Immigration and the Significance of Culture

Papers that changed how I see things: a series

”Immigration and the significance of culture”, by Samuel Scheffler, was published in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Spring 2007. The other work I have read by Scheffler is his marvelous short book, Why Worry About Future Generations?, which I highly recommend, especially to my arts policy colleagues, for whom the question of cultural preservation is vital.

I was reminded of the “Immigration” essay by two things this past week. First, I was re-reading G.A. Cohen’s essay on “Rescuing Conservatism”, and he mentions the essay (favorably) a few times (Scheffler in turn refers to an early version of the Cohen essay). I had read each of these essays in the course of writing my book, which has separate chapters on conservatism and multiculturalism in arts policy, though of course the two topics are closely linked, since any conservative needs to ask what it is that they want to conserve.

Second was this story in the Sunday New York Times, about the experiences of Bhutanese immigrants to the United States. This being the Times, the focus was on how the Bhutanese fit, or not, into the census classification of “Asian American” (a group that is currently enjoying its annual Heritage Month). The article notes that it is an odd racial category, combining Pakistanis and Koreans while excluding Afghans and Tajiks, and yet it has solidified into an entity that carries some weight. It is not an exaggeration to say that arts policy in the US is obsessed with the question of diversity in arts participation and employment, and the metric of this diversity is everywhere the standard white, black, Asian-American, and Hispanic, even if, when looked at even from a middle distance, the fault lines in these aggregates become apparent. The article talks about whether the Bhutanese immigrants are adopting Asian-Americanness as a thing (although I have to ask, why does this matter?), and also about the question for all immigrant groups about what aspects of the home culture are preserved, and what aspects of American culture are adopted. This question is most salient for the newest arrivals, since anyone arriving as a small child, or yet to be born to the immigrant family, will eventually be signing up for junior hockey, playing clarinet in the high school marching band, and staying up late on Saturday nights playing League with their friends.

Scheffler opens his essay with a familiar question: when it comes to immigration, should the goal be for the host country, let’s say the US, to do what it can to preserve a national identity and culture, and as such strongly encourage immigrants to adopt American cultural practices, and refuse to grant equal status to the cultural practices of the immigrant’s home country? Such a view would likely go hand in hand with a strong restriction in the amount of immigration to be permitted. Or should the host country adopt a position of multiculturalism, and so allow its culture to shift as it will through the influence of immigration? Scheffler’s point, through his essay, is to show that while this is a familiar question, it is not an awfully helpful question; like our census categories of race and ethnicity, it oversimplifies the notion of what a “culture” is. T.S. Eliot said that “Culture is the one thing we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake.” Exactly so.

Scheffler tells the story of his grandfather, who around 1911, at age 14, left his family in his native Galicia first for Scotland and then, after a few years, for New York City, where he remained for the rest of his life. What then was Yidel Zuckerbrod’s “culture”? Galicia at the time was ruled by the Hapsburgs. It would eventually become a part of Poland, but it’s not correct to talk about Polish culture in this instance. We could discuss “Jewish culture”, but that is also tremendously varied. Maybe there is something we could call “New York Jewish culture”, but even that is not so simple:

If there is such a thing as “New York Jewish culture,” then it is a culture created by immigration; if the Jewish immigrants who settled in New York had simply brought a fixed and determinate culture with them, and if the United States had somehow contrived to preserve that culture unaltered, then “New York Jewish culture” would never had existed.

[I’ll note as a sidebar that my parents were immigrants from Scotland to Canada, making the (permanent) move just a few years before I was born, and their culture was a shifting thing, some things carried over (dancing to Jimmy Shand records) and some things new (going to Vancouver Mounties baseball games). They would sometimes smile when I or my sisters spoke in a broad Canadian accent. My mother’s family were immigrants to Scotland from Lithuania, and late in her life she remembered old Lithuanian children’s songs. What was her culture, then?].

“Cosmopolitanism” is not the right terms for someone who carries with them various cultural practices from different worlds, since cosmopolitanism involves a choice to be open to all things, and to see oneself as something of a citizen of the world. Scheffler’s grandfather was not that (neither were my parents).

So, what can we say? I take three insights from Scheffler.

First, as with the example of his grandfather, my own parents, virtually every immigrant, we cannot assign to them a single culture to which they belong. We are all too complicated, in the associations we form, in what cultural activities we enjoy or not (and these will shift over time, for most everyone), from the huge set of options available to us. We adopt some things from our parents, find other things on our own, and make serendipitous discoveries, each of us slightly different from one another. To tell someone taking a poll that I am a Lithuanian-Scottish-Canadian-American is not to give them many hints as to my “culture” (my age, and that I am an academic, would probably tell them much more). And, as Scheffler notes, this truth does not only apply to immigrants, though we tend to pay more attention to what their culture might be. We are complex. It doesn’t make us all cosmopolitan, which has a specific meaning. But it does mean categorization will always be over-simplified (as the Times story about the Bhutanese immigrants, perhaps inadvertently, illustrates).

All of these identifications and passions and affiliations, and countless others, are aspects of human culture, and to live a human life is to trace a particular path through the space of possibilities they define. Admittedly, some people explore that space more intrepidly than others, and few people regard all of their identifications and affiliations as equally significant. For some people, there is a single affiliation that is central to their sense of themselves, while for others there may be a small number of such affiliations. Yet to insist that, for each individual, there must be some one identification that corresponds to his or her real culture is to misunderstand both identity and culture.

Second, immigration involves change, for the people immigrating, and for the host country. Any immigrant to anywhere knows that they will experience life differently in their new country, that customs will not be the same, that they will meet new people and be exposed to new things. They are especially aware that their children will have a very different life experience than if they had stayed put. For immigrants other than those fleeing very dire situations at home, these changes are the point of moving. Even if you had a very stubborn immigrant, who wanted to insist upon preserving as much of their home country way of life as possible in the new world, their experience changes as a result of having to take these active protectionist measures (when I moved to Australia to teach for a few years, I was, as an immigrant, given a handbook from the Australian government on life in Australia, and, aside from the bulk of the book being devoted to different sorts of animals that could kill you, I remember a passage about cultural change, that Australia was a liberal country, and that for some that might initially pose something of a challenge to the cultural traditions to which they were accustomed). And the same is true for residents of the home country: their culture will change from immigration, either from the possibilities of new associations and activities, or, for the stubborn, from adopting an effort to insulate from change. The politicians who claim to want to protect a traditional culture from the influence of immigrants (or, I think more often, from the influence of a younger domestic generation with more liberal views on certain matters), in effect end up changing the culture, since the defensive stance is in itself a cultural choice. Scheffler tells us that the adamant cultural preservationists, whether immigrants or a fearful segment of the domestic population, are on a failed mission: their culture will change regardless.

But then again, culture will change even without immigration. Think of the changes to American culture since the year 2000: the changes in popular culture, in campus culture, the ubiquity of the “smart” phone, attitudes towards the LGBTQ population - we would be hard pressed to say that immigration had much to do with any of it. And as Generation Z ages, and a new generation comes along (Double-Zed?), culture will change again, in ways we cannot predict. The changes in American political culture, the rise of Trumpism, are not due to immigrants (okay, maybe one immigrant had a hand in it), even as he has tried to make the question of immigration the central issue of our politics. We did this ourselves.

His third point in reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (at least the first half of it): a culture only lives through change, through artists and their audiences taking all of their varied cultural heritage and expressing something new with it. The cultural preservationist needs to allow space for the culture to evolve. Which leads to a stance for cultural policy I am happy to adopt:

The spirit of these remarks suggests a general position that might be described as Heraclitean pluralism. Heraclitean pluralism asserts that culture and cultures are always in flux, and that individuals normally relate to culture through the acknowledgment of multiple affiliations and allegiances, and through participation in diverse practices, customs, and activities, rather than through association with one fixed and determinate culture. It further asserts that, in light of these facts, states should be maximally accommodating of the cultural variety that free individuals will inevitably exhibit, without seeking to constrain that freedom in the vain and misguided attempt to preserve some particular culture or cultures in the form that they happen to take at a given historical moment. …

It would be fatal to Heraclitean pluralism if it could not in any way accommodate the conservative impulse, particularly the impulse to conserve valued traditions, customs, practices, and modes of living. However, the failure of strong preservationism helps point the way toward an alternative strategy of accommodation that is compatible with Heraclitean pluralism. Strong preservationism fails as a strategy for accommodating the conservative impulse because it fails to recognize that change in essential to culture and to cultural survival, so that to prevent a culture from changing, if such a thing were possible, would not be to preserve the culture but to destroy it. … the right way to preserve a culture is to allow it to change.

And so, to return to the question of the cultural lives of immigrants, of

whether there is anything that immigrants may demand of the host society, or that it may demand of them, in the name of cultural preservation.

Heraclitean pluralism, as I am understanding it, delivers a negative answer to this question. What immigrants may demand of the host society, it asserts, is justice, where justice is understood not to include any special cultural rights, entitlements, or privileges. Justice does include the basic rights and liberties - including freedom of thought, expression, association, and conscience - that are familiar from egalitarian liberal theories like that of John Rawls. It also includes, let us suppose, fair equality of opportunity and some conception of the just distribution of economic resources. More abstractly, the principles of justice set out fair terms of cooperation among free and equal citizens. … The fulfillment of these demands, Heraclitean pluralism asserts, gives ample scope for immigrants (and others) to pursue reasonable preservationist projects. … What they cannot do is demand additional rights or resources, beyond those they are owed as a matter of justice. …

By the same token, however, there is nothing that the host society may legitimately demand of immigrants in the name of preserving the national culture. …

Of course, in practical terms we expect the population, of immigrants and non-immigrants alike, to realize that accommodations need be made. Our public schools need a common language for instruction, but with the resources necessary to ensure those children coming to America from a country where English is not the primary language to get additional instruction that brings them up to speed. Our public libraries, and arts councils, need to recognize the various interests of our diverse cultural tastes. And sometimes an accommodation that seems like a big imposition at first turns out not to be such: I remember in Canada when the decision was made to allow Sikh members of the Mounted Police to wear a turban as a part of their uniform - this caused quite a fuss amongst cultural conservatives at the time, but I think the numbers who continue to oppose such a policy would be vanishingly small today. I don’t think that is awfully controversial.

But recognition of the diversity of individuals, not just racial and ethnic groups (which are bound to get it wrong) does represent a real change in perspective, as does the recognition of the need to give room for cultural evolution and changing perspectives.