Citizenship, identity and belonging

Abstract

Chapter 2 is split into three main parts. The first part discusses an approach to citizenship that stresses affect, and then moves on to explore some of the vast literature around citizenship and nationalism, focusing on what Conversi refers to as the ‘deliberate cultivation of common [national] allegiances’ (2014 p.28) and the role of universal democratic principles in so doing. I draw attention to the arguments of several commentators that asserting a national identity through commitment to apparently universal liberal democratic principles often obscures the existence of narrower cultural and ethnic understandings of belonging. Second, Chapter 2 considers the role of citizenship education in promoting national and global belonging, and identifies some of the recent developments in the subject. Third, it discusses these recent developments in England and elsewhere, including the entanglement with counter-extremist policies.