Andrew Mycock

Does Citizenship Education Make Young People Better-Engaged Citizens?

Citizenship education has been a compulsory feature of the curriculum in secondary schools in England since 2002. However, its future may be uncertain amid inter-party disputes over the utility of such teaching. Moreover, there are substantial concerns over the breadth, aims and reach of the Citizenship curriculum. There is a lack of clarity over whether good citizenship can be taught and dispute over whether it can or should go beyond bolstering civil engagement (volunteering) and improving civic (political) activity. This article assesses the motivations for the introduction of Citizenship and the extent to which it has become a politicised panacea to a range of emerging policy challenges. Then, using survey data gathered for the Youth Citizenship Commission, established under the previous government to encourage community and democratic participation by young people, the article tests whether citizenship education is making a difference to the engagement of young people in the civil and political spheres. It assesses which categories of young people have been most influenced by – and which remain impervious to – citizenship education.

SNP, identity and citizenship: Re-imagining state and nation

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has been strongly critical of attempts to resuscitate British national identity and has sought to present an alternative Scottish cultural and political identity that is projected as ‘wholly civic’. However, questions persist as to how the SNP understand concepts such as citizenship and nationality and the extent to which their civic nationalism is reflected empirically in speeches and policies, particularly since forming a minority Scottish government in 2007. This article seeks to explore how the SNP and other Scottish separatists construct an independent Scottish state, nation and people. In particular, it will assess how Scottish separatists address Scottish nationality, multi-nationality and also its transnational imperial legacy.

Becoming citizens in late modernity: a global-national comparison of young people in Japan and the UK

The experiences of young people in developed societies such as Japan and the UK have undergone considerable change in the last 30 or so years. Our starting point is that such developments are associated with the globalization of institutions and an individualization of experience, which destabilizes life-course transitions and cultural transmission between generations. However, we continue to assert the importance of the national framework, defined by national cultures and territorial jurisdictions, in mediating global processes. Adapting Connollys (2005. Pluralism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) differentiation between types of politics in late modernity, we argue for a distinction to be made between being citizens and becoming citizens. Being a citizen involves integration into pre-existing collective identities such as nation-states which increasingly act to restrict membership to the citizen community. With this in mind, we compare the key sites of social recognition in Japan and the UK for young people and identify some fundamental barriers to citizenship. In addition, we discuss the ways in which conventional social and educational policy responses aimed at integrating young people into work and nation perpetuate their precarious relationship to citizenship. These processes are contrasted with becoming a citizen, which is dynamic, intimately connected to cultural learning and the creation of new civic virtues and sources of recognition.

National pride and students' attitudes towards history: an exploratory study

Recent debates about “Britishness” have drawn increasing attention to the inculcation of national values within the school history curriculum. To date, however, few studies have explored young people’s attitudes towards history or how these are related to their sources of national pride and shame. This paper draws on a survey of over 400 undergraduates’ experiences of secondary education, investigating their attitudes towards the history curriculum and how these relate to their feelings of national pride. Using principal components analysis we found that students’ attitudes towards history loaded on to two distinct factors: traditional/conservative and multicultural/liberal. Bivariate correlations then revealed that pride in national sporting and economic achievements and a sense of shame about immigration were positively associated with a traditional attitude towards history. Pride in British civil liberties and social diversity and a sense of shame about racism and UK foreign policy were associated with a multicultural attitude. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The First World War Centenary in the UK: ‘A Truly National Commemoration’?

Abstract Prime Minister David Cameron has called for ‘a truly national commemoration of the First World War’. This article shows this to be problematic, politicised and contested. This is in part due to the elision of English and British histories. Scottish, Welsh and Irish responses are noted, and the role and commemorations of ‘our friends in the Commonwealth’. There are tensions around interpretations of empire and race. There has been a failure to appreciate that the debates about the legacies of the First World War are deeply entangled with those of colonialism.

The Party Politics of the ‘New English Regionalism’

This article explores the potential that ongoing regional devolution in England might transform the so-called ‘party politics of Englishness’, complicating and potentially compromising the emergence of a nascent English political nationalism. It provides a primary examination of the extent to which conceptual and normative intersections between nationalism and regionalism are reordering both the constitutional architecture and the party political landscape of England. The article argues that politicised manifestations of ‘new English regionalism’ raise new and important challenges to how the two main Union-wide political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, frame and articulate issues of English national party organisation, policy development and identity. The article concludes by noting that the emergence of national and regional forms of identity politics in England is undermining the plurinational organisation and political unity of both parties.

After empire: The politics of history education in a post-colonial world

Mycock explores the politicisation of history education in former colonising states where the end of empire has necessitated the simultaneous revision of colonial citizenship and identity and also the historical narratives established that underpinned them. His chapter assesses the form and content of the politically fractious and divisive ‘history wars’ about how the colonial past should be taught in schools in the wake of empire. He considers the conceptual and empirical complexities facing post-colonising states in ‘teaching the empire’, assessing whether they adopt celebratory, critical or amnesic approaches to the colonial past. It concludes by arguing that a ‘selective myopia’ is evident in many post-colonising states whereby they continue to disseminate nostalgic and largely uncritical versions of colonial history in schools.

Beyond the English? The UK’s Pluri-National Euroscepticism

A central argument of this book is that the ongoing crisis of Britishness is fundamental to understanding contemporary Euroscepticism. In this chapter, we develop this theme by turning our attention to the idea of the UK as a contested multi-national polity and its co-deterministic relationship to Euroscepticism. If, as Ben Wellings has argued in Chapter 2, a British state ‘awkwardness’ has been replaced by a populist English nationalism as the organizing principle of UK-EU relations, then this raises fundamental questions for the other nations and polities of the UK: Is UK-based Euroscepticism an inherently English ‘problem’? How and in what ways are other national positions within the UK on Europe being represented? And is English Euroscepticism further fuelling secessionism from the UK across its other nations? We explore these questions in this chapter pointing to both the opportunities and challenges that Euroscepticism poses for representative politics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Moreover, we consider the extent to which a strand of British Euroscepticism remains durable and distinctive, thus not reducible to an English variant supplemented by other different national manifestations.

Loyalism, Orangeism and Britishness: Contemporary Synergies and Tensions

Perhaps the most visible expression of loyalism in Northern Ireland can be found in the Orange Order, especially through its set piece commemorations and in particular its parading tradition. Such parades give open and very public expression to notions of loyalty and identity (Bryan 2000). Within this, several writers have drawn attention to the key role of the Order (correctly titled the Loyal Orange Institution) in defining popular constructions of Britishness for many Northern Irish Protestant unionists (Kaufman 2007; Kinealy 2004; McAuley and Tonge 2008). Central to this is the linking of core themes of past and present within the Protestant unionist tradition (McAuley and Tonge 2007). Through this the Orange Order provides not just a teleological link that connects current generations to those who are seen to have defended the Union, but also provides a crucial institution shaping a historical narrative that celebrates a particular view of ‘Britishness’ and the British national past.

The Politics of England

Party political interest in the so-called ‘English Question’ has grown in recent years, due to the enmeshing of constitutional issues with a growing political and public affiliation with and expression of English national identity and culture. More recently, attention has shifted to the decentralisation of government within England. The ‘English Question’ is thus defined by two interconnected but distinctive ‘English Questions’. This article will assess whether, in seeking to find answers for these ‘English Questions’, the Conservatives and Labour are establishing a more distinctive ‘politics of England’. It will first consider the extent to which the politicisation of English identity and civic society have stimulated a more nationally framed political culture and party politics, and then assess whether constitutional reforms undertaken in Westminster, especially the introduction of EVEL, and regional devolution initiatives within England might facilitate greater party political engagement with an emergent ‘politics of England’.