The failure of state multiculturalism in the UK? An analysis of the UK’s multicultural policy for 2000–2015

Abstract

If the 1997 New Labour’s winning election seems to correlate with an upsurge in both the political arena and in public favour for multiculturalism in the UK, the overall decade and a half that ensued took the very opposite path. For example, Prime Minister David Cameron declared in 2011 that state multiculturalism was a failure. In this article, I question the impact of such declarations onto the UK’s immigrant multicultural policy. In particular, using and updating the Multicultural Policy Index, I show evidence of the evolution, between 2000 and 2015, of the UK’s multicultural policy. In turn, this provides a satisfactory framework for having a clear understanding of the public policy dynamic in matters of multiculturalism in the following of David Cameron’s declarations concerning the failure of state multiculturalism. Then, echoing Meer and Modood’s argument of a ‘civic-thickening’ for the UK’s integration policy, I discuss citizenship education programs of the four constituent nations of the UK – where such integration policies have been implemented. This shows that while such curriculums all put forward approaches for ‘thickening’ togetherness, it is nonetheless consistent with a ‘multiculturalist advance’. Hence, one must invalidate the thesis following which multicultural policy and integration policy should be understood through the strict prism of a zero-sum game.