Immigration and Multicultural Citizenship in Europe: Insights from the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

Abstract

Multicultural citizenship, a set of group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups, is now a common feature of most domestic legal systems in Europe. The conventional view, widely reflected in practice, suggests that ‘strong’ rights of this sort should be restricted to so-called ‘historical’ minorities. However, the increasingly long-standing presence of distinct cultural groups of immigrant origin raises the question of whether, and to what extent, the latter should also be granted stronger forms of multicultural citizenship. This article addresses this question by reference to the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, a central pillar of the international minority rights regime in Europe. The article analyses the application of the treaty to immigrant-origin groups in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, showing that the scope of protection afforded to such groups is stronger than previously assumed, though less far-reaching as compared to their ‘historical’ counterparts.