This article (Nesbitt-Larking, 2008) advocates a multiculturalism that aims to generate mutual dialogue, is committed to tackling social injustice and inequality and is open to cultural critique. Such multiculturalism is certainly to be welcomed. The arguments are advanced with reference to Muslims in Canada. The author seeks to engage critically with three terms: diaspora, multiculturalism and dialogue. But rather than critiquing all three terms, the article points to the ways in which the last two may be deployed in social and political discourse and jettisons the term diaspora altogether on the grounds that it holds connotations of a perpetual status of second class citizenship and encourages a view of diasporic people as culturally encapsulated outsiders.
However, it is not inevitable that the term 'diaspora' should connote devalued status. The ways in which a diasporic group is treated in society is a reflection of the socio-economic and political context of the receiving society rather than due to the fact that the arriving group is a diaspora. There is no a priori reason that the new arrival should necessarily be seen as the Other. In my work and that of others, I have found that diasporas are complex formations whose positioning in the receiving society is embedded in the social circumstances of the new context and cannot be unproblematically predicted in advance (e.g. Brah, 1996;Walter, Hickman, Morgan, & Bradley, 2005). The author suggests that in theory all groups in Canada other than the First Nation Canadians could be designated as diasporas. This is indeed the case. The older diasporas in Canada-namely the English speaking and the French speaking ones-could be named as such. The author wishes to see the demise of diasporic consciousness. Yet, a 'diasporic consciousness' does not negate, as the author seems to suggest, the need in a nation state for full and equal citizenship for all. There is no evidence to suggest that diasporic groups are less likely to 'integrate' because of their diasporic status. Historically, for example, the Jewish diaspora has integrated to greater or lesser extents around the world without losing diasporic identities (and, indeed this has not guaranteed their social inclusion). It is, therefore, not the case that the demise of