Young Adults’ Attitudes Towards Multiculturalism in Australia: Tensions between the Multicultural State and the Intercultural Citizen

Kymlicka [(2003). Multicultural states and intercultural citizens. Theory and research in education, 1 (2), 147–169] worried that the ideal of an intercultural citizen, with strong intercultural skills/knowledge, would not fit neatly or simply into the ideal of a multicultural state. He identified three possible areas of tension: (1) intercultural citizens may prefer global interculturalism over local interculturalism, (2) some groups may dismiss the assertion that intercultural interaction leads to personal growth and enrichment and (3) the ideal of an intercultural citizen requires a level of understanding that is either superficial or utopian. This paper reports on attitudes towards, and experiences of, interculturalism through insights derived from focus groups with young ‘Anglo-Australian’ adults and uses these to test the concerns articulated by Kymlicka. Despite an official multicultural policy, young Australians living in Western Sydney did not express intercultural values, fully, at all times, or...