Multicultural reflexivity: university students negotiating ‘pockets’ and ‘strings’ of multiculturalism in Malaysia

Abstract

The university is a critical spatio-temporal geography where youth negotiate becoming adult and encounter diverse ‘others’. However, there has been a lack of attention to university students’ reflections on, and formulations of attitudes towards multiculturalism as part of their transition processes. Drawing from interviews with 15 Malaysian university students, we argue that university student life offers opportunities for young people to engage in ‘multicultural reflexivity’ (i.e. the ability to analyse experiences and observations of racism and intercultural conviviality). We propose the dual concepts of ‘pockets’ and ‘strings’ of multiculturalism to analyse how participants make sense of the paradoxical co-existence of racism and conviviality in their lives. Beyond these youth narratives, we argue for a mobile–rather than static–conceptualisation of multiculturalism that is attentive to the shifting understandings and enactments of multiculturalism as people make sense of their past and present lived experiences and in terms of future imaginaries.