Social Justice Education in European Multi-ethnic Schools

Addressing the Goals of Intercultural Education

Cinzia Pica-Smith, Rina Manuela Contini, Carmen N. Veloria

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351057288
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Europe is a multi-ethnic society experiencing a rise of anti-immigration, racist, xenophobic discourses, and right-wing political rhetoric and movements proposing legislation to further solidify structural inequality and institutionalized systems of oppression that fuel educational inequities. Social Justice Education in European Multi-ethnic Schools brings together researchers in the fields of sociology and education to examine debates in multicultural education. Drawing on critical theory, the book takes an in-depth look at how these challenges are being addressed (or not addressed) in educational contexts and in the proposed framework of intercultural education adopted as a conceptual and educational framework by the European Union over the last two decades.

The book begins with an analysis of the sociological models and theories of migration and their connection to multiculturalism and interculturalism. It engages in the current debate between multiculturalism and interculturalism, bringing to light the "political rhetoric" that fueled narratives about the "failures" of multiculturalism, which ushered in the intercultural framework. It puts forth a critical analysis of interculturalism, linking it to neoliberalism, and policies of civic integration and the concept of govermentality. Advocating for a transformative framework informed in social justice education that aims to promote more equity in schools, it critically analyzes and discusses intercultural education, the pedagogical extension of interculturalism, as per the European documents highlighting its goals, pedagogies, tensions, and challenges.

Social Justice Education in European Multi-ethnic Schools will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and scholars in the fields of intercultural, multicultural, and transformative education.

Part I

Intercultural education

Origins, current thinking, practice, and critiques

1 Social theories of migration, political realities, and the rise of interculturalism¹

Introduction

Increasingly, people around the globe, especially people from the Global South, are moving, crossing national borders, and settling outside of their countries of birth. Pécoud and de Guchteneire (2007) assert that this transnational movement is now structurally embedded in the economic realities of most countries. This migration is not only a lived historical reality and experience of each individual or family that migrates; rather, as Castles and Miller (2012) point out, migration is a “collective act” that affects the nations at both the departing and welcoming end. Indeed, these movements affect the infrastructure, social, political, and cultural institutions, and labor and economic systems of both departing and welcoming countries (Cesareo, 2015).

¹Overall, Chapter 1 draws on Contini & Pica-Smith (2017) and Contini (2017). Portions of the section, Multiculturalism and the Multiculturalism Backlash, as well as all of the Interculturalism versus Multiculturalism section were previously published in Contini and Pica-Smith (2017).

Another consequence of mass migration has been the growing visible diversity of European nations, which, in some cases, had previously been more ethnically and racially homogeneous. Hence, a first conceptual innovation in the sociological analysis of migration policies has been a focus on diversity, which has meant something different for multiculturalists, who focused on the rights of ethnic and religious minority groups, and interculturalists, who have focused on diversity as a concept related to each individual’s multiple identities and intersecting group and individuals’ diversity. This is a concept that can be traced back to the idea that identities are not siloed but rather connected to one another, as American black feminist scholars have phrased “intersected” with one another so that, for example, race, gender, class are inextricably linked (hooks, 1984, 1989, 1990; Crenshaw, 1989). Regardless of the conceptualization and understanding of what diversity means from these two frameworks, in societies that are becoming increasingly diverse, the question is no longer how to live with but rather in diversity (Antonsich, 2014; Antonsich & Matejskova, 2015). That is to say, European societies are grappling with cultural pluralism and the creation of culturally diverse contexts that focus on both the rights of ethnic and religious groups, which have been essentialized and marginalized, as well as those of individual people, whether they are members of ethnic and religious minoritized groups or “native,” who have been marginalized by their gender, sexual, or disability identities (Ambrosini, 2014). In many ways, this interculturalist shift on the concepts of diversity from the rights of ethnic and religious minority groups to the individual reflects the disaffection towards multiculturalism in the European sociological and political debate and the obfuscation of an increasingly right-wing politics of migration in a neoliberal Europe (Prins & Slijper, 2002).

Questions tied to immigration are a priority in the political agendas of governments and political parties. In various European countries new political actors are gaining importance, requesting higher restrictions for new arrivals, less tolerance for cultural and religious diversity, stricter measures against irregular immigration, and less social benefits for new arrivals (Ambrosini, 2016). A common trait of European policies regarding immigration is identified in the growing shift regarding the request of civic requirements towards migrants (Goodman, 2010). The concept of civic integration tends to blur the distinction between the “national models” of immigrants’ inclusion (Ambrosini, 2016; Joppke, 2007). At the same time, European institutions assert the necessity to move from multiculturalism to interculturalism as a new method of governmentality and of governance of the complex phenomenon of diversity in society.

This chapter intends to rebuild the sociological and political debate on the principal models of analysis on the migration and integration processes and the ways with which countries try to face the dynamics of diversity. In particular, this chapter analyzes theories of assimilation and neo-assimilation, multiculturalism as a framework that responded to the ethnocentrism and colonizing ideology of assimilationism, and interculturalism, which grew out of a multiculturalism backlash. We conclude the chapter by focusing on the political rhetoric and debate between interculturalism and multiculturalism (Kymlicka, 2016) as well as an analysis of the relationship between interculturalism, civic requirements, and governmentality.

Assimilation and neo-assimilation

To date, the theoretical underpinnings regarding much of the study on the process of integration is based on the paradigm of assimilation. Informed by the School of Chicago (Park & Burgess, 1924), this framework gained strength in the American context between the two World Wars when steady immigration was shaping the American landscape. It was further bolstered by the prominent functionalist sociological approach of the times. This model considers assimilation to the culture and society of the welcoming country as a process that happens inevitably on an intergenerational level to those who immigrate from one cultural context to another. The theory of assimilation derives from the universalist epistemological perspective and is characterized by the foundational idea that all differences can be traced back to only one human structure. Encounters with the “other” are progressively and inevitably resolved as individuals grow closer to the dominant cultural model. This linear development progresses towards a common, universal horizon: humankind, which is able to contain all difference. In such a vision, assimilation is considered an organic, univocal, and linear process by which immigrants assimilate to the new social context, and social order, and become similar to “natives” acquiring their mental habits and lifestyles.

Yet, according to the classical definition of assimilation, this process is intended as “a process of interpenetration and fusion in which people and groups acquire memories, feelings and attitudes of other people and groups and, sharing their experiences and their history, they are incorporated with them in a common cultural life” (Park & Burgess, 1924, p. 735). Cultural assimilation, therefore, is instrumental for social mobility. It follows that assimilation is not only inevitable, but also desirable and, to a certain extent, obligatory. Only when immigrants assimilate and lose their sociocultural practices can they be accepted, and progress along the welcoming country’s social ladder, which they must do without disrupting the political, sociocultural context, and balance of the receiving society. With this in mind, assimilation becomes the responsibility and duty of the immigrant, and not a commitment of the receiving society to accommodate or change for the benefit of newly arrived persons. This normative, descriptive, and prescriptive process has constituted the most critical aspect of the concept of assimilation.

By the end of 20th century a neo-assimilationist paradigm was prevalent in the literature of sociology of migration, especially in the North American literature. This new iteration abandoned the normative and ethnocentric components of a more traditional assimilationist formulation yet reaffirmed that assimilation takes place as a dominant pattern (Alba & Nee, 1997). Brubaker (2001) re-proposed the concept of assimilation, sanitizing it from its prescriptive components and from assumptions of the superiority of the White Protestant American cultural norm. In other words, new generations of immigrants assimilate themselves by becoming more similar to the autochthonous population for linguistic use, matrimonial ties, collocation on the job market, and so on (Ambrosini, 2008; Brubaker, 2001; 2005). Jung (2009) proposed an important critique of these paradigms based on race that, despite Alba and Nee’s (2003) assertion of residential integration and intermarriage with whites being more available for Asians and “light-skinned Latinos” than “other groups” (thus, acknowledging racial differences and patterns), they mostly ignore and exclude native-born blacks and argue that assimilation is still a dominant pattern.

Distancing themselves from the positions of Alba and Nee (1997) as well as from Perlman and Waldinger’s (1997) re-proposed, linear assimilation paradigm, Portes and his team proposed the theory of segmented assimilation (Portes 1995; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; 2006; Portes & Zhou, 1993) focusing on the children of immigrants (the second generation) and the contexts in which their integration occurs. These scholars highlight the importance of understanding the ambit and trajectory in which young people assimilate. They posit that the process of integrating into “mainstream American society” for young people of immigrant origin is fragmented along trajectories of upward assimilation, downward assimilation, or selective assimilation. These distinct forms of adaptation can mean either “growing acculturation and parallel integration into the white middle-class,” “permanent poverty and assimilation into the underclass,” or “rapid economic advancement with deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s values and tight solidarity” (Portes & Zhou, 1993, p. 82).

Such assimilation paths, they argue, depend upon complex individual and contextual factors: “individual features,” “modes of incorporation,” and “family structure.” Individual features include financial resources of immigrants, human capital, job skills, language proficiency, and educational levels. Mode of incorporation refers to contextual factors such as government policies towards immigrants, receptiveness to immigrants, level of racial prejudice in the welcoming context, and the level of support available by already-established ethnic communities. Finally, family structure refers to, for example, whether or not young people have one or both parents/guardians within their family context.

In the case of selective assimilation, for example, the young children of immigrants take advantage of the support and social capital of the ethnic group and of the occupational resources offered by the ethnic network. Ethnic communities can carry out a protective function, mitigating the negative influence of the underclass. In this way, ethnic belonging can constitute a resource that favors upward social mobility. The downward mobility paths, on the contrary, are carried out towards marginalization and urban deprivation. The main indicators of this trajectory are academic drop out, early pregnancies, and incarcerations. In segmented assimilation the conservation of the culture of origin and ethnic networks are a form of “ethnic social capital” (Esser, 2004; 2010) that influence the integration processes with support and protective actions that can facilitate academic success and social mobility (Portes, & Rumbaut, 2001; 2005; Zhou, 1997). The ambiguity of “ethnic social capital” is debated and highlighted in the sociological literature because, on the one hand, it gives immigrants a network of solidarity, on the other, it risks blocking the mobility processes, limiting immigrants to the community’s traditional occupational contexts and paths, which are often unskilled labor opportunities. Therefore, social ethnic capital can be a resource or a barrier, especially in the context of the job market.

Moreover, in the sociological debate the theory of segmented assimilation problematizes the linearity of the relation between socioeconomic integration and cultural assimilation. For Portes and Rumbaut (2001) immigrants can both acquire the linguistic and cultural modalities of the receiving society, and at the same time, maintain the linguistic and cultural capital of their country of origin allowing them to neither forcibly assimilate nor isolate into ethnic parallel societies.

In a review and critique of these newly revitalized assimilation theories, Jung (2009) proposes an important reframing. Using a critical race lens, he argues that the analytical focus of migration theories should be shifted from a discussion of “difference” in culture to one of “inequality and domination.” He writes:

Specifically with regard to race, Alba and Nee stress the consequential institutional changes that the civil rights movement wrought, and Portes and colleagues chart the different routes, in large part because of racial discrimination, that assimilation can take. For all of their advances, however, assimilation theories do not adequately account for race … They [assimilation theories] engage in suspect comparisons to past migration from Europe; read out or misread the qualitatively different historical trajectories of European and non-European migrants; exclude native-born Blacks from the analysis; fail to conceptually account for the key changes that are purported to facilitate “assimilation;” import the dubious concept of the “underclass” to characterize poor urban Blacks and others; laud uncritically the “culture” of migrants; explicitly or implicitly advocate the “assimilation” of migrants; and discount the political potential of “oppositional culture.”

These are important lacunae in a discussion of whether and how immigrants obtain access to institutional capital. We believe these cannot be omitted from a complex and critical understanding of migration especially as neo-assimilationist theories essentialize visibly minoritized individuals (Blacks in particular). Take, for example, the racialized deficit discourse on “downward assimilation” that proposes that immigrants who live in proximity to the “underclass” Blacks can adopt “deviant lifestyles” that will lead to economic stagnation and long-term poverty.

(Portes & Rumbaut, 2001, p. 310 as cited by Jung, 2009)

As one may note these notions are both informed and reproduce deficit theories. We contend that it is important to understand these theories of migration with this critical lens as we engage in a discussion of interculturalism and its educational extension in the European context at a time of increasing global migration.

Multiculturalism and the multiculturalism backlash

The “three waves” that impacted the rise of multiculturalism were the global struggle for decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s, the struggle against racial segregation and civil rights in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and struggle for minority and indigenous rights across the globe (Kymlicka, 2010). These events resulted in the affirmation of multiculturalism as a political and philosophical movement in the West during the 1960s as these nations experienced both a rise of political movements by their historically marginalized, and minoritized citizens as well as an increase in cultural diversity due to migration from previously colonized nations (Parekh, 2016). Multiculturalism differentiated itself as an alternative to assimilationism proposed the importance of affirming and valuing cultural diversity and the defense of historically marginalized groups (Kymlicka, 1995; 2007; Taylor, 1994). Kymlicka (2010) understands multiculturalism as part of a “human rights revolution” that reacted to:

A range of illiberal and undemocratic relations—including relations of conqueror and conquered; colonizer and colonized; master and slave; settler and indigenous; civilized and primitive; ally and enemy … that explicitly propounded the superiority of some people and cultures and racist ideologies.

(p. 35)

Modood (2007) defines multiculturalism as “the recognition of group difference within the public sphere of laws, democratic discourses and the terms of a shared citizenship and national identity” (p. 2). Multiculturalism is, thus, focused on structural changes that affect social institutions and minority’s access to these. For Kymlicka (1995; 2007) the term “multiculturalism” points to a particular political approach to address culturally diverse societies in which the cultural practices of minority groups receive the same recognition and accommodation as those of the cultural practices of the dominant group. A multicultural approach demands a social commitment and respect for the cultural needs of minority groups, which includes institutionalizing practices and policies that support minority groups in their continued practice of their cultural values and ways of being. Multiculturalism refutes the notion that in order to be recognized, cultural minority groups must abandon their beliefs, values, and cultural practices to assimilate themselves into the cultural practices of the dominant and majority group. In addition, non-dominant groups must gain access and become represented in social institutions and public spaces through school curricula, public media, and political engagement.

The notion of “recognition” and representation is an important one so as to build a society in which minority groups are seen, understood, and valued on their own terms. Taylor (1994) recognizes the foundational role that the question of recognition assumes and proposes an analysis of the issue of recognition that stresses its legitimacy within the legal, political, ethical spheres of democratic liberalism. He connects recognition to issues of identity of individuals and groups as well as to the goals of multiculturalism. He contends that the demand for recognition is related to identity in the sense that, “our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others” (Taylor, 1994, p. 25). Thus, he reinforces the role of institutional structures to recognize minority or non-dominant individuals and groups so that they make take up their rightful place in pluralistic societies without compromising or assimilating their authentic ways of being in order to participate in said society. Furthermore, he notes the detrimental consequences of institutional non-recognition or misrecognition:

A person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Non-recognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I Intercultural education: Origins, current thinking, practice, and critiques
• Part II Theory in practice: “Us and them,” intergroup friendships, intergroup dialogue, and the promise of social justice education
• Final thoughts
• Afterword
• References
• Index