Bounded Inclusion: Race, Migration and the Making of the European Educational Space

Abstract

The creation of “European educational space” is one of the objectives of the European Union’s (EU) cultural policy. This paper examines an overlooked contradiction within the European educational space discourse, namely the tension between its stated goals of creating a new European identity based on common cultural heritage and its reliance on intercultural education’s ideas of trans‐ethnic identities to address the challenges of immigrants’ integration. Relying on the insights of critical race theory, the paper argues that the key assumptions behind the European educational space and intercultural education, far from being contradictory, are interconnected insofar as intercultural pedagogy informs the tropes of “migrants,” “integration,” and “multiculturalism” that are at the core of the European dimension of education’s discourse. The paper argues that these tropes are part of an evolving discourse about immigrant education that allows the EU to maintain a facade of multicultural benevolence while perpetuating a differential inclusion of EU and non‐EU migrants in Europe. To support these claims, the paper critically examines the evolution of the discourse surrounding migration and integration in the EU, focusing on the main policy initiatives on immigrant youth education elaborated from the 1970s onwards.