Confronting the Progressive Dilemma, Rethinking Inclusive Solidarity

This paper explores variety of articulations of the progressive dilemma, a concern that immigrant multiculturalism undermines support for the welfare state, addressing questions: first, whether or not resource distribution among “natives and newcomers” is just, and second, what are the political consequences of the use and abuse of the progressive dilemma by different political actors. One such effect is in conceptualizing civic integration policies which often redefine ideas of integration, inclusive solidarity, citizenship in reductive ways. Social progressives want to reconcile both values - diversity and solidarity - or curtail any potentially harmful effects that insistence on one might cause on the other. Instead of rhetoric “natives first” that is readily and perilously available during economic crisis and democratic recession, it is argued that we should rethink inclusive solidarity - how it could be produced and maintained in contemporary societies facing different challenges. Inclusive solidarity is broader approach then mandatory and individualized civic integration approach. Democracy is a life among strangers, a transgression of boundaries of demos: both in terms who belongs to demos and how demos acts. The project of building institutions of inclusive solidarity is thus a project of transgression of boundaries of demos and overcoming the progressive dilemma. While articulations and arguments stemming from the progressive dilemma literature typically cover North America and Western and Northern Europe, I will extrapolate theoretical framework for assessing corresponding yet somewhat different dilemma emerging in the post-Yugoslav countries, Serbia in particular, where diversity mostly comes from refugees and asylum seekers and the post-socialist welfare regimes as systems of institutionalized solidarity have been rapidly deteriorating.