Diversity, Group Identity, and Citizenship Education in a Global Age

Abstract

Worldwide immigration and quests for rights by minority groups have caused social scientists and educators to raise serious questions about liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship that historically have dominated citizenship education in nation-states. The author of this article challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education. He argues that citizenship education should be reformed so that it reflects the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups, and he contends that group rights can help individuals to attain structural equality. In the final part of the article, he discusses the implications of his analysis for transforming citizenship education.

Is Development “The New Peace”? Global Citizenship as National Obligation in Postwar Guatemala

“…Profe worried that the school’s internationalist orientation tacitly exempted students from their civic duties and connections to the state, illustrating enduring tensions within citizenship education in a globalized world (Abu El‐Haj ; Banks ). Privately, he explained, “We are a school for Guatemalans, but these students are also citizens of other countries... the students need to sing our anthem, they need to know their flag.…”

“…According to the logic that presupposed development as peace, indigenous resistance to mega‐development projects was irrational and harmful to Guatemala’s needs as an underdeveloped, post‐conflict nation. The resolve of this economic perspective likewise illustrates the ways that “[g]roups with power and influence often equate their own interests with the public interest” (Banks , 132). This was poignantly illustrated as students ridiculed and dismissed Indigenous language rights by assessing their economic value (and lack thereof) on the global market.…”

“…Growing interest in and commitments to educating for global citizenship have been accompanied by robust scholarship aimed at defining global citizenship, theorizing its relationship to the nation‐state, globalization, and transnationalism, and questioning its meaning and feasibility in educational practice. Anthropologists and multicultural educators argue that diversity within nation‐states has shifted substantially in an era of global migration so that schools must respond by reorienting citizenship education from the nation to students’ growing transnational identities and affiliations (e.g., Abu El‐Haj ; Banks ; DeJaghere and McCleary ; Dyrness ; Hall ; Osler and Starkey ). Citizenship education that is oriented transnationally poses an alternative to assimilative and narrow conceptions of belonging within one nation‐state, particularly for those whose identities have been historically excluded from the benefits of national citizenship.…”

“…Theorists conceive of these types as upholding discrete attributes or ideologies of globalization and global citizenship (304), or, in some cases, as constitutive of a developmental trajectory (Banks ). Across these models, transitions from “personally responsible” to “justice oriented” (Westheimer and Kahne ), minimal to critical approaches (DeJaeghere ), soft to critical global citizenship (Andreotti ), or traditional to transformative outlooks (Abu El‐Haj ; Banks ) imply a shared vision that equitable and just societies depend on citizens who are increasingly conscious and critical of injustice, reflective and reflexive about their positioning within global power structures, and disposed to take action on behalf of others near and far. At the “soft” (Andreotti ) end of the spectrum, global citizenship is often reduced to marketized expressions of international connectedness and positive features of multiculturalism (Oxley and Morris , 318), failing to examine how transnational structures generate, and derive from, power inequities operating at multiple scales.…”

Geographies of Flexible Citizenship

“…That citizenship functions as more than a legal status, and also as an identity and marker of belonging, is well established (Ahonen, 2001;Delanty, 1997;Isin, 2002;Joppke, 2007;Staeheli, 2011;Young, 1989). The f lexibility and multiplicity of identities and terms of belonging in the contemporary world is a key focus of the literatures on citizenship, migration, and transnationalism (Banks, 2008;Benhabib, 2007;Cottrell Studemeyer, 2015;El-Haj, 2007;Gilmartin, 2008;Ho, 2008;Nagel and Hopkins, 2010;Nagel and Staeheli, 2004). Transnational and cosmopolitan citizenships become identities that transcend national borders, "enacted and imagined at multiple sites and scales" throughout the world (El-Haj, 2007;Fein and Straughn, 2014;Hörschelmann and El Refaie, 2013, p. 446;Leuchter, 2014;Nagel and Staeheli, 2004).…”