Educating for active compliance: discursive constructions in citizenship education

This article examines the discursive construction of ‘active citizenship’ within recent civics curriculum documents across three provinces in Canada. New secondary school civics curricula have emerged across liberal democratic states since the year 2000, presumably in response to the perception of youth as disengaged from political involvement. Many of the new curricula subsequently emphasize ‘active’ engagement within the polity. The central task of this paper is to better understand what such ‘active citizenship’ actually means, via the methodological tool of discourse analysis. Engaging a theoretical frame that incorporates Foucauldian governmentality theory and cultural theories of the role of the state in creating subjectivities, the paper ultimately argues that the ‘active citizen’ of contemporary civics curricula is, in fact, a deeply neoliberal subject. The article then draws on feminist theories of citizenship in order to assess the forms of exclusion that the curriculum documents inadvertently create, arguing that they ultimately participate in a long tradition of devaluing such elements of citizenship as relationality and emotional ties. We conclude that one of the fundamental goals of citizenship education – to expand access to citizenship participation for all – has failed.     

Political and Civic Engagement and Participation: Towards an Integrative Perspective

Abstract

This article presents an overview of current understandings in the study of political and civic engagement and participation, drawing in particular on innovations which have emerged from the Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP) project. For the purposes of the article, ‘engagement’ is defined as having an interest in, paying attention to, or having knowledge, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, or feelings about either political or civic matters, whereas ‘participation’ is defined in terms of political and civic participatory behaviours. The different forms that political and civic engagement and participation can take are outlined, and the factors that are related to different patterns of engagement and participation are reviewed. These factors operate at different levels, and include distal macro contextual factors, demographic factors, proximal social factors, and endogenous psychological factors. An integrative model covering all four levels of factors is outlined. Some findings from the secondary analysis of existing data-sets (including the European Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme) in the PIDOP project are also reported. These findings show that engagement and participation vary as a function of complex interactions between macro, demographic, and psychological factors. It is argued that multi-level integrative theories, such as the one proposed in the current article, are required to understand the drivers of political and civic engagement and participation, and that policies and interventions aimed at enhancing citizens' levels of engagement and participation need to take this multi-level complexity into account.     

Exporting ‘active citizenship’: foreign support for citizenship education in the Arab world

What explains the rise in support for active citizenship programs in the Arab region? How has active citizenship been envisioned and taught with support by foreign states? How do participants understand the usefulness and impact of such programs? In this paper, we examine the contexts in which citizenship programs that embody the political aspirations of foreign states, are implemented. Embedded in local political realities, participants in these programs routinely question the ef?cacy and applicability of training modules focused on active citizenship and civic engagement. We argue that the proliferation of active citizenship programs for civil society organizations in practice serves to both bolster state legitimacy and discourage community leaders and activists from expressing political dissent. By submerging con?icting values, practices, and perspectives while encouraging civic participation based on conformity rather than dissent, active citizenship programs risk fostering a depoliticized civil society that is detached from the local political context.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

Communicating Global Citizenship: Multiple Discourses Beyond the Academy

This article demonstrates that notions of “global citizenship”, as communicated beyond academic debates in political theory and sociology, can be situated within two overarching discourses: a civic republican discourse that emphasizes concepts such as awareness, responsibility, participation and cross-cultural empathy, and a libertarian discourse that emphasizes international mobility and competitiveness. Within each of these discourses, multiple understandings of citizen voice can be identified. Exploring how myriad ways of thinking related to “global citizenship” are springing forth in public debate serves to illustrate new ways in which a wide variety of political, social and economic actors are reflecting upon the meaning of voice and citizenship in the context of increasing public recognition of global interdependence. Not only has “global citizenship” emerged as a variant within the concept of citizenship, but the concept of “global citizenship” contains many variants and sources of internal division. How the concept of “global citizenship” continues to evolve in public discourse, especially in response to watershed events, promises to remain a fruitful line of inquiry for years to come.     

On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy

Abstract

The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young people and what the policy does in their favour. A content analysis of a corpus of European and Italian legislation, policy and planning documents has been undertaken. We also conducted six in-depth interviews with politicians and representatives of Italian nongovernmental organizations in order to investigate (a) policy priorities and institutional points of view, (b) consistency between these priorities and European programmes, and (c) European Union support for the policy actions and projects promoted in Italy about youth. The results showed a general difficulty for young people to ‘engage’ and be engaged in civic and political activities. There is also a gap between the political level and an effective investment which will recognize young people as a real resource.     

Mechanisms for popular participation and discursive constructions of citizenship

In the past decade, Latin America has witnessed the emergence of a political discourse that links popular participation to citizenship accompanied by an explosion of participatory mechanisms. Yet there is little qualitative research that looks at how participatory experiences affect people's perceptions of their role as citizens or to what extent the discourse transmitted through these institutions encourages participation or compliance. This article examines conceptions of citizenship among individuals who engage in participatory mechanisms in Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile. Using discourse analysis, it finds that participants in Venezuela and Ecuador have developed a ‘radical’ conception of active citizenship that differs from the liberal interpretation in Chile. Regardless of the preferred model, however, state discourse establishes parameters around citizenship. Furthermore, the discursive repertoires of citizen participants align with those produced by state institutions, suggesting that participatory mechanisms act to socialize people into participating in ‘legitimate’ and acceptable ways.     

Europe as a Beacon of Democracy? Citizenship Policies Relating to Youth and Migrants in Portugal

Abstract

This article aims to compare discourses about national and European policies on active citizenship and democratic participation, with a particular focus on youth and migrants. For this purpose we analysed official documents of public institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to assess how the process of Europeanization has influenced national policies with regard to increasing political participation and citizens' civic awareness. Additionally, we conducted interviews with policy makers and NGO leaders in order to integrate and compare different levels of discourse and thus identify potential dissonances. Analysis of the documents shows that there is a strong concern to match national policy priorities with those established by international organizations. Notwithstanding positive perceptions, NGO leaders and policy makers criticize the ways policies have been implemented, stressing the need to adopt a strategy that bridges the gap between the prescribed and the real, as well as the importance of overcoming the hegemony of economic factors in policy decisions. In this regard, NGO leaders criticize the cynicism of political leaders and policies motivated by demographic and economic concerns. In relation to European identity and integration, NGO leaders argue that Europe must be collectively constructed; yet, policy makers stress that the failure of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 resulted from a deficit in the negotiation process. In sum, this article suggests that it is necessary to promote greater involvement of civil society in the design and implementation of policies which, in turn, may contribute to the strengthening of shared democratic principles.     

Making citizenship public: identities,practices, and rights at Woodsquat

The common conception of citizenship is that of belonging to a political community, with the ensuing rights and responsibilities of membership. This community tends to be naturalized as the nation-state. However, this location of citizenship needs to be decentred in order to investigate current modes of democratic participation. This paper investigates current sites and practices of citizenship through reflection on a tactical housing squat of an empty department store staged by an urban social movement in Vancouver in 2002, known as ‘Woodsquat’. It uses a social movement perspective to look at citizenship, emphasizing the identities, practices, and locations of democratic engagement over the collective question of how we will live together in these places. From this point of view Woodsquat shows current limits of national citizenship, conceptually and practically, and suggests alternative possibilities for future citizenship practices located in multiple identifications with (political) communities. Moving from this analysis of political participation at Woodsquat attention is brought to the importance of spaces of democratic communication for possibilities of citizenship, where there seems to be a reinforcing relationship between public spheres, social movements, and democracy. Ultimately, then, actions at Woodsquat are argued to be a form of citizenship that emerged within a democratic public.     

Testing the liberal subject: (in)security,responsibility and ‘self-improvement’ in the UK citizenship test

The recent debate over the changes to the ‘Life in the UK’ citizenship test offers another opportunity to reflect on the testing of would-be citizens in liberal democracies. The citizenship test has often been understood as part of the ‘strengthening’ of national borders: set within a discourse of fears over high levels of migration and the risk to cultural homogeneity. Furthermore, it has been viewed as an illustration of the death of multiculturalism and presented as an illiberal strategy of cultural assimilation. I propose that whilst the notion of ‘testing’ is built out of fears regarding ‘threatening’ difference and ‘community cohesion’, what the UK testing process presents is an explicitly liberal strategy of governing. Drawing on the history of the test, I suggest that it is not purely a mechanism of restriction but that it also relies on strategies of responsibility, empowerment and ‘self-improvement’. The citizenship test, alongside other recent border strategies, may be better understood as representing a fascinating nexus between advanced liberal ideas of governing and concerns regarding (in)security. I argue that studying the test in this way offers up vital questions about how community and political membership continues to be shaped in late modernity.     

Civic Orientations: Does Associational Type Matter?

A widespread consensus has emerged that a revival of patterns of civic engagement and citizenship will compensate for the assumed deficiencies of modern democracies. Voluntary associations are widely perceived as pivotal facilitators and mediators of social and political participation and as making a significant ( direct and indirect ) contribution to civic and democratic well-being. Associations are valorised as social capital manufacturers and for their all-round societal and democratic contribution. However, different types of association are likely to 'produce' very different levels of social capital. Given much of the contemporary focus on the (alleged) associational impact on members, there is a paucity of research that actually links citizens' orientations to the specific types of association they are involved in. This article seeks to make a contribution to that research gap by connecting the organisational context to membership, activism and volunteering. Unique data from a comparative study of associational life in Aberdeen (UK) and Mannheim (Germany) are presented. This study includes extensive mapping of all voluntary associations in these two cities, and interviews with selected members. In spite of the common expectation among social capitalists that groups concerned with social matters, small groups and groups with high levels of involvement will show higher levels of confidence and engagement, the data presented in this article did not uncover any systematic substantial difference (in either city).     

‘Citizens of the region’: Party conceptions of regional citizenship and immigrant integration

Citizenship is usually regarded as the exclusive domain of the state. However, changes to the structure of states resulting from decentralisation and globalisation have required a re‐conceptualisation of citizenship, as authority is dispersed, identities multiply and political entitlements vary across territorial levels. Decentralisation has endowed regions with control over a wide range of areas relating to welfare entitlements, education and cultural integration that were once controlled by the state. This has created a new form of ‘regional citizenship’ based on rights, participation and membership at the regional level. The question of who does or does not belong to a region has become a highly politicised question. In particular, this article examines stateless nationalist and regionalist parties' (SNRPs) conceptions of citizenship and immigration. Given that citizenship marks a distinction between members and outsiders of a political community, immigration is a key tool for deciding who is allowed to become a citizen. Case study findings on Scotland, Quebec and Catalonia reveal that although SNRPs have advocated civic definitions of the region and welcome immigration as a tool to increase the regional population, some parties have also levied certain conditions on immigrants' full participation in the regional society and political life as a means to protect the minority culture of the region.     

The paths to citizenship: a critical examination of immigration policy in Britain since 2001

ABSTRACT

McGhee explores the Labour government's attempts to manage the challenges and protect against the ‘risks’ associated with a particular group of migrants to Britain: permanent immigrants. He examines how Gordon Brown conceives of his three-stage proposals for ‘earned’ British citizenship working with the wider managed migration strategy introduced by Tony Blair and Charles Clarke. At the same time, McGhee contextualizes the earned British citizenship proposals within the recent immigration policies and citizenship/integration strategies introduced by David Blunkett when Home Secretary. If the episodes of social disorder involving the second generation of settled immigrant communities in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the summer of 2001 were the events that triggered Blunkett's new integration/citizenship strategies, including the introduction of English classes and citizenship lessons for would-be citizens, then the 7/7 attacks by so-called ‘home-grown’ extremists were the events that influenced the emergence of what will be described here as the institutional racialization associated with Brown's recommendations. McGhee also explores the shift from Blunkett's model of civic assimilation, with its Cantle-esque emphasis on participation, to the Brown model of civic nationalism, with its post-7/7-fuelled emphasis on loyalty, shared values and responsibilities.     

Young adults’ conceptions of ‘good’ citizenship behaviours: a latent class analysis

Democracies need an active civic society, and early adulthood is a significant period in life for becoming an engaged citizen. The research reported on here categorized young Australians according to their conceptions of good citizenship using latent class analysis. Half of the sample were characterized as either ‘engaged’ or ‘duty-based,’ suggesting that there is more to consider when talking about citizenship norms and value changes, as the other half comprised ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘subject’ citizens. Prior participation was almost unrelated to those citizenship norms. The findings provide implications for an active citizenry, and the discussion addresses limitations and directions for future research.     

The emergence of ‘citizenship’ in popular discourse: the case of Scotland

ABSTRACT

The 2014 Scottish Referendum gauged public opinion on the possibility of Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, raising significant questions about the legitimacy of claims to citizenship in the event of independence. Through a mixed methods survey, this study explored the ways in which citizenship emerged in popular discourse in the lead up to the Scottish referendum. Findings point to an emphasis in public discourse on a commitment to and participation in society, instead of the more traditional citizenship markers of ancestry, birthplace or residency. Data indicates a view of citizenship encompassing status and practice, while identity was framed in terms of more static notions of birthplace and ancestry. The salience of social participation was noticeably greater in respondents’ assessment of others’ potential Scottish citizenship than their own. Specifically, the study highlights the salience of relational aspects of citizenship in popular discourse, with an emphasis on social citizenship in preference to legal citizenship. The study constitutes a significant contribution to ongoing discussions about ‘participatory citizenship’ in the field of Citizenship studies, by providing much needed empirical data on social conceptualizations of citizenship.     

Citizen-Centered Collaborative Public Management

Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.     

The blind spots of liberal citizenship and integration policy

Governments across Europe have stepped up their efforts to manage social diversity politically, often specifically targeting Muslim populations. Lewicki interrogates the policy tools that the British and German governments deploy to ‘integrate’ an increasingly stigmatized and racialized population, zooming in on whether and how they problematize patterns of inequality. Complicating the ‘one country, one citizenship’ rationale of the citizenship regime literature that assumes a one-dimensional interpretation of history, cultural identity, political institutions or legal norms, she points to four salient liberal citizenship discourses that currently frame policies of diversity management. These are civic republicanism, multiculturalism, civic universalism and cosmopolitanism. Her analysis demonstrates that all four liberal citizenship discourses have blind spots when it comes to problematizing structural hierarchies and the logics of racism. Over the last two decades, liberal citizenship and integration policy frameworks have thus contributed to the retention of binary distinctions between superior citizens and inferior Others, distinctions that can now easily be exacerbated and used for mobilization by right-wing populist movements.     

Did the Egalitarian Reforms of the Swedish Educational System Equalise Levels of Democratic Citizenship?

In the mid‐1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a ‘school for everyone’ intended to function like a ‘social equaliser’. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an extended curriculum of social science courses. This article examines whether the well documented gap in levels of democratic citizenship indicators between students in theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes persisted after this massive reform. Given the vast amount of empirical research that has shown that education promotes democratic citizenship, the reform could be expected to result in a decreased civic gap. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom in research on the impact of education, little evidence is found linking the initiation of longer educational programmes with more social science courses to an increase in the levels of the examined dimensions of democratic citizenship. The egalitarian reform of the Swedish gymnasium, which provided more civic education, did not produce hypothesised positive effects on any of the dimensions under study (i.e., political participation, political knowledge and political attentiveness). Rather, results support the pre‐adult socialisation models since the gap between citizens from theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes remained after the unification of the educational system.     

Measuring How Administration Shapes Citizenship: A Policy Feedback Perspective on Performance Management

Governments increasingly require administrators to develop outcome measurements that reflect a program's impact on society. But standard approaches to performance measurement have neglected the impact on citizenship outcomes—the individual civic capacities and dispositions and social bonds of civic reciprocity and trust. The concept is adapted from the growing policy feedback literature in political science, which offers strong empirical evidence that certain policies have measurable effects on citizenship outcomes such as political participation, social capital, a sense of civic belonging, and self-worth as a citizen. Using the Program Assessment Rating Tool as an example, the authors demonstrate the failure of performance assessments to consider the civic implications of public policies. They argue that performance management systems should focus on citizenship outcomes and offer a series of suggestions on how to measure such outcomes.     

Citizenship values and asset accumulation: the case of Argentine migrants

Using diverse conceptualisations of citizenship, this article analyses the effect of the accumulation of civic and political assets on the transformation of citizenship values among Argentine migrants to Spain and returnees. Focusing on the transnational spaces, this article analyses important civic and political capabilities accumulated by a group of migrants and explores the impact of the assets accumulated in the transnational context. This research uses data drawn from 19 Argentine immigrants to Barcelona and 30 Argentine returnees from the cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. Findings indicate that the migratory experience generated gains in the civic and political capabilities of this group of migrants and returnees and that living in Spain promoted the development of a more responsible, analytical and, in some cases, active citizenship. As holders of ‘multiple-perspectives’, interviewees were in a privileged position to critically analyse both the sending and receiving societies. Moreover, respondents implemented a number of practices acquired in the host society, in their home society, although this transfer generally remained at an individual level.