Special Issue: “Islam and the End of European Multiculturalism”

POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION
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Special Issue: “Islam and the End of European Multiculturalism”

Multiculturalism has been the dominant paradigm for the West since the
1960s influencing a range of policies from international development,
immigration to democracy promotion. Over the decade or so since 9/11
and against the background of the Iraq War, terrorist attacks in New
York, Washington, Madrid and London, and a number of other critical
incidents, Europe has officially turned away from the doctrine of
state multiculturalism. In 2010 Angela Merkel declared that
multiculturalism in Germany had “failed utterly” and indicated that it
was an illusion to think that German and “gastarbeiters” or guest
workers could live happily together. Merkel’s stance was repeated by
Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011 who commented that "We have been too concerned
about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about
the identity of the country that was receiving him." Merkel’s and
Sarkozy’s comments were quickly supported by former prime ministers
for Australia and Spain John Howard and Jose Maria Aznar. On 5th
February 2011, the British Prime Minister David Cameron[1] echoed the
criticisms of state multiculturalism arguing “Under the doctrine of
state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live
separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have
failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to
belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving
in ways that run counter to our values”. Cameron’s talk was aimed at
Islamic extremism and the process of radicalization while being
careful not to lump all Muslims together. He too focused on the need
for identity with core liberal values of host societies: “we need a
lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more
active, muscular liberalism”. Partly as a response, in Britain and
elsewhere in Europe, there emerged a call for “integration” and for a
“community cohesion agenda” comprised of tougher immigration and
deportment laws, citizenship tests, compulsory citizenship education,
and new employment policies giving preference to British workers. The
combined impact of the Iraq war, the Abu-Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay
abuses and the “war on terror” have been highly damaging to Muslim
minorities leading to claims of social exclusion, discrimination and
abrogation of identity rights. At the same time political Islam is in
a state of radical transformation with the events of the Arab Spring
and a spate of revolutionary protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen
that have forced traditional rulers from power with other protests
throughout the Arab world. This special issue investigates the end of
European multiculturalism against this contemporary political
backdrop.

Please send expressions of interest in the form of a title and
abstract to Michael A. Peters mpeters@waikato.ac.nz by the end of
February 2013.