A sociological debate about assimilation and its normative implications for multiculturalism

This chapter critically discusses two central contributions to the recently-developed position in migration studies, here called a ‘liberal sociology of assimilation’, which tends to be critical of multiculturalism. The first is Joppke and Morawska's (2003) programmatic introduction to Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States. The second is Brubaker's (2001) reconceptualisation of assimilation, on which Joppke and Morawska's reintroduction of the concept is founded. Brubaker's article, entitled ‘The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany and the United States’, summarises a reconceptualisation of assimilation in American sociology without explicitly linking it to a liberal political theory. This reconceptualisation stands at the basis of the more normatively-oriented ‘liberal assimilationism’ outlined by Joppke and Morawska.

The major reason for Brubaker, as well as for Joppke and Morawska, to reintroduce assimilation is their claim that its use as a legitimate sociological and normative concept prevents us from focusing on differences only. It also helps us to avoid theoretically endorsing or masking processes of social exclusion in terms of (desirable) cultural difference. These authors criticise the multiculturalist argument that the cultural diversity produced by migration in liberal societies should lead to the explicit recognition of migrants as distinct ethnic groups or ethnic minorities. In this sense, their view is related to Noiriel’s, who Brubaker (2001) mentions as an important resource. Like Noiriel, Brubaker, Joppke and Morawska argue that assimilation as a concept was rejected for the wrong reasons in the late 20th-century age of postmodernist differentialism. It is necessary, they suggest, to reflect on assimilation's morally legitimate uses. Unlike Noiriel, however, the liberal assimilationists do not consider assimilation as necessarily a violent social process that forces migrants and their children to adapt to the receiving society at multiple levels.