‘We Must Demonstrate Intolerance toward the Intolerant’: Boundary Liberalism in Citizenship Education for Immigrants in Germany

Abstract

Following the decline of ethnic notions of national identity, the extent to which immigrants are believed to have acceptably liberal values has become a site of boundary making in Western Europe. Much scholarly work has focused on 'boundary liberalism' in European media/policy discourse, and the ways that Muslim migrants in particular are framed as carriers of unacceptable ideologies. There has, however, been little exploration of how these ideas shape practice in the mandatory citizenship training that is an increasingly common feature of European integration regimes. This article examines boundary liberalism in citizenship education as it took place in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Attention is paid to how instructors interpret the mandate to enforce tolerance in others in light of Germany's own problematic history, how curricula and classroom interactions define normative liberalism, and how lessons on these values still draw the symbolic boundaries of national and supranational identities to exclude Muslims.

Gender and Anti-immigrant Attitudes in Europe

“…I contend that gender ideologies are a crucial part of boundary-making processes in Europe and are often mapped onto racial and ethnic distinctions. Illiberal gender ideologies are frequently attributed to Muslim immigrant groups, for example, and become a salient marker of group membership and, thus, of the boundary that demarcates liberal native and illiberal Muslim foreigner (Brown 2016). In addition to-and in support of-these ideological distinctions, Muslims in Europe are consistently identified as a distinct ethnic and cultural group despite considerable ethnoracial and national diversity (Brubaker 2013).…”

‘We Are That In-Between Nation’: Discourses of Deservingness of Hungarian Migrants Working in Institutions of Refugee Accommodation in Germany

“…These tensions result in various social worker perspectives set on their refugee clients: empathy, critique of the institutional system, disciplinary perspectives aimed at educating and socialising clients, as well as bureaucratic pragmatism and indifference towards clients might thus unfold in asylum-related social work in Germany (Kubisch et al, 2017). Studies focusing on the educational context, and specifically integration courses for refugees and immigrants in Germany have emphasised the normalising disciplinary aspects of teacher–student relations (Brown, 2016; Heinemann, 2017; Williams, 2018), along frameworks of deservingness related to education and employment and to culture.…”

“…Such policies on culture and identities, expecting performance and adjustment on the part of refugees arrived into a welfare services and education context that has long been characterised by looking at refugees (and at migrants at large) from a civilising perspective. Various research on social work discourses in Germany (Attia, 2013; Olivier-Mensah et al, 2017), on discourses and practices of integration courses (Brown, 2016; Heinemann, 2017; Williams, 2018) and on volunteering for refugees (Braun, 2017) have described how, in the context of education and social welfare services ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ become embedded into disciplining discourses of civilisation, Orientalism and racism. The mobilisation of such discourses imply Othering regards on the part of social workers, teachers and volunteers.…”

Boundary Integrationism and its Subject: Shifts and Continuities in the EU Framework on Migrant Integration

“…Amidst recent immigrant and refugee arrivals and in the context of controversies related to security, Islam and the alleged failure of multiculturalism, immigrant integration has remained high on the European political agenda in the past decades. Rather than improving the livelihoods, rights and opportunities of non-citizens and citizens alike, scholars have argued that integration policies instead burden "migranticized" (as per Dahinden, 2016) and minoritized groups with "ethnic monitoring" (Westerveen & Adam, 2019) and serve as a boundary-making tool (Brown, 2016;Schinkel, 2017). Since the 1990s, the governance of "integration" in Europe has undergone a decentralization of authority from national governments downwards to city levels, outwards to civil society, and upwards to the European Union.…”