Conference Agenda

In Slovenia, increasing religious and cultural diversity, driven by global migration, is challenging traditional educational frameworks. While the majority of Slovenians identify as Catholic, primary schools are encountering a growing number of pupils from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. This demographic change raises important questions about the role of religion in education, the promotion of mutual respect, and the adaptation of school policies to meet the needs of a plural society.

This study seeks to answer the following research questions: How do selected Slovenian primary schools address religious and cultural diversity in practice? What challenges do school staff face in promoting neutrality and pluralism in increasingly diverse classrooms? Addressing these questions contributes to understanding the complex interplay between constitutional principles, educational policies, and classroom practices.

The paper examines the constitutional principle of the separation of religious communities and the state in Slovenia, noting that religion is not part of the compulsory curriculum in public primary schools, yet it appears in the hidden curriculum through subjects such as history, literature, and civic education. Although the Slovenian system is formally neutral, school-level practices reveal diverse approaches to integrating minority pupils and managing cultural and religious diversity. From a sociology of education perspective, the study situates Slovenian schools within broader European debates on modernity, secularization, and the coexistence of scientific and religious rationalities. Drawing on Habermas (2006), the post-secular society and the institutional translation proviso highlight the need to mediate between religious expression and secular public reasoning, ensuring that all citizens can participate in public life without privileging particular religious views. Weber’s (1987) distinction between scientific and religious rationalities underscores the tension between empirical knowledge and faith-based belief systems, which modern schools must navigate in practice.

A pilot study with primary school counsellors from various Slovenian regions illustrates that selected schools respond differently to religious and cultural diversity, depending on local challenges, staff experience, school leadership, and family-school cooperation. The study identifies varying interpretations of how schools should promote neutrality and plurality beyond the formal curriculum and highlights common challenges, including religious symbols, dietary requirements, holidays, and cultural norms such as gender roles.

Schools face the dual challenge of upholding secular, non-indoctrinating education while respecting students’ religious identities. Practical dilemmas include requests for religious accommodations in school activities, dress codes, or school trips, requiring careful balancing of family authority, individual rights, and educational policies. Misinterpretations of secularism can lead to “neutralization” of diversity, limiting dialogue, critical thinking, and opportunities for immigrant pupils who already face structural disadvantages. By fostering interreligious and intercultural dialogue, schools can become safe spaces for mutual respect and integration. Education that acknowledges and respects religious and cultural differences enables students to develop critical thinking skills, navigate conflicting values, and engage in constructive debates. Schools, in this sense, act as laboratories for democracy, promoting inclusion, social cohesion, and the ethical development of students within a plural society.

Overall, the study emphasizes the importance of reconciling constitutional principles of neutrality and pluralism with the lived realities of increasingly diverse classrooms. Effective multicultural education requires both policy frameworks and practical strategies to ensure that all students can participate fully, safely, and respectfully in school life. The findings underscore the ongoing challenge of balancing religious freedom, family rights, and secular education in a way that supports equity, inclusion, and social cohesion, offering insights relevant not only to Slovenia but to other European contexts experiencing similar demographic shifts.

In this presentation, we trace how notions of child / children / childhood - both in the symbolic and real sense - are being mobilised in far right rhetoric to promote nationalistic agendas in four European countries, namely Finland, France, Hungary, and Sweden

However, the rationale for selecting these cases is not to conduct a comparison. By analysing these rhetorics side by side, we aim to highlight the different ways far right political parties use notions of child/hood in their political visions to shore up support for their cultural and political ideologies and agendas. We selected parties based on them being represented in national parliaments and therefore carry potential influence on ongoing parliamentary discussions. In order to explore these discourses, we use far right parties’ political mandates written in their party programs and / or speeches or presented in public and parliamentary debates and pay special attention where notions of child/hood are mobilized. In other words, we are not comparing time periods nor particular policies, we compare ways in which ‘the child’ as a figure is being capitalised on by far right politics. We use Erica Burman’s analytical lens: ‘child as method’, ​​to highlight how affects and emotions are linked to the parties’ wider cultural–political projects. ‘Child as method’ is helpful as it identifies connections between figurations of the child and affective and political economies of childhood pointing to broader cultural changes in societies.

Our understanding ofn affect dominantly follows Sarah Ahmed (2004/2014), who approaches affects as constantly moving mobilising forces, which are socially, and historically produced. As mobilising forces, affects play a crucial role in formations of political communities and identities (Zembylas 2021). Antonsich and Skey (2020) have paid attention to the everyday affective side of the nation, understanding nation as ‘community of feelings’, meaning communitiesy that areis moved by national affects. By affective nationalism, they refer to the emergence of feelings and emotions as they unfold through practices, objects and materially heterogeneous assemblages entangled with nation (Antonisch and Skey 2020, 580). Affective practice is a moment in which complex flows—across bodies, subjectivities, relationships, histories, and contexts—intertwine to produce a distinct affective episode, atmosphere, or moment with its own potential classifications (Wetherell, 2015). These practices vary in scale: they may animate an individual, a family, or a small group, or be diffused more broadly through communal celebrations or collective moods.

For instance, a politician might draw on patriotic feelings or cultivate an affective atmosphere to motivate a public toward certain behaviours. Affective attunement within these ordinary flows is shaped by social and cultural processes that orient interactions. Rise of the far -right politics has received a remarkable scholarly interest. However, childhood has been a relatively rarely discussed topic and focus has been more on policies and everyday practices in relation to directed to children (e.g Zembylas 2021). Our aim is to analyse how child/hood is used for emotional and affective mobilizing purposes still needing urgent research attention.

Education plays an important role in the process of identity building. In unstable and turbulent times, it’s crucial to examine the national narratives embedded in educational materials and to analyze how governments employ these materials to legitimize their actions, maintain national cohesion, and advance particular conceptions of citizenship. In this respect, the Russian context represents an interesting case study, as the state-led political transformations of recent decades has impacted educational space in general and textbooks used in schools in particular.

Given that foreign language education is not a neutral practice, but one formed by “power relations” and loaded ideologically (Moss et al., 2015, p. 69), English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks might serve as “a nesting-ground for ideological systems that few dare to question” (Smith, 2021, p. 89). The paper investigates the manifestation of nationalism within EFL textbooks used in Russian secondary schools. The research critically examines the evolving relationship between foreign language teaching materials and the nationalist currents embedded in Russia’s political and patriotic discourse. By exploring how EFL textbooks contribute to the students’ national identity formation, it considers how these patterns reflect broader trends within Russian education policy and contemporary constructions of national identity.

Objective: to identify the ideologies embedded within EFL materials and examine how power relations and ideologies manifesting in their multimodal discourse impact language learning and contribute to the formation of students’ national identity.

The research question: How are notions of “Russianness” and of the imagined “Other” discursively produced within Russian EFL textbooks, and what do these representational strategies reveal about the contemporary state-driven narratives of Russian national identity?

I argue that nationalism in Russia is reproduced through educational spaces not conventionally associated with nation-building, including English language classrooms. To investigate this, the study undertakes a critical analysis of Russian EFL textbooks, tracing discursive shifts in the representation of such binary categories as “us/them” and “own/foreign.” It also examines the tools utilized by textbook authors to foster students’ national consciousness, reinforce their sense of belonging to the Russian nation, and shape their perceptions of Russia’s position in the world.

I analyze how Russia and its imagined “others” are constructed, examining the ways they are portrayed in educational texts, assignments, and images. I discuss the underlying value paradigm and elaborate on the rhetorical and visual tools used to shape students’ national identity, as well as the main features of this constructed identity. I also examine possible omissions in the history/ culture narratives, as these “silences” are profoundly meaningful, since what is not present says a lot about what a society prioritizes or neglects (Norton & Pavlenko, 2019, p. 710). The current research might help to understand the kind of identity “prescribed” to Russian students in the 2020s. Given the current geopolitical climate (tensions with the West, evolving partnerships with Asian countries), future studies could benefit from comparing these findings with analyses of EFL textbooks projected for use in Russian schools in the 2030s. 

The theoretical framework underpinning this research combines Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities”, which conceptualizes nations as socially constructed through shared narratives, with Billig’s theory of “banal nationalism”, emphasizing the everyday reproduction of national identity through routine practices. Additionally, the study engages with Critical Discourse analysis and Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to interrogate how language mediates ideological positions within educational texts. This multi-layered approach highlights how English language teaching functions as a site for the subtle reinforcement of national identity and patriotic values.

Zuquete (2017) closes his foundational paper on the nexus of politics and religion and the surge of religious populism by calling for an approach sensitive to the ‘repeat encounter, with many intersections, between the two fields, instead of a clash’. While religious populism as a political strategy has been attracting vast scholarly attention (DeHanas&Shterin, 2018; XXX), how the religious field transforms in this encounter and how organized religion has engaged with conservative populist politics have remained largely neglected (Cremer, 2021). As part of the broader trend of outsourcing service delivery and welfare provision, faith-based organizations (FBOs) have become formative actors of neoliberal governmentality since the millennium. In societies governed by religious populists, the increased service delivery involvement of FBOs is a form of Christian conservative identity politics. The Hungarian far-right government has generously subsidized the educational involvement of politically loyal religious organizations. Applying a Bourdieusian analytic lens, I explore how the Hungarian religious field transformed under the religious populist strategy of instrumentalizing religion as a source of legitimacy and transferring formerly state-managed service delivery to the churches. Based on 38 semi-structured interviews conducted with the policy-makers and administration of the faith-based school networks, the paper identifies the key positions and major tensions emerging with the complicity of religion in populist governance. The interview analysis concentrates on the unfolding legitimation struggles and emerging justification narratives in the religious field, and differentiates between field-specific and field-external logics driving such legitimacy claims. Field-specific claims reflect different positions taken alongside the interpretations of the mission of the church. Legitimacy claims referencing the norms, values and standards of the broader education system mobilize the logic of subsidiarism, democracy and the market. Legitimacy struggles unfolded around the interference of the political field, leading to the dominant strategy of depoliticizing religious service provision. The paper contributes to sociological scholarship aiming at situating religious service delivery within the broader education system. It aims to produce a refined account of the various positionalities and strategies within the religious field, partially shaped by relationships among actors in a shared space as well as external pressures and resources, as field theory suggests (Bourdieu 1996 cited by Krause and Robinson, 2023). Instead of viewing religious policy narratives as stark choices between purity and pollution, or between naivité and realism (Krause, 2014), these positions are approached as objects of sociological analysis, shaped by the social space that makes them possible.