Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition (Dec 2015)
Multicultural Media in a Post-Multicultural Canada? Rethinking Integration
Abstract
This paper addresses the post-multicultural challenges that confront the integrative logic of Canada’s multicultural media. Multicultural (or ethnic) media once complemented the integrative agenda of Canada’s official multiculturalism, but the drift toward a post-multicultural Canada points to the possibility of a post-multicultural media that capitalizes on the positive aspects of multicultural media. The argument is predicated on the following assumption: an evolving context that no longer is multicultural but increasingly transnational, multiversal, and post-ethnic exposes the shortcomings of a multicultural media when applied to the lived-realities of those who resent being boxed into ethnic silos that gloss over multiple connections and multidimensional crossings. According to this line of argument, both diversity governance and ethnic media must reinvent themselves along more post-multicultural lines to better engage the transnational challenges and multiversal demands of a post-multicultural turn. Time will tell if a post-multicultural media can incorporate the strengths of a multicultural media, yet move positively forward in capturing the nuances of complex diversities and diverse complexities. Evidence would suggest “yes”, and that a post-multicultural media may well represent an ideal that reflects and reinforces the new integrative realities of a post-ethnic Canada.
