Yet if we see multiculturalism as, in Talal Asad’s words, part of “the attempt to deal with the practical problems encountered in education and the social services—two major institutions of Britain’s welfare state,” we get a very different view. With this emphasis in mind, the rejection of multiculturalism can be seen less as an expression of concern about integration or “British values” and more as part of the neoliberal attack on the idea of social welfare provision itself. In other words, it is as much an economic objection as a culturalist one.

QUESTION: How do economic critiques of welfare and culturalist critiques of multiculturalism interlock in practice in British politics?

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 148