Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards 'counting' mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change - but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of - rather than problematic within - diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.