Desperately seeking the global subject: international education, citizenship and cosmopolitanism

This article takes the case of international education and Australian state schools to argue that the economic, political and cultural changes associated with globalisation do not automatically give rise to globally oriented and supra-territorial forms of subjectivity. The tendency of educational institutions such as schools to privilege narrowly instrumental cultural capital perpetuates and sustains normative national, cultural and ethnic identities. In the absence of concerted efforts on the part of educational institutions to sponsor new forms of global subjectivity, flows and exchanges like those that constitute international education are more likely to produce a neo-liberal variant of global subjectivity.

The Europe of Elites. A Study into the Europeanness of Europe's Political and Economic Elites

Contents: 1 Introduction: European integration as an elite project, Heinrich Best, György Lengyel, and Luca Verzichelli; 2 Europe à la carte? European citizenship and its dimensions from the perspective of national elites, Maurizio Cotta and Federico Russo; 3 Ready to run Europe? Perspectives of a supranational career among EU national elites, Nikolas Hubé and Luca Verzichelli; 4 National elites’ preferences on the Europeanization of policy making, José Real-Dato, Borbála Göncz, and György Lengyel; 5 The other side of European identity: elite perceptions of threats to a cohesive Europe, Irmina Matonyté and Vaidas Morkevicius; 6 Elites’ views on European institutions: national experiences sifted through ideological orientations, Daniel Gaxie and Nicolas Hubé; 7 Patterns of regional diversity in political elites’ attitudes, Mladen Lazic, Miguel Jerez-Mir, Vladimir Vuletic, and Rafael Vázquez-García; 8 The elites–masses gap in European integration, Wolfgang C. Müller, Marcelo Jenny, and Alejandro Ecker; 9 Party elites and the domestic discourse on the EU, Nicolo Conti; 10 Elite foundations of European integration: a causal analysis, Heinrich Best; 11 Elites of Europe and the Europe of elites: a conclusion, Heinrich Best; 12 Appendix. Surveying elites: information on the study design and field report of the IntUne elite survey, György Lengyel and Stefan Jahr.

The Effects of Civic Education on Political Knowledge

Traditionally political knowledge was regarded as an important potential outcome for civic education efforts. Most of the currently available research, however, tends to focus on non-cognitive goals, despite the fact that studies repeatedly have shown that political knowledge is an important resource for enlightened and engaged citizenship. In this article, we investigate whether civic education contributes to political knowledge levels. The analysis is based on the Belgian Political Panel Survey, a two year panel study among 2,988 Belgian late adolescents. The analysis shows that experiences with group projects at school contribute significantly to political knowledge levels two years later on. Furthermore, we can observe an interaction effect as those who are already most knowledgeable about politics, gain most from these group projects. Classes about politics, on the other hand, did not have an effect on knowledge levels. In the discussion, it is argued that civic education can have strong cognitive effects, but that these effects are not always related to classical civic education efforts.

Citizenship and Inclusion: Rethinking the Analytical Category of Noncitizenship

The paper problematises the category of noncitizenship. It traces its trajectory in accounts of inclusive citizenship and argues that it is difficult to theorise it as a distinct theoretical category outside of citizenship. To support this argument, the paper distinguishes between a pluralist, political and democratic variant of accounts of inclusive citizenship and it shows how they all end up reducing noncitizenship to a journey to citizenship. To overcome this limit, the paper develops the idea of subversive politicisation and suggests that injustices and inequalities can be challenged without falling back on the vocabulary of citizenship.

Do Institutional Participatory Projects Contribute to the Development of Political Capabilities?

Participation usually sets off from the bottom up, taking the form of more or less enduring forms of collective action with varying degrees of infl uence. However, a number of projects have been launched by political institutions in the last decades with a view to engaging citizens in public affairs and developing their democratic habits, as well as those of the administration. This paper analyses the political qualifying capacity of the said projects, i.e. whether participating in them qualifi es individuals to behave as active citizens; whether these projects foster greater orientation towards public matters, intensify (or create) political will, and provide the necessary skills and expertise to master this will. To answer these questions, data from the comparative analysis of fi ve participatory projects in France and Spain are used, shedding light on which features of these participatory projects contribute to the formation of political subjects and in which way. Finally, in order to better understand this formative dimension, the formative capacity of institutional projects is compared with the formative dimension of other forms of participation spontaneously developed by citizens.

Territoriality and Migration in a Divided Society: Lay Theories of Citizenship and Place in Northern Ireland

The study of citizenship has increasingly focused on the ways in which spatialized understandings of the concept can be used to marginalise and exclude social groups: exclusive constructions of national boundaries, local neighbourhoods and public spaces can deny marginalised groups their social and political rights. Less attention has been paid to how constructions of place can accommodate different groups’ rights and promote peaceful coexistence. This is particularly important in locations where migration disrupts existing understandings (‘lay theories’) of the relationship between residency, identity and collective rights. The present research examines how spatialized understandings of citizenship shape perceptions of intergroup mixing in previously segregated areas of a post-conflict society. Critical Discursive Social Psychological (CDSP) analysis of 30 interviews with long-term residents and recent migrants to increasingly mixed areas of Belfast shows that, while all pa
rticipants acknowledged Northern Ireland’s territorialisation, different lay theories of citizenship underpin the possibility and desirability of intergroup coexistence. Long-term residents drew upon understandings of the negative citizenry of the outgroup to argue against the possibility of peaceful coexistence within their locale, while recent incomers gave evidence of their own experiences of good citizenship within the shared spaces of neighbourhood to demonstrate that this could and should be achieved. The implications of lay theories of citizenship for the study of residential migration and mixing are discussed

Citizenship formation for a new millennium in Sweden : a prognosis of our time

The aim of this article is to forecast the present situation of citizenship formation in the field of Swedish education. In highlighting trends and tendencies in the educational assignment to provide for democratic citizenship in the first decade of the 21st century, which can be characterised as lacking collective visions for change, three depictions of citizenship are prevailing: citizenship formation for deliberation, for entrepreneurship and for therapeutic intervention. These depictions are analysed in terms of the direction for action taking and attention that they stress and produce as concerns citizenship in the making. The first one, citizenship formation for deliberation, stresses an inward-looking and inward-feeling citizenship. The second one, citizenship formation for entrepreneurship, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship, and the third one, citizenship formation for therapeutic intervention, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship. Taking on this forecast, which actualises democracy as something that is already achieved as a consequence of an assumedly post political situation, we argue that citizenship as well as society itself risks being pictured as apolitical and democratically “saturated.” This situation is hazardous, we argue, as it does not open up for change to come into question as desirable or even possible. Put differently, it leaves us with the notion that things have to be as they are, as we are living in the best of worlds. 

Transformative Political Spaces? Asambleas Populares, Identity, Alliances and Belonging in Buenos Aires

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Global citizenship education. Politische Bildung für die Weltgesellschaft

Der Beitrag gibt einen kurzen Einblick in ein neues Masterprogramm zu Global Citizenship Education und die damit verbundene Konzeptentwicklung, die sich um eine enge Verknüpfung von Globalem Lernen, Politischer Bildung und Friedenspädagogik bemüht. Dabei werden auch Spannungsfelder und Perspektiven für Kompetenzorientierung und -entwicklung in einer global orientierten politischen Bildung beleuchtet. (DIPF/Orig.)

Cultural citizenship and its implications for citizenship education: Chinese university students’ civic experience in relation to mass media and the university citizenship curriculum

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

Exporting the racial republic: African colonization, national citizenship, and the transformation of U.S. expansion, 1776-1864

The effort to create a colony of African Americans on the west coast of Africa was one of the most celebrated and influential movements in the United States during the first half of the 19th century. While historians have often viewed African colonization through the lens of domestic anti-slavery politics, colonization grew from an imperial impulse which promised to transform the identities of black colonists and indigenous Africans by helping them to build a democratic nation from the foundation of a settler colony. By proposing that persons of African descent could eventually become self-governing subjects, the liberal framework behind colonization offered the possibility of black citizenship rights, but only within racially homogenous nation-states, which some proponents of colonization imagined might lead to a “United States of Africa.” This dissertation examines how the notion of expanding democratic ideals through the export of racial nationhood was crucial to the appeal of colonization. It reveals how colonization surfaced in several crucial debates about race, citizenship, and empire in the antebellum United States by examining discussions about African Americans’ revolutionary claims to political rights, the bounds of US territorial expansion, the removal of native populations in North America, and the racialization of national citizenship, both at home and abroad. By examining African colonization from these perspectives, this dissertation argues that the United States’ efforts to construct a liberal democracy defined by white racial identity were directly connected to the nation’s emerging identity as a defender and exporter of political liberty throughout the world.

The conversation on political issues on Twitter: an analysis of the participation and frames in the debate on the 'Wert law' and evictions in Spain

The aim of this study is to determine which social agents are involved in the political debate on Twitter and whether the interpretive hegemony of actors that have traditionally been the most prominent is tempered by the challenge of framing shared with audiences. The relationship between the interpretations expressed and the profiles of participants is analyzed in comparison with the frames used by mainstream media. The chosen methodology combines content analysis and discourse analysis techniques on a sample of 1,504 relevant tweets posted on two political issues –the approval of the education law LOMCE and the evictions caused by the crisis, which have also been studied in the front pages of four leading newspapers in Spain. The results show a correlation between political issue singularities, frames and the type of discussion depending on the participants.

Muslim citizenship in everyday Australian civic spaces

Questions about Muslims, multiculturalism and citizenship continue to shape the political discourse of many nations, including Australia, a nation often foregrounded as a beacon of multiculturalism in practice. The key assumption underlying these questions is that Islam constrains the full possibilities of citizenship in multicultural secular societies and that Muslims must be actively steered towards participation in civic life. By contrast, this article, based on research with 80 young Australian Muslims from migrant backgrounds reveals how Australian Muslims are enacting everyday citizenship through active, self-driven participation in multicultural civic spaces. This is a process overlooked by contemporary government approaches to the management of Muslim communities and alike. This article argues that is it access to these spaces of everyday interaction rather than an emphasis upon securitisation and civic literacy that fosters the development of citizenship and civic engagement central to the success of Australian multiculturalism. The article provides important considerations for those concerned with the future viability of multicultural policies.