Session Information
Contribution
Description: This paper is a response to the current challenges politicians and policy-makers face of constructing and promoting an inclusive multi-ethnic concept of Europe and European citizenship and the lack of substantial research into the possibilities and limitations of combining European and multicultural agendas. Despite the fact that Europe is undergoing considerable demographic, political and social change as it moves towards a knowledge economy, there is no substantial research as yet on the ways in which the concept of Europe could be transformed to address the issue of marginalised communities, such as the Turkish Muslims, in Europe. This paper therefore considers the potential of a multicultural political and educational approach to European citizenship and identity (i.e. multicultural European citizenship). Rather than global citizenship per se, or any of its associated approaches such as cosmopolitan citizenship, global citizenship education and world citizenship, the proposed concept of a multicultural Europe, with an incorporated global dimension, has a variety of benefits for people already living in, or migrating into, the EU. It could not only help prevent Eurocentric education but it might also be easier for the new generation of youth to forge a loyalty to Europe as a political identity given that there is, for example, a European Government.
Methodology: The paper draws upon data from my PhD research to think about how European and multicultural agendas could be combined to address the issue of the presence of minority ethnic (e.g. Muslim communities) in Europe. The broader study combined quantitative (i.e. questionnaires) and qualitative (i.e. focus groups, semi-structured interviews, documentary sources) methods. At the macro-political level, I analysed European Commission and national government documents on Europe and multiculturalism. At the institutional level, this design involved four exploratory case studies of fifteen-year-old white and Turkish youth located in two secondary schools, in Stuttgart (Tannberg Hauptschule and Goethe Gymnasium) and in London (Millroad School and Darwin School). I chose four schools that had an active approach as far as possible to Europe, citizenship and multicultural issues and were comparable in terms of achievement levels, inner-city locations and social/ethnic intake.
Conclusions: The research found, for example, that some teachers I interviewed in Tannberg Hauptschule in Stuttgart constructed a white European national identity and, in so doing, privileged a Eurocentric educational approach which made it extremely difficult for students, and Turkish Muslims in particular, to relate positively to Europe. However, this study also indicated that there is potential for the concept of Europe to be a source for cultural and linguistic enrichment and a common ground, for both white and Muslim youth, to negotiate their political identities. Both white and Turkish Muslim youth at Goethe Gymnasium in Stuttgart seemed to be able to gain from the opportunities associated with Europe (e.g. knowledge, identity) if Europe is reconceptualised in multicultural terms. At Goethe, which promoted European values alongside rather than instead of multicultural values and tried to integrate students on the basis of what I am calling 'multicultural Europeanness', young people engaged with Europe as a political identity and developed national-European hybrid identities. If, however, Europe is understood as an exclusionary, white Christian concept (as it was the case at Tannberg Hauptschule) then Turkish students struggled to relate positively to Europe as a political identity and instead emphasised their Turkish and/or German identities. The findings not only show the potential of European agendas in inclusive school contexts and when combined with notions of multiculturalism, but also promote a debate on the future of multicultural Europe between the academic community, policy-makers and politicians and the public at large. This also takes existing debates, for instance, on the future of multicultural Britain/Britishness on from the national to a European level.
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