At a time when populistic and sovranista (suprematist) rhetoric and policies promote and lay sole claim to national identities, take action to limit the human and educational rights of individuals, families and workers from minority ethnic backgrounds, and effectively block refugees at their borders, for us in NW07 it is imperative that the conversation about social justice is begun again in earnest and that it continues. We believe that Education has the power to confront injustice, to transform lives and challenge inequalities. The reality is that disparities have continued to grow and the world has become ever more complex and complicated, as compared to what was happening in 1996 when this network first came into existence. Then, words like Islamophobia and ‘the refugee crisis’ were not in common use, though we always knew that when we combine social justice with intercultural education there were bound to be more questions than answers. Difficult issues such as who is the ‘outsider’ and who is the ‘insider’ have reemerged over time and their intensity has increased, especially since poverty is growing among the local citizens, as happens for instance in Italy and Greece.  Identity is another important issue for all students. Why is it that in some countries eg. UK those young people who might have considered themselves ‘European citizens’ or ‘global citizens’, may have to re-configure their identity after Brexit? And in Italy young people who are integrated at the educational, linguistic and social level cannot achieve citizenship owing to the re-setting of the law just before the recent political elections? What is the meaning of diversity? Can we ignore the nations’ own cultural, linguistic and socio-economic diversity that is too often seen as disparity? What can we as researchers do on an individual and collective level?

This network opens up assumptions about the question of rights, equity and inclusion with regard to race/ethnicity, gender, social class and disability. It looks at human rights, the value of intercultural understanding and the search for opportunities to develop social and moral understanding of complex issues in our day to day work. Surely that must continue. 

We would like to do this in the form of a conversation welcoming the audience to participate. We will present our thoughts in the light of the current socio-political changes and of our own intercultural research and methodological approaches.

1.Bhatti G., Gaine C., Gobbo F., Leeman Y., eds. (2007), Social Justice and Intercultural Education - an open-ended dialogue, Trentham Books, Stoke on Trent, pp. 75- 88.
 2.Bhatti G. and Leeman, Y. (2011) Convening a network within the European Conference on Educational Research, European Educational Research Journal 10, 219-142 3.Bhatti, G. (2011). Outsiders or insiders? Identity, educational success and Muslim young men in England. Ethnography and Education, 2011, 6, 1, 81-96. 4.Bhatti, G. and McEachron (2017) ‘ If I could not make a difference why would I be a teacher? Teaching English as an Additional Language and the Quest for Social Justice’ . In Peters, M.A., Bronwen, C. and Menter, I. (eds) (2017) A Companion to Teacher Education Research. Singapore: Springer 681- 696 5.Cigman, R. (ed.) (2007) Included or excluded? The Challenge of the mainstream for some SEN children. London: Routledge. 6.Gillborn D. and Youdell , B (1999) Rationing Education: Policy, practice, reform and equity Buckingham: Open University press 7.Gobbo F. (2012a), “ Intercultural dialogue and ethnography. On learning about diversity in Italian multicultural classrooms”, in Tina Besley, Michael A. Peters eds., Interculturalism, Education and Dialogue, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, pp. 224- 236.
 8.Gobbo F. (2012e), “Intercultural Education and Intercultural Learning in Europe”, in J. A. Banks ed., Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 1218-1221. 9.Gobbo F. (2011a), “Racism, ‘race’ and ethnographic research in multicultural Italy”, in Ethnography and Education, vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 9-27. 10.Griffiths, M. (2000) Action for Social Justice in Education, Maidenhead: Open University Press 11.Leeman, Y. (2017) Whither cultural diversity and intercultural education in the Netherlands? pp 17-33. In: Reid, C. & Major, J. (eds) Global Teaching. Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity (New York: Palgrave, Macmillan) 12.Leeman, Y, Van Koeven, E & Schaafsma, F. (2018) Inter-professional collaboration in action research. Educational Action Research 26(1) 9-24. 13.McEachron, G. & Bhatti, G. et al (2015) ‘Teaching English as an Additional Language in the Global Classroom: a transnational study in the United States and United Kingdom, Global Education Review, 2 (2) 59-83 14.Nind, M., Sheehy, K. Simmons, K. & Rix, J. (2003) Inclusive education: diverse perspectives. London: Fulton. 15.Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2005) Changing Citizenship: democracy and inclusion in education. Maidenhead: Open University Press 16.Thomas, G., & Loxley, A. (2007). Deconstructing special education and constructing inclusion (2nd ed.). Maidenhead: Open University. 17.UNESCO (1994) The Salamanca statement and framework for action on special needs education. Paris: UNESCO.