Multiculturalism

In an increasingly global world with significant cross-border migration, societies inevitably contain people with different ethnic, cultural, and religious identities. In the context of the United States in particular, the presence of ethnic, cultural, and religious heterogeneity is more commonly referred to as diversity, while in most other contexts the mere presence of such heterogeneity is dubbed multiculturalism—the most general formulation of multiculturalism in sociology. However, multiculturalism is also an ideological position founded upon the claim that minority identities are important to the people who hold them, and that the identity groups they create will persist. Because identity and identity groups matter, they must be recognized and accommodated in social and political life. Generally speaking, the sociology of multiculturalism falls into six broad categories: the study of growing population diversity, commonly referred to as demographic multiculturalism; multicultural theory; multicultural policy; the impact of multiculturalism; the retreat from multiculturalism; and examination of multiculturalism as a cultural object. Due to its broad subject matter—recent and contemporary cultural diversity and the changes it has wrought in societies and nations—the study of multiculturalism is particularly interdisciplinary. The sociology of multiculturalism overlaps many other areas of research in sociology: migration and immigrant inclusion, national identity and citizenship, religious studies, and racial and ethnic studies, just to name a few. Multiculturalism is also a common subject in the fields of education, political science, philosophy, cultural studies, and history. This article focuses almost exclusively on work that is done in sociology and by sociologists. In addition, the sociology of multiculturalism is, most especially, an international field of research.