Read the article “Education: a tool of cultural awareness” by Daniel Faas on the Bridge, a bimonthly review on European integration.

Following an SOS from a Berlin school last spring, German legislators have sought to help children with immigration backgrounds. But can laws combat ingrained cultural insensitivities?

Read the related article on SPIEGEL online INTERNATIONAL, 08/23/2006.

D. Faas has been interviewed on the subject.

Europe is undergoing considerable demographic, economic, cultural and socio-political change. National citizenship identities have been challenged by the simultaneous processes of European integration and the migration of people into and across Europe. This paper explores how the current generation of youth relates towards Europe, and highlights the factors affecting their political knowledge, interests and identities. Although the article draws on mainly qualitative data from a study into the political identities of native youth and youth of Turkish descent in England and Germany, the results have implications for all European countries.

The research indicates that, in countries which promote European agendas and where schools and curricula emphasise an inclusive concept of Europe (e.g. Goethe Gymnasium in Stuttgart), young people have high levels of knowledge about Europe and make Europe part of their hybrid identities. However, in countries where governments and schools marginalise European agendas (e.g. Millroad School in London), young people struggle to relate positively to Europe, especially in working-class contexts where national(istic) agendas come to the fore. The article raises important questions about the possibilities of promoting inclusive governmental and curriculum approaches and offers ways in which the knowledge and identity gaps between youth in different European countries could be addressed.

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Germany’s national (or ethnic) identity has become thoroughly European and there are even signs of Eurocentrism. This is particularly problematic for the Turkish Muslims who, arguably, are not European. This article explores how fifteen-year-old German and Turkish youth in two Stuttgart secondary schools, one in a predominantly working-class area (Tannberg Hauptschule) and the other in a more middle-class environment (Goethe Gymnasium), negotiate their identities.

Drawing on documentary sources, focus groups and semi-structured interviews, the research found that at Tannberg, which at times adopted a Eurocentric approach and where some teachers were getting close to being Islamophobic, young people developed ethno-national identities. In contrast, at Goethe, which promoted European values alongside rather than instead of multicultural values, young people employed national-European hybrid identities. This article raises important questions about the role of education in the development of identities, and how to address notions of cultural insensitivity and inequality.

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This article investigates how 15-year-old white and Turkish students in two Inner London comprehensive schools, one in a predominantly working-class area (Millroad School) and the other in a more middle-class environment (Darwin School), construct their identities. Drawing on mainly qualitative data from documentary sources, focus groups and semi-structured interviews, the work points to a range of factors affecting identity formation processes, such as macro-political approaches and school dynamics.

The research found that at Millroad School, which celebrated diversity and where students’ conflict was ethnic or racial, young people found safety in their national(istic) identities. In contrast, at Darwin School, which tried to integrate students on the basis of common British citizenship and where there was only low-level ethnic conflict, young people developed hybrid ethno-national identities. This article raises important questions about how to create community cohesion in conflictual environments so as to promote both diversity and solidarity.

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Germany has been reluctant to adapt its education systems to the growing number of minority ethnic students, and politicians and policy makers have only recently officially acknowledged that Germany is an immigration country despite decades of mass immigration. This article first provides a socio-historical analysis of the German responses to migration-related cultural and religious diversity by tracing the development of educational policies from assimilationist notions of ‘foreigner pedagogy’ in the 1960s and 1970s to intercultural education, which slowly emerged in schools in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Policy, school dynamics and youth identities in Germany, England and Greece

Europe is undergoing considerable demographic, political and social change as it moves towards a knowledge economy. At a time when Europe has entered accession talks with Turkey, politicians and policy-makers are presented with the challenge of constructing and promoting an inclusive multi-ethnic concept of Europe.

The project is a response to these challenges and aims to address this research gap by developing a deeper understanding of (a) the ways in which EU policy-makers and politicians combine multicultural and European agendas and address the presence of Muslim communities in Europe; (b) the ways in which national educators and policy-makers in European countries with sizeable Muslim populations perceive European and multicultural agendas; and, (c) the ways in which school curricula of subjects like Geography, History and Citizenship address notions of multiculturalism and Europe.

The Multicultural Europe project is closely connected with the first phase of the EMILIE project. [More..]

In the Eveleigh Railway Workshops Train Cleaning Depot (ACDEP) case, intra-community ties, inward-looking cultural norms and exclusive linguistic codes prevailed for most of the migrant employees who belonged to the largest and/or most cohesive cultural groupings. Management may well have sought to enhance the individual human capital of all its migrant employees and the organisation’s social capital by introducing English language classes and cultural sensitivity training. However, the threat of punishment and exclusion for failing to conform to the collective norms that operated within their own specific ethnic groupings provided greater incentive than the pursuit of individual self-interest. Only those migrant employees from cultural groups that were not well-represented at ACDEP were sufficiently free from the constraints of ‘strong bonds of reciprocity and care’ to pursue their personal self-interests by investing in education provided by the English classes. [More..]

This book evaluates the degree of accommodation, or lack thereof, of cultural considerations in EC law and action and offers valuable insight into the plethora of ways in which the European institutions seek to balance cultural with other legitimate EC policy objectives. The study draws upon a series of policy areas that are (or can be) enriched with a cultural dimension and examines concrete judicial and legislative instances attesting to the efforts deployed to deliver coherent, culture-sensitive policies at EC level.

All the policy papers produced by EMILIE research project’s partners on education and cultural diversity [More..]