The multilevel governance of education within the European Union allows Member States to design their own policies, despite some “harder soft governance” (Knodt & Schoenefeld, 2020) mechanisms such as comparative reports and, perhaps most importantly, Cohesion Policy’s conditionalities. Nonetheless, the European discourse combines the legacy of the Lisbon Strategy (2000), around competitiveness imperatives (Nóvoa, 2013), with social cohesion appeals. Besides the acknowledgment of rural/urban and native/immigrant asymmetries, the strategy is vague regarding the need to promote better cohesion. Furthermore, comparative reports (Education and Training Monitor) or the European Semester appear to frame the need to solve such asymmetries as solely important to the achievement of greater economic prosperity and competitiveness, disregarding democratic, citizenship, and even cultural goals.

Such vagueness is not far from the blurriness usually attributed to the policy narrative of cohesion (Artelaris & Mavrommatis, 2020) within the European strategy more broadly understood (Faludi, 2005; Medeiros, 2016). While some views on territorial cohesion seem to argue in favor of an approach that intends to create a block of equal and equally competitive territories, others prefer an outlook that underlines endogenous resources as value (Chamusca et al., 2022). Due to its vague appeals, educational documents and strategies do not support the clarification of this concept. Despite not daring to solve the conceptual ambiguity of the “cohesion discourse”, we argue that a look at the subnational governance of education in Portugal might clarify the dialogue between education policy and the pursuit of cohesion, especially through a diversity lens. 

The decentralization process that has been carried out in Portugal has tried to empower subnational government units through the transfer of increasing competencies. Despite the many challenges (mainly financial), this process has allowed local governments and communities to have a louder voice within the formulation of education policies, thus trying to find local-based solutions to close problems and asymmetries.

Through discourse analysis, we intend to assess the presence and operationalization of territorial cohesion principles within the local governance of education in Portugal, inescapably bounded by a multilevel governance framework, thus coordinating European guidelines and national laws. Therefore, we pose the following question: How do municipalities translate the European discourse on territorial cohesion into education policies?  

The preliminary hypotheses (H) rely mainly on our empirical experience within the design of local education policies and instruments combined with insights from the literature. Due to a closer knowledge and contact with local vulnerabilities, we believe that:

H1: Municipalities tend to articulate concerns with specific local asymmetries and to formulate place-based policies to solve them.

In equal measure, local authorities also have a greater knowledge of endogenous resources and assets. Hence, we posit that:

H2: Local entities tend to embrace a more positive understanding of territorial cohesion, which prefers to highlight territorial resources and diversity as an asset.   

However, the influence of the European and transnational discourses on education might be unavoidable and the race towards competitiveness an inevitability:

H3: Despite believing in equity and cohesion goals, municipalities also understand such principles as instrumental to the pursuit of greater competitiveness and economic prosperity.

The research focused on the dialogue between education and territory has been worried about place-based learning (Gruenewald, 2003), spatial justice (Marques, Tufail, et al., 2021), or community role (Vester, 2008). On the other hand, the Europeanisation of education has been well-researched for the past two decades (Alexiadou, 2007; Dale, 2009; Nordin, 2014). However, the research on the hypothetical double Europeanisation of education policy and cohesion narratives has seldom been considered. 

According to Purkarthofer (2018), narratives and discourse are especially relevant when researching areas governed by the Open Method of Coordination, where the EU lacks lawmaking powers. It is thus almost inevitable to resort to a methodology that dissects narratives, which is why we follow the narrative policy framework proposed by Jones & McBeth (2010). This framework will be used to analyze the local policy instruments that allow us to test the hypotheses and answer our research question. Those instruments are the Local Education Planning Charter (Carta Educativa, in the original) and the Local Strategic Plan for Education, designed by a sample of Portuguese municipalities. This sample comprises ten municipalities: two from each region of mainland Portugal (Norte, Centro, Lisboa, Alentejo, and Algarve), in accordance with the following criteria: i) One municipality considered a top-performer territory in education and with a high absorption of European funds; ii) One municipality considered a bottom-performing territory in education and with a low absorption of European funds; iii) In order to carry out the required narrative analysis, each municipality must have its local education policy instruments publicly displayed. We argue that these criteria and strategy are coherent with the backdrop of our research, linking the European and local scales of education policy.

We expect to confirm some insights from previous studies, namely those that find a hybridism in Portuguese education policies (Baixinho, 2017; Teodoro & Aníbal, 2007), between the European sphere of influence and national/subnational aspirations and scope of action. Within this context, we expect to find a seemingly paradoxical coexistence of cohesion as a condition for competitiveness (which might in itself be a contradiction). Given the local knowledge of endogenous resources, we expect to encounter cohesion (at least partially) understood as the promotion of diversity as an asset, where education plays an important role, despite the weight of constraining vulnerabilities. While this is not, perhaps, the cheeriest conclusion for researchers that understand education beyond its economic purpose, it is a sort of seed for the consolidation of a diversity-oriented paradigm of territorial cohesion, fostered by education.

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