The Promises and Perils of Multiculturalism

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

This presentation introduces a tripartite model of multiculturalism- multicultural contact, ideology and policies- and describes an emerging programme of research with majority and immigrant groups in the UK, US and New Zealand.

The research illustrates how perceived norms for multicultural contact, ideology and policies differentially relate to social and psychological outcomes such as threat, national attachment, belongingness and psychological well-being, offering significant benefits to immigrant groups without significant disadvantage to majority members of the receiving societies.

The promising results suggest that multiculturalism could function as an effective national diversity management strategy; however, for this to be the case, multiculturalism should benefit all national minorities. Accordingly, the presentation also explores our novel extension of this model to indigenous peoples (Māori) in New Zealand.

Findings demonstrate that Māori strongly endorse the importance of multicultural ideology but have mixed views about the importance of contact due to its association with colonisation and threat to their cultural vitality and the importance of policy due to distrust of government. The results point to the perils of extending this conceptualisation of multiculturalism to indigenous peoples and the need to understand indigenous perspectives on multiculturalism in post-colonial settler societies.