Multiculturalism has failed. 

This is the constant and confident verdict of many commentators, academics, keyboard and ‘culture’ warriors and many a politician in recent years, in Malta and more broadly across Europe and beyond.

Allied to this is the assertion that very many of the problems and challenges we face from health and housing to identity and education to religion, infrastructure and immigration are the result of pursuing this ‘failed’ philosophy and strategy.

In short, ‘we’ are not responsible for society’s ills and failings, ‘they’ - most especially those who promote or pursue this multiculturalism- are. The ‘we’ and the ‘they’ are deliberately vague and are a movable feast depending on context, culture and, inevitably, politics and prejudice.

By contrast, we are rarely if ever enlightened (except by extreme far right groups) as to what the ‘alternative’ to multiculturalism is – mono-culturalism, uniculturalism, assimilation, exclusion? Instead, we get vague and unspecified assertions that ‘our culture’ and ‘way of life’ is being eroded by multiculturalism and that we need to somehow ‘return to’, ‘rediscover’ or redefine our ‘original’ or ‘untainted’ identity and culture. 

And this it is assumed we can do without too much disagreement or dissent. 

Routinely, the result is that we avoid dealing with the substantive issues before us, for example – overdevelopment and its associated ills, the absence of effective policies and governance, deeply embedded dishonesty and criminality and a toxic and self-defeating political culture.  ‘Multiculturalism’ has become our ‘get out of jail’ card.

Despite this supposed ‘failure’ of multiculturalism, we actually live in a Malta, a Europe and a world where every facet of life (even ethnicity, language, religion, identity, culture and more) is, by definition multicultural, embodying elements, facets and components of not just one but multiple cultures. 

Malta and all things Maltese are by dint of history, geography and the experience of life over time (locally and internationally), suffused with multicultural DNA. In this sense, the story of Malta and the Maltese is a/the universal story. There is no ‘pure’, single-cultured Malta.

Inevitably (and for me, positively) the realities of a multicultured life does indeed pose challenges, some fundamental and many potentially transformative. The Maltese know this deeply as their internationalised history and culture attest.

I was born into and grew up in an Ireland that was, despite its history, prone to idealising a particular definition and interpretation of what it meant to be Irish. To be ‘really’ Irish, one was required to tick a number of selective ‘ethnic or cultural boxes’ – white, catholic, nationalist, an Irish speaker, ‘straight’, a follower of all things Gaelic, committed to a united Ireland etc. 

Defining ‘Irishness’ in this manner was as much about excluding as it was about including. Needless to say we were (and are) not unique in this regard but nonetheless, this ‘Gaelic’ culture was literally beaten into us in school.  

As a result, our constitution, our formal and informal institutions, laws and practices were crafted to protect and deliver this selective and rarified definition of ‘Irishness’.  Those who did not adequately tick the required boxes were forced to ‘navigate’ and ‘survive’ the dominant definition and culture often at huge personal and social cost. Our history is littered with the human and social consequences of attempting to promote one overarching and often supposed superior monoculture.

As a result, discrimination became widespread, even if routinely unspoken. It existed in employment, in religion, in gender, sex and marriage, in sport, in education and, most deplorably and cruelly, in healthcare and the institutional ‘care’ of children.

As I grew older, travelled in Europe, studied in Canada and Australia and eventually worked in various countries in Africa, I realised that having more than one established culture is vital for the well-being and the prospering of any society.

Slow learner that I am, I eventually came to realise that culture has no overarching or co-ordinating authority nor should it. Culture is never static or settled, it ebbs and flows in the superstructure and the substructure of any society. It displays and speaks with many voices and very rarely with just one. Culture is, by definition, complex and contradictory with multiple layers of ambiguity or ‘fuzziness’. 

Ultimately, culture is a porous world of ideas and experiences, one that is constantly open and interactive with other worlds. As such, cultures benefit from external exposure and from ongoing engagement with different ways of living, thinking, defining value and satisfying individual and social needs.

Valuing and embracing multiculturalism need not imply or indicate a dismissal or diminution of one’s own culture, community, identity or heritage. Rather it signifies a deep appreciation of it including recognition of its limitations and failings.   

At the core of multiculturalism lies a series of common values or aspirations based around the principles of human dignity and rights, for example, those of respect for self and for others, the mutual need for equality of opportunity, freedom of cultural expression and respect for conscience and for diversity.

Blaming Malta’s current ills (especially those associated with our chosen model of growth without development) on multiculturalism is lazy and mistaken. It is also dangerous as the history of so many other countries (my own included) attests. It is indeed time to address Malta’s existential problems but not by pointing the finger at multicultural others but pointedly at ourselves and our choices.