8 Citizenship Education
without Citizenship?
The Migrant in EU Education Policy
on European Citizenship—Toward
the Margin through ‘Strangification’
Maria Olson
INTRODUCTION
An important task of education in many Western democracies, including the
supra-national European Union, is to provide for the formation of active participatory
citizens. This task is particularly urgent in the present social and
educational situation of plurality and globalisation. The emphasis on promoting
participatory citizenry through education in these democracies can
be viewed in light of general political concerns about the future of democracy.
These concerns are partly underpinned by political science and sociological
research suggesting a decline, particularly among adolescents, in political
participation, knowledge and interest at local, national and global levels in
various parts of the world (Inglehart 1997; Putnam 2000; Schulz, Ainley
and van de Gaer 2010c; Yates and Youniss 1998). Although the claims raised
by this research are inconsistent, a contemporary political targeting of these
issues in the field of education, coupled with the ongoing revival of the field
of political socialisation (cf. Amnå et al. 2009), indicates a political unease
about the current state of democracy and participatory citizenship.
This unease is based on a normative, liberal educational ideal that
emphasises individual autonomy and freedom as core values (Barry 2001;
Feinberg and McDonough 2005; Gutmann 1999; Irisdotter Aldenmyr,
Jepson Wigg and Olson 2012; Kymlicka and Norman 2000). This ideal
implies that, as far as possible, individuals should be in charge of their own
lives. It entails “the vision of people controlling, to some degree, their own
destiny, fashioning it through successive decisions throughout their lives”
(Raz 1986:369). The ideal thus promotes two notions: First, the idea that
people have a capacity for both autonomy and for living in a plural and
diversified society, that is, they are able to turn the rights and provisions
conferred on them into actions that serve their best interests and ways of
living; and, second, that they both can and have the possibility and right to
consider whether or not they want to be part of an educational formation
for European participatory citizenship (for critical comments on the heavy
156 Maria Olson
reliance on liberal ideals in education when it comes to young people’s citizen
competence, see Olson 2012c).
The current EU education policy on citizenship is by no means exceptional
in stressing the need for a liberal-style educational approach to participatory
citizenship (cf. Kerr and Nelson 2006; Schulz et al. 2008; Weerd
et al. 2005). In fact, increased attention has been directed toward such
education during the last two decades within the European Union (Hvinden
and Johansson 2007; Isin and Wood 1999; Johansson 2007; Nóvoa
and Lawn 2002). More precisely, this attention is a matter of revitalising
citizenship education programmes that are alleged to be too oriented
toward the nation-state within the established democracies of Europe. At
the EU educational policy level this revitalisation is considered to be essential
for the legitimacy of democratic governance in Europe, which crucially
depends on the extent to which the complexly interwoven liberal democratic
structures and practices are supported and ‘owned’ by citizens in
command of their own lives (see McCowan and Unterhalter, Chapter 7,
and Zimenkova, Chapter 2, this volume).
By conducting a policy analysis of the EU’s supra-national educational
policy on European citizenship, I aim to stress three things in this chapter.
First, certain individuals and groups—who can be characterised by the concept
of the Migrant—tend to become marginalised by this policy. Second,
these marginalising rhetorical policy forces can be depicted as a ‘pushing’
of the Migrant toward the margin of what counts as a proper European
citizenship. Finally, this pushing process tends to be self-reinforcing in the
sense that it does not lend itself easily to making it possible for the Migrant
to be considered as an adequately educated European participatory citizen.
The chapter is structured as follows: First, the current EU education policy
on citizenship is presented. Second, central features of its implications are
juxtaposed to the figure of the Migrant, who is introduced as a hypothetical
character in this text. Third, a brief account of a postcolonial perspective
is given, followed by an analysis of the ways in which the Migrant
becomes marginalised within and through the EU’s education policy.
Finally, some ideas are suggested regarding an educational approach for
European participatory citizenship, which could pave the way to counteracting
these marginalising forces.
EDUCATING FOR PARTICIPATORY CITIZENSHIP IN EU POLICY
As the European Union does not have an educational entity under its own
command, the current emphasis in its policy on the role of education in
the formation of participatory European citizens is directed towards its
member states. Similar to the days when various European individual state
curricula placed emphasis on patriotism, this joint EU education policy is
also presented in positive terms: qualifying and socialising young people
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 157
by providing them with certain social skills and creating both individual
and collective identities among them (Bîrzea 2003; Hvinden and Johansson
2007; Johansson 2007; Ross 2008; see also Sack, Chapter 1, this volume).
Two lines of thought are especially stressed in the EU policy on citizenship—knowledge
and shared social and cultural belonging:
A Europe of knowledge is now widely recognised as an irreplaceable
factor for social and human growth and as an indispensable component
to consolidate and enrich the European citizenship, capable of
giving its citizens the necessary competences to face the challenges of
the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and
belonging to a common social and cultural space. (European Commission
1999:1)
The political efforts of the EU assume a multiplicity of histories that are held
together by a great emphasis on “knowledge” and on an imagined, common
“social and cultural space”. The vision of a collective European participatory
citizenship seems to focus on reconfiguring the relationship between citizenship,
belonging and identity, so as to allow current demands on contemporary
European society at the jurisdictive, social and cultural levels (Zimenkova,
Chapter 2, this volume). This reframing is to take place within the member
states of the EU and their educational systems. It is emphasised that the
educational systems of the member states should not merely be limited to
the reproduction of their own cultures by promoting nation-state-oriented
values. ”They should also educate for citizenship: and here, Europe is not a
dimension which has replaced others, but one which enhances them” (European
Commission 1993:6). In this reframing, the EU is seen as the uniting
agent (cf. Haar 1997), as put forth in the Lisbon Treaty:
The peoples of Europe are building a single Union out of many diverse
nations, communities, cultures and language groups: it is a Union built
around the equal interchange of ideas and traditions and founded upon
the mutual acceptance of peoples with different histories but a common
future. (Lisbon Treaty 2008:3)
Taken together, these policy demands accentuate the need for a modified,
expanded and participatory citizenship-fostering agenda among the
member states of the EU. This agenda may serve as a plausible basis for
something other than the patriotism that is commonly expected. This educational
agenda for European citizenship appears to require somewhat
disconcerting features. On the one hand, it calls for a type of fostering
that includes the objective of promoting an individually oriented pluralism
and difference in liberal registers. On the other hand, it emphasises the
importance of belonging to a certain social and culturally coloured terrain—Europe—in
order to attain these individually oriented, participatory
158 Maria Olson
citizen-fostering goals. In this twofold imagery, the EU’s educational goal
of promoting European citizenship appears to be contradictory: It calls for
a citizenship of a ‘plural nowhere’, but it also calls for a defined base and
place for this nowhere.
What is problematic here is that the framing of European citizenship as
a post-national, ‘non-’ or even ‘never-bound’ territorial life form within
education policy is simultaneously presented as being distinctively European
(Olson 2012a). Furthermore, this ambiguity involves an unsettling
promise of a nation-transcending, participatory European citizenship in
Europe through national citizenship education.1
The tension, or paradox,
involved here comes to a head in that a European participatory citizenship
is presumed to be plural and multicultural just because it is situated
in Europe. This ambiguity in EU education policy is well mapped out in
critical studies, mainly in Foucauldian analyses (Dean 1999; Fejes 2006;
Mitchell 2006; Popkewitz, Olsson and Petersson 2006). In relation to my
focus on the figure of the Migrant, I will adopt a postcolonial perspective
(Hansen 1998; King 2005; Masuzawa 2005; Said 1978; Sibley 1995; Spivak
1988) that offers vital insights into the relationship between the Migrant
and EU policy on citizen-fostering for participatory citizenship. Based on
this theoretical approach, I aim to investigate how this puzzling ambiguity
in EU education policy on citizenship is called into question by relating it
to the figure of the Migrant, which serves as a hypothetical backdrop on
which the image of this policy can take form in this chapter.
THE MIGRANT AND EDUCATIONAL
CITIZENSHIP ‘KNOWABILITIES’
Through the lens of the Migrant as a fictional figure, we may ask what
positions are being offered to children, young people and adults who are
subjected to education that is formally or even informally related to the
EU’s education policy on citizenship in Europe.2
What comes to the fore,
I suggest, is the fact that this policy does not merely stand out as being
incompatible in its principles. It also seems to fail to allow the Migrant to
come into question and to matter as an adequately educated participatory
European citizen. I begin by providing a specific description of the figure of
the Migrant. This is followed by a discussion of two central ‘knowabilities’
that stand out in the EU’s education policy. These knowabilities denote certain
capacities, skills and knowledge considered necessary for an adequate
European participatory citizenship. Finally, I will provide an account of the
relationship between the Migrant and these knowabilities.
The fictional figure of the Migrant can be depicted as a unifying image
of individuals and groups that can be perceived to embody certain characteristics
common to the depiction of a migrant. Far from providing any fullfledged
or all-inclusive depiction of what persons and groups of persons
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 159
could or should be included in this unifying image—as this is indeed a
delicate task with political implications that vary from one nation-state in
Europe to the other—some characteristic features of these persons can be
provided.3
The Migrant can be either a non-resident or resident of Europe,
inside or outside the EU. Furthermore, s/he can be more settled or less
settled, i.e. more mobile, depending on the mode of existence actualised
in ethnic, religious, cultural and social registers. Thus, in invoking the
Migrant, I am referring to people who are excluded from a citizenship status
or parts of it, due to any form of alien-ness, resulting from external
perception, self-perception or both.
To provide some concrete examples, the persons embedded in the fictional
figure of the Migrant could be guest or migrant workers; ethnocultural
minority groups or other marginalised groupings, like the Romani
or the Sami; exiled or illegal refugees from both inside and outside the EU;
residents from any intra-European or non-European country; or residents
from one EU country that move to another EU country. These people may
or may not have formal, juridical citizenship status inside or outside of
Europe and can be more or less itinerant. In sum, the persons who fall
under the notion of the Migrant are those who, for one reason or another,
are conceived of as being in special need of a European participatory citizenship
education (PCE)—regardless of whether this is an alleged requirement
from an EU supra-national political perspective or from the level of
any of the EU’s member states that claim this supra-national perspective
(for a French case, see Olson 2012b; for Russian and Estonian case, see
Zimenkova, Chapter 2, this volume), or if this need is assumed to be voiced
by the people in question.
When it comes to the paradoxical notion of citizenship and the educational
implications that are inscribed into EU policy on citizenship, the
central features presented in the preceding can be pictured as two different
knowabilities for European participatory citizenship. The concept of
knowability denotes a particular capacity, set of skills or knowledge considered
to be necessary to attain for an adequate European participatory
citizenship. It can be seen as a way through which EU education policy
envisions what it means to be a pan-European participatory citizen, but
also—and perhaps most importantly—how this objective is to be attained
and accomplished within and through educational settings of each EU
member state. The first envisioned knowability could be seen as the educational
acquisition of socially and culturally specific codes related to the
nation-state. This acquisition involves a concretisation of traditions, moral
values, manners and customs that are distinctively tied to the particular
national context in question. This nation-state-based knowability can be
seen as corresponding to the emphasis in policy on the role of education in
providing children, youth and adults with different social and cultural identities
and “histories” of Europe in order to partake in a “common future”
of Europe (Lisbon Treaty 2008:3).
160 Maria Olson
The second knowability that can be derived from the EU’s education policy
on citizenship could be described as an educational acquisition of a set of
individual-oriented principles and rights-regimes (see Sack, Chapter 1, and
Hedtke, Chapter 3, this volume). To illustrate, children, youths and adults
are assumed to acquire knowledge about freedom of speech, freedom of religion,
freedom of sexual orientation and so on, and the judicial prohibition
against harassing or persecuting anyone because of her or his opinion, religion,
disability and ethno-cultural affiliation, among others. The acquisition
of such knowledge involves the embodiment of liberal principles of individual
autonomy and freedom and can be seen as corresponding to the nationtranscending,
territorially independent feature of the EU’s education policy.
This knowability stresses the need to face difference and plurality beyond
the knowledge, skills and attitudes of children, young people and adults that
they have appropriated through nation-state-oriented education. That is,
they should go beyond the socially and culturally specific codes related to the
nation-state they have acquired in the first knowability.
What is at stake here is to expand the student’s general aptitude for
embracing the universal liberal values of respect, plurality and tolerance
through education, in order for them to be prepared for a European citizenship.
If the former knowability can be traced back to the policy’s emphasis
on the need for the individuals to inculcate nation-centred values, traditions
and customs—which are inscribed as nation-based examples of the
different social and cultural “histories” of Europe—the latter knowability
can be understood as being part of the universalistic, nation-transcending
tendency within EU policy in order to ensure each individual’s educational
preparedness to be(come) territorially independent with regard to the enactment
of a participatory citizenship in Europe and elsewhere.
If we try to flesh out what this policy envisions to be desirable outcomes
of the citizenship education offered to children, young people and adults
in any of the EU’s member states, the educationally desired individual is
one who is territorially confident with certain values, skills and traditions
considered to be relevant for a proper participatory citizenship in nationstate-oriented
registers. S/he is also familiar with liberal universal values of
tolerance, plurality and difference with regard to different historical, social
and cultural contexts within and outside of Europe. Thus, s/he is assumed
to be sufficiently prepared for the territorially independent part of a European
participatory citizenship.
What is at stake, I argue, is not only that these two knowabilities are
incompatible in principle, but also that the Migrant individual can hardly
embrace and embody them in a presumably appropriate way, and thus
barely comes into question as being an adequately educated participatory
European citizen. When it comes to the EU’s policy framing of the educational
task to provide children, youths and adults with the two derived
knowabilities for European participatory citizenship, the Migrant is implicitly
thought of as not having the opportunities, disposition and motivation
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 161
to be subjected to education in order to cultivate these knowabilities. This
policy vision of the Migrant—be it children or young or adult persons who
come from a non-European country, or persons who live in a EU country
or a non-EU European country, or people who move around between
different EU countries and non-EU European countries—implies stipulating
certain predispositions, skills, knowledge, familiarities and qualities
considered necessary for them to acquire. What the EU’s policy framing
of citizenship education tends to imply is that the Migrant person has the
opportunity, disposition and motivation to take on these two knowabilities
through education, which might not always be the case. This situation
regarding the relationship between the EU’s policy and the Migrant might
have hazardous implications.
Following this line of thought, the EU’s policy emphasis on the two-step
educational task of providing for a participatory European citizenship has an
unsettling limitation for—at least some, if not all or only—persons who can
be seen as integral to the Migrant. The alleged participatory citizenship that
is to be attained through education is limited to the following: firstly, those
who have access to the educational arena in any of the EU member states;
secondly, those who do not embrace a mobile lifestyle that involves an itinerant
mode of existence across nation-states in Europe; and, thirdly, those who
have a predisposition to inculcate liberally entangled knowledge, skills and
qualities necessary to achieve a proper participatory European citizenship.
Turning to the first condition that has to be fulfilled for the Migrant children,
youths and adults to come into educational consideration as a potential
participatory European citizen—that s/he is offered access to education in
any of the EU’s member states—some of them are provided meagre opportunities
to come into such consideration. The knowabilities required, the
“knowledge” and “belonging” necessary for a “common future” in Europe,
are offered to people who are partly acknowledged as being legal or formal
residents in the EU’s member states and are therefore able to gain access
to these educational systems (cf. McCowan and Unterhalter, this volume).
Migrants who lack this level of recognition with regard to their legal and
formal status do not have access to such educational systems. This holds
for people living in any EU country for any of the following reasons: workrelated
reasons, like the Turkish people working in Germany who are not or
have not been, historically, full German citizens; political reasons, like refugees
or exiled children, youths and adult people who are waiting for statesanctioned
decisions about their formal and legal status in some European
nation-state; or for other reasons, like undocumented people who live their
lives anonymously in EU countries without access to education, ‘white’ legal
jobs or protection from national and international social rights and regulations.
These persons do not receive consideration as full-fledged subjects for
citizenship education toward a European participatory citizenship.
If we consider the second condition that has to be fulfilled for the
Migrant to come into consideration as a potential European participatory
162 Maria Olson
citizen—that s/he is settled and ‘non-itinerant’ as a member of a specific
territorial (nation-oriented) setting in Europe—we face the fact that there
are many people who do not embrace a stationary lifestyle but are instead
part of an itinerant mode of living across different nation-states within
the EU. An example are the Romani and Sami people, who—voluntarily
or not—seem to embody mobile modes of existence for cultural, material
or social reasons. This type of Migrant can scarcely come into consideration
for attaining a proper education for participatory European citizenship
within and through the educational arrangement offered by the EU’s
member states as this arrangement seems to require a settled, non-iterant
lifestyle. Regardless of whether this ‘first step’ of the EU’s policy—which
includes the educational task of providing for the assimilation of allegedly
European values—covers nation-oriented values and traditions or ‘lighter’
liberal universal attitudes and principles (Gregg 2003), the Migrant has to
possess certain formal, legal acknowledgments and ways of living in order
to come into consideration for an educational acquisition of the knowabilities
‘necessary’ for attaining a proper European participatory citizenship.
Even if the Migrant has gained access and legal acknowledgment and
conforms to a lifestyle that follows the compulsory regulations of the educational
system of any EU country, there is another, third, condition that
has to be fulfilled for him/her to come into consideration for a European
citizenship education: an inclination to embrace liberal values and a liberal
democratic worldview. This condition, which can be characterised as the
‘second’ step in the EU’s policy on citizenship, is actualised through the second
knowability and corresponds to the non-territorial aspect of the EU’s
education policy on citizenship. What is required here is that the Migrant
child, youth or adult has the willingness and belief that acquiring a set of
individual-oriented liberal principles and their related rights-principles is a
good thing to undertake at both a personal and social level.
Hence, in order to be regarded as a person with the necessary preparedness
to achieve and enact a proper participatory European citizenship, s/he
must be in agreement with liberal values. Regardless of whether such values
focus on the achievement of substantial cultural (particularly European)
qualities or on the enculturation into a non-territorial, yet at the same time
deeply ‘European’, participatory attitude, it is assumed that the Migrant
can and should acculturate and act upon them. This seems to be an exclusionary
condition, in that it makes it hard for those who come from social
and cultural contexts other than the EU, or other liberal Western European
countries, to nurture such inclinations. To give an example, migrants who
come from China, Cuba, India, Saudi Arabia or any other country in the
world that does not have political traditions in full concert with Western
liberal cosmopolitan values, and thus are educated into political worldviews
other than the liberal one, might be less inclined to embrace liberal
values as part of a global participatory European citizenship education.
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 163
In sum, as the nation-state is (still) the primary social and cultural entity
that is envisaged as an educational setting for gemeinschaft in the EU’s education
policy on participatory European citizenship (Zimenkova 2011a), it
contributes toward putting some persons and groups included in the figure
of the Migrant in a special and difficult situation: They must first acquire the
social and cultural capital within the curriculum of some European nationstate
within the EU, which mirrors that particular nation-state’s social and
cultural identity. After having been acculturated into this local educational
setting, the ‘second’ step to take toward a European, nation-transcending
citizenship is opened up for her or him, which involves an appropriation of
liberal values in order for her or him to transcend the acquired social capital
of the nation-state. This two-step model, which stands out as exemplary
in the EU’s education policy on citizenship, is also mirrored in the EU member
states’ citizenship education curricula (on Swedish education policy, see
Olson 2008). This implies, I suggest, that there are certain forces involved
in this policy that serve to marginalise certain persons and groups of people
making up the figure of the Migrant. On the basis of the scrutinised notions
and examples of persons that might become targets for such marginalising
policy forces, we may ask how these forces work, i.e. in what way the
Migrant comes to be subjected to these marginalising forces.
A POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE: THE MIGRANT,
THE MARGIN AND ‘STRANGIFICATION’
THROUGH CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
By making a postcolonial perspective my theoretical point of departure, I
will approach the question of what possible features of marginalisation are
put into play in the policy apparatus with regard to the marginalisation of
the Migrant. First, some theoretical concepts are introduced, followed by a
discussion of what forces stand out as being actualised with respect to the
EU’s education policy on participatory citizenship.
The Centre and the Margin of What Counts as
a Proper Education for European Citizenship
From a postcolonial perspective, the relationship between the Migrant and
EU education policy on citizenship appears to be more than just one filled
with tension. This relationship also fuels centrifugal forces whereby the
Migrant, as exemplified earlier, stands out as being marginalised from an
alleged centre of what counts as properly educated European citizenship.
This marginalisation can be seen as being part of Europe’s colonial heritage.
What is at stake here is the rhetorical level of the EU’s policy, which not
only covers socio-cultural dimensions but also juridical/legal, political and
164 Maria Olson
social ones. This rhetorical policy-related marginalisation can be viewed as
an integral part of Europe’s constitutional, colonial heritage in religious,
scientific, gendered, national and Western-oriented contexts (King 2005;
Masuzawa 2005; Said 1978; Sibley 1995; Spivak 1988). From a postcolonial
perspective, the concepts of centre and margin within European participatory
citizenship are central to understanding what this colonial heritage
implies in terms of the rhetorical marginalisation of the Migrant.
What could constitute the centre and the margin of what counts as
European participatory citizenship in EU education policy according to
this theoretical perspective? One concise depiction of the centre is that it
consists of a space, which some voices on European citizenship and its educational
implications occupy by repressing “other” voices, voices of the
subaltern, i.e. others who are not heard or given the opportunity to voice
their opinions on the subject at hand as they are repeatedly pushed out
into the margin (Spivak 1988). Historically, these others have been women,
minority groups or ethno-cultural groups, often with religious affiliations
other than those of the people who colonise the centre. Yet there is more to
the concept of the subaltern than merely being another word for the other.
According to Spivak (in de Kock 1992), the subaltern denotes a specific
space of difference:
The Subaltern is not just a classy word for oppressed, for Other, for
somebody who’s not getting a piece of the pie . . . In postcolonial terms,
everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is
subaltern—a space of difference. Now who would say that’s just the
oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It’s not subaltern . . . Many
people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the
most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority
on the university campus, they don’t need the word ‘subaltern’ . . .
They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They’re
within the hegemonic discourse wanting a piece of the pie and not
being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They
should not call themselves subaltern. (1992:45)
What comes to the fore here is that the concept of subaltern is intimately
related to power. The voices from the occupied centre have historically provided
a colonised place, and the subaltern can be depicted as offering a
perspective of those who are colonised, at least from the viewpoint of the
colonisers of the centre. Bhaba (1996:210) stresses the importance of highlighting
the historical and social power relations involved in the repression
of subaltern groups, as this might remind us that they do not have to be
repressed, because it has not always been so: “oppressed, minority groups
whose presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group,
subaltern social groups, were also in a position to subvert the authority of
those who had hegemonic power”. Looking at Europe as a representational
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 165
space, Said (1978) furthers Bhaba’s argument by claiming that the very
European idea of familiarity, difference and strangeness with respect to
what counts as proper and untainted European values, traditions and habits
is founded on a historically settled image of an other (the Orient).
According to Said (1978), the voice given to the other by the colonised
centre of Europe has been perpetuated by the media and political discourse
in Europe, creating an ‘us-and-them’ binary by which Europeans define
themselves by identifying the differences of this imagined and delineated
other. Said further claims that this has laid the foundation for colonialism
by presenting the other, the Orient, as backward and irrational and therefore
in need of help to become modern in the European sense. Hence, the
political discourse of the other is necessary for maintaining Europe as the
representational centre of what it ‘really means’ to be modern, respectful,
democratic and so on. This abstracted and generalised other is thus continuously
stigmatised as an object who has not yet been properly modernised,
educated or cultivated according to a ‘truly European’ order, or something
in need of ‘matching’ in order to achieve the standards of the European
discourse and its educational implications (cf. Phoenix 2009).
In this context, Europe both signifies and serves as a signifier for what it
means to be truly cultivated in the ‘European way’, in Europe and elsewhere.
Europe constitutes the colonial centre that serves the principal aim of excluding
voices that are considered not to be ‘its own’, as this would tear down the
centre and the voices that populate it altogether. The populated centre takes
on the task of perpetually addressing, “interpellating” (Althusser 1976) or
calling for the other in a way that positions her/him as the subaltern. Put
differently, the other becomes an object for subjectification, as s/he is called
into being by this policy language in a special way. This subjectification is
the process by which s/he comes to experience her/himself as a subject having
particular subjectivities. Even though the aim here is not to deepen the
scope of these intra-active processes of subjectification, this perspective offers
important insights into the function of the Migrant in Europe’s history, especially
in relation to the way in which s/he comes to be marginalised in the
EU’s education policy language as representing apparently ‘too much’ difference
and plurality with regard to European citizenship.
EU Policy ‘Pushing’ the Migrant toward the
Margin through Acts of ‘Strangification’
Leaving aside the important historical, empirical and political implications
of this colonial heritage, I aim to shed light on the apparatus of policy
language that is ‘at work’ in the EU’s education policy on citizenship. This
apparatus is understood to marginalise the figure of the Migrant and his/
her opportunities and dispositions to become regarded as a properly educated
European citizen. Alternatively put, this marginalising policy language
involves pushing the Migrant toward the margin of what counts as
166 Maria Olson
properly educated pan-European citizenry, by implicitly stressing that s/he
is not approved or qualified for its educational actualisation.
The very pushing force in this language apparatus can be seen in symbolic
registers; through the policy wording, the Migrant is framed as someone
who is positioned—or positions her/himself—in the margin of what
constitutes an adequately educated European citizen. Moreover, the very
process through which this symbolic pushing of the Migrant toward the
margin takes place through policy can be further specified as a matter of
ongoing rhetorical acts that ‘strangify’ the skills, dispositions, preferences,
lifestyles and citizen enactments that are actualised by concrete others that
are encompassed by the figure of the Migrant. More precisely, it is a strangification
of these peoples in the policy text by leaving their enactments ‘outside’
of what is inscribed as necessary for achieving European citizenship.
This language-based strangification of what-is-not-truly-European tends to
contribute to a framing of the Migrant as someone who consequently takes
on the form of a European subaltern. This silenced Other(ness) is defined—
explicitly or implicitly—by an indicated and alleged pan-European political
policy centre which determines what counts as proper skills, dispositions
and ways of living in order to be appropriately educated into an assumedly
adequate European participatory citizenship through some of the EU member
states’ citizenship curricula.
According to this postcolonial scrutiny, the language used in the EU’s
education policy tends to prioritise certain knowledge, skills and ways
of living in relation to the educational objectives of the member states in
order to ensure a properly educated European participatory citizenry at the
expense of marginalising those who do not embody this knowledge, skills
and ways of living. If we consider the example of the Migrant, the people
in question are, for example, those who lack documentation for formal citizenship
or social rights in any EU nation-state, those who enact a more or
less itinerant mode of living or those who, for different reasons, do not have
the disposition or inclination to embrace Western-oriented liberal values.
The processes of strangification of any mode of being and living other than
those inscribed in the policy language of EU education policy contributes
to marginalisation of those comprised by the figure of the Migrant. This is
so, I suggest, as the policy’s language indirectly touches on their presumed
inabilities of being part of a citizenship education in any of the nationstates
in the EU context. Put differently, according to the policy language,
this citizenship education is marked by certain kinds of complexly interwoven
liberal values, like social and cultural plurality and difference that—
when emphasised—contribute to marginalising persons within or beyond
the EU context. They tend to be perceived as failing to embody or even
understand or acquire these pluralities and differences within and throughout
the educational systems of the EU nation-states. Thus, according to the
EU’s policy vision, there seems to be, to put it roughly, ‘right’ ways of being
and becoming an adequately educated participatory European citizen and
ways that are less ‘right’ or valid.
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 167
If we recall the aforementioned examples of persons that are encompassed
by the figure of the Migrant—i.e. the Turkish guest workers in Germany,
exiled, undocumented persons or itinerant persons who move from one (EU)
European context to another—such persons become portrayed as being illequipped
to be part of an education for European participatory citizenship.
Regarding the two knowabilities involved for adequate participation, they
appear to be out of practical reach for (some of) the Migrant(s). This is so
as these knowabilities do not seem to be in concert with their life situation.
In this sense, the EU’s education policy on participatory citizenship is not
only paradoxical. It is also harsh. It is paradoxical in that it involves quasicommunitarian
modes of togetherness and collectively determined identitymaking
processes for European citizenship, which are not in tandem with the
all-inclusive liberal principles of difference and plurality. It is harsh in that
it presupposes that the Migrant can and wants to acculturate, perform and
engage in such participatory citizenship, even when this is not the case.
The implied shortcoming of the Migrant to live up to these liberal, but
at the same time illiberal, policy criteria for participative European citizenship
is testament to a power-related tension in the EU’s policy apparatus of
European citizenship: a tension that tends to position the Migrant as subaltern.
Consequently, s/he becomes an object for subjectification by negation.
S/he fails to come into consideration as a subject for the acquisition
of a ‘right’ participatory citizenship through education. In other words, the
Migrant’s own social and cultural repertoire of difference, which pertains
to her/his mode of living and the conditions through which this living is
enabled, turns out to be ‘too strange’ in the EU’s education policy language
on citizenship (cf. Chapter 7, this volume, pp. 137–47; cf. Chapter 2, this
volume, pp. 45–46).
As a result of this policy of pushing and strangification, the figure of the
Migrant is potentially, if not practically, cut off from being considered—by
policymakers and political actors on national and supra-national levels in
the EU—as capable of enacting a proper European citizenship. The concrete
people comprised by the figure of the Migrant become, following Spivak
(1988, 1993), positioned as subaltern by EU policy. This takes place
because s/he, the subaltern Migrant, is considered to lack the necessary
resources to design an active, participatory citizen life in accordance with
European ‘standards’. From this perspective, EU education policy on citizenship
pushes the Migrant out from the centre of what counts as a proper
European participatory citizenship by ‘strangifying’ her/his life conditions.
In doing so, this policy not only contributes to a marginalisation of the
Migrant in relation to this supra-national envisioning of citizenship. It also
contributes to a recalling of the colonial heritage of Europe by reproducing
Europe and European values and knowledge as exemplary (Olson 2012b).
Ironically enough, it is this strangification that EU education policy for citizenship
explicitly aims not to reproduce with its alleged call for a socially
and culturally plural, individual-oriented, nation-transcending European
participatory citizenship within liberal registers.
168 Maria Olson
EXCURSUS—WHERE COULD EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP
EDUCATION GO? TOWARD DIS-ORDERED INTERROGATION?
What we can learn from the preceding is that the colonial heritage of Europe
may be just as actualised in the current liberal, supra-political framing of
participatory citizenship as it was in the days of patriotism with its related
establishing of nation-state curricula inside and outside of Europe. This
heritage may even be more difficult to see because geographical borders are
no longer concrete, and the signalling of what codes, symbols and values are
needed to purportedly become an appropriately educated citizen in society
are inscribed in the overall explicit ambition to include each and every one.
From this point of view, the EU’s supra-political policy regarding participatory
citizenship risks having hazardous implications for certain people.
This is so as it contains a political strategy of enclosure that is pulled forth
as an all-inclusive one but nonetheless reduces chances for citizenship with
its juridical, social and cultural consequences.
Where, then, could nation-bound citizenship education in Europe go?
From a postcolonial purview, it seems to be practically impossible for education
in Europe to respond to this concern. Historically, education—particularly
higher education—has been considered to serve as a medium in
which critical, often ideological spaces for thinking and action are encouraged.
At a social and educational level, it has also been assumed, and to
some extent desired, that education advocate such spaces. Nevertheless,
such an approach to education in Europe is by no means unproblematic.
From postcolonial purviews, the very existence of this education is intimately
intertwined with the reproduction of well-established paternalistic
acts of ‘pushing-through-strangification’ within the EU. This perspective
does not offer much in the way of educational counter-responses to these
acts. It rather points to the notion that education has served, and continues
to serve, to foreclose spaces for such responses. The question thus becomes
how to disrupt the oppressing logics of the centre precisely through the
schooling processes created for the making of these logics?
Far from offering any concrete solution to this question, some feasible
suggestions might be provided as to what direction citizenship education
in Europe could take. Considerable work on this question has been made
within the EU’s policy discourse (cf. Council of Europe 2007; Council of
European Commission 2003), where goals and action plans in many different
directions are promoted and produced within the concept of “Diversity
Education” (Council of European Commission 2003). A general feature in
this work is that diversity is stressed explicitly in relation to the postcolonial
consciousness of bloodshed in Europe’s history:
At long last, Europe is on its way to becoming one big family, without
bloodshed, a real transformation . . . a continent of humane values . . .
of liberty, solidarity and above all diversity, meaning respect for others’
Citizenship Education without Citizenship? 169
languages, cultures and traditions. (Laeken Declaration in Council of
European Commission 2003:1)
Nonetheless, even though the people of Europe are meant to “become one
big family”, and despite this being characterised in terms of “real transformation”,
as in the preceding quote, these policy efforts tend to be based on a
similar imagery of a homogenised, unifying, all-inclusive liberal citizenship
education for European citizenship as the one problematised in this chapter.
What a postcolonial perspective on the figure of the Migrant offers in
relation to EU policy on European participatory citizenship is doubt about
any one political policy depiction of the educational formation of citizens
that takes its point of departure in preformulated, all-inclusive agendas in
its formulation and design (cf. Sack, this volume). The power processes ‘at
work’ within such policies challenge us as educationalists to hint at radically
different approaches to such agendas with respect to the task of providing
for a European participatory citizenship through the EU’s member
states’ educational systems (cf. Hedtke, this volume).
Without offering any answers or practical keys—which in itself would
be to speak for the subaltern Migrant—we can ask ourselves what an education
from the margin might be like, if it is possible to think of this in positive
terms. In raising this issue, some vital questions could be drawn out at
the educational policy and practical level: What spaces for agency can be
sought out or maintained in education—either generally or in a concrete
educational situation—because this institution has historically played a
central role in fuelling the old, colonial heritage of Europe? What might the
articulation of an education toward a dis-ordered depiction of European
participatory citizenship sound like, if it were voiced? Whereas the current
liberal, albeit quasi-communitarian conception of EU citizenship education
focuses on how individuals can be included in pre-established social
and cultural orders, a dis-ordered citizenship education of peoples—formal
citizens with full rights or not—might no longer be determined entirely in
terms of predefined knowledge, skills and attitudes. It could also be based
on a desire to find out the ways in which each new effort made in the
EU’s policy on citizenship and its educational outputs contribute to the
perpetual pushing of certain persons and groups away from the historically
settled centre toward the margin in the envisioned citizenship based on
“equal interchange of ideas and traditions and founded upon the mutual
acceptance of peoples with different histories but a common future” (Lisbon
Treaty 2008:3).
One tangible proposal about how such an approach could be actualised
in citizenship education might be to investigate what claims specific texts,
subject matters and curricula make to their readers: In what ways do these
claims come to represent educational failures in establishing a non-marginalising
citizenship formation of children, youths and adults in school?
Even though there seems to be limited space for a total escape from the
170 Maria Olson
remnants of imperialism, a persistent critical questioning by teachers and
students about the very processes of strangification and pushing persons
and groups toward the margin of a ‘proper’ European citizenship might
provide a way of countering these imperialistic practices. Such questioning
requires both EU and nation-bound educational policies and practices
to embrace the notion that the political ideas of inclusion, as well as the
political implementation of these ideas, tend to oppress vast numbers of
people precisely by negating that they are oppressive (Todd 2010). It also
calls for resistance to assertions that these policy ideas successfully express
what-is-best-for-all-people-in-Europe. With reference to Europe’s colonial
heritage, it is exactly such powerful expressions that have led to marginalisation
of certain peoples (Zimenkova 2011b). This is not to say that we
should head for an education that lacks reference to constructive notions
of citizenship. What is important here is the attempt to turn the perpetual
corrective questioning of educational policies and practices into insights
at local, nation-state and supra-national levels regarding the hazardous
power-related political apparatus involved in the very notion of European
participatory citizenship within education.
NOTES
1. I use both the concept of education and that of citizenship education without
making any specific or vital distinction between them. The reason for doing
so is that, for different reasons, not all (EU) European member states’ educational
curricula involve the concept or subject matter of citizenship education
(Sweden is a case in point here, see Olson 2008), even though what is at stake
at a more general level is precisely that—to offer an education that aims at
providing for some kind of formation for citizenship.
2. The aim of the text includes all presumptive individuals subjected to any educational
level and design where the goal is to educate for citizenship. Hence,
the presumed not-yetness stressed in the text refers to any individual who,
regardless of age, is object-subject of (citizenship) education for doing something
later. Therefore, I do not refer to any age-related or developmental
aspect of these individuals but rather to an educational or political postponing
of their enactment of citizenship that is imposed by the EU’s education
policy on citizenship regardless of their age or condition.
3. Important to note is that my aim is not to say anything about what, how
or why any individual or group of people comprised by the figure of the
Migrant in this text testify to the representational forces they are subject to.
The temporary, representational burdens that are imposed on them through
my exemplifications are to be seen as part of the analytical points I wish to
make rather than as a consequence of any political, social or cultural prejudgment
or voicing by themselves. This is crucial to stress as this relates to
the important issue of who speaks for whom, which is inevitably entwined
with historical and power-related particularities (Spivak 1988).