Conference Agenda

In today's world, pervasive alienation and detachment from democratic processes underscore the urgency of addressing political challenges, particularly the rise of populist rhetoric (Ruitenberg, 2009; Tryggvason, 2018). The potential decline in civic engagement and trust in democracy among students is linked to their limited exposure to lived democracy, often absent in decision-making processes at school; for instance, over 70% of Lithuanian students don’t believe that their voice can make a difference in decision-making (NVO Švietimo tinklas, 2017). This disillusionment often leads students to relinquish decision-making to authorities and detachment from institutions.

Despite the endorsement of children's participation by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, translating this ideal into practice poses challenges. Despite the school's routine featuring non-formal civic education situations related to conflicts, student voices, and school governance, negative attitudes persist (Lo, 2017). Mere adoption of a democratic formal system is insufficient; authentic democratic institutions flourish when rooted in a democratic culture with values, attitudes, and practices (Council of Europe, 2016). Consistently upholding these values within the school community is vital for fortifying democracy, embracing pluralism, and transcending mere imitation (Thornberg; 2009). This significantly shapes how students develop democratic competence, particularly as the younger generation, disillusioned with traditional political processes, seeks alternative ways to engage in and reshape democracy (Thomas & Percy-Smith, 2023).

Their evolving approach to school participation may align with agonistic democracy, as proposed by Chantal Mouffe. Arising as a reaction to global polarization and in contrast to deliberative democracy, agonistic democracy sees conflict not as a hazard but as a driving force for democracy (Mouffe, 2000, 2013). Shifting attitudes toward conflict and viewing them as opportunities for educating democratic citizenship in schools could bring transformative changes in student participation and learning processes (Lo, 2017; Ruitenberg, 2009). Understanding how students learn about democracy and develop attitudes toward democratic values in today's world requires exploring pupil participation from an agonistic perspective, with an emphasis on the positive role of conflict to foster a dynamic and participatory school environment.

Within the historical context of Lithuania, where democratic citizenship education emerged three decades ago following the restoration of independence, marking a departure from almost half a century of totalitarian rule, there exists a noticeable gap in the study of student participation in daily school life. Consequently, this research aims to address this gap by evaluating students' current participation in daily school life and, through participatory action research, identifying and exploring ways to instigate change, potentially by implementing approaches rooted in agonistic democracy.

Research questions:

• How do students express their participation in daily school life, and in what contexts and settings does this manifestation occur? What types of students actively engage in these participatory experiences?
• How do various stakeholders perceive agonistic participation in relation to fostering democratic education? What insights do students gain from this participation, and how do they reflect on their learning experiences?
• How do teachers either enhance or impede the seamless integration of agonistic perspectives into students' democratic learning experiences, and what measures could be implemented to improve this integration?

The presented study is based on the observation of the implementation of an intercultural project offered in secondary schools in Germany. Intercultural competence has been deemed as one of the possibilities to tackle the forces that broaden the gap between migrated and established members of society in a time of political and societal uncertainty all over Europe.The primary argument of the paper is however, that the intercultural education currently offered in schools is not an exercise in reducing individual stereotypes in order to strengthen societal unity; rather, it involves the active engagement with, utilization of, and reflection on social situations from the perspective of the societal diversity discourse which carries the danger of strengthening mechanisms of exclusion by reproducing not only differentiating categories but the idea of dividing difference which is embedded in a social imaginary no longer attuned to societal reality (Schmidt/Wächter 2023). Though the study is working with a program designed for a national context, conclusions for the improvement of intercultural education in a European context will be drawn.

The research was triggered when it became clear that teachers and instructors of the program reinterpreted situations of conflict brought up by students during discussions by applying the predominant categories of differentiation such as “migrational background” or “nationality” even when these categories were not initially invoked by the participants. This divide between the participants' narrated experiences and the interpretations by instructors and teachers suggests that the courses can be viewed as reinforcing the existing discourse and socializing students into it.

The central argument of this paper is that intercultural education in schools, at times, falls short of its stated objectives. Instead of achieving a deeper understanding as theorized by Bredendiek (2015) and Deardoff (2009), it often serves as an initiation of learners into the discoursive system that perpetuates societal differentiation. More specifically, the program engages in the addressing and discussion of categories commonly employed in public discourse to interpret social problems, thus training participants to argue along those lines. Consequently, participants become socialized into the discourse and the associated narratives, as well as the societal roles imposed upon them through the lense of social identities.

Throughout the program, participants attended three distinct sessions, wherein group dynamic exercises and discussions aimed to enhance understanding and acceptance among students of diverse backgrounds and identities. Despite the program's claim to be grounded in current research on intersectionality and the constructed nature of societal categories, it adhered to traditional methods and beliefs of intercultural education which are widely criticized by Mecheril/Rangger (2022) and Gogolin/Krüger-Potratz (2020). They characterize current intercultural education as it is performed in schools as accepting a seemingly ontological differentiation between "us and them," focusing solely on acceptance rather than understanding or deconstruction of differences. Despite its claimed departure from problematic traditions and Eurocentrism, the program seemingly faces the same pitfalls as similar predecessors. The observations reveal that participants, enrolled due to conflicts within the group as perceived by the teachers, seldom attributed the conflicts to the categories discussed by the program. Instead, it was the explicit discussion of categories such as nationality or culture that incorporated them into the participants' argumentative patterns. Often, it was the teachers or instructors who actively reinterpreted participants' discussions through the lense of discursive categories such as "culture" or "belonging."

In her book 'Belonging: a culture of space', bel hooks writes 'living away from my native place I become more consciously Kentuckian than I was when I lived at home' (hooks 2009/2019, p. 13). This quote shows the significance of places in relation to one's own feelings of belonging. This is exactly where my doctoral project comes in, in which I ask how students with a refugee background experience everyday life in secondary schools in Berlin (Germany). Based on a relational understanding of space, I differentiate between place and space (Löw 2001/2019).

The focus on space in this case becomes interesting when we understand space as a product of physical, mental and social elements where the physical cannot be seen in isolation from the social and relational (Lefebvre). Space therefore can be described as a combination of what is physically present and what is imagined (Soja). The relation between school and out-of-school spaces will be explored, as will the self-positioning of the students within everyday life at school - beyond the classroom. In this context, moments of agency and well-being that arise in the students' everyday life are of particular research interest.

Focusing on a young refugees' perspective can be understood as a form of 'strategic essentialism' (Spivak 1981), that serves to contribute to a systematic thematization of migration, which is still a young phenomenon in the academic landscape. At the same time it is intended to counteract the dominant discourse in which the connection between education and migration is discussed primarily in the context of successful integration (into the existing system) (Mecheril 2013).

In this paper I want to put a special focus on methodological topics around participatory and creative research with students with a refugee background in schools: Which personas do play a key role?, In which way is the research influenced by the structures of the school itself?, and one of the most important questions, how can the participants be recruited in a participatory manner?