8.1 Multiculturalism’s Main Schools of Thought

The following pages describe the six main tenets of the long-standing Canadian school of thought on multiculturalism, named so for its two main contributors: Canadian philosophers Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka. This section then concludes with a brief overview of an emerging school of thought based in the United Kingdom. This school of thought is largely associated with the works of scholars Tariq Modood, Nasar Meer, Varun Uberoi, and Bhikhu Parekh, all of whom are affiliated with the University of Bristol’s Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship.

Geoffrey Brahm Levey (2018) describes these scholars’ contributions to understanding multiculturalism as “the Bristol School of Multiculturalism” (or “BSM” for short) due to their shared institutional affiliation. As we shall see, the BSM is in part a response to Will Kymlicka’s normative theory of “liberal egalitarian multiculturalism”, and therefore some of its tenets differ from those of the Canadian school of thought on multiculturalism.