Citizenship for Some: Heteronormativity as Cloaked Bullying

SUMMARY

The average student of diverse sexuality hears eight homophobic insults per day with one third from faculty and staff. Through a lens of citizenship education, we elucidate heteronormative undercurrents obstructing the acceptance of sexual diversity; in-depth analysis of two such barriers, the public man and the ethics of marriage, are provided and suggest that heteronormativity, with roots in the Enlightenment discourse, is overpowering instrumental curricula promoting the acceptance of sexual diversity. Further, the perpetuation of such heteronormative undercurrents can and should be seen as a form of violence: cloaked bullying. The article challenges the use of “It's Ok to be Gay” kits and other modes of essentializing sexual diversity, and petitions educators to remain cognizant of heteronormative undercurrents in their teaching practice. By laboring to dislodge heteronormative underpinnings educators are enabled to model genuine open-minded and accepting citizenship and effect meaningful progress in the acceptance of sexual diversity.     

Military,Masculinity, and Citizenship: Tensions and Contradictions in the Experience of Blue-Collar Soldiers

This article seeks to problematize the relationship between military service, masculinity, and citizenship, from the perspective of lower-class soldiers who serve in blue-collar roles in the Israeli military. Introducing class and ethnicity into the “taken for granted” equation of men, military, and the state reveals counter-hegemonic conceptions of masculinity and citizenship, and exposes tense and often contradictory relationships between them.

Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that blue-collar Israeli soldiers simultaneously accept and challenge the hegemonic Zionist conceptions of both masculinity and citizenship. Unlike the combat soldiers, blue-collar soldiers demonstrate gender and national identities that are not anchored in military life. Rather, these soldiers present an alternative version of “home-based masculinity,” which grants the family superiority over the military and the state. This masculinity is expressed through two recurring themes: ongoing resistance to military discipline and authority, and an emphasis on the role of the provider over the role of the soldier. Through these daily military practices, the soldiers express their rejection of the republican “principle of contribution” as a criterion to one's belonging to the collective. However, their conception of citizenship emphasizes a militant ethno-national discourse. The discrepancy between their antimilitaristic practices and their militant patriotism reflects their ambivalent socio-political location in Israeli society between their preferred location as Jews and their marginal location as Mizrachim of lower classes. These ambivalent identities reveal that a mutual affirming connection between the military, masculinity, and the state exists only for hegemonic groups. For non-hegemonic groups, the relationship between masculinity, military, and citizenship is ridden with conflicts and inner contradictions.     

TRAVEL AS AN ANALYTIC OF EXCLUSION: BECOMING NONCITIZENS,AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY AFTER THE BERLIN WALL

This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship and the production of noncitizens after the Berlin Wall. This production is linked to a shift in the post-Wall German and European discourses and practices of asylum, which are significantly renegotiated and restricted shortly after the Wall falls. It is not only the law that changes, but also the mobility of the subjects perceived not to belong. The production of non-citizens is also related to official and unofficial articulations that attach Germanness to “Whiteness.” “Black” subjects must not only negotiate their citizenship via real histories of mobility and displacement but also because their skin itself signifies travel and adventure. In the end, I write about the space that this imagination of travel and adventure through “Black” bodies both opens up and closes off for a politics based on “Blackness.” I turn from normative accounts to the voices and bodies of “Black” subjects themselves.     

Developing intercultural competence and global citizenship through international experiences: academics’ perceptions

International education is a key priority for Australian universities, government and employer groups. For students, an international professional experience is uniquely placed in providing opportunities for developing intercultural learning, intercultural competence and global citizenship. Employers see graduates with international experiences as interculturally competent, viewing them as proficient in analysing and responding appropriately to culturally significant values and perceptions. This research seeks to understand how students are prepared for international experiences and how intercultural learning is integrated into course programmes. Academic staff responsible for international experiences were interviewed in one-on-one qualitative interviews about their practices and perceptions of preparing students for these experiences. Although all international programmes were procedurally well planned, we found that most participants did not include intercultural pedagogies into their programmes, nor did they purposefully seek to develop intercultural competence and global citizenship in their students. Professional development opportunities need to be created for academics to rethink their pedagogical intent regarding international experiences. Immersion in culture is not, on its own, an assurance of intercultural learning. Providing international experiences without a pedagogical framework that helps students to reflect on self and others can be a wasted opportunity and runs the risk of reinforcing stereotypical thinking and racist attitudes.     

Balancing citizenship and interculturalism: a comparison of two European contexts of inclusion

The premise of this article is that unbalanced versions of inclusion politics are usually at work in European contexts. Some inclusion patterns may be more relevant for certain aspects or levels of the education system or various models may be applied to specific ethnic groups. A necessary balancing approach is discussed in this article, drawing on examples from Italy and Romania. In this article, I will engage with the profile of the inclusion politics of education in two European contexts, at different levels and regarding various arenas: nationally relevant policy documents issued by the Ministries of Education in both countries, consolidated configurations of school practices and specific provisions, the profile of the inclusion message as presented in some school textbooks and teachers’ guides. I will argue that at national policy level, both countries are difference recognition oriented, although for different rationales and following different patterns. At a lower level, a plurality of unbalanced and differently focused versions of inclusion politics inside national contexts, frequently as one-dimensional provisions, may be noticed. Yet, a more ‘balanced’ policy may still not be sufficient in itself. It may be, in fact, a matter of specific solutions as correcting the status quo in particular contexts and of multidimensional as substantial multicultural education to be taken on seriously in practice.     

Commercially arranged marriage and the negotiation of citizenship rights among Vietnamese marriage migrants in multiracial Singapore

Globalization and increased mobilities have multiplied cross-border transactions not only in the economic sphere but have also a major impact on human relationships of intimacy. This can be seen in the increased volume of differently mediated forms of international marriage, not just straddling ‘east’ and ‘west’, but within Asia and across different ethnicities and nationalities. International marriage raises a host of social issues for countries of origin and destination, including challenges relating to the citizenship status and rights of the marriage migrant. This paper examines the negotiation of citizenship rights in the case of commercially matched marriage migrants – namely Vietnamese women who marry Singaporean men and migrate to Singapore as ‘foreign brides’. While they are folded into the ‘family’ – what is often thought of as the basic building block of the nation in Asian societies – they are not necessarily accorded full incorporation into the ‘nation’ despite Singapore's claims to multiculturalism. This is particularly salient at a point when cross-nationality, cross-ethnicity marriages between Singapore citizens and non-citizens are on the increase, accounting for over a third of marriages registered in Singapore in recent years. Vietnamese women who marry Singaporeans are positioned within the nation-state's citizenship regime as dependents of Singaporean men, having to rely on the legitimacy of the marriage relationship as well as the whims of their husbands in negotiating their rights vis-à-vis the Singapore state. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with 20 Vietnamese women who are commercially matched marriage migrants, the paper first focuses on the vulnerable positions these women find themselves, particularly given difficulties in forging their own support networks as well as weaknesses of the civil society sector in what has been called an ‘illiberal democracy’ characterized by a political culture of ‘non-resistance’. The paper then goes on to examine the way they negotiate rights to residency/citizenship, work and children within webs of asymmetrical power relations within the family and the nation-state. We draw on our findings to show that citizenship is ‘a terrain of struggle’ within a multicultural nation-state shaped by social ideologies of gender, race and class and negotiated on an everyday basis within spheres of family intimacy.     

Prejudices,social competencies and political orientations in relation to schools’ hidden curriculum

In the framework of a one-and-a-half year long research and development project implemented by the Kurt Lewin Foundation, we studied the relationships between organizational culture and the hidden curriculum of schools, as well as how students’ knowledge, opinions, and attitudes are connected to active citizenship, democratic values, social and political issues, and questions related to minorities. We were interested to discover whether we could find any connections between school life, teaching competencies, teachers’ knowledge and students’ extreme right sentiments, and political attitudes. According to our hypothesis, students in a more democratic school should hold more democratic views, and should be more open towards minorities, demonstrating more support for human rights and the rule of law. Our research – focusing on graduating student cohorts, studying in secondary schools located in Eastern Hungary – only partly confirmed our hypothesis: the schools involved in the project influenced students’ knowledge, opinions, and attitudes regarding issues within schools. However, with respect to most questions, there was a limited relationship between school environment and student attitudes regarding social-political issues outside the schools. Our research also explored the underlying reasons behind the results and – connected to that – possible ways to ameliorate attitudes, from the school management level to educational policy-making.

A Kurt Lewin Alapítvány másféléves kutatási-fejlesztési programja során megvizsgáltuk, hogy milyen kapcsolat van az iskolák szervezeti kultúrája, rejtett tanterve és a diákok aktív állampolgársággal, demokratikus értékekkel, szociális és politikai kérdésekkel, valamint kisebbségekkel kapcsolatos tudása, vélekedése és attit?dje között. Arra voltunk kíváncsiak, hogy található-e kapcsolat az iskolai élet, a tanítás és a tanárok ismeretei, kompetenciái és attit?dje, valamint a diákok széls?jobboldalhoz kapcsolódó érzelmei és politikai attit?dje között. Hipotézisünk szerint a demokratikusabb iskolák diákjai maguk is inkább demokratikusak, nyitottabbak a kisebbségek felé, jobban támogatják az emberi jogokat és a jogállami kereteket. Kutatásunk, melyben kelet-magyarországi középiskolák végz?s diákjai vettek rész, csak részben igazolta feltevésünket: a programba bevont iskolák a diákok iskolán belüli életére vonatkozóan bírnak befolyásoló hatással a diákok tudására, véleményére és attit?djeire. Mindazonáltal a legtöbb kérdés esetében az iskola falain kívüli élet társadalmi-politikai ügyeit illet?en nincsenek jelent?s hatással. Kutatásunk annak is utána járt, hogy milyen magyarázatok találhatók az eredményekre és - ehhez kapcsolódóan - milyen fejlesztési lehet?ségek állnak rendelkezésre az iskolaigazgatási szintt?l egészen az oktatáspolitikai döntéshozásig. Jelen cikkünkben a diákok adott társadalmi-politikai kérdéseket illet? attit?djeire vonatkozó eredményeket és a releváns fejlesztési javaslatokat ismertetjük.     

Protest Through Presence: Spatial Citizenship and Identity Formation in Contestations of Neoliberal Crises

We live in a contested, crisis-prone era, indicative of ongoing processes of neoliberalization. The most recent global financial and food crises have disproportionately impacted those already marginalized in society: people of colour and the working classes. The spatial expressions of this disproportionality are especially acute, evidenced by the uneven distribution of the basic necessities of food and home. Activists in the USA are responding with forms of spatial citizenship, namely exercising their right to peaceably assemble and reclaiming public spaces. During the creation of spaces of dissent, we observe the fluid formation of a collective spatialized identity among social movement actors, contingent on political identities and ideology. We use two cases based in Florida to highlight these processes. The first case is a local iteration of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Occupy Gainesville, which has occupied the city's most central public gathering place, the Bo Diddley Community Plaza. The second case involves Food Not Bombs in the city of Orlando where attempts were made to ban the group from distributing food in public parks to the homeless and working poor. First, these cases highlight the spatiotemporal relationships between unjust economic systems and the state surveillance and policing apparatus and those resisting such systems. Second, they reveal how collective identity influences and in turn is influenced by space. Our article furthers a processual, dynamic understanding of activist mobilizations to reduce the uneven burdens of neoliberalization and argues for greater attention to the spatialities of contentious politics.     

Correspondence

Cooperative learning has long been at the disposal of school teachers. However, it is often misunderstood by some teachers as just another form of collaborative group work. This article revisits cooperative learning, including a sampling of its popular variations, with practical approaches toward effectively integrating it into classroom instruction. Moreover, this article highlights the promise that cooperative learning holds for democratic education in the twenty-first century with special attention paid to its social implications.     

Historical Heritage in Contemporary Polish Law Relating to Foreigners

The Polish diaspora living around the world is best described as an inheritance of the turbulent history of Poland. For decades, citizens of Polish origin from various states have been trying to maintain ties with their kin and country. During communist times, citizens of Eastern European countries (including the Soviet republics) could not enjoy free contacts across borders. Poland's accession to the European Union and Schengen area has created new barriers for third country nationals willing to come and stay in Poland. Therefore, any facilitation or exemption from visa requirements is very attractive for them. Legal instruments relating to foreigners which have recently been adopted in Poland affect the situation of Polish minorities and the rights of their members. The author reveals the historical roots of the legal solutions and indicates the specificity of Polish immigration law. First, she considers the historical background of the links between immigration law and minority rights, particularly in the area of economy, culture and education. She comes to the conclusion that well-constructed immigration provisions may be useful in filling gaps in the protection of minorities and that the new ways of acquisition of citizenship may to some extent compensate old harms and injustice.