Diversity and the Problem of Belonging

In an article in The New Yorker late last year, Hua Hsu wrote about “diversity fatigue,” and the scapegoating of diversity for a slew of cultural failures. The results of a recent Ipsos MORI poll for the BBC would seem to raise that malaise to fear, even hostility. Residents in a majority of the twenty-seven countries polled felt their countries are more divided now than a decade ago, and many blame migration.

In our ever more multicultural world, questions about diversity and social cohesion have coalesced into debates over niqab bans, contentious diaspora histories (see the storm over federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s associations with pro-Khalistan activists), and more. These are questions explored by Will Kymlicka in a recent anthology co-edited with Keith Banting, The Strains of Commitment: The Political Sources of Solidarity in Diverse Societies, published by Oxford University Press. Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in political...