Shadow of a rainbow?: National and ethnic belonging in Mauritius

Abstract

Combining national and ethnic belonging tends to be perceived as challenging in many public and academic debates. In contrast, a harmonious co-existence of various ethnic, religious, and cultural groups as part of one nation is emphasized in Mauritius. This country is also known as a “rainbow nation.” In this dissertation, Femke van der Werf focuses on the claimed success of rainbow nation Mauritius, while keeping an eye open for its potential challenges and “shadows.” Such a focus can improve our theoretical and empirical understanding of the ways in which societies can approach the thorny issue of national unity and cultural diversity. Guided by three main aspects of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), Van der Werf investigates views and experiences of Mauritians regarding 1) their understandings of Mauritian national identity, 2) their self-identifications as national and ethnic group members, and 3) their attitudes toward other groups. The results support the discourse of a peaceful co-existence of different ethnic groups that are part of one Mauritian nation, while also indicating nuances and challenges. The success story is reflected in the findings that respect and care for others are an important part of Mauritians’ understanding of their national identity, that many Mauritians have a bicultural self-identification, and that a higher satisfaction with the societal performance of the national government relates to a higher likelihood of ethnic-national compared to national self-identification. This indicates that national unity can co-exist well with ethnic diversity in terms of understandings of national identity and people’s self-identifications. At the same time, attitudes toward fellow Mauritians from other ethnic groups were neutral or slightly positive rather than clearly positive, and those toward foreign groups were, on average, slightly negative. This puts the understanding of a harmonious and functioning plural society into perspective and asks for a (re)consideration of what kind of attitudes toward groups are required for such a society. Moreover, conflicted blended bicultural self-identification is not uncommon among Mauritians who feel that their ethnic group is not sufficiently recognized and this, as well as a behavioral understanding of national identity, relates to relatively negative outgroup attitudes. It seems important to consider how to handle conflicted bicultural identity experiences and behavioral understandings of national identity in order to ensure and maintain individual and societal harmony as much as possible. In sum, there are several opportunities for dealing with national unity and ethnic diversity in a harmonious way, while it also appears important to be realistic about the understanding of intergroup harmony and to accommodate different bicultural identity experiences and needs.