Apoliticità e apolidia tra localismo e transnazionalità

Anche sul piano giuridico e politico la posizione di questo gruppo di tecnomigranti risulta particolarmente interessante perché, proprio per le particolari condizioni di frontiera in cui si trovano ad operare, è rivelatrice di alcune linee di tendenza positive ma anche di potenziali rischi che stanno emergendo.

Vivendo e lavorando sempre a contatto con culture diverse, queste persone in genere non rimangono chiuse in una dimensione localistica e, anche se con un certo distacco, si informano sulle vicende politiche dei vari paesi che hanno un qualche riferimento con la loro realtà personale. Quasi mai votano nel paese di origine, del quale continuano a godere della cittadinanza, ma seguono con preoccupazione l’andamento delle decisioni politiche che potrebbero avere riflessi sul loro futuro (accantonamenti pensionistici, risparmi, assicurazioni, ecc.).

Pur sperimentando continuamente un certo straniamento rispetto alla società in cui vivono, cercano comunque il contatto con le varie realtà che incontrano, aperti alla prospettiva di nuovi orizzonti interculturali transnazionali, meno asfittici e più eticamente validi. Essendo nelle condizioni di sperimentare la porosità e attraversabilità dei confini e, soprattutto, la profonda comune umanità che ci lega al di là delle pur consistenti differenze culturali, riescono ad avere uno sguardo diverso e più eccentrico sulle caratteristiche e sui limiti delle culture nazionali meglio e prima dei soggetti stanziali.

A partire dalla loro esperienza di continua peregrinazione, spesso maturano una nuova forma di apolidia che, in contrasto con l’attrazione centripeta del localismo securitario8_{, li induce ad}

accettare la tensione innovativa verso la mondializzazione anche se, collateralmente, li disincentiva rispetto all’esercizio attivo della politica. La loro è una condizione che li porta a vivere questa diaspora transnazionale in modo spesso contraddittorio e conflittuale, da persone sempre in cammino, perennemente in crisi e “senza una casa” pur se con tante risorse. Perennemente costrette a riapprendere, comparare, ricostruire rimangono internamente scisse tra il desiderio di autoaffermazione personale, che il lavoro assicura loro pur se tra notevoli costi e fatiche, l’insicurezza per l’assenza di legami socio-familiari e di prospettive stabili, la nostalgia per il mondo perduto della comunità di origine, il disagio, legato al continuo sforzo di conoscenza e di adattamento alle tante diversità (comunicative, ideologiche, culturali, rituali, comportamentali, di stile, ecc.), la curiosità suscitata dai nuovi ambienti da esplorare ed il piacere eccitante della scoperta delle peculiarità inedite dei nuovi contesti .

Nel mondo del lavoro queste persone si trovano come in un osservatorio privilegiato ma allo stesso tempo rischioso. In esso hanno l’opportunità di crescere umanamente e professionalmente9_{, di prendere coscienza di sé e delle dinamiche esistenziali, relazionali e}

socio-culturali, di lavorare con e sulle differenze per sperimentarne, assieme alla problematicità, anche tutte le ricchezze, stando in prima linea nei processi produttivi ed innovativi. Analogamente, però, negli stessi contesti lavorativi è possibile apprendere atteggiamenti e comportamenti di tutt’altro segno (carrierismo, sfruttamento del potere connesso al ruolo, divertimento dispersivo, atteggiamenti arroganti e prevaricatori, insensibilità affettiva, instabilità sentimentale, disimpegno sociale e politico, ecc.) ed alienarsi progressivamente.

In particolare c’è il rischio che i lavoratori si accontentino di una realizzazione personale giocata

tutta e soltanto nella appartenenza al tessuto lavorativo (successo nella carriera aziendale) e rinuncino ad una appartenenza sociale e politica di più largo respiro (impegno nelle battaglie di

8 _{BAUMAN Z., Communitas.Uguali e diversi nella società liquida, Aliberti ed., Roma 2013.}

9 _{ROSSI B., L’organizzazione educativa. La formazione nei luoghi di lavoro, Carocci, Roma 2011; PORTERA A.,}

Introduzione, in GUIDETTI B. (2008), Educazione e Pedagogia interculturale in azienda, Franco Angeli, Milano 2009.

civiltà e di giustizia), più onerosa da perseguire, che necessita di maggiore consapevolezza, coscienza storico-critica ed impegno etico di apertura ai problemi di tutti. E’ il rischio di chi si riconosce in una “appartenenza senza partecipazione” perchè non è disposto a realizzare “ una partecipazione anche senza appartenenza”, non riuscendo a leggere la realtà in cui si muove alla luce anche dall’impegno sociale, etico e politico, segno di vera maturità umana e culturale. A questi rischi sono esposti, ormai, non soltanto questi tecnomigranti ma tutte le persone che, non essendo adeguatamente attrezzate sul piano culturale e spirituale, oltre che su quello tecnico operativo, non riescono a fare dell’esperienza accomunante dell’impegno lavorativo quotidiano l’occasione per crescere assieme agli altri, imparando a comunicare e dialogare con i diversi, ad arricchirsi nell’ascolto, ad affrontare con serenità e senza pregiudizi la babele culturale in cui ormai siamo chiamati a destreggiarci.

Ecco perché urge oggi offrire a tutti, nei percorsi formativi, strumenti che rendano non soltanto tecnologicamente competenti ma anche culturalmente, psicologicamente e spiritualmente più attrezzati per un lavoro ed una vita sociale molto più problematica ma, anche, più dinamica e ricca di prospettive e potenzialità esperienziali.

Soltanto persone emotivamente e culturalmente meno fragili, storicamente e politicamente più consapevoli e aperte al dialogo potranno sopportare l’onere di questo traghettamento verso nuovi modelli culturali e politici perché sapranno riconoscere e disinnescare le nuove tentazioni di colonialismo culturale, più o meno sotterranee, e riusciranno a mantenere sempre alta la tensione etica verso i valori di integrazione sociale, partecipazione democratica ed umanizzazione delle condizioni di vita di tutte le persone

.

BIBLIOGRAFIA

ALESSANDRINI G. (a cura di), Formare al management della diversità. Nuove competenze e apprendimenti nell’impresa, Guerini & associati, Roma 2010.

BAUMAN Z., Communitas. Unguali e diversi nella società liquida, Aliberti, Roma 2013.

BENHABIB S. (2004), I diritti degli altri. Stranieri, residenti, cittadini, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2006 BERTOLOTTI F., CANTARELLI P., MACRÌ D. M., TAGLIAVENTI M. R., Le conseguenze inattese

dei processi di identificazione organizzativa, in “Sviluppo & Organizzazione”, n. 201, 2004. GOLD M., VILLA D., Trading Fours. Il jazz e l'organizzazione che apprende, Art For Business

Edizioni, 2012

ONG A., Da rifugiati a cittadini. Pratiche di governo nella nuova America, Raffaello Cortina Ed. , Milano 2005 (2003)

PORTERA A., Introduzione, in GUIDETTI B. (2008), Educazione e Pedagogia interculturale in azienda, Franco Angeli, Milano 2009.

ROSSI B., L’organizzazione educativa. La formazione nei luoghi di lavoro, Carocci, Roma 2011. SIRNA C., MICHELIN SALOMON A., RUGGERI F., Nomadismo familiare e scelte educative di

fronte al cambiamento, in F. CRISTANTE, M. CUSINATO, F. MORINO (a cura di ), Dentro la complessità delle famiglie. Scelte familiari tra crisi e risorse, Giunti, 1999, pp.229-244.

SIRNA C., Famiglie ed educazione nella società dei processi migratori in “Pedagogia e vita” A. 2011, giugno.

TAJFEL H., (ed.), Social identity, intergroup relations, Cambridge university press, Cambridge 1982. VATZ LAAROUSSI M., BOLZMAN C., LALHOU M. (a cura di), Familles migrantes au gré des

Multiculturalism and Education for Citizenship in a Context of Neoliberalism Christine Sleeter

Schools globally are finding immigration, as well as already-existing racial and ethnic diversity, to pose challenges. In part, this is an academic challenge (i.e., how to help diverse students to become academically successful, given a dominant national language and culture). It is also a social challenge involving citizenship preparation for a multicultural democracy.

The complexity of the social challenge can be illustrated with a controversy near my home. As a part of the process of opening a new elementary school, the school board of a predominantly Mexican-American school district selected what has become a highly controversial name for the school. In the U.S., citizens of school districts select school names, which often honor heroes. In this case, the school board selected the name of a Mexican American who lived during the 1800s. From the Mexican American community’s perspective, he was a hero who protected Mexican land from white aggression and defended Mexican American culture, but was unjustly convicted of murder by an all-white jury. From the white community’s perspective, he was a violent bandit and an inappropriate role model for students in a community that is plagued by gang violence. The controversy surrounding this issue raises a host of questions about citizenship, perspective, race and racism, who has the right to name reality, cultural citizenship versus political citizenship (Wozniacka, 2013).

For teachers in societies that are becoming increasingly diverse, the question becomes how to prepare their students as citizens who can engage with complex issues in a way that reflects equity and justice. Democracy and diversity are messy concepts that cannot be packaged up neatly; conflicts in experiences, points of view, histories, and specific interests cannot be reduced to standardized formulas and narratives, nor can their resolutions be reduced to steps to follow. Most teachers need help learning to analyze and guide students through difficult issues of public life, and cannot be expected to simply figure out how to do so on their own. Based on an analysis of

citizenship education in the Netherlands, for example, Bron and Thijs (2011) noted a large gap between policy intentions and what teachers actually do. Further, based on a literature review of citizenship education in the U.S., Cotton (2001) noted that teachers are not only ill-prepared to teach it, but also to share power with students and to address controversial issues. In addition, citizenship curricula too often are poorly conceptualized, meaningless to students, shallow, textbook-bound, and disconnected from current local and global issues.

In what follows, I first consider what it means conceptually to connect multicultural education with citizenship education. Then I examine three central issues involved in planning multicultural citizenship curricula. Finally, I briefly illustrate what active multicultural citizenship education can look like for students at different age levels.

Multicultural Citizenship

Multicultural education and citizenship education can be powerful when connected (Banks, 1997), but often they are not. Goal statements for citizenship education tend to be lofty but vague, giving little specific guidance (Cotton, 2001). Cosmopolitan citizenship, a concept stressing common humanity across national borders and cultural differences, also tends also to be vague, offering teachers too little guidance for how to link local concerns and identities with humanity as a whole (Osler, 2012). Diversity studies usually stress learning about the other rather than engaging with or learning to work in solidarity with diverse others. The ascendance of neo-liberalism makes even less straight-forward what it means to connect multiculturalism with citizenship.

Liberalism upholds individual rights, freedoms and private ownership of property within the rule of law. Citizenship conceptualized through liberalism emphasizes the relationship between individuals as citizens of nation-states and the official law-making process, focusing on rights and responsibilities such as voting, with the assumption that everyone has roughly equal opportunity to participate. Neo-liberalism, born in the context of reduced and stagnating fortunes of the super-rich during the 1940s and 1950s, links the rule of law with the needs of capital, prioritizing the market over citizenship and democracy. The result is, as Macedo, Dendrinos, and Gounari (2003) put it, “the market itself becomes tautonymous to democracy” (p. 114): shopping is equated with voting, and the “only form of agency available is to consume” (p. 133). Neo-liberalism linked with neo- conservatism becomes especially repressive when members of the far-right attempt to thwart democracy through means such as voter suppression or equation of unregulated campaign spending with free speech.

Simply adding diversity onto liberal or neoliberal conceptions of citizenship usually means adding identification with culture and community to the individual – nation-state relationship, acknowledging diverse sub-cultural identifications and commitments, as well as (perhaps) current impacts of past histories of exclusion, and claims to group rights that complement individual rights and national unity (Kymlicka, 1995). Such conceptions attempt to connect unity with diversity, and uphold civic equality among diverse individuals as a national value. Cultural differences are to be

tolerated respectfully, but people are to be treated the same. By teaching young people to

acknowledge culturally diverse groups and to handle disagreement as well as the right to disagree, one assumes that societies can work toward civic equality of their citizens.

Liberal and neo-liberal conceptions of multicultural citizenship, however, are limited. First, individualistic conceptions of citizenship overemphasize the primacy of national identity and the nation-state, marginalizing those who have faced oppression historically. Dominant groups can usually equate national citizenship with their own racial or ethnic identity, an equation that is much less straightforward for marginalized groups and immigrants. For example, Ladson-Billings (2004) points out that while U.S. American identity is commonly equated with being white, many people of color, who have experienced long histories of oppression by whites, see little basis for solidarity with them, and therefore prioritize their own ethnic identity over a national identity. In addition, many people of color make citizenship commitments on the basis of common concerns people of color share globally, placing ethnic and international commitments above national commitments. Similarly, writing with reference to Italy, Love and Varghese (2012) draw attention to challenges of Black Italians, as well as children of immigrants, to be seen and treated as “real” Italian citizens. Further, the discourse of individual rights and responsibilities has paved the way for emphasizing individual responsibility for one’s own welfare and one’s ability to claim citizenship, thus divesting the nation-state and corporate leaders from concern for people’s wellbeing (Schinkel & Van Houdt, 2010).

Second, increasing transnational migrations due to globalization are resulting in more and more people who are legally, or at least functionally, transnational citizens, a status that global internet access facilitates. In the U.S., roughly eleven million undocumented immigrants who are citizens of another country (mainly Mexico) live and work due largely to globalization processes that have restructured rural economies elsewhere. Debates about citizenship and the law do not capture why people immigrate without papers and the realities they find themselves in as a result. Some authors and activists use the term “cultural citizenship” to refer to ways in which excluded or undocumented communities question, disrupt, and remap what it means to participate as a citizen (Benmayor, 2002). As Castles (2004) points out, “The idea of the citizen who spent most of his or her life in one country and shared a common national identity is losing ground” (p. 18). Not only are people relocating across borders on a massive scale, but transnational corporations, global organizations, international law, and regional configurations such as “European citizenship” are reducing national sovereignty (Hansen, 2000).

A third limitation of liberal and neo-liberal conceptions of multicultural citizenship is their reliance on fixed racial/ethnic and gender categories, which become taken for granted as natural, and their tendency to essentialize the culture that is connected with categories. Liberalism upholds protections against discrimination and provision of some level of common welfare, making use of and inscribing into law categories of people. For example, in the U.S., I am classified as white, which ascribes characteristics to me that supposedly differentiate me from people classified as Asian or African American. However, while categories themselves have been socially constructed, and are continually reconstructed in the context of struggle over material conditions, their material basis is lost when viewed as natural. Reddy (1999), for example, argued that the meaning of the South African racial category "Coloured" depends on who has the power to name. Although people of European descent tied racial categories to biology, those classified as "Coloured" are, by

definition, not 100% some other category. But because over time racial categories structured access to resources, the category of Coloured acquired a material basis – it became “real.” Bur when challenging huge economic disparities that colonialism created, the category "Coloured" tends to fracture strategic identities people use politically: "black," "African," or "working class”.

Conceptions of multicultural citizenship must address complex “politics of culture and identity and the differential sources of solidarity across and within specific forms of identity” that people take up when struggling for justice (Torres, 1998, p. 423).

In contexts of nation-building, when culture is essentialized and tied with assumed biological categories, it excludes as well as includes who can be regarded as a citizen. Moon (2010), for example, points out that the one-blood and one-culture myth in Korea, constructed historically as a tool for nation-building, undermines the cultural and citizenship rights of transnational migrants, perhaps most poignantly in the case of international marriages in which non-Korean born wives struggle to be seen and treated as Korean citizens. Hansen (2000) makes a similar argument in his analysis of calls for European citizenship, which he notes is bolstered by an essentialized version of European culture, history, and civilization that excludes those of non- European ancestry, and those who are not Christian.

A fourth limitation of liberal and neo-liberal conceptions of multicultural citizenship is their failure to analyze how power is actually used, thereby allowing attention to formal participation structures and processes to substitute for active democratic processes, and attention to the needs of capital to replace development of democracy. Torres (1998) points out that social movements build on knowledge and experiences of ordinary people, constituting them rather than elected

representatives as problem-solvers. According to Hyslop-Margison and Sears (2006), following the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s in Europe, economic needs eclipsed democratic citizenship as appropriate objective for schooling, and “the role of citizen within this milieu became one of political conformity rather than political engagement since the neo-liberal social structure was dictated almost entirely by market logic” (p. 2). The interests of the nation were increasingly equated with interests of the corporate class, thus weakening democracy. For subordinate groups, however, the task is one of reclaiming power and participation through collectivist grassroots activism, rather than one of becoming included in systems run by the dominant group. Based on an analysis of the history of racial power in the U.S. and Brazil respectively, Ladson-Billings (2004) and Gonçalves e Silva (2004) show how formal participation structures were created in the context of exclusion and conquest, which dominant groups continue to use to further their own advantage. Conceptions of multicultural citizenship need to embrace collective action aimed at defending rights and claiming power using organic grassroots participation processes. Conceptions of multicultural citizenship must not only directly interrogate capitalism and its role in structuring inequality, but also consider collective democratic participation beyond individual participation in formal structures.

Central Issues in Planning Multicultural Citizenship Education Pedagogy

Multicultural citizenship education view as a political project of social justice that embraces a diverse public, and that links local with global struggles for equity and human rights, offers a potential counter-narrative to neoliberal education, and a rich framework for considering

citizenship. Planning multicultural citizenship education, however, requires grappling with three central issues.

First, what is the relationship between citizenship and human rights? An international consensus panel in the U.S. recommended that the teaching of human rights should underpin citizenship education in multicultural nation-states (Banks, et al., 2005). Citizenship education and human rights education, however, are not the same thing. Hung (2012) explains that, to be a citizen and have rights of a citizen, one must be a member of political community. But community

residents– who may be there legally or illegally -- are not necessarily citizens. Human rights (usually ground in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights) are universal and do not depend on citizenship status, but are nonetheless routinely violated among marginalized peoples. Bajaj (2001) distinguishes among three models of human rights education for citizenship

that derive from different situations people experience in a diverse societies and points in time. Human Rights Education for global citizenship emphasizes national and international frameworks for rights, and the individual in relationship to the nation-state and global political order,

deemphasizing affiliation commitments based on ethnicity, transnationalism, or other community configurations. Human rights education for coexistence emphasizes developing unity alongside diversity in culturally plural nation-states, building mutual understanding through contact, and respecting collective rights; it de-emphasizes concerns of the most marginalized communities, as