What Kind of Citizenship for European Higher Education? Beyond the Competent Active Citizen

How might European higher education contribute to the promotion and development of European citizenship? In this article, the author addresses this question through a critical discussion of the notions of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’, which play a central role in current policy and research on the role of education in the development of European citizenship. The author argues that there is a tendency within the idea of ‘active citizenship’ to depoliticise the very idea of citizenship because it is based upon a consensus notion of democracy and a functionalist understanding of citizenship and the formation of citizens. The author also argues that the idea of civic competence reduces civic learning and political education to a form of socialisation which undermines rather than supports political agency. For these reasons, the author argues that European higher education should not aim to become a socialising agent for the production of the competent active citizen but should seek to support modes of political action and civic learning that embody a commitment to a more critical and more political form of European citizenship than what is envisaged in the ideas of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’. Introduction: higher education and European citizenship Over the past decades, the question of citizenship has emerged as a major theme on the agenda of politicians, policy makers and civic organisations in many countries around the world. In new and emerging democracies, the focus has been on the promotion of a democratic culture and the formation of democratic dispositions and allegiances. In established democracies, the focus has been on the revitalisation of citizenship, often fuelled by concerns about decreasing levels of civic participation and political involvement, and by wider concerns about social cohesion and inclusion (see Biesta & Lawy, 2006; Lawy & Biesta, 2006). In both ‘old’ and ‘new’ democracies, the question of citizenship is particularly important for the legitimacy of democratic governance as this is considered to depend crucially on the extent to which democratic structures and practices are supported and ‘owned’ by citizens. Whereas the discourse on citizenship initially focused on citizens’ rights – see particularly the seminal work of T.H. Marshall (1950) – the emphasis has shifted more recently towards questions about corresponding duties and responsibilities and issues concerning active participation. The question of democratic citizenship is also a central concern for the European Union. Although the notion of European citizenship was already introduced in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, there have been ongoing discussions about the shape and form of European citizenship. At stake in these discussions are normative questions about what European citizenship should look like and empirical questions about the kinds of citizenship that are actually emerging within and across the member states of the European Union. A key question in this regard is whether the European Union is best understood as a problem-solving entity based on economic citizenship, a rights-based What Kind of Citizenship for European Higher Education? 147 post-national union based on political citizenship, a value-based community premised on social and cultural citizenship, or as a particular combination of these dimensions. A specific problem for the development and enhancement of European citizenship lies in the fact that citizenship is commonly experienced at a national level. This is not only because the nation state is the original guarantor of citizenship rights. It is also because there are more opportunities for citizens to identify with and participate in democratic processes and practices at local, regional and, to a certain extent, national level than there are in relation to something as remote and abstract as the European Union. This partly explains why European citizenship has predominantly developed along economic lines, since for many inhabitants of the European Union the impact of the Union – both positively and negatively – is most strongly experienced in the economic domain, for example, in relation to employment, economic legislation, the single currency and regional development.[1] Compared to the economic dimension, the sociocultural and political dimensions, which have to do with the extent to which inhabitants of the member states see themselves as European citizens and identify with and actively support the European Union as a unit of democratic governance, are far less developed.[2] The most prominent policy development in relation to the sociocultural and political dimensions lies in the promotion of what is known as ‘active citizenship’ (see Benn, 2000; Wildermeersch et al, 2005). Within official European policy, the idea of ‘active citizenship’ first emerged in the context of the Lisbon European Council in March 2000. Here, the strategic goal was set for the European Community to become ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (Lisbon European Council, 2000). In the communication Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality, the European Commission promoted three major pillars, one of which was ‘learning for active citizenship’ (see Commission of the European Communities, 2001). In the Detailed Work Programme on the Follow-up of the Objectives of Education and Training Systems in Europe (Education Council, 2002), the European Council formulated 13 objectives related to the Lisbon programme. Objective 2.3 was ‘supporting active citizenship, equal opportunities and social cohesion’ (see de Weerd et al, 2005, p. 1). In the wake of this, much effort has been invested in developing indicators and instruments for measuring active citizenship (see Hoskins et al, 2006, 2008; Holford, 2008), thus making the idea of active citizenship a central plank in the European Union’s approach to the development of citizenship. In this article, I wish to explore the question of European citizenship from the perspective of European higher education.[3] While compulsory education has largely remained tied to national priorities (albeit with increasing efforts to include ‘a European dimension’ in its curricula), higher education is rapidly evolving into a sector that transcends national borders and agendas. The ‘Europeanisation’ of higher education is partly the result of long-standing exchange programmes such as the Erasmus programme, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2007 (see also the contribution of Papatsiba in this issue). The main impetus for the transformation of European higher education, however, has come from a series of policy initiatives aimed at the creation of a European Higher Education Area (Bologna Declaration, 1999), a European Research Area (Commission of the European Communities, 2000), and a European Area of Lifelong Learning (Commission of the European Communities, 2001). The Lisbon strategy has been a major driver behind these initiatives. Although the economic imperative is central in this strategy (see Biesta, 2006) – and became even more central in the 2005 relaunch of the Lisbon strategy with its explicit focus on ‘growth and jobs’ [4] – policy makers are aware of the wider potential of higher education in relation to questions of social cohesion and European citizenship (see Commission of the European Communities, 2003, 2005, 2006; London Communiqué, 2007; see also Zgaga, 2007, pp. 99-111). This potential has also been emphasised by representatives from European higher education institutions, who have stressed that their role encompasses more than only the creation of the next generation of workers for the knowledge economy, and that it includes a responsibility for cultural, social and civic development at a national and European level (see European University Association, 2002, 2003, 2005; see also Simons et al, 2007). The question this raises is what kind of citizenship might be promoted in and through European higher education and also what kind of processes – educational and otherwise – might contribute to this. What, in other words, is the particular potential of European higher education for the development of European citizenship? To ask the question in this way suggests a rather