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The author is commenting on the two previous chapters. He begins with the observation that the first wave of multiculturalists made arguments from justice; liberal states were charged with treating their minorities unjustly, and so justice required their accommodation. The previous two chapters indicate that, at the theoretical level, the first wave has been a success. Next, theorists and politicians must deal with the injustices caused by particular multicultural policies, as is illustrated in Ch. 4, as well as the general impact of multiculturalism on citizenship, as illustrated in Ch. 5. The author attempts to situate these two issues within the larger multicultural debate.

Chapter 2 considers how existing citizenship scholarship now understood as ‘the Citizenship Debate’ can be explored in more detail at a national level through the lens of the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum. This chapter draws on a wealth of primary sources (including media analysis, parliamentary speeches, debates, reports and legislation) and academic analysis to outline the dominant sovereign understanding of the citizen-subject in discussions surrounding this referendum. The arguments surrounding this referendum are linked to the two main theoretical models which have dominated current citizenship scholarship: a particular (exclusive) model, and a universal (inclusive) model of citizenship. This chapter demonstrates how both models in The Citizenship Debate ignore hybrid possibilities of political subjectivity which exceed the discursive space made available by a statist account of time and space. This chapter draws on the work of cutting edge theorists within the field of critical citizenship studies such as Ayelet Shachar and Sandro Mezzadra to consider the importance and possibility of naming and confronting how both the problem and the solution to citizenship have come to be located in a modern sovereign statist dualistic framework.

Multiculturalism is a subsidiary strategy adopted by liberal-democratic societies in order to further the primary or dominant strategy of individual autonomy, and more specifically the autonomy of the individual as a citizen of the liberal-democratic nation-state. Pluralism, by contrast, proffers exogenous limits to state authority that result in contested sovereignties and jurisdictional competition. While pluralists might recommend similar institutional arrangements as multiculturalists, their defence of associational authority stands on different grounds which do not depend on cultural difference. This is due, in part, to the structure of associations not corresponding to that of cultures. This is illustrated through the tension between Rowan William’s pluralism and Ayelet Schachar’s concept of transformative accommodation. Ultimately, multiculturalism is unable to resolve the problem of multiple authorities that concerns political pluralism.