Higher Education is increasingly seen to be a problem space where governing rationales with contradictory logics clash partly due to the history of modern nation building and partly to emerging state languages that might cause novel forms of authorial power; a situation that creates paradoxes for those who work or study in the sector (Dillabough 2022; Coman and Volintiru 2021)).To identify what causes democratic deficit at the micro level of the polity and how they can be mitigated under the recurrent wave of the current crisis UNESCO has called for a new social contract in education whereby learning for democracy can be reimagined or retooled (UNESCO. 2021). Within this framework, this action research aims to address the question of how education can contribute to “resilient recovery” and shift the axis of politics through the interplay of political actors, institutions, and communities to produce regenerative practices which de-polarize political and social relations. The paper focuses on the potential role universities can have in promoting resilience through pedagogical practices which involve their publics in learning ‘for democracy’.

In seeking to provide an account of how citizenship is currently sensed, conceived and envisioned in higher educational settings and also the way it has been institutionally maintained the project looked at past, present and future expectations of Eastern and Central European international students in Eu and non-EU member states (Beckert 2016;Beech 2014; Borup et al. 2006; Bussey, Inayatullah, and Milojevic 2008; Facer 2013; Milojević and Inayatullah 2015; Mische 2009). 6 focus groups and 36 narrative biographical interviews were carried in 6 different countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, Georgia, Latvia, Russia) with an aim to understand students’ sense of civic self in a global higher educational environment, their imaginaries of citizenship as well as their vision of what the future holds for them. Revisiting the UNESCO (2021) report the project underscores the pivotal role of universities in resilient recovery in ”radically reconfiguring our place and agency” in the face of recurrent crises of various kinds. Our findings show that the fairly successful Europeanization process in the higher education sector reported in the narratives seems to be challenged by the fact that institutions are sensed not to be able to respond to students' expectations of self-development during the pandemic and ever since. Covid-19 seems to have influenced how civic connectedness and civic self are envisaged in the higher educational environment, however, civic principles and preferred patterns of participation are mainly reported to remain untouched. Cultural cosmopolitan visions appears to be prevalent with a strong belief in institutional transformation and neoliberalism in the narratives. While neo-nationalism is omnipresent in various forms of nostalgia, resentment and struggle of identity, students, nevertheless, are actively looking for opportunities in the system of higher education to forge entirely new ways of relating, rather than contributing to existing institutional structures. The way neo-nationalism reappears in narratives both in support of neoliberalism and in supply of institutional operation seems to be of considerable value. Therefore,, the paper reveals the forms of neo-nationalistic sentiments in communication with cultural cosmopolitan and neoliberal considerations and in turn portrays how these constructs involves their publics in learning for democracy .

In brief, the profession-based vision of citizenship within the framework of nation states, that the current institutional base in the European higher education space offers, felt rather insufficient. There is an explicit need for engaged universities operating in a wider cultural ecological environment; for institutions engaged outside the boundaries of nation states or nation building (Oxley and Morris 2013; Pashby et al. 2020; Rhoads and Szelenyi 2020). Still neo-nationalism has its function, prevalence and historical legacies. Thereby, our data and methodology by highlighting students’ sense of civic self in a global higher educational environment help to understand how higher educational governance can provide viable learning trajectories and plan for the future by interpreting social, political or cultural tensions of the post Covid 19 period from the perspective of emerging professionals in Central Europe (Bozkurt 2022; Chankseliani 2018; Davies 2020).

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