Let’s start with Multicultural Citizenship. What does Will Kymlicka mean by this?

Well, I think the first thing to say about the book is that multiculturalism as a political theory began in the late 1980s and we are actually indebted to Canadian theorists. Canada was the first country to declare itself a multicultural state and Will Kymlicka, with this book in particular, is really pioneering this theory. This is one of the first major statements of a political theory of multiculturalism and Will Kymlicka is really the leading liberal exponent of multiculturalism; meaning that he thinks individual freedom is the highest good. For him multicultural citizenship is about extending our politics to accommodate minority groups. But he says the reason we should do this is because individuals will lead more fulfilling lives. They will be more themselves if we do this. So unlike others he actually says the highest good is not accommodating groups but allowing individuals the maximum amount of freedom and opportunity to develop themselves.

He has some good example of this, hasn’t he? One is where he talks about Orthodox Jews in the US who want an exemption from military dress codes so they can wear their yarmulkes and they want this exemption so they can then join in.

Yes, exactly so. His example is that we offer these exemptions so that people are able to be fully citizens. It is a form of integration which will come as a surprise to some people, because some people think multiculturalism is the enemy of integration. I think what a lot of people mean by integration is actually what I think of as assimilation because they think it means you should be like the majority of the population.

One other thing about the book is that he combines in his multicultural citizenship three different groups of people from Canada. These are indigenous people – for example, the Inuits as well as the Native Americans; he is thinking of national or sub-national groups like the French speakers of Quebec, and he is thinking about migrant groups, but he gives the migrant groups the least political status. So you asked me what does he mean by multicultural citizenship and I think in some ways the book would have been better titled ‘Multinational Citizenship’ because the political status that he gives to Native Americans and the Québécois, who he conceives of as nations, is quite considerable compared to the opportunities for accommodation given to the immigrants.

Your next choice is Bhikhu Parekh’s Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory.

Bhikhu Parekh is really the leading British theorist of multiculturalism and he combines extensive public service with political philosophy. For instance, he was the acting chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in the early 1990s and at the end of the 1990s he chaired the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. He published a string of essays on multiculturalism in the 80s and 90s. Then he produced this book which came out in the year 2000 and is a very substantial statement of multiculturalism. Unlike Will Kymlicka, he wants to go beyond liberalism; he wants to argue that we should include groups, and not just because ultimately individual freedom is so important, and that somehow groups contribute to individual freedom. He thinks that both people and groups are important, so he is talking about people whose fulfilment lies in membership of a certain group. He says we shouldn’t have to find reasons for including groups based on what one might call liberal or individualist arguments.

Though, of course, one consequence of this is the tension between individual rights and what one might call group rights. So if we say individuals should be able to run their own community affairs, well, there are some groups, say, South Asian origin groups, who are likely to run their affairs by appointing elderly males as community leaders, and we might say, what about your women? And they could say that their role is something else. But some women within that group might feel that their rights are being less respected than the rights of their male community members.

There are other difficult cases, like female circumcision, where individual rights and allowing cultures to continue with their customs and practices conflict. But Bhikhu Parekh discusses in great detail the controversial cases like this and shows how it is possible, through an effort by each side to understand the other, to find some sort of accommodation. He does want to support individual rights but he thinks that sometimes individual rights can be interpreted in very Western ways, which deny other cultures certain opportunities to promote their own ways of living.

Your next book is Jonathan Sacks’s The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society.

The last three books are all a little bit later than the first books. So for instance the next two books are published in 2007 and my book was published in September 2010. That means that they are shaped by a climate in which multiculturalism has become unpopular. The first two books are to some extent manifestos for what is seen as a new approach to politics, whereas the next three books are all considerably more defensive and more qualified about what multiculturalism means and how much it is being advocated.

Jonathan Sacks’s book falls into that category because it is notable that in his earlier books he was a champion of strong communities and diversity, of groups having the space to be different so they could be faithful to their own traditions. But in this new book he emphasises what he calls integrated diversity. Now, actually, a lot of what he says about this is shared by people like myself who call ourselves multiculturalists. And Jonathan Sacks only manages to distinguish his own position from a multiculturalist position by caricaturing multiculturalism. I would say that although the book has many strengths, one of its weaknesses is that it doesn’t engage with multiculturalist authors – it just uses multiculturalism to refer to something negative.