New and old xenophobia : the crisis of liberal multiculturalism

![CDATA[We live in an environment where the traditional norms of hospitality towards strangers are breaking down, and in which the social character of outsiders is changing. These changes are part of the growing liberal sense of a crisis in multiculturalism. Although this problem is essentially political, it has an important ethical underpinning. Jacques Derrida has in written eloquently and convincingly about the rights of the stranger, arguing that ethics is in fact hospitality.2 If we cannot treat guests with hospitality, they will become aliens. If they are aliens, we have no particular responsibility towards them, because they are not fully rightsbearing individuals. If we have no social responsibility for them, they remain outsiders. Our relationship is one of estrangement.]]