Civic but Post-Secular: Contrasting Tendencies in the Management of Diversity

Secularism was the very first framework devised by states to manage diversity. In effect, secular solutions to the problem of governing social bodies fraught with religious dissent have served as blueprints for liberal states dealing with other types of identifications. Notwithstanding this, the management of religion—typically epitomized by church-state relations—and the management of diversity—notably enacted by migrant policies and nationality/citizenship laws—were long considered distant fields of state activity. Over the past couple of decades, however, these seemingly different fields have started to overlap, not least due to the religious pluralization of the West. As a consequence, current debates on immigration and multiculturalism often turn into discussions over the governance of religious life—and vice versa. This overlap should not be deemed surprising inasmuch as policies toward religion and diversity share an ultimate objective: that of promoting social integration and cohesion. In spite of this correspondence, these fields of state activity appear to have gone their separate ways in one crucial respect: while policy approaches to diversity have undertaken a civic turn which shuns particular identifications from public life, policy approaches to religion have been losing their staunch secularist character by adopting accommodationist and inclusive stances toward religion. How do these civic and post-secular tendencies interact in practice? Are they contradictory? Are there ways in which they reinforce each other? The present paper endeavors to contribute to the discussion on civic integration by investigating the interactions between these seemingly opposite developments. To this end, Italian discourses and policies toward religion and diversity are analyzed and compared to their equivalents in the United Kingdom. This study demonstrates that although post-secularism has inclusive potential, it may be caught in a “neo-liberal communitarian” (Schinkel and Van Houdt 2010) logic which nurtures a civic and secular type of citizenship.