8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
1/19
Robert Latham
What are we?From a multicultural to a multiversal Canada
Samuel Huntingtons most recent book, Who Are We? The Challenges to
Americas National Identity, contends that the future of American democ-
racy rests on the prospect of defending the Anglo-Protestant culture that
has been centre stage in US political history. Many commentators have
rightly questioned the premises of this book. Rather than join in, let me
point your attention to Huntingtons use of the pronoun who. Its a choice
that leaves little option but to do exactly as Huntington wants: to make the
issue of an overarching ethnonational identity the principal problem. The
title of this essay is What are we? The simple substitution of what for
who makes the principal problem our understanding of how what we call
Canada is organized in sociopolitical and ethical terms. Huntingtons for-
mulation takes this for granted: the core issue at play for him is whether the
right whoWASP ethnocultural identitycan remain central enough to
support his whatthe American liberal republic.
Robert Latham is director of the York Centre of International and Security Studies at
York University. The author acknowledges the support of the International
Development Research Centre to conduct this work.
| International Journal | Winter 2007/08 | 23 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
2/19
I have purposefully left in the pronoun we, not to sneak in a who
but to emphasize two things. First, that when considering ourselves as a
collectivity within the national social space and political community that iscalled Canada, we do so in terms of the question of what we are as a
Canadian society rather than who we are as Canadians. A secondand
far more controversialreason I keep the we is to question the possibili-
ty of some kind of unified, comprehensive understanding of we at all.
Indeed, a what can be conceived in a highly pluralized and fragmented
fashionan option not easily available in answers to the question who we
are. It may be the case that understandings of what we are splinter along
the axes of a series of two Canadas that not only include the one associat-
ed with the worlds of Francophone and Anglophone or First Nations and
European settlers, but also the one that distinguishes people and commu-
nities that are open to the very question of what we are?embracing dif-
ference in an essentially cosmopolitan world viewfrom another Canada
that is closed to this question and which seeks to protect itself against dif-
ference and cosmopolitanism.
Focusing on a what is hardly unusual. Political theorists, at least from
Hobbes onward, have done this ostensibly because principles and logics of
social organization provide a powerful justification for making claims abouthow best to order a polity. This tendency is far from just theoretical or aca-
demic: in Canada and elsewhere, those responsible for policy and political
organization justify action based on claims about the nature of social life.
Among the most central understandings of the nature of Canadian society
is that it comprises many cultures and this thereby justifies policies and
laws associated with multiculturalism. I will argue that the concept of mul-
ticulturalism actually does not answer the question of what Canada is, and
as a result we need to consider policies that are better suited to a more accu-rate understanding of the nature of Canadian society. My overall goal is to
suggest that we can move beyond a multicultural frame and consider the
nature of the social life in the territory we call Canada in all its complexity,
taking account of our far greater awareness of the complex interweave of
forms of life operating at varying scales from neighbourhoods to transbor-
der networks. I believe we can use this very open conception of the social
space we associate and identify as Canada as a basis to build effective poli-
cy. This suggests the possibility of not just adjusting or amending our
understanding and assumptions about multiculturalism, but working with
a different understanding and set of assumptions. My point is not to reject
| 24 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
3/19
multiculturalism per se, even if it has flaws, but to move beyond it in a pos-
itive sense. If effective and just policy is a more likely outcome when based
on a more accurate model and understanding of society, then it behoovesus to pursue that greater accuracy.
I also want to suggest that what I call multiversalsociety is something
to be actively supported and advanced by civil society and government. The
existence and recognition of that form of society can be a good in itself. To
this end, I will argue, there are basic policies and commitments, such as the
advancement of multiple citizenship in Canada and worldwide, which can
make a huge difference to the development of a multiversal society (the way
that single national citizenship itself has been so critical to the formation of
nation-states).
The reason to take this task on now is that it is clear that many people
in countries like Canada are increasingly anxious about the difference pro-
duced by widening immigration and transnationalism and intensifying
energies in the assertion of rights in many realms from religion to sexuali-
ty. It is also more readily apparent that the categories we have used to model
differencesuch as ethnic culture or majority/minority groupare too
limiting: individuals are increasingly understanding themselves in far more
complex and intersecting ways, involving, for example: class, locale, con-sumption, political orientation, sexual preference, and religious affiliation.
Rather than be content with using models from an earlier period of politi-
cal development to contend with the politics of difference in the 21st cen-
tury, Canada can innovatively get ahead of the curve and rethink itself as an
open, transnational society.
FROM MULTICULTURALISM TO MULTIVERSALISM
By now many of us concerned with multiculturalism are familiar with thecriticisms that have been levelled against it from both the left and the right.
Criticisms have included the ghettoization of new immigrants; the solidifi-
cation of Anglo-Canadian culture as a norm; the established of a culture
hierarchy; the commodification ofand fixation onculture; the papering
over of crucial class and general differences and inequalities; and the pur-
suit of a false unity and common Canadian identity.1 Rather than focus on
1 The work associated with these critiques is far too large to list here. Readers inter-
ested in critical and supportive perspectives on multiculturalism will be well servedby the thoughtful and comprehensive discussion in Gerald Kernerman, Multicultural
Nationalism: Civilizing Difference, Constituting Community(Vancouver: UBC Press,
2005).
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 25 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
4/19
such critiques I want to make two basic points. First, even if we have con-
cerns about the instrumental uses and sociopolitical effects of multicultur-
alism as an ideology and a policy, we can still acknowledge that Canada ismulticultural and the commitment to multiculturalism put in place in the
early 1970swhile not to everyones likingwas an innovation in state-
society relations.2
Second, while we may recognize the truism that Canada is multicul-
tural, many of the criticisms argue directly or suggest indirectly that Canada
is much more than just a multicultural social formation. It is multiracial,
multiclass, multigendered, multisexual, multilocal (from rural to urban,
from North Toronto to Harbourfront Toronto). It is multipolitical, multire-
ligious, multilegal-status, multilingual, multihistorical (within lives and
across communities), and multiprofessional. It is multigenerational, multi-
status (from temporary worker to citizen), and multiscalar (with lives real-
ized at difference scales, some which remain more or less within a single
province, while others reach regularly across borders and oceans). The list
is not exhaustive and perhaps expands far out to the horizon when we con-
sider all the mixed formations, such as hybrid-ethnicities (e.g., Chino-
Latinos) resulting from mixed marriages or hybrid spatial forms growing
out of a mix of urban and suburban in the new in-between cities that sur-round many of Canadas urban centres.3
2 I am especially aware here of the concerns of people in Qubec since 1971 about
dilution along the cultural axis in the move from bi- to multi-cultural. See, for exam-
ple, Richard J.F. Day, Multiculturalism and The History of Candian Diversity(Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2002).
3 On mixed marriages, see the recent research by Minelle Mahtani, Interrogating the
hyphen-nation: Canadian Mixed race women and multicultural policy, in Sean Hier
and B. Singh Bolaria, eds., Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in
Canadian Society(Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2007), 124-56. On in-between
spaces, see the work of the city institute at York University at www.yorku.ca.
| 26 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
5/19
Of course, on one level, there is a cultural dimension to everything I
mentioned.4 Indeed, it certainly helps simplify matters to reduce the over-
whelming array of social domains, identities, and spaces to varieties of cul-ture. But it is the huge differences and multiplicity implied by the seem-
ingly infinite everythings in a society that I want to emphasize should be
taken into account on their own terms when thinking about the nature of
Canadian society. A small town, for instance, has a culture, but it also has
an economy, political organization, one or more religious communities,
and a particular geography. Each of these many factors may find expression
in the towns culture but what is expressed has its own force and logic.
An important reason not to be satisfied with one single pivot like cul-
ture to anchor the difference and multiplicity that constitutes Canada is that
we can help avoid trying to fit all the complexity and changeability of the life
of individuals that can be identified on one level as Caribbean-Canadian
into an overarching concept like Caribbean-Canadian culture. Not only
might an individual understand his life in Canada through her race, but
also her class, sexuality, neighbourhood, and political connections to the
Caribbean. She might also alter these understandings, positions, and relat-
ed practices throughout her life or even in the same year. The same could
be said for a group within the so-called Caribbean-Canadian community. 5
And while legal frameworks such as the Canadian charter of rights and
freedoms can provide protections and the basis for claims along many vec-
4 See Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), chapter 5. This implies that we can
address other dimensions of human experience and society, sexuality, or race,
through the lens of culture. To my mind this is a misguided attempt to preserve theprimacy of multiculturalism as the best approach for dealing with social difference.
Critiques of the attempt to reduce the complexity of societies and identities to culture
have come from varying quarters, including the critical social theorist Shela
Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era(Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2002) as well as the liberal political philosopher Brian
Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism(Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
5 While Kymlicka reads Neil Bissondaths Selling Illusions: The Cult of
Multiculturalism in Canada(Toronto: Penguin Books, 1994), as chiefly complainingabout multiculturalisms ghettoization of immigrant groups, I read him as chiefly
complaining about being forced to live his life through the cultural-ethnic category of
Caribbean-Canadian.
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 27 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
6/19
6 Despite the effort of theorists like Iris Young, Inclusion and Democracy(New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), to forestall the typical fixity in theorizing, it continues
today in the work, for example, of Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism:
Cultural Diversity and Political Theory(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
7 In this then I agree with social theorists such as Ernesto Laclau, New Reflection on
the Revolution of Our Time(London and New York: Verso, 1990), 8992, who con-
tend that the view of society as an intelligible totality is essentialist and misleading.
This does not mean that we have to agree with Margaret Thatcher when she quipped
there is no such thing as society, meaning to assert that we should worry less about
the welfare of the British people as a collective. My point is that we can understand
this collective in all its difference and multiplicity as multiversal.
tors from sexual preference to disability, charters are not proactive pro-
grammatic policy like the multiculturalism act.
We can shrug our heads and say that taking into account all this com-plexity and multiplicity is too much even to begin to fathom, let alone sort
out as a basis for organizing Canada politically. The first part of this objec-
tion has merit: it is unreasonable to expect a coherent, structured portrait of
society once we open up our frame to take the full range of multiplicity into
account. But I would argue that attempts to create such carefully structured
portraits are really attempts to contain social complexity in some concep-
tion that is only partial at best. Rather than be satisfied with these partial
portraits (a multicultural or a unified Canada) we can just accept that we are
a multiverse made up not just of many identities and perspectives, but also
many specific domains of action and practice from health and education to
the environment, and that all these many universes are changeable to vary-
ing degrees.
If it is true that political theorists and policymakers start with a model
of society that is typically used as a point of reference for building a theory
or policy, what happens if we treat that model of society as an open, variable
conception that always presents itself as ultimately impenetrable? The
question what are we? should be seen as a recurring or even permanentproblem to be addressed, rather than a question to be answered in the inter-
est of moving on with political theorizing or policymaking.6 In this sense I
am asking that we keep the question what are we? in constant motion.
Thus, multiversality is first a claim that no macro-conceptualization can
realistically represent the basic structure of society. The term multiversal
society represents a conceptual place-holder for a complex, overlapping,
inconsistent social formation that we are otherwise often content to call
society or Canada.7
Multiversalism does not try to fix meaning, but to pro-
| 28 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
7/19
8 William James was the first known user of this term to convey the need to under-
stand that the world is made of a plurality of perspectives and subjectivities. See
William James, The one and the many, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old
Ways of Thinking(New York: Longman Green and Co.,1907): 49-63. Since then the
term has been used mostly in natural science to describe a reality composed of mul-
tiple universes andin a similar fashionin science fiction.
9 The notion of multiple public spheres in the same country is developed by NancyFraser, Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually
existing democracy, in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 109-42.
vide a conceptual frame for individuals and groups to navigate democratic
contestations and life choices. A multiverse is never complete, and is never
knowable or transparent.And yet I have the nerve to ask for government action based on such an
understanding of Canada? Moreover, I am asking people who are living
under the authority of the unified Canadian state, in a distinct, bounded ter-
ritory with national symbols, media, and systems of infrastructure, to rec-
ognize themselves in this disjointed and potentially confusing way. My will-
ingness to ask this of policymakers and publics is not only based on the
belief that this is a more honest and comprehensive understanding of life
in Canada. It also holds the promise of opening the way toward important
social and political innovations that will establish Canada as a global leader
in rethinking how to help organize life in an increasingly transnational 21st
century. In that context, part of the task of the state is to undertake action
that will facilitate complexity and multiplicity.
Before I go on to suggest some steps in that regard, I will first try to
clarify why we need the term multiverse and what are the advantages of
thinking of Canada in a multiversal way. Why bother with the term multi-
verse? I think this somewhat strange and awkward wordas multicultur-
al likely sounded decades agois necessary.8 For some the word diversi-ty might do, given that the term multiversity is quite proximate to the
term diversity. However, while diversity and multiversity have similar
meanings associated with difference along many vectors from class to gen-
der, the word multiverse is more closely related to the world universe, the
point being that the use of the term multiverse is to convey that there are
many universes (understood in this context as, for instance, a domain of
activity like healthcare, a discrete public sphere realized through a busy,
robust internet forum, a locale such as a town, or a form of community thatmight emerge out of a womens rights movement).9 Indeed, in a multiverse
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 29 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
8/19
you do not just have diversity across one universe, but diversity within and
across many overlapping and intersecting universes, so that there are a
seemingly infinite variety of views, life trajectories, and identities.Just as multiculturalism and diversity fail to convey what is meant by
multiversalism, the terms hybridity, pluralism, and cosmopolitanism also
fall short. As indicated above, hybridity implies a mixing and crossing of
various identities and dimensions of lifei.e., working class immigrants
that otherwise hold together as integral on their own terms. In the multi-
versal frame, the point is to allow for both the hybrid and non-hybrid. 10
On one level multiversality is, like multiculturalism, merely one partic-
ular form of or approach within pluralism, the latter being in this funda-
mental sense the basic assumption that any given social and political for-
mation should be thought of in terms of multiplicity and difference. The
problem is that pluralism taken in this sense is far too abstract and gener-
al to convey the specific points about multiversalism I have already made.
Indeed, pluralism typically takes form as a specific theory about the nature
of democratic politics. (Historically, in the US in the 1950s, it focused on
the role of interest groups in politics; in Britain in the first decades of the
20th century, it focused on the power of nonstate social organization. 11)The
ways we might imagine a politics of multiversalism will surely overlap withthe politics of pluralism.
Like the other terms, cosmopolitanism has important affinities with
multiversalism, given that I assume that individuals positively disposed to
the Canadian multiverse will be cosmopolitans. That is, they will be open
and supportive of difference and willing to share social space with groups
and individuals with all sorts of identities and ways of being, if not also will-
ing to participate in and affiliate with their diverse universes.12 However, it
| 30 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
10 I am using hybrid here to represent social forms where there is a clear identity of
mixture like Latin jazz, Ukrainian-Portuguese, or gay South Asians. I recognize the
point that every form ultimately is hybrid because of historical and concurrent influ-
ences that are not highlighted in an identified mix. A key text on hybridity is Homi K.
Bhabha, The Location of Culture(London, Routledge, 1994).
11 One useful attempt to review the various faces of pluralism is Gregor McLennan,
Pluralism(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
12 See David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism(New York:
Basic Books, 1995) for a statement of the advantages of cosmopolitanism over plu-
ralism and multiculturalism.
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
9/19
13 Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 142, goes as far as to argue that multiplicity is
necessary for democracy.
should be clear that cosmopolitanism represents a perspective, attitude, and
set of practices regarding others and other worlds rather than a framework
for understanding the nature of social life in Canada. Indeed, multiversal-ism, as a very strong version of pluralism, assumes that Canada can include
decidedly non-cosmopolitan perspectives, even if these come at the cost of
hindering the development of policies that encourage multiversity.
It should be clear by now that I believe multiversalism is a good thing.
That belief rests on the near truism that multiplicity and difference across
Canada are necessary for the widest possible development and circulation
of ideas about the organization of social and political life through varied
approaches, critiques, assessments, and proposed alternatives. Democracy
may be valued for many reasons but one of them is the potential for a wide
set of options and thoughtful evaluations regarding public policy and
norms to help make economic life, social welfare, foreign policy, and envi-
ronmental actionto name a few areasbetter.13 The point is that no one
philosophy, approach, individual, or group will have all the wisdom and
effective policy on its side, even if they have much of the power and access.
Therefore, as many relevant perspectives on an issue as are present in the
Canadian multiverse ought to contribute to collective thinking on issues
from lawmaking to diplomacyexpressed through public debate, consulta-tion, and political conflict.
Beyond the advantage of having more perspectives on the nature of
political and social life that can sometimes help us avoid bad decisions and
mistakes or see them when they happen, a multiverse means the existence
and possibility of more choices in the ways and places within which we
might live our livesfrom rural to urban, gay to straight, traditional to
experimental, collective to individualistic. Whatever ones views on the
desirability and difficulty of protecting these forms, facilitating access tothem, or making them more visible, it should be understood that the posi-
tion and perspective from which one criticizes such desirability and difficul-
ty is part of the multiverse. Indeed, one of the advantages of seeing Canada
as a multiverse is that we need not agree on a hierarchy of pivots for under-
standing difference in Canada, including nation, culture, race, class, sexual-
ity, religion, rural/urban, new/old immigrant, language, and disability.
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 31 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
10/19
MULTIVERSALISM AND COMPLEX COEXISTENCE
I realize that the very possibility of protecting difference and facilitating
access to it presupposes a liberal democratic polity within which funda-
mental rights are available, along with space for democratic practices and
expression. But just as multiculturalism helped push the Canadian liberal
polity beyond its mostly individualistic foundation toward the development
of group rights, multiversalism can push it further by emphasizing specif-
ic rights of coexistence not just between identifiable groups and communi-
ties, but also within such groups, as well as within and across spaces, bor-
ders, and spheres of activity (from the factory to the clinic).
Within the context of this essay, I cannot articulate a political theory of
such rights, only suggest some simple starting points for thinking abouthow one might begin to approach such a theory, specifically in the realm of
citizenship. A critical first point is the understanding that to view Canada
as a multiverse, highlighting the profusion of social forms and identities,
does not entail displacing the primacy of the state in political life. On the
contrary, in the Canadian multiverse the states centrality is more visible as
the one set of institutions that is in effect present in every sphere of life.
The nature of its presence can vary from the very constitutor and key agent
in a domain such as education or healthcare, to being one among a num-ber of forces in civic spaces such as a neighbourhood or the media.
One implication of this is that the fear that rights-claiming newcomers-
immigrants will dissipate the political coherence of Canada is unfounded.
Among the many nation-making activities the state undertakes is the con-
stitution and maintenance of borders, territory, national symbols, civic edu-
cation, a common currency, and territory-wide military force. As one coun-
try among many in the wider international system, Canada maintains a
coherence based on these elements that belies concerns with difference andmultiplicity as threats to unity. It is only a challenge like the potential suc-
cession of Qubec that brings the foundations of the Canadian state into
question.
The point is that it is not shared understandings, per se, that make a
polity, but shared institutions, activities, symbols, space, and territory.
While shared understandings can emerge around any of these, or, say, a
humanitarian emergency inside Canada, they are not prerequisite to politi-
cal life. We can think of a family whose members may share a home with
very difference understandings of the space and its purposes. Where spe-
cific rooms are shared, the family needs to ensure that spaces have multi-
| 32 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
11/19
14 On the ways that globalization reinforces states, see Linda Weiss, The Myth of the
Powerless State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); and Stephen Castles and
Alastair Davidson, Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of
Belonging(London: Macmillan, 2000).
ple meanings and purposes (i.e., a room for music and meditation). The key
to coexistenceor more appropriately, complex coexistenceis how they
contend with the different frames of reference for understanding the roomsand their uses (through intersecting, overlapping, and alternating use).
Multiversal difference reinforces the political robustness of Canada in
that the common element that joins the many spheres associated with soci-
ety is the Canadian state. Similarly, transnational processes involving the
movement of people, images, and goods in and out of Canada can reinforce
the functional integrity of a state that guards its borders and territory and
regulates movement.14 On an experiential level, the very awareness of
transnationality (or perhaps more accurately, translocality) on the part of
someone in movement, or someone observing someone in movement,
rests on their emplacement in a specific territory like Canada and place like
a Vancouver or Windsorthereby reinforcing the integrity of Canada as a
place to be transnational or translocal in or from. In this respect, newcom-
ersand those who repeatedly leave and returnare a part in many differ-
ent ways of the already existing complex fabric of a multiversal Canada.
They reinforce, by their presence and movement, the distinctiveness of the
Canadian political community in local, national, and international contexts,
by raising the very questions of what is that they are part of and on whatterms.
I realize that those Canadians who reject cosmopolitanism are all too
likely to be uninterested in recognizing that Canadian identity rests on any-
thing other than their self-understanding of what it isin national and
local terms. Since we already have a multiversewhether we like it or not
in places like Hrouxville, QCthe question is what are the terms of inter-
section among its many components. One key aspect of this challenge is
dealing with tensions between the many universes inside Canada that comein contact with one another in physical and symbolic terms. The typical lit-
mus test is when one group, established in the country for some time, finds
the actions of newcomers objectionable or repugnant, leading to various
forms of social conflict in terms of a fear of change. The current debate in
Qubec over reasonable accommodation is exactly this, contending with
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 33 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
12/19
15 This is the position so articulately worked out by Will Kymlicka, Multicultural
Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996).
tensions arising out of overlapping universes. When some self-identified
majority feels they are the predominant shaper of a space and place the
question is why should they make exception for others? Why accommodatewhen you are the chief constitutive power, with the main capacity to shape
spaces not only based on majority numbers and precedent, but control of
government and other institutions?
Returning to my previous analogy of the family home, what happens
when you have two families of very different orientations sharing the same
home, but with one family outnumbering the other, setting up its life first,
and being in legal control of the home? So far, liberalism has suggested that
minority rights to live according to ones cultural norms ought to be pro-
tected as long as they follow the basic laws of the land.15 But no liberal
approach solves common public space issues where universes intersect. To
just admit there is an inherent conflict in such intersection means it is left
essentially to the courts to sort out the logics of harm and benefit (which
they may do poorly). It is also inadequate to call for peaceful coexistence
when the grounds for it are not there.
The question is what is the guiding principle of complex coexistence?
A multiversal frame suggests the possibility of moving beyond the reason-
able accommodation concept that assumes minority/majority duality toarticulate the less presupposing concept of complex coexistence (of space
and particular forms of constitutive power) such that the various domains
(or universes) of practice, institutions, symbols, and meaning overlap and
abound, but, in principle, need not interfere with one another (the halal
Chinese restaurant can be next to a Polish one). We know that many streets
in Canadian cities from Vancouver to Ottawa are like this, as various reli-
gious, political, aesthetic, class, racial, and moral sensibilities (progressive
or conservative) overlap and interweave, along with the regulatory elementsof the state guiding the provision of sidewalks and crosswalk. The members
of various universes as a result can experience the same space differently,
focusing on the elements that make it theirs. When they want to engage or
experience the other overlapping universes about them, they can do so
without having to ask others to alter their practices. Multiversalism further
suggests that these universes are splinted with all sorts of prismatic effects
across generations, genders, classes, philosophies, and types of presence in
| 34 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
13/19
16 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London:
Routledge, 1992) uses the term encounter differently but relatedly. She points to the
contact zones that are the spaces of colonial encounters, the space[s] in which
peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other
and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical
inequality, and intractable conflict. My taking the term encounter out of the colonial
context is meant to open the way toward noncoercion, equality, and nonviolent coex-
istence.
17 Much has been made of encounters in cities. See, for example, Erving Goffman,
Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interactions (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1961). Whileas Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of American Cities (NewYork: Random House, 1961) pointed outsuburbs can limit encounters, it is not nec-
essarily the case that towns limit them, which is one of the reason some Qubcois
are concerned about accommodation.
18 For some early reflections on logics of restrain in encounter, see Edward Ross,
Social Control(New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1901/1970).
Canada (length and nature of time in residence and legal status). That is,
the spaces are experienced differently within and across identity groups.
The notion that they are a them, shaping space in one way with one set ofmeanings, and we are an us, shaping space in one way with one set of
meanings, becomes deeply problematic.
One critical issue is the effects of what is taken by some to be visual
offences (e.g., the miniskirt or the hijab, dark skin, or working-class attire)
that is typically the result of the unanticipated encounter (someone walking
by), where options for structural separations (e.g., clouded glass or fences)
are few. We know that these encounters typically happen in the interstices
between worldsthe places of transit, where ones very presence already
assumes all forms of risk, from crime to accidents to visual offence.16 In
small town the salience of each encounter can be high because of the lower
population density. We know that the option to avoid chance encounters
a key aspect of public spaceis not available to many as they go to jobs,
clinics, and schools.17 A multiversal perspective suggests that in encounter
one is not confronting an ethnic or cultural bloc bursting with multicultur-
al rights, but individuals sorting out their complex experiences of world-
making, expression, difference (class and racial), and their own episodes of
encounter as well. While this recognition will not easily overcome non-cos-mopolitan attitudes, it does underscore that the negotiation of transitory
encounter is possible on an individual or small group basis, rather than an
ethnic bloc basis.18
| What are we? |
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 35 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
14/19
19 For a thoughtful discussion of the fear of immigration in liberal democracies, see
Roxanne Lynn Doty, Anti-immigrantism in Western Democracies (New York:
Routledge, 2003).
TOWARD A COMMITMENT TO MULTIVERSAL CITIZENSHIP
Issues of encounter and complex coexistence raise the questions of who is
encountered, why they are encountered, and on what basis do those
encountered have claims and rights to be of and in a particular multiverse.
Lying at the heart of the backlash associated with reasonable accommoda-
tion is the simple query: why are they here in my world? But what do they
or we mean by world? Is it a specific neighbourhood, enclave, town,
province, or national territory? In national terms, there is little opportunity
in contemporary modernitywith its large cities, diverse labour and popu-
lation needs, and transnational, economic, transport, and communication
structuresto live in anything other than a multiverse. Even if one lives in
a small town, the overlaps are many because of travel or spillover at theedges as suburbs come to abut rural towns and labour needs bring in new
residents. There is of course, no shortage of arguments such as
Huntingtons in western democracies against the most visible and charged
source of multiversity, new immigrants.19 They seem to be made as a last
gasp of desperation to save a set of traditions generated by imagined politi-
cal nostalgia in Huntingtons case orfar less ambitiouslyby a nostalgia
for the local world of the everyday (in towns and neighbourhoods) taken to
be threatened by dissolution and loss of predominance. I would argue that,once we stop taking the claims arising in Qubec lately at face value, a more
accurate way to read them are as endeavours to find a secure place in a sea
of multiversity operating within, across, and beyond local, provincial, and
national boundariesespecially because these claims do not come with any
meaningful overarching frame for negotiating the world beyond their local
perch. These efforts at preservation, thus, can be understood as recognition
of multiversity and its force in shaping Canadian social relations on many
geographical scales, from local to global.If we thus can assume modern life is multiversal, and perhaps becom-
ing more so with time, we should at least explore what it means to have an
obligation to ensure fairness and justice to everyone who is part of it and to
think through on what terms those new to it become a part of it (on the
assumption that each newcomer is a test of what we are). Some readers may
believe I am placing too much emphasis on immigrants and diasporas
| 36 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
| Robert Latham |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
15/19
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
16/19
secure status in any state in which they are resident. While this view of cit-
izenship may be jarring to our earswhich are so accustomed to the hard,
exclusive citizenship associated with nation-statesit should not be over-looked that more fluid, overlapping forms of membership existed in
empires both ancient (Roman) and modern (British). Now that human
rights-based, non-imperial, transterritorial forms of belonging and mem-
bership are possible (with contemporary developments in global norms,
rights, institutions, communications, and travel), it ought not be labeled as
unfeasible by states protective of their exclusive forms of belonging.
Along those lines, the Canadian government clearly has, in recent
decades, been liberal toward multiple citizenship, a core dimension of mul-
tiversal citizenship. Efforts in the mid-1990s in parliament to contest mul-
tiple citizenship, by forcing those with Canadian citizenship to express pri-
mary allegiance to Canada, were not successful.21 This liberality created
public controversy when Lebanese-Canadians were aided in their effort to
flee an Israeli invasion in 2006. On the other hand, the Canadian state has
strengthened the residency requirementmaking the attainment of a sec-
ond, Canadian, citizenship more difficult.22 In addition, in the post-9/11
security context many multiple citizens from the Middle East and south and
central Asia have found out that they not only may not receive protectionsas Canadians but they can be treated as dangerous suspects who can be
more easily deported than Canadian-only citizens (who would in effect
become stateless).23 Rather than treat the risks associated with multiple cit-
izenship in the current environment as a reason to avoid it, we might con-
sider strengthening the protections associated with having it.
21 See the discussion in Donald Galloway, The dilemmas of Canadian citizenship
law, in T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., From Migrants to
Citizens: Membership in a Changing World. (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace), 82-118.
22 Lloyd Wong, Home away from home? Transnationalism and the Canadian
citizenship regime, in Paul Kennedy & Victor Roudometof, eds., Communities
Across Borders: New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures (London, Routledge,
2002), 169-181.
23 Daiva Stasiulis and Darryl Ross, Security, flexible sovereignty, and the perils ofmultiple citizenship, Citizenship Studies 10, no. 3 (July 2006): 329-48; and Audrey
Macklin, The securitization of dual citizenship, forthcoming in Thomas Faist, ed.,
Dual Citizenship in Global Perspective(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
| Robert Latham |
| 38 | International Journal | Autumn 2007 |
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
17/19
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 39 |
| What are we? |
On what basis would I ask for multiversal citizenship to be established
as the primary frame for citizenship when the vast majority of Canadians
have single citizenship (and many of this majority are troubled by alterna-tive framings)?24 The easiest answers are probably the least compelling: that
stronger support for multiversal citizenship can enrich the Canadian mul-
tiverse by making multiscalar lives easier, which is a good in itself, as
argued above; and that single citizenship, in a multiverse, is but one type of
status among many, even if it is predominant on a national basis. In other
words, single-state citizens are mulitiversal citizens. Beyond these two
answers are other notable reasons. One is that any single citizen, or her
children and family, are potential multiple citizens. Creating an environ-
ment where multiple citizenship is taken to be the norm strengthens the
possibility of that option for those with single citizenship (who otherwise
might fear loss of Canadian citizenship). Another reason is that a commit-
ment to multiversitymanifest in real terms in part through strong sup-
port for multiple citizenshipcan expand the meaning of Canadian civic
identity that is consistent with its historic identification as a country advanc-
ing multiculturalism and accepting high levels of immigration.
Finally, probably the most important reason is that normalizing multi-
versal citizenship can potentially open the way to a more secure status forthose individuals with precarious status in Canada. The idea is that all res-
idents, regardless of the nature of their status, can be thought of as mutiver-
sal citizens if they are in Canadain that they already have citizenship from
somewhere else and are potential citizens of Canada. In other words, if
multiversal citizenship is the norm, then secure status should be extended
to those who are currently here with precarious status. This extension can
take various forms from a proposed US-style amnesty to the redefinition of
forms of secure status short of permanent residence or full citizenship. Thepossibility of receiving Canadian citizenship should be a normative goal for
all people who reside in Canada, no matter what their current status.
Ultimately, the establishment of norms of multiversal citizenship
require international protections and commitments to multiple citizenship
worldwide. In effect, there should come into being an international regime
24 When thinking about multiple citizenship, it is important not only to consider
immigrants inside Canada but the nearly three million Canadians abroad. See Kenny
Zhang, Mission invisible: Rethinking the Canadian diaspora, Canada-Asia
Commentary46 (September 2007).
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
18/19
| Robert Latham |
| 40 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
for multiple citizenship. Such a regime should establish the parameters for
one state extending citizenship to the citizens of another state; articulate
protections and rights for citizens of one country who are present and resid-ing in another country without citizenship or permanent residence in that
country; and strengthen the channels and rights for interstate protection of
citizens who are detained in other countrieseven if they are citizens of the
country detaining thembeyond those derived from the Vienna conven-
tion on consular relations.
An international regime for multiple citizenship could help place
understandings and developments of citizenship within the context of the
multiscalar connections between societies and peoples and thereby poten-
tially take it out of the frame of exclusive state formation. 25 It could also help
contend with notions of exclusive loyalties by institutionalizing the possi-
bility of multi-allegiances.
I am not suggesting that the construction of this regime will be easy. In
fact, it will take considerable leadership. This is an ideal opportunity for the
Canadian state to re-establish itself as a primary actor in the international
arena. Difficult issues include how to contend with competing claims by
individuals and governments across jurisdictions; prevent states from
using the regime as a basis for establishing even greater control over bor-ders and human movement; and determine the effects the regime should
have on the openness of borders. Luckily, we already have some precedent
in international instruments, such as the 1997 European convention on cit-
izenship. And there clearly is precedent for the Canadian states exercise of
international leadership in areas such as the international ban on land-
mines and the development of multilateral peacekeeping. Each of these
areas also had difficulties that seemed insurmountable at first. This leader-
ship role could expand Canadian civil identity beyond what would be gainedby a domestic commitment to multiversalism.
25 For a cogent, thorough exploration of the exclusive state formation frame, see
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1992).
8/4/2019 Multiversal Can Intl Jrnl Latham
19/19
| International Journal | Winter 2007-08 | 41 |
| What are we? |
CONCLUSION
I am not able to explore here proposals for domestic action advancing mul-
tiversalism or for international action advancing a multiple citizenshipregime. Even without such proposals, readers will likely see that I am ask-
ing a great deal of Canadians: to reframe an important part of Canadian
civic identity regarding difference in Canada (multiculturalism); to confront
head-on yet one more dividethat between cosmopolitans and non-cos-
mopolitansbeyond language, race, and ethnicity; to rethink the meaning
of citizenship and place it within a very transnational frame; and to take
responsibility for leading other countries in sorting through the very diffi-
cult realm of multiple citizenship. My optimism that this call will not be
completely ignored rests on the Canadian history of political and social
innovation.