Beyond Us versus Them | bpb.de

The authors from countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Greece and France challenge the use of a deficit model in understanding the need for citizenship education within particular populations. It is an approach, they argue, that obscures systemic flaws in the dysfunctional settings within which citizenship educators often operate. It may also hinder critical self-reflection of the constructs and political interests which shape the field in which we operate. Our societies can produce hard to reach categories through political decisions, for example by funding or conflating multiculturalism with presumed ‘national’ identities. Political issues such as emancipation, power negotiation and democratic reform should receive more attention from citizenship educators concerned with social marginalisation and hard to reach groups in their societies.

The chapters in this book offer an exciting array of practical and conceptual approaches – geographically, across diverse groups and categories – and interventions by a range of agencies.