Rethinking Multiculturalism: The Ethnocentric Dimensions of Multiculturalism and its Impact on Transnational Cross-border Connections

Sammanfattning: Multiculturalism has had significant successes with promoting mutual cultural acceptance, inclusion and equality of national and cultural minorities in several western states. It is often praised by politicians and governments due to its emphasis on inclusion of minority-groups regardless of any cultural distinctiveness. Yet, such distinctiveness might be more significant for minorities and their identities than promoters of multiculturalism might admit. In practice, identifying oneself as different or being labelled as such might be two very different things even in the most multicultural society. Questions that rise from these reflections are if culture ever is neutral, what impact culture has for the majority’s self-image and how this affects its definitions, interactions and inclusion of minorities. This study therefore analyzes the implementation of integration-policies to understand how ethnocentrism and ethnocentric fallacy affect the rules for multicultural inclusion and equality of migrants. By offering alternative perspectives on multiculturalism, I argue that the distinctiveness of migrants’ transnational cross-border connections and identity is overlooked due to the unconscious conviction of the universal legitimacy of liberal democracy and its norms, practices, values and societal structures, which imbues the cultural logic of majority-groups within multicultural states. This leaves migrants with little choice but to assimilate in accordance with the majority’s cultural logic.