The Multiculturalism Paradox
How identity-affirming policies fuel the competitive group dynamics that weaken national cohesion.
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About the Author
Jowan Mahmod, PhD, is a multidisciplinary researcher focused on how digital technologies, identity, and shifting social norms are transforming contemporary societies. Dr. Mahmod’s work challenges dominant narratives by examining the psychological and sociological forces behind polarization, perception, and collective behavior. She is currently writing a second book that shows why polarization makes more sense once the deeper dysfunctions driving it are understood. You can follow her work at wehavebeenfooled.substack.com.
For decades, multiculturalism has been treated as the obvious solution to the challenges of immigration and cultural pluralism. Unlike assimilation, which encourages newcomers to integrate into a shared national culture, multiculturalism actively promotes the preservation—and even the strengthening—of distinct cultural and religious identities. At its core is the belief that minority cultures deserve special recognition and accommodation within their adopted countries.
As the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it, multiculturalism is “the view that cultures, races, and ethnicities, particularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgment of their differences within a dominant political culture.” The model does not merely acknowledge or accept cultural difference; it elevates it into a guiding principle of policy and social practice.
Many Western democracies have embraced this approach to varying degrees, building policies on the central assumption that affirming group identity fosters inclusion and social trust. The Department of Canadian Heritage, which funds and administers multiculturalism programs, expresses this idea succinctly: “Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging, making them open to and accepting of diverse cultures.” Similarly, the Dutch National Institute of Multicultural Development insists that “The aim is to encourage group identities and mutual acceptance. If people are not prejudiced… they become a multicultural society.”
In short, multiculturalism promotes the celebration of difference on the assumption that strengthening one’s group identity naturally produces greater openness toward, and acceptance of, others. Few ideas have been more widely embraced—and more poorly understood—than this.
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Societies struggle to build cohesion when they cannot agree on the basic facts shaping debates, such as those on immigration. Rapid demographic shifts generate anxiety, but the intensity of that anxiety is amplified when media outlets presents radically different versions of the same events. When people inhabit separate informational worlds, the group identities driving division only harden.
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While diversity is an unavoidable feature of social reality, multiculturalism as a doctrine has increasingly shown its limits. The reason is simple: it rests almost entirely on ideology and moral aspiration—on how things ought to be—rather than on psychological insight into group behavior or evidence of how things actually unfold. Decades of research show that the stronger people identify with their ethnic, national, or religious group, the more likely they are to view outsiders as rivals or potential threats. Reinforced group identities tend to increase, not reduce, prejudice.
We readily recognize the dangers of strong group identity when it fuels far-right movements, yet this insight mysteriously disappears when the very same dynamics emerge within migrant or minority communities. This blind spot reflects the core creed of multiculturalism: noble intentions and moral rhetoric paired with total disregard for real-world outcomes.
How Group Behavior Works
More than fifty years ago, psychologist Henri Tajfel conducted a series of now-classic experiments revealing just how effortlessly group bias forms. He divided schoolboys into groups based on trivial differences—preferences for one abstract painting over another, or even something as meaningless as a coin toss. The boys had no interaction, no shared history, and no reason to compete. Yet they immediately began favoring their own group. When asked to distribute money, they consistently allocated more to their in-group and were even willing to accept less for themselves if doing so ensured the out-group received even less. In other words, people will willingly incur personal costs to disadvantage the out-group. Later studies have shown in-group favoritism not only in resource allocation but also in cooperation, trust, and group-loyalty measures, indicating that bias extends far beyond material decisions.
These experiments revealed something profound: mere group membership is enough to trigger bias and discrimination. Tajfel’s work became the foundation of Social Identity Theory, which shows that people attach their self-image and social status to the groups they belong to. To elevate their standing, they glorify their own group and denigrate outsiders. The emotional attachment runs deep; loyalty to the group becomes a proxy for self-esteem and pride.
Group membership does provide a crucial sense of belonging, but must that belonging rest solely on ethnic or national identity, ignoring other possible bases for connection such as shared values, ideology, or personal experience? I’ll return to that question in a future essay. What matters for now is something more fundamental: when group identity becomes the dominant frame, individuals cease to be seen as individuals and become representatives of their group. This is a form of deindividuation—seeing people primarily as group members rather than unique individuals. It is not the same as dehumanization, but it’s a step in that direction.
If people will discriminate over something as trivial as a coin toss, it should come as no surprise that identities rooted in centuries of culture, religion, ethnicity, or nationality exert far greater influence on how they perceive and treat others. And when one community asserts its identity forcefully, others typically double down on theirs. Where there is a rival “them,” the “us” only grows stronger. This reflex is not unique to any group; it is a universal element of human nature.
Asking for Unity While Rewarding Separation
Group identification is not a trivial or benign matter; it shapes whose interests people are willing to defend, even when there is no personal benefit, and even at their own expense. The stronger someone identifies with their group, the more they prioritize its interests and view outsiders as competitors or threats. Of course, not every us-and-them distinction leads to prejudice or hostility. Some differences remain benign: students and professors may consider themselves distinct groups, but few feel existential attachment to those roles in the way they do to identities rooted in culture, ethnicity, or heritage. Identity becomes volatile when it is tied to moral worth, perceived threat, or competition—a pattern seen repeatedly in conflicts involving ethnicity, religion, nationhood, and increasingly, political ideology.
These forces play out everywhere, from war zones to Western democracies, only in different guises. In places like Iraq or Rwanda, diversity and group divisions are openly acknowledged as sources of tension and conflict. When similar patterns appear in France, the UK, Sweden, Germany, or the United States, the response is often wrapped in moral appeals while ignoring the underlying psychology. Yet in both contexts the mental machinery is identical: loyalty to one’s group above all else, regardless of conduct, fueling in-group favoritism and status competition.
To be clear, social tensions are amplified by many other factors, including segregation, media narratives, discrimination, and lack of economic opportunity. Western democracies have compounded the problem by allowing isolated migrant communities to form without a shared social contract for integration, in some cases giving rise parallel societies. France provides a clear example. These issues deserve attention, but what remains largely overlooked is the group psychology that sustains divisions and reveals the core paradox of the multicultural model: it seeks unity by reinforcing the very group boundaries that divide people.
Multiculturalism has twisted itself into a contradiction: encouraging the preservation of distinct cultural identities while expecting their seamless integration into a shared national identity. It simultaneously demands both separation and unity. Explaining the challenges of multiculturalism solely through the lens of racism is no longer adequate. If group identification reliably fosters prejudice, then the problem isn’t one-sided.
The Way Forward
Despite decades of research in social psychology, these insights rarely make their way into debates on multiculturalism. Ideology continues to trump evidence. As tensions rise, the reflexive response has been to demand “more tolerance and more inclusion,” as though deep-seated social instincts can be undone by slogans. Yet forced assimilation is not the answer either; it often provokes backlash, prompting people to cling to their group identities even more tightly. If we want to reduce bias and build social cohesion, we must rethink how we understand identity and belonging.
While we do not choose the groups we are born into, we can choose how much they define us. A sense of belonging matters, but it need not come at the expense of a liberal commitment to individuality. The real problem begins when people anchor their self-worth primarily in group identity. To counter prejudice and tribalism, we must do almost the opposite of what multiculturalism prescribes. Instead of encouraging people to intensify their group bonds, we should create conditions that loosen those ties and strengthen personal identity over collective labels.
When people derive meaning and pride from their own accomplishments, the urge to root self-esteem in group identity weakens, along with the in-group favoritism that results from it. Prejudice does not fade through moral appeals; it weakens when we learn to see others as individuals with distinct personalities and perspectives. Societies that emphasize individualism tend to be more open to diversity because they allow people to form their own values and purpose, rather than passively inheriting them from group belonging. Data from the World Values Survey show that tolerance for difference—including LGBTQ rights, gender equality, free speech, and other liberal attitudes—is highest in societies that value individualism, and lowest in collectivist cultures where conformity and group loyalty dominate. This is, not least, one of the main reasons migrants are drawn to Western democracies: for their liberal freedoms and broad tolerance.
Achieving a shift away from groupthink and from viewing the world primarily through group identity requires a broader change in mindset, one with cultural and institutional implications. It means promoting shared civic values over ethnic or religious ones in public life, encouraging schools to teach autonomy rather than identity-based grievance, and challenging media narratives that flatten people into avatars of their group. It means asking Who are you as a person? not merely What group do you belong to? It means teaching how identity itself works—what activates different aspects of it, and why—rather than simply cataloguing the identities people happen to hold. Above all, it means helping individuals understand that a person’s story is never identical to that of their group, and that their needs and desires are distinct from it.
The very notion of collective identity presupposes homogeneity and sameness, erasing the vast differences that exist between individuals within any group—a far cry from reality. A Middle Eastern man may have 40 years of experience as a Middle Eastern man, but none of the lived experience of a Middle Eastern woman. Likewise, the life of a gay man or a person with a disability can differ profoundly from that of a woman of the same background. By centring identity around groups, multiculturalism obscures these differences and downplays the divergent realities that exist within those very groups.
Ultimately, tolerance does not grow out of abstract ideals. It grows from loosening the grip of collective identity and seeing others not as representatives of a category but as individuals. Societies must ensure that people of all backgrounds can develop a strong sense of personal identity. This is not merely desirable but essential for any nation that hopes to remain both diverse and cohesive. Prejudice is rooted in group belonging and in the basic psychology of us-and-them. When institutions encourage people to define themselves primarily through group identity, they inevitably reinforce the very us-and-them thinking that fuels prejudice and division.
A functioning multicultural society is not one that obsessively manages groups and their identities, but one that enables individuals to move beyond them and form connections based on shared human and civic values. Only then can we approach the kind of multicultural society we claim to aspire to, and that can be achieved only by loosening, not tightening, the hold of group identity.
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Critiques of multiculturalism and its detrimental effects on the very people for whom it is *supposed* to be advocating are not new (see Bernstein’s “Dictatorship of Virtue”), but Dr. Mahmod’s insights go much deeper. Count me a new subscriber of hers.
Another rigorous analysis by Jowan Mahmod who dares to push for new perspectives in a field that badly needs them. What she writes is simply very rational.