Multiculturalism in Canada : Symbolic Boundaries and the Institutionalization of Difference

This paper explores how people are constructed into groups, and how these constructions are reinforced by the ideology of multiculturalism in Canada. I am primarily concerned with the metaphorical use of the border concept in the context of Multicultural Canada, and if and how the current ideology of multiculturalism reifies cultural distinctions and, in complex ways, contributes to divisiveness and disunity within Canada. The goal of Canada's Multicultural policy is integration via acceptance of difference. Yet, the principle or logic underlying the policy rests on the premise that cultural variation is discontinuous. Thus, Canadian multiculturalism's undue emphasis on cultural differences means that such differences, whether superficial or substantive, are abstracted into meaningful difference through the metaphorical extension of border concepts. As such, multiculturalism has left unchanged the structural organization of power in the cultural and political landscape of Canada.