Abstract
At the heart of Daniel Faas’s Negotiating Political Identities: Multiethnic Schools and Youth in Europe lie four case studies at four secondary schools – two in London (UK) and two in Stuttgart (Germany). In each city, one of the two schools offers ‘lower level secondary education’, located in a predominantly ‘working class neighbourhood’, with a student population of a mostly ‘working class background’. In contrast, the respective other school offers ‘higher level secondary education’, is located in a predominantly ‘middle class neighbourhood’, with a student population of a mostly ‘middle class background’. Importantly, what all the four schools have in common is a considerable ethnic minority student population of Turkish descent (i.e. first and [mainly] second generation immigrants).
At each of the four schools, Faas conducted questionnaire studies, focus groups, and individual interviews with students of Turkish descent and German ethnic majority students (15-year-olds) to learn about their attitudes and perceptions concerning ethnic, local, regional, national, and supranational (i.e. Europe) forms of belonging; political identities (i.e. citizenship and democratic values); and cultural diversity – mainly in terms of their personal experiences at school. In addition to these ‘student-centred’ enquiries, the author carried out interviews with teachers, programme directors, and school managers on roughly similar topics.
Faas introduces the respective case studies through insightful discussions of regional, national, and European politics and policy agendas – with a particular emphasis on European and multicultural dimensions in educational systems, programmes, and initiatives. These cross-national comparisons illustrate various between-country variations, notably Germany’s long-standing support for European integration processes (not least in the field of formal education) and England’s historically much more hesitant engagement with (the institutionalized) Europe. The reader also learns about comparatively less widely researched differences between England’s and Germany’s approaches to intercultural and multicultural education and how these may impact on students’ and teachers’ attitudes, experiences, and perceptions.
To further contextualize and conceptually anchor the book’s more empirical parts, Faas draws various links to eminent scholarly debates on the topics of (inclusive) citizenship; ethnic, local, regional, and (supra) national identities; European integration; migration; multiculturalism and interculturalism (i.e. in the field of formal education); and social cohesion (i.e. in Europe and the USA). In doing so, he explicitly locates his own position-takings within ‘post-structuralist’ theories and propositions, particularly in relation to notions of ‘identity’.
Based on this multi-layered analytical framework, Faas competently assembles a series of excerpts from interview and focus group transcriptions. The respective data serve well to illustrate different forms of inter-ethnic tolerance and prejudice in students’ and educators’ attitudes, experiences, and perceptions. To some extent, the respective empirical data analyses suggest that ‘both the politics of multiculturalism and the politics of Europe can become an integrative and cohesive device if thought of in multiethnic ways’ (p. 224).
Reflecting on his empirical findings, Faas appears very much aware of various explanatory alternatives, but ultimately sees a relatively straightforward link between a school’s educational ethos and students’ political and ethnic identities. The co-occurrence of specific educational (i.e. school level) policies and students’ political and ethnic identities, however, may indeed – and to a greater extent than the author seems willing to concede – depend on factors other than a school’s specific educational ethos: notably the respective student’s social class background and, associated with this, his or her access to economic, social, and (inter) cultural capital; adequate housing conditions; an empowering local neighbourhood; and higher level institutions of secondary education.
At least two important interrelated issues remain underexplored. On the one hand, the conceptual distinction into political and ethnic identities lacks clarity at the theoretical level and systematic operationalisation at the level of empirical analysis. On the other hand, the respective assumptions, theses, and conclusions (e.g. the confidently proclaimed ‘power of a post-structuralist framework for the study of young people’s identities in schools’; p. 9) – whilst no doubt thoughtful and informative in their own right – considered as a whole, do not always contribute to a coherent line of argument, so that, in places, the author’s attempts towards theoretical generalisation from anecdotal evidence seem premature.
In spite of these limitations, Negotiating Political Identities: Multiethnic Schools and Youth in Europe makes important contributions to various literatures. It offers an array of interesting empirical observations, complemented by an impressive contextual knowledge (i.e. in relation to educational politics and policies), and enriched by various challenging conceptual theses. Readers of different academic and non-academic backgrounds will find this book to be an inspiring resource.