Holding to Tradition: Diversity, Education and Citizenship in Germany, A Case-Study of Bavaria

Abstract

Since the close of the Second World War, and especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European nation-states must negotiate tensions around citizenship and belonging as they become increasingly diverse in race, ethnicity, religion, and culture (Preuss, 1998). The conflict between heritage-based citizenship laws and continued demographic changes has especially challenged Germany to reconcile its diverse society with its traditional exclusionary notions of belonging. Citizenship education traditionally needed only prepare those who were citizens to interact with others like them. However in the late 1990s new citizenship and immigration laws officially redefined Germany as an immigrant nation. The political discourse, which has long championed a monocultural view of Germany, began to emphasize integration of immigrants and the preparation of all future citizens for participation in multicultural German and European polities. Whether education policy and practice have likewise expanded to create and enact more inclusive citizenship education has been left unprobed. This dissertation examines, in the case of Bavaria, citizenship education policy at the state-level and the implementation of this policy by individual teachers. Results reveal that state policy expansion towards multiculturalism is bounded by European concepts to the exclusion of non-European German students. Likewise teachers view diversity as positive only in European terms and continue to define and enact citizenship education in ethnocultural terms.