Description: If we are to fully understand and adequately respond to the multicultural question in European education, it is necessary to do two things. First, we need to develop rich empirical descriptions and theoretically rigorous explanations of what is going on. For example, we need to be able to characterise and explain the differentiated ways in which education policies and practices do or do not recognise, support or undermine diverse cultural identities and do or do not reproduce various kinds of educational and social inequality. Second, we need to be able to produce some kind of account of what ought to be going on. This involves confronting a number of important questions: what is ethically entailed in recognising and supporting diverse cultural identities? What are the limits to recognising and supporting diverse cultural identities? In the context of identity and culture, what do we mean by equality and inequality? And are all forms of educational and social inequality unacceptable? In this paper, we will begin to respond to these complex normative questions by mapping out some of the dimensions and dilemmas involved in trying to take the multicultural question in education seriously.