Globalisation has changed our experience with the world enormously. Our cultural and/or religious identity is not anymore bounded with a local community, a country or a city alone. Notions as pluralism and secularism make clear that the world today is a community of different (forms of) cultural and religious identities. New developments in transport and especcially ICT create enormous spaces where people can meet each other and where we dialy are faced with different cultures and religions. But the optimistic belief that a time of peace has come, seems to be far from the real reality. Every day pictures on television confronts us with war and violence all over the world. Pictures that prove that uniting different cultures, civalisations and religions is not a simple thing to do. The European Union, f.e. has declared to make of this problem its biggest challenge of 2007. How to bring different cultures and religious together without neglecting their identity? What we can't ignore is that the process of European integration without smothering the different ways of life, traditions and cultures of its peoples is still an uphill battle. Solutions for this problem are laying in the creations of spaces where people are free to travel, to work and to educate. Communication and community become (virtual) spaces where people can transport and invest in new information and transform it into new capital. Today, the world, so we can say, has become an 'environment': a space where we can move, invest and transport information; a communication wherein we can update and upgrade our identity. From this perspective it becomes obvious why education, work and life appears as the main items on the agenda of the European Union. By creating these environments Europe offers its inhabitants the instruments and the technology so that we can care of our own identity. The questions that presents itself in this paper is the following one: What is the effect of this problematisation of the reality as a 'problem of identity' on (religious) educational research today?Discourse-analysis (studies of governmentality)In this paper I will show that from a governemental perspective the notion of identity (f.e. a cultural or religious identity) appeals us to behave ourselves in a certain way, namely that we are in need of spaces where through communication and dialogue we can investe in identity. Against the discourse of 'identity is a right' the main research object of (religious) educational research seems to be today the development of instruments, technologies and systems (f.e. The European value reseach) so that people not only 'learn' how to achieve an identity (competences, skills and attitude) but also that they are able to regulate permanently and autonomously their identity in front of (visible) other (religious or cultural) identities.Foucault, M. (2004). Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978). Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil. Geerinck, I. (2004). God embarrassed by the pastor? A search for new practices in religious education. In D. Nauer, R. Nauta & H. Witte (eds.). Religious Leadership and Christian Identity, Münster, Litt, pp. 143-153. Masschelein, J (2004). How to conceive of critical educaional theory today? in Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 38, nr. 3, pp. 351-367. Simons, M. (2006). Learning as Investment: Notes on governmentality and biopolitics, in Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 38, nr. 4, pp. 523-540.