Since '9/ 11 ', commentators, politicians and media discourse in a range of European contexts have increasingly drawn on narratives of the ' crisis of multiculturalism' to make sense of a broad range of events and political developments. For all this focus, multiculturalism has rarely amounted to more than a patchwork of initiatives, rhetoric and aspirations in any context, and has been subject to a long and well-documented history of 'backlash'. Multiculturalism, therefore, can be approached analytically as a mobilising metaphor and discursive assemblage that facilitates and orders debate on questions of race, legitimacy and belonging. This article examines the transnational mediation of ' multicultural crisis', and explores the cultural dynamics through which a congruent narrative of a ' failed experiment' has. been shaped and circulated. It argues that these transnational dynamics have become politically significant in positioning and justifying a politics of integration predicated on visions of core values and 'ways oflife', and invested in by a complex spectrum of political positions.