Everyday cosmopolitanism and the labour of intercultural community

![CDATA[The oft-proclaimed ‘crisis of multiculturalism’ has entailed a raft of both theoretical and political criticisms. Theoretically, the identity focus of multiculturalism is seen to be incapable of capturing the cultural complexity of contemporary societies. Politically, as a set of policies and programmes, it is seen to be inadequate for servicing that complexity, or addressing concerns around cultural division and the desire for social cohesion. In its place, a clutch of ideas has emerged to fill this void and offer alternative visions for grappling with the consequences of diversity in an increasingly globalised world. The interest in notions of cosmopolitanism is central here because they shift the focus away from a politics of identity, which reifies categories of ethnicity, towards an ethics of cohabitation. This shift, however, has not been without its problems – cosmopolitanism has been too often constrained by its philosophical and ethical orientation, and its preoccupation with elites, and rarely used to explore the pragmatics of living with difference in diverse settings. This paper explores ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’, configured as situated and strategic practices of transaction in specific contexts. It builds on the Living Diversity and Connecting Diversity reports commissioned by Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) as a way of gaining a better glimpse into the cultural complexity of Australian multiculturalism as it is lived and breathed (Ang et al. 2002, 2006). These studies found evidence of strong civic engagement with cultural diversity and social issues, support for diversity and immigration, experiences of hybrid lives and community identities, and co-existing forms of ethnic and national belonging. This was significant because they were conducted during a period of critical debate about multiculturalism, when panics around terrorism, ‘ethnic crime’ and cultural disharmony were seen to justify a conservative agenda for dismantling multicultural programmes and policies and to license increasing levels of racist vilification, especially against those of Arabic-speaking and Muslim background (Poynting et al. 2004).]]