自由主義面對文化多樣性的兩難

這篇文章的重點, 在於揭示自由主義在面對不同文化團體的要求時所面對的兩難。自由主義的預設有二─基於人人有相等的潛能去實踐道德, 每一個個體都應該互相尊重, 每一個個體也都享有平等的地位; 基於自由主義對平等自由人的理解, 任何有充足道德能力的成年人都不應被拒絕於任何的政治群體之外。這兩個自由主義思考的基點會和不同文化群體的特別訴求產生衝突。在捍衛自由主義基本價值的同時, 不少具有特色的文化團體無可避免地被邊緣化。本文嘗試以自由民族主義作為分析的框架, 指出文化多樣性如何為自由主義提出有效的挑戰; 筆者以香港的新移民作為引子, 自由主義在面對眾多複雜的文化與及種族衝突時, 其理論的一致性(coherence)會面臨相當大的張力。

Does the exclusion of immigrants by liberal states justifiable?—an observation from a Hong-Konger perspective

1

In Hong Kong, there are about 50000-60000 immigrants from mainland every year. The influx of mainland immigrants is never a single event. Most residents in Hong Kong are immigrants from mainland. Only very few of us are Hong Kong “aborigines”. In 1950, due to the instability of the political situation in the mainland China, several hundred thousand people came to Hong Kong for a temporary stay. In response to the wave of illegal immigration, the British colonial government implemented a “touch base policy”. Under the policy, those illegal immigrants who are able go to the urban area without being “stopped down” by the police can apply for a permanent residence in HK.

Because of this historical fact, many permanent residents in HK are “immigrants” from that particular wave. However, these old immigrants would see the new immigrants as an alien group, the outsiders that ought to be excluded by the government. The reasons for such exclusion are twofold. One type of reasons is mainly practical, most of the old immigrants or the Hong-Kongers believe that the influx of new immigrants will stress the limited resources in government policy. Another type mainly concerns the identity problem. Old immigrants believe that they are the “real” Hong Kong people. There was a popular rumor that the large amount of influx of mainland immigrants was a conspiracy by the communist government to “dilute” the original Hong Kong residents’ composition before the handover of the colonial rule. Indeed, the image of the new immigrants is often portrayed as bad and inferior. In many Hong-Kongers’ eyes, especially for the older generation, the new immigrants are simply outsiders that do not share the same entitlement as the “real” Hong Kong people do. As a result, the government remained prudent in immigration policy. There is a rather limited quota for the issue of one-way permit (that is essential for the residence in HK). Even one can get the permit, he does not share the same citizenship with the permanent resident in HK. The policy itself might be the result of political bargaining, but it surely points to a deeper inherent tension in the liberal theory.

Despite the political concerns, there is a philosophical interest in the problem of immigration. There are two main core assumptions in liberal political theory. First, liberals endorse a universal commitment to the moral equality of humanity. People are equal in terms of their moral worth as such and we are entitled to equal respect and concern. Second, rational, free and equal persons should not be excluded in the politics of a liberal community. All public political institutions and practices must be capable of justification to all rational agents. The contractarian tradition does not allow the exclusion of a competent adult being as an outsider of the community. However, the universalistic nature of the assumption introduces an inherent tension with the membership nature of the present nation-state. Membership implies exclusion of certain parties from an association, a community or even a nation-state (in this case, it is citizenship instead). The reasons for excluding some parties are not always morally non-arbitrary. Liberal states distinguish between “insiders” and “outsiders”, but the basis can be morally arbitrary and result in the tension with the core liberal assumptions. Take the new immigrants in Hong Kong as an example. Although it is debatable about the liberalistic nature of the colonial or the HKSAR government, the exclusion of new immigrants in HK appeals to features that might not be endorsed by liberals: where one is born or who one’s parents happen to be are not things under one’s control. In HK’s case, it seems that it is justifiable to have a citizenship if an “illegal” immigrant has reached HK before 1980 (the year in which the touch-base policy had been terminated) but not afterwards. From a liberal point of view, the exclusion policy cannot be justified based on these morally arbitrary features.

The above observation points to the dilemma of liberal immigration policy. There is a tension between the internal principles and external principles of liberal theory.[1]On one hand, the internal principles require the two liberal assumptions to be truly represented in the constitutional arrangements within the governance of its own citizens. On the other, the external principles, in which the ways for the government to treat the non-citizens, might not be consistent with core liberal values. The tension might make liberals’ motto “all men are free and equal” become empty. Men are free and equal just within the nation-state boundary. Non-citizens cannot enjoy the same moral status as citizens and are excluded by different types of immigration measures. Liberals, in response, can have two strategies to resolve such tension. First, liberals can claim that there can be no immigration control at all. Libertarian would advocate a complete freedom of international movement.[2] However, little liberal egalitarian endorse this position. Second, liberals can admit that the principle of moral equality has a rather limited role in practical theory level. There are some local principles more overriding, such as adding communitarian or national ground into liberal theory. In what follows, I would examine this type of justification, especially on how national identity could provide a ground for exclusive membership. Liberal nationalists need to show that our constructed national identity outweighs other more local forms of community. In addition, they need to show that the content of a national identity can be compatible with core liberal principles. Nevertheless, to construct such an identity, there is a tension between the commitment to liberal constitutional politics and that to the historical and cultural context of this particular liberal state. If the historical and the cultural element contribute a little part of the constructed identity, then the notion is too thin to be sufficiently establishing a distinctive membership for immigration policy. If we add those elements too much, the nature of the identity shifts toward an ethnic understanding which liberals would find it too hard to be accepted. To conclude, I would argue that liberal coherence for internal and external principle is very hard to achieve at both the theoretical and the practical level in immigration policy.[3]

2

Why do we exclude some immigrants but not the others? In reality, most states do not exclude all the immigrants. Those immigrants with higher education level, higher social class and higher economical status are much welcomed than those who are political or economical refugees. Those economical refugees are usually the worst-off group in the society, but they are treated as “illegal” immigrants in many circumstances. The reasons to reject those refugees are based on some pragmatic concerns, such as limited resources of the state, national security or public order. But we have something more than pragmatic concerns here. Liberals cannot just simply ignore the fact that most people in the world is living in modern nation-states. When a state claims to exclude certain groups, the basis of exclusion can be the fear that the large influx of outsiders would threaten the insiders’ cultural or national identity. Nationalism, probably as one of the most influential ideology in the globe, exerts much of its power on immigration policy. Some liberals, like Yael Tamir, try to accommodate nationalism with liberalism so that one’s nationality can make sense to be a defensible component of one’s cultural identity. In this section, the possible tension between liberalism and nationalism will be explored. In the context of immigration control, the focus will be on whether the idea of national identity can provide a test for membership. I would argue that even if the act was successful, there would have been great tension with the core liberal principles.

A nation, as Benedict Anderson defines it, is “an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”.[4] It is not an actual community as we do not experience face-to-face communication with everyone else in a particular nation-state. Although it is a socially constructed imagination, many of us still regard a nation to be a particular valuable form of community. Therefore, national relationship can justifiably be prioritized in some cases, at least as observed in some Asian or Middle-East countries.

There are many varieties of nationalism, one of which stress on the cultural-national impact on the construction of the identity of citizens. Tamir, one of the advocates of “cultural nationalism”, argues that liberal philosophy needs to take the influence of culture in people’s lives seriously. Liberals just focus too much on individual choices. We do not recognize that many of our choices are influenced by existing cultural as well as communal framework. We might even take a stronger claim that the existing cultural framework shapes the range of options that an individual is likely to make. Freedom is not an abstract entity; it is meaningful only if it is situated within a cultural context. Tamir therefore claims that liberal theory must recognize a right to culture—that individuals have the right to “live within the culture of their choice, to decide on their social affiliations, to re-create the culture of the community they belong to, and to refine its borders.”[5] The right to culture, as she puts it, is something that “entails the right to a public sphere in which individuals can share a language, memorize their past, cherish their heroes, live a fulfilling national life”[6] In this sense, nation and culture are connected. It is the presence of nation that can preserve the distinctiveness of culture. There must be a public sphere in which the national culture is expressed. A national culture, according to Tamir, “is a set of specific features that enable members of a nation to distinguish between themselves and others”.[7] Therefore, we must see “nations as cultural communities demarcated by the imaginative power of their members”[8] The national identity so constructed, therefore, rests on the cultural difference between different communities. The boundary between nations is culturally determined, and this line between “us” and “others” enables people to identify themselves. It seems that for Tamir, the valuableness of a nation is that it provides the very basis for the nurturing of a distinctive cultural framework for the people in order to live a good life. As she puts it,

The ability of individuals to lead a satisfying life and to attain the respect of others is contingent on, although not assured by, their ability to view themselves as active members of a worthy community. A safe, dignified, and flourishing national existence thus significantly contributes to their well-being.[9]

Despite this idealized picture of national identity, we should question about whether our goodness is always in phase with what nation/national culture defines. Presently in mainland China, there are many children having gymnastics training everyday in order to suit nation’s goal to gain medals in Olympics games. Although we might argue that the children will be very happy if they can really get a medal in the end, we still have reasonable doubt on whether such a “cultural-or-national-determinism” is really a good to the development of our own individuality. Not all the children want to be a good athlete.

Another problem is also an old question from a liberal perspective: Is there any obligation of the state to promote a national culture? Alan Patten has analyzed four stages of the arguments for cultural nationalism:

1. Individual autonomy is a fundamental value within liberal theory.

2. A liberal state must establish the conditions for this autonomy.

3. A meaningful range of options requires a cultural framework.

Therefore:

4. The liberal state ought to promote a national culture. [10]

Patten has made an important point here. We can only move to the conclusion if we assume that “national” cultures are important to their member’s autonomy.[11] Without this assumption, the argument runs like culture is important for human flourishing, but not national culture. In addition to the counter-argument that I have given in the previous paragraph, we can question on the importance of a rich and diverse cultural varieties in the development of one’s well-being and originality. This moves us to J.S. Mill’s individuality argument.[12] To promote individuality, the society needs to be pluralistic. In addition, we need to recognize the dependence of the good for each of us on relationships with others. To say that collective identities mean the collective dimensions of our individual identities. As Appiah puts it,

[To say that collective identities] are responses to something outside our selves is to say that they are the products of histories, and our engagement with them invokes capacities that are not under our control. Yet they are social not just because they involves others, but because they are constituted in part by socially transmitted conceptions of how a person of that identity properly behaves.[13]

To experience different lives in different cultures is one of the important ways to develop our individuality. We have our own reflective judgments on our ways of life. It is very hard to say the national culture, probably a uni-cultural one, is overridingly valuable over other possible forms of cultures and experiences. After all, culture is not a static or fixed entity without any additional element from and interaction with other forms of culture. If a particular culture is isolated from the world and stop interacting with other forms of culture, that particular, over-protected culture can be said to be dead. Therefore, it is not good for the state to reject immigrants in order to promote a national culture. It clings too much to the absolute sovereign will of the individual states. Such an act cannot protect our autonomy; rather it would impede our development of individuality, which constitutes an important part of our autonomy.

3

Let’s us back to the question of immigration control. If liberal nationalism is to provide a justification on membership controls, it needs to provide a national identity that can be used to distinguish between insiders and outsiders. In spite of the cultural nationalism account, we will see another justification of national identity for deciding membership in this section.

For David Miller, nationality differs from other forms of identity in five ways: First, nationalities are constituted by belief as a shared imagined community. Second, there has to be historical continuity so that present members feel loyalty and obligations to past and future generations. Third, nationality is an active identity. Fourth, a national identity connects a group of people to a confined geographical place. Fifth, the identity requires people who share it should have something in common.[14] The phrase “something in common” raises a number of concerns here. Miller does not refer the common characteristic as biological traits; rather it is a “common public culture which is compatible with their belonging to a diversity of ethnic groups”.[15] We can regard this “common public culture” as one of the normative test of an acceptable national identity. That means if we interpret membership in a boarder sense (citizenship), we could understand public culture as the way we relate to each other as citizens, as long as we note how fluid the public-private boundary can be.[16] The sign of a good citizen, therefore, is one who exhibits certain cultural characteristics such as language and religion. This claim of private-public boundary is supported by the following text:

National identities are not all-embracing, and…the common public culture that they require may have room for many private cultures to flourish within the borders of the nation.[17]

Other than common public culture, another normative test of an acceptable national identity provided by Miller is social myth. At first glance, it seems that there is no ethical justification for a national loyalty to be based on myth. However, Miller argues that national myths “provide reassurance that the national community of which one now forms a part is solidly based in history, that it embodies a real continuity between generations”[18]. In addition, “they perform a moralizing role, by holding before us the virtues of our ancestors and encouraging us to live up to them”[19]. Nations are ethical communities that has instrumental values, and there are reasons for us to hold such a belief even we are somehow aware that it is false.

This seems an absurd argument—how one can still hold a belief even he knows that such a belief is a “false-consciousness”? Sometimes we do act in this self-deception way. For instance, we know that the belief that smoking can release stress can be wrong—because the increased level of nicotine in the blood actually increases one’s heart beat rate. But we still hope to believe that such a belief can be right. The case is more prominent in the post-Mao period of China. My observation is that most citizens in China, at least as observed in HK, do not believe what the communist party portrays. They think that many images of national successes are all propaganda from the national government. Meanwhile, they need something to fulfill the emptiness of their souls – The Great Cultural Revolution has broken down many traditional foundation of the conception of the good[20] in the good old days. History always involves writing someone else but not the others, however, we should note that filling empty spaces by national narratives rather than uncovering the distasteful truth can sometimes help citizens to forget their unhappy past. This type of normative test, though a sad practice, might still contribute as one requirement for an acceptable national identity. If we reject national myth at all, the standard might be too stringent to allow any citizens to live within such an “imagined community”.

The above discussion leads us to the third test of national identity: authenticity. For Miller, national identity is not authoritative and is open to critical assessment. We need a conversation for such an assessment, and the method is a liberal one:

Without freedom of conscience and expression, one cannot explore different interpretations of national identity, something that takes place not only in political forums, but is the various associations that make up civil society.[21]

The authenticity of national identity, according to Miller, depends on the result of free and equal contestation between groups.

[T]he freedoms and rights defended by liberals are valued here as the means whereby individuals can develop and express their ethic and other group identities, while at the same time taking part in an ongoing collective debate about what it means to be a member of this nation.[22]

So we can conclude all those normative tests for national identity altogether. To accept a national identity, it must be authentic. For that to be achieved, we need a common public culture through which it emerges has to be liberal. We do care about historical accuracy of national stories, but the accuracy as such does not contribute much to one’s understanding of his national identity.

Despite the very high standard of acceptance, there is still one more fundamental concern which is related to the immigration control. Whenever we are constituting a “we”, at the same time a “they” is constructed out of this association. Miller’s ideal picture is that there is a free and equal contestation between groups, but it simply cannot happen in the real life situations. Those outsiders simply do not get involved into the progress of “producing” a national identity. Many of them are too weak to represent themselves in so called common public culture. For Miller, all problems are a matter of inclusion, just like the U.S. “melting pot” policy. But it cannot be true. We might argue that the term nationalism, whatever its form, implies certain exclusion of “they” and inclusion of “us”. The most fundamental flaw of Miller’s argument is that he seems to assume that the excluded group can have a fair equality of opportunity in the contest of inclusion in the national identity, but it simply doesn’t happen in most of the cases.

4

After all, the concept of liberal national identity cannot be “universal” that the identity is shared by all members of all liberal polities. Rather, each individual liberal polity will have its own distinct national identity. So, the matter of exclusion comes to the dialogue between different “nations” to talk about the identity problem.

Recalls Tamir’s claim on liberal nationality. Based on a communal rather than a contractarian approach, she outlines two requirements for membership in a liberal state:

1. General civic competence—the readiness and the ability to communicate, argue, and discuss matters with fellow citizens, and to form judgments on the basis of this dialogue.
2. A shared culture and identity—the competence to act as a member of this particular society.[23]

From the above formulation, it seems that an immigration control based on liberal national identity works perfectly fine with the core liberal assumptions. Any rational adult that is capable of general civic competence and has a shared culture and identity with others in the nation can be morally justified having the membership in a liberal state. Tamir continues to argue, that “prospective citizens must be able and willing to be members of this particular historical community, its past, its future, its forms of life and institutions.” A state that “views itself as a community” can issue citizenship only to those committed to respect its communal values.[24]

A shared culture seems to be the basis for membership for liberal nationalists, at least for Tamir and Miller. Nevertheless, it is rather an oversimplified picture for most modern-state’s situation. We can consider the case of new immigrants in HK again to illustrate the problem. The new immigrants in HK do not necessarily share the same culture as the old immigrants. It depends on how we define the content and scope of the term “culture”. Although both of us do write Chinese, we speak different dialects. Most new immigrants find very hard to learn the prevalent Cantonese when they first arrive HK. It is a common phenomenon that most students from mainland find reluctant to play with other Hong-Kongers because of the language problem. They are afraid of being laughed by the locals because of the lack of ability to speak Cantonese. Besides linguistic heterogeneity, we also have different life-styles that are sometimes hard to accommodate. Many new immigrants cannot stand the flamboyant life-styles that most Hong-Kongers experience everyday. Despite all these differences, we do share a lot given that all of us are “immigrants” from mainland. The factor that contributes our differences is time—we came to HK at different time frame. If a rather homogeneous community, like the new and old immigrants in HK case, also experiences a difficulty to constitute a “shared” culture, how comes such a principle be extended to a more heterogeneous situation in other places, like that between the Tibet and the Han ethnics in China?

Even if a shared culture does exist, the liberal state need to identify what is the ruling culture in the state in order to maintain such a “shared” culture. The identification is hard, because both political beliefs or commitments or culture are somehow invisible. As in HK, can we identify the new immigrants as having the shared culture as most Hong-Kongers because of the capability of speaking Cantonese (the most prevalent dialect in HK)? Even if the ability of speaking Cantonese can be quantified and tested, the commitment to be included in certain cultural community cannot be tested. If we move beyond language, it is likely that the nation-state would apply some ethnic and “anti-liberal” measures to distinguish between “us” and “they”. One of the Tamir’s judgments on membership is on the “respects on communal values and collective history”. However, how can we really measure the respects of prospective members? Does it mean, for instance, the new immigrants in Hong Kong must be able to speak Cantonese fluently and able to pass the test on Hong Kong’s history in order to show their commitment and respect? There is a danger of slippery slope in the argument. Cultural nationalism seems to be a matter-of-degree concept. If we want to make the membership measure more distinguishable, we need more measures on the shared cultural identity. The more the measure or the requirement, the more intrusive the policy is. If we stress too much on the importance on national culture, we might give too much to the state to exercise its sovereignty upon the promotion of nationality.

Liberal nationalism, in effect, is negotiating a space between a thin version of “liberal constitutionalism” and a thick version of “ethnic nationalism”.[25] “Liberal constitutionalism” agree on national identity depends on civic competence but not on shared cultural identity. “Ethnic nationalism”, on the other hand, includes essentialist view of ethnic features to define a nation. Liberal nationalists endorse the former but reject the latter. To prevent becoming too “thick”, they have to draw some lines between ethnic nationalism and cultural nationalism that they endorse. One of the strategies, as suggested by Miller, is to draw the distinction between public and private sphere by stressing the importance of a common public culture. Following this, the difference between ethnic nationalism and cultural nationalism is that the former intrudes too much into the private sphere of individual while the latter preserves such a boundary. However, as Miller acknowledges, “both nations and ethnics group are groups of people bound together by common cultural characteristics and mutual recognition”.[26] The line is simply unclear to be drawn. The reasons that liberals reject liberal nationalists are the same as those that liberal nationalists reject ethnic nationalists. Nationalism must contain some ethnic elements if we understand ethnicity as a body of cultural beliefs but not that of biological features. So the argument to protect national culture (which is a common public one) becomes more like a welfare question: the state need to promote national culture because it is for the individual’s own good. The state is justified to be “non-neutral” in this sense. This act surely blurs the distinction between public sphere and private sphere, and it creates a great tension with the core liberal assumptions that I have mentioned in the beginning of the paper.

5

The importance of “cultural membership” as a criterion for citizenship makes the label “liberal culturalist” more makes sense. The emphasis of cultural importance brings us to the question of minority group rights. In response, Kymlicka distinguishes “bad” and “good” minority rights. Minority rights are bad if they involve restricting individual rights while they are good if they can supple individual rights. The “bad” minority rights concern internal dissent and exert internal restrictions within the group (intra-group). This raises the danger of individual oppression. The “good” one, on the other, involves inter-group relations and concerns the unfairness between groups. Kymlicka believes that liberal culturalism would accept the latter. He claims that minority rights are consistent with liberal culturalism “if (a) they protect the freedom of individuals within groups; and (b) they promote relations of equality (non-dominance) between groups.”[27] In the context of immigration policy, it seems to Kymlicka that we ought to include those immigrants given they can fulfill the above two criteria.

Understood this way, the major dilemma for minority culture is not the tension between liberalism and communitarianism (or nationalism). Rather, it is the danger of being marginalized from the major economic and political institutions of the society. There are four options for minorities when they face this danger. They can either emigrate; accept integration into the majority culture; seek for national self-determination (of self-government); or accept permanent marginalization.[28] For new immigrants in Hong Kong, my observation is that most of them favor the option of integration. Then, the problem they face is not to “preserve” their own distinctive cultural or ethnic heritage as new immigrants might not remain proud of their heritage; rather, many immigrants demand fairer terms of integration. Kymlicka outlines two basic elements for this demand. First, there is a need of special accommodations for immigrants on a transitional basis. For instance, mother-tongue services are required to help them, especially the children, to learn effectively in school. Second, there are institutions to ensure that immigrants can share the same degree of respect, recognition, and accommodation of the identities and practices as those of the majority group. For instance, government might need to examine the portrayal of minorities in school curricula or the media to see if they are “stigmatized”.[29] For him, the matters are all the problem of fairness.

However, as I have mentioned in section 4, there is always a tension between thin “liberal nationalism” and thick “ethnic nationalism”. Although immigrants are no means conceived themselves as a nation, there is still a cultural distinctiveness problem. Kymlicka’s project, in the first sense, stresses on the importance of cultural diversity within the liberal framework. One problem that Kymlicka has not faced in the project is about the tension between core liberal principles and those more localized cultural or ethical principles that any minority group would face. In the case of immigrants, it seems that the problem is less prominent than those ethno-religious groups or national minorities. But still the line between public and private sphere is not always easy to draw. For instance, what if the new immigrants in HK want to maintain traditional Confucian practices in sex, love and marriage? Some of them might think that there is too much freedom in sexual behavior in modern city like HK. They might prefer a more perfectionalist view on a government role to promote the traditional culture. Indeed, it is sometimes very hard to say whether the predominating culture is a common public one. Even if it is, there is still a feeling of alienation, if not an oppression, for those marginalized groups (like the new immigrants) to be exposed in such a situation. After all, liberalism is just one of the various forms of good life; we have no reason to assume that most minorities or immigrants would like to live in a liberalist style.

6

It is hoped that the tension between liberal core assumptions and exclusive membership in present nation-states has been successfully illustrated in the paper. There is always a need for the state to exclude some competent prospective members. The exclusion itself inevitably introduces conflict with the core liberal assumption of a universal commitment to the moral equality of humanity. The strategy that liberal nationalism holds cannot effectively resolve the dilemma. The space between thin “liberal constitutionalism” and thick “ethnic nationalism” is not easy to negotiate. If we cling too much to the liberal side, we do not take cultural diversity seriously. If too much national culture protection is carried out, it violates the core liberal assumptions. A third solution for the tension is to reduce the problem of cultural conflicts into that of fairness, however, we cannot assume that the minority groups always want to get integrated into the mainstream. Integration can sometimes be another form of oppression. It is a lesson learned from our long history of cultural conflicts between nations, which appears to be one of the circumstances that are necessarily faced by all mankind.

References:

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities, New, London, New York: Verso.

Appiah, K.A. (2005). The Ethics of Identity. Princeton University Press.

Cole, P. (2000). Philosophies of Exclusion – Liberal Political Theory and Immigration. Edinburgh University Press.

Kymlicka, W. (2002, 2^nd edition). Contemporary Political Philosophy – An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mill, J. S. (1974). On Liberty. Ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Miller, D. (1995). On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.

Patten, A. (1999). “The Autonomy Argument for Liberal Nationalism”. Nations and Nationalism 5(1): 1-17.

Tamir, Y. (1993). Liberal Nationalism. Princeton University Press.