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In 2010, the leaders of Germany, Britain, and France each declared that multiculturalism had failed in their countries. Over the past decade, a growing consensus in Europe has voiced similar decrees. But what do these ominous proclamations, from across the political spectrum, mean? From the influx of immigrants in the 1950s to contemporary worries about refugees and terrorism, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe examines the historical development of multiculturalism on the Continent. Rita Chin argues that there were few efforts to institute state-sponsored policies of multiculturalism, and those that emerged were pronounced failures virtually from their inception. She shows that today´s crisis of support for cultural pluralism isn´t new but actually has its roots in the 1980s. Challenging the mounting opposition to a diverse society, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe presents a historical investigation into one continent´s troubled relationship with cultural difference.

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"Rita Chins indispensable and timely book brilliantly analyzes the ideological obfuscation involved in the claim by Western Europeans, on the right and left, that multiculturalism has failed. Instead, Chin suggests, it was never really tried. Exploring the roots of past racism and its new secularist forms today, Chin casts a sobering and troubling look at the intolerance of difference in Europe."--Samuel Moyn, author of Christian Human Rights

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Rita Chin is associate professor of history at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany and the coauthor of After the Nazi Racial State.

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