Monday, May 25, 2009

Kymlicka interviewed about Canadian multiculturalism...

in the Globe and Mail. Includes some discussion of the Tamil community's distinctive political profile, as well as discussions about the Canadian high-skill immigration model.
Posted by Jacob T. Levy at 9:21 AM
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1 comment:

Matt said...

Very interesting. Thanks for linking to this as I'd otherwise not have seen it. One thing in particular stands out to me now. Kymlicka said, as to why immigrants lag behind economically, The second reason is immigrants get virtually no credit for any experience they've had working outside Canada. And that wasn't true 30 to 40 years ago. These are disturbing trends, but have little to do with multiculturalismIn a broad sense of "multiculturalism" this might well have something to do with it- a tendency to not value credentials or experience that is "foreign". This can be rational- it's hard to know how to evaluate a degree from an unfamiliar education system, or work experience in a very different society- but when the default is to strongly disvalue such credentials or experience, as is often the case, this seems to me a failure to achieve a properly broad multiculturalism. (Note in the sense Kymlicka's talking about- I'm going beyond his point here hoping to make a broader one.) As my wife is a foreigner with a higher education from an unfamiliar system I've had the unfortunate occasion to witness this sort of thing up-close. For this reasons I've long thought that the project of mutual recognition of credentials and the like across Europe (mostly in the EU, but also beyond it) was a very important step in the integration of Europe, and one I'd like to see extended more widely.

3:46 PM

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