영국의 자유방임식 다문화주의 ― 영국적 전통과 이민자 통합 ―

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze British multiculturalism, British national model of social integration, in its historical context. In the wake of the 9.11 Terror and the London Terror of 2005, a criticism on British multiculturalism has arisen. The issue as to how Britain could integrate immigrants is at stake. But few researches have approached British integration questions in the dimension of history. This paper shows how British traditions such as ‘indirect rule’, common-law tradition, and British philosophy of practicalism and liberalism have influenced the formation of British multiculturalism. It also attempts to find out the linkage between the legacy of British traditions and the characters of British multiculturalism. Finally, it analyzes the recent criticisms on British multiculturalism, and prospects its future. Since the late 1960s Britain has integrated immigrants in ways of multiculturalism. It is believed that the integration system had been working successfully until recently. There had been a social agreement on multiculturalism based on British traditions. According to the system of ‘indirect rule’, which is the belief that “the African native had better be left an African, but aided to become a better African”, British government has allowed immigrants to keep their cultural and religious traditions in British society. In the common law tradition official multiculturalism has expressed itself in a multitude of legal provision, such as partially exempting Hindus and Muslims from Britain's strict marriage rules, and allowing Muslim girls to wear hijab at school. Britain has also acknowledged Islam as a religious group under the liberal tradition of the Church of England. These historical traditions compelled British society to accept easily the multicultural ways of integration, but they brought about a serious result, which was that a immigrant could never be a member of British major society. British official multiculturalism was a creature of elite-oriented rule over minorities, the ways in which Britain drives out social minorities of the major society, divides them, and rules them. In this sense British multiculturalism seems a separatism. The recent scepticism on multiculturalism by the result of the London Terror incident makes an assertion to revise the system of multiculturalism, and even to adopt a system of ‘assimilation’ in which Britishness could be an essence of social integration. In some ways ‘civic integration’, in which immigrants' responsibility for their own integration in a major society is emphasized, is recently applied to integration policies. Despite these critiques on multiculturalism, a large number of British people still insists that multiculturalism is the best way of social integration, and believes that Britain will never abandon it. But it is undeniable that this is the very moment to revise the defects of British multiculturalism, and to reappraise the legacy of British traditions on social integration.