Liberal Multiculturalism and the Ethics of Hospitality in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

The increasing political presence of refugees and immigrants in post-Cold war Europe has generated considerable debate about the nature of multicultural society. The demand for the recognition of cultural, racial, and ethnic differences has come to occupy a central place in the forms of post-national politics emergent today. Yet, a closer examination of the juridico-political regulations developed in response to these demands reveals a troubling tendency: cultural/racial difference is translated into an understanding of cultural diversity that treats minorities, to use David Bennett's term, as "add-ons" (5) to the existing nation form. Thus the question becomes whether such an "additive model" (5) is capable of inducing a radical transformation in the concept of the sovereign position of the national self. This essay addresses the limitations of this procedural multiculturalist valorization and argues that the liberal imperative to tolerate and respect cultural difference is far from displacing the sovereignty of the host society in question. In discussing these limitations, I will situate liberal multiculturalism in the context of today's capitalist globalization. 1. When we examine the policies and programs through which the culturally different is valorized today, it becomes clear that liberalism has become the regulative principle in many metropolitan countries. Yet it is far from clear whether such a liberal valorization and the granting of legal rights to non-normative citizens, the ethnically and racially "different," will prove to be a counter-hegemonic political force. Is the legal codification of respect for identities in their particularity adequate for reinventing a democratic political space? If such politicization does not flourish in particularist liberal multiculturalism, then we need to be vigilant about what is being left intact. In fact, we need to take our vigilance one step further and question the ways in which such codification regulates the destabilizing force of the political and entails its 2.