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Global Questions: Global Questions: Is Multiculturalism failing?

Discussion & Talk

Australia: Is multiculturalism failing?

22/06/2019 GMT

Global Questions: Is Multiculturalism failing?

BBC World Service - Global Questions, Global Questions: Is Multiculturalism failing?

Can you have a multi-racial, multi-faith society, without forcing people to assimilate?

Global Questions travels to Sydney to ask if the multiculturalism dream has failed - if too many communities live separately, pursuing segregation rather than integration.

Multiculturalism was once the dream of many countries around the world, encouraging ethnically diverse cultures to live side by side in harmony. But critics say that dream has failed: that too many communities live separately – pursuing segregation rather than integration, fuelling dangerous resentment. Can you have a multi-racial, multi-faith society, without forcing people of different cultures to assimilate?

Global Questions travels to Sydney, Australia – a young country built on immigration, where many cultures now live together – hailed by its former Prime Minister as the most successful multi-cultural society in the world. But even here there are real tensions, and the world recoiled in revulsion when a self-avowed Australian racist and white supremacist massacred fifty Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. It revealed a disturbing underbelly of racism in parts of Australian society.   

So in this mobile, globalised world, is multiculturalism failing – and if so, what needs to replace it? 
 
Presented by Zeinab Badawi.

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