Summary
The liberal theorist of minority rights whose international-legal distinction between indigenous peoples (accommodation) and minorities (integration) Stateless Citizenship (2013) sets out and then problematizes in Chapter 1: outside the European settler-state core cases the distinction collapses, and the arguments for indigenous self-government apply equally to other homeland groups (Stateless Citizenship (2013), PDF p.54-61).
Details
- Kymlicka’s stated international-legal position is “that indigenous peoples have a right to accommodation, whereas minorities have a right to integration” (Kymlicka 2008, 3, as quoted at PDF p.55); the distinction rests on three presumed differences in the groups’ aspirations, set out in part 1.
- In the continuation read in part 2, both types of old minorities are bestowed the right to accommodation — self-government over traditional territory and linguistic and cultural rights — so the distinction is rendered irrelevant for minority rights, and the legal arguments for indigenous peoples apply to other vulnerable old minorities (Kymlicka 2008, 10-12, at PDF p.59).
- National minorities, originating mainly from Europe, had their homelands merged into larger states during European state formation; indigenous peoples were instead subjected to a distant colonial European power, but both are old or homeland minorities by their “historic presence on their traditional territory that predates the formation of the current state” (Kymlicka 2008, 8-9, at PDF p.59). New minorities, products of migration after the state’s establishment, compel an integrationist approach.
- Kymlicka argues the real difficulty is the moral and political inconsistency of a sharp distinction: “whatever arguments exist for recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples to self-government also apply to the claims for self-government by other vulnerable and historically disadvantaged homeland groups” (Kymlicka 2008, 10, at PDF p.60).
- “In a familiar sense,” he argues, “no groups in Africa, Asia, or the Middle East fit the traditional profile of indigenous peoples,” as their homeland minorities were merged into states dominated by neighbouring populations rather than European settler-states (Kymlicka 2008, 12, at PDF p.60). For Israel he refers to Amal Jamal’s argument that the Israeli national project should be included as a European settler-colonial state, on which inclusion Palestinians inside and outside Israel’s imagined borders would meet the traditional definition of an indigenous people (PDF p.60).
- Molavi’s critique, begun in part 1: an analysis of power and oppression is hardly present in Kymlicka’s account; his contribution is “the liberal mainstreaming of minority rights” (Joppke 2002, 247, at PDF p.57).
Related pages
Stateless Citizenship (2013), Multiculturalism, Indigeneity, Israeli Incorporation Regime