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What is sometimes talked about as the 'post-secular' or a 'crisis of secularism' is, in Western Europe, quite crucially to do with the reality of multiculturalism. By which I mean not just the fact of new ethno-religious diversity but the presence of a multiculturalist approach to this diversity, namely: the idea that equality must be extended from uniformity of treatment to include respect for difference; recognition of public/private interdependence rather than dichotomized as in classical liberalism; the public recognition and institutional accommodation of minorities; the reversal of marginalisation and a remaking of national citizenship so that all can have a sense of belonging to it. I think that equality requires that this ethno-cultural multiculturalism should be extended to include state-religion connexions in Western Europe, which I characterise as 'moderate secularism', based on the idea that political authority should not be subordinated to religious authority yet religion can be a public good which the state should assist in realising or utilising. I discuss here three multiculturalist approaches that contend this multiculturalising of moderate secularism is not the way forward. One excludes religious groups and secularism from the scope of multiculturalism (Kymlicka); another largely limits itself to opposing the 'othering' of groups such as Jews and Muslims (Jansen); and the third argues that moderate secularism is the problem not the solution (Bhargava).

This extended commentary engages in debate about the place of religion within multicultural social structures and the perceived risks and benefits of the incorporation of this within state and social policy. If social policy has indeed been extended from ethnicity to include religion, what are the implications of this? Key issues within the debate include the relationship between secular and religious identities and the kind of secularism that should inform the way in which the state is seeking to accommodate religious demands and identities in its engagement with particular communities, particularly ethnic minority communities. The commentary takes as its starting point an article published in 2011 in Critical Social Policy 31(3) by Singh and Cowden on 'Multiculturalism's New Fault Lines' and a response to this by Tariq Modood.

Ethno-religious diversity is a fact of Western European cities and will grow and spread. Living in these locations today requires a respect for 'difference' as well as a sense of commonalities; these are required at the level of the local and the city but also at the level of the national. A framework of anti-discrimination and processes of uncoercive cultural encounters are also necessary but are not sufficient. We also need to have the possibility of sharing a macro-symbolic sense of belonging. With this in mind I consider a number of modes of integration. I argue that multiculturalism is a mode of integration, which can be contrasted with other modes such as assimilation, individualist-integration and cosmopolitanism, and like the others it is based on the core democratic values of liberty, equality and fraternity/unity. My contention is that even though multiculturalism is unpopular with some European publics today, integration is not possible without including it within an integration strategy. I go on to consider what kinds of 'difference' mark the real divisions today and into the future. I conclude that one of the most profound questions Europeans are being forced to consider is about the place of religion in the public space.

Cultural capital analysis, or class analysis more generally, exacerbates rather than resolves the anomaly of why non-white ethnic minorities in Britain are over-represented in higher education. Some of these groups have a disproportionate lower, socio-economic profile and yet at least some of these groups are more likely to pursue and achieve entry into higher education than whites, especially, their white working-class peers. They also suffer additional disadvantages such as racism and cultural marginality. Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital is designed to explain why members of a disadvantaged class achieve less educational success than an advantaged class. It is not helpful in explaining why some disadvantaged groups do better than one would have predicted on the basis of a class (and/or racism) analysis. On the other hand, US sociological studies which deploy the concept of social capital in combination with ethnicity to explain the trajectories of 'second generation' migrants seem promising. This conclusion is offered on the basis of a brief literature review and a suggestion that the "motor" of the British South Asian and Chinese overcoming of disadvantage lies in migrant parents getting their children to internalize high educational ambitions and to enforce appropriate behaviour.