Multiculturalism or integration? Why are they seen as oppositional?

In a recent essay in the Globe and Mail, Daniel Stoffman argues that Canadian multiculturalism is more an ideology than a fact. His piece asserts that for having seemingly different official approaches to immigration, Canada (multiculturalism) and the US (melting pot), assimilation rates and political actions come across as remarkably similar. His examples include both countries acting against the cockfighting which some Hispanic communities seem to regard as essential to their culture, as well the debate on Shariah laws.


The piece in interesting insofar as it asks pertinent questions about how multiculturalism is defined, and points out that the term certainly seems to be used in a relatively vague fashion in public space.

Yet, Stoffman seems to conceptualize multiculturalism, and the cultural mosaic it aims to achieve, in a way that is not without problems. Commenting on the Minister's of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism words concerning integration as the new way to avoid creating isolated ethnic silos, Stoffman concludes:

"But if we don't want silos, then we don't want to be a mosaic either. Both
images suggest a society composed of separate groups rather than an integrated
whole. If the Minister of Multiculturalism is rejecting silos, he is also
rejecting multiculturalism. Maybe it's time the Department of Multiculturalism
was renamed the Department of Integration. "

This dichotomization of multiculturalism and integration seems to assume that cultures somehow are internally homogenous and clearly externally bounded, as well as static, unchanging. This is a very reductionist, even simplistic, view of how cultures actually work. Cultures, it seems to me, are highly dynamic, always changing in contact with others and their borders are seldom easilty drawn. Stoffman's treatment also seems to imply that integration means the radical abandonement cultural plurality, which transforms the concept from one of mutual negotiation between equal parties to one very close to assimilation.

If nothing else, the essay does bring attention to the need to clarify what is actually meant by terms like multiculturalism and integration, which see common usage in the public debate.