Multiculturalism Reassessed

This article sets out to scrutinize attitudes that people living in the so-called 'multicultural' countries of Australia and Canada have towards important aspects of multiculturalism. The examined attitudes include immigration, integration and assimilation, national pride, and xenophobia. The attitudes in Australia and Canada are compared with the same attitudes that people living in the so-called 'ethnic' countries of Austria and Germany have. Data are drawn from the International Social Survey Program 1995 (ISSP), which is a program for international comparative attitude studies. The results indicate that the support, or lack of support, towards important aspects of multiculturalism is similar in the examined countries regardless of the difference in policy regimes between the two pairs of countries. The latter implies that the political programs of multiculturalism in Australia and Canada risk running into serious problems of getting public support in the future. However, there exists a real political possibility for a move towards a more multicultural model in Austria and Germany.