The "Refugee" as Paradigm for Civic Education

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-13 - Communities, "Outsiders," and Education: Migrants, Refugees, and Language Minorities

Abstract

This paper argues for the unique and substantial educational import of Agamben's bold statement concerning contemporary politics that "the guiding concept would no longer be the ius [law or right] of the citizen but rather the refugium of the singular." In shifting the figure of the refugee from marginality to "decisive factor," Agamben's paradigmatic method and "the refugee" paradigm, in particular, destabilize previous conceptions of civic education and suggest a vital alternative to educational proposals on cosmopolitanism and deconstruction. This paper, then, reframes citizenship education while challenging a number of contemporary transnational discourses and responding to an urgency in our political and educational situation.

Author

• Harvey Shapiro, Northeastern University