Introduction

Europe is currently experiencing the largest movement of people since World War II; the unprecedented scale and speed of refugees moving across European borders has sparked a humanitarian disaster and thrown Europe and the European Union into political turmoil. Prior to the current movement of people, transnational migration from the global south to the global north had been steadily growing over the past 20 years and the issue had already earned itself a position as one of the most pressing social and political concerns of the twenty-first century. Governments across Europe, Australia, US and Canada have responded to the challenges of migration by not only trying to tighten their national borders to restrict the access of some groups of migrants, but also by mandating the types of education deemed appropriate and necessary to support cohesive and stable societies. These educational initiatives are almost invariable targeted at migrants, rather than the longer term settled population, and usually stipulate the language and citizenship requirements which must be achieved to enable naturalisation or permanent settlement. This chapter starts with a brief overview of the retreat from cultural pluralism in European discourses and the turn to cultural values and identity as key issues in migration and integration debates. Drawing on the example of the UK, I will suggest how lifelong learning is being co-opted to support and manage the immigration policies of nation states. The education mandated is based on fundamental, but largely unspoken, assumptions about the nature of the individual, the social world in which we live, and processes of learning. Although ontological assumptions and theories of learning may not be explicit in policies, they can be discerned from the nature of state-sanctioned provision and the expectations on learners. These assumptions will be outlined in relation to state mandated education for migrants and will be juxtaposed to the learning that migrants and longer term settled communities are undergoing in the process of living together. The dis-embodied and dis-embedded conceptualisations of learning enshrined in policy stand in contrast to the everyday pedagogy and learning that accompanies migration.

Through an exploration of transnationalism and the concept of transnational spaces an alternative framing is offered in the second part of the chapter. This framing sees neighbourhoods and nations as spaces of connection (Massey 1994, 2005), which exist in constant flux and interconnected liveliness. Moving away from a sense of pure and boundaried spaces fosters acknowledgement of the multi-layered histories of migration and the ongoing re-inscription of identities at individual, cultural, national and global levels. It also questions the assumption underpinning language and citizenship requirements that cohesive communities based on stability and common values are ever attainable (or indeed ever existed). Finally, transnational migration is posed as a mundane and inevitable part of life in the global north, one which gives rise to an everyday pedagogy of spontaneous, embodied and unpredictable learning. The alternative framing of migration and learning proposed indicates approaches and future directions for research in this field. The role of the educator is to open spaces which enable ‘cultural destabilization’, and some broad pointers to how this process might be understood and shaped are offered.

The Turn to Cultural Values and Identity and the Co-Opting of Lifelong Learning

Since the early 2000s, there has been a growing backlash against multiculturalism across Europe from both the political left and the right (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). Commentators on the left have pointed to the deep and enduring patterns of inequality between minority ethnic and migrant communities: low educational attainment, high unemployment, poor jobs, poor quality housing and limited social mobility, as evidence of the failure of multiculturalism. It is claimed that there has been too much emphasis on celebrating ‘culture’ at the expense of addressing socioeconomic and structural inequalities. From the political right, multiculturalism is seen as problematic as it has preserved and sustained the different cultural values of minority ethnic and migrant populations. In academic circles, the work of Putnam (2000, 2007) has been highly influential; he claims, somewhat controversially, that the more diverse a society is, the less trust and solidarity there is both between and within ethnic groups. He argues that diversity leads to inward facing communities based on bonding social capital, or networks between homogenous groups; these networks promote exclusionary practices so that people ‘hunker down’ and avoid engagement with their local community (Putnam 2007: 149). These ideas have been taken up by populist commentators and politicians on the right of the political spectrum who argue that too much cultural diversity weakens the bonds of solidarity and erodes the strong national identity necessary for the functioning of a stable state. Fears that culturally different communities are not only a threat to Western ways of life, but also pose a threat to security have escalated and coalesced around the figure of the migrant, and in particular the Muslim migrant.

The ideological assumption that lack of shared cultural values and identity is linked to extremism and terrorism has seeped, unchallenged into public and policy discourses. This is witnessed in the UK, for example, in the positioning of British values as a key part of the UK Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy which targets extremism. The strategy describes extremism as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values’ (Home Office 2015: 2). It is witnessed in the US by President Donald Trump’s attempt to block visas for citizens from 7 ‘dangerous’ Muslim countries, calling for a temporary halt to the resttlement of refugees to the US and a permanent ban of refugees from Syria.The political context in many Western states is now dominated by anxieties about ‘too much diversity’, ‘extremism’, and the need for Governments to be seen to be doing something to protect their citizens. The result is a shift in the way Western countries are defining and presenting themselves: the use of razor wire, the closing of borders, the taking of valuables from refugees and Islamophobic rhetoric represent a race among states to present themselves as the least welcoming and most hard line.

The turn of attention to cultural values and identity is reflected in integration policies across Europe which are increasingly emphasising assimilation measures and the requirements for migrants to adopt the cultural values, norms and identity of the country in which they live. The UK is an interesting example as it has a classic and long-standing history of multicultural policy and practice. Like the Netherlands and Sweden it has traditionally been associated with a more liberal or multicultural model of integration, characterised by greater tolerance of cultural and ethnic diversity, and by viewing integration as a dynamic two-way process with some responsibility for the receiving society to adapt to difference. In contrast to countries like Germany or Switzerland in which policies of multiculturalism never existed (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010); or France which has always had a more assimilationist approach based on the assumption that migrants will eventually become fully incorporated into the host society and should not bring about significant social or cultural change to that society. Whatever approach is taken, most government and academic understandings broadly agree that integration is a process or processes and not an end state; is multidimensional and takes place across different spheres: economic, social, cultural and political (Portes 1997; Zetter et al. 2002). Where the balance of responsibility between migrant and society is struck, and to what degree commonality and difference are stressed and in what areas of life, have long been a source of struggle and contestation; however, there has been an intensification of these debates over the last 15 years and the balance has increasingly been tipping towards the responsibility of the migrant and away from societal responsibility embedded in liberal multicultural models. This represents a reframing of integration from a pre-1990s conceptualisation, where the state was the main actor responsible for removing barriers and ensuring appropriate support was in place for migrants to have equal access to education, the labour market and society more generally, to a duty-based concept in which responsibility lies with the migrant to integrate (Perchinig 2012).

Increasingly issues of identity and values are used as a mechanism to control who can belong to the nation state, for example by linking naturalisation to the passing of language and citizenship tests. Such tests can be seen as an overt expression of the state’s project of moral regulation which aims to give a single, coherent and unifying expression of timeless national identity (Morrice 2016). The construction of this ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983), in which Western cultural identity is elevated and fixed, depends upon a polarising discourse in which the non-Western migrant becomes ‘other’. In this orientalist construction, the values of migrants are left largely unexplored, or at best perceived as ‘backwards’ and belonging to some long past stage of civilisation. There is an assumed set of majority cultural values, which are positioned as the glue which can hold society together in the face of the corrosive impact of migrant values (Bhattacharyya 2009).

The expanding role of lifelong learning in managing and supporting European states’ immigration and integration policies is set out in a report by the Council of Europe (2014). The survey of 36 member states identified a trend across Europe to adopt language and cultural knowledge-related requirements. The report highlights the steady increase in the number of countries enacting legislation to make language knowledge a requirement for residence, citizenship, and in some cases entry; it also notes a trend towards increasing the level of language proficiency required. The report raises concerns suggesting‘… in some cases that language requirements aim at hindering migration and/or integration rather than facilitating integration’ (Council of Europe 2014: iii). Through the linking of learning to immigration and naturalisation requirements, lifelong learning (albeit perhaps reluctantly) is made complicit in the reproduction and cementation of global inequalities and relations of domination. Despite the UK’s multicultural history and sense of itself as a nation, it has introduced some of the toughest legislation in Europe. Since 2005, all applicants wishing to settle permanently in the UK or to become naturalised British citizens must successfully demonstrate English language proficiency and knowledge about British culture, institutions and traditions. When first introduced the Knowledge of Language and Life (KoLL) requirement could be achieved through one of two routes. Either by answering 24 multiple choice, computer-based citizenship questions based on an official Government handbook, and demonstrating language proficiency. Alternatively, by completing the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) speaking and listening qualification using specified citizenship-based teaching materials. The applicant must have demonstrated progression from one ESOL level to the next. This latter route, which offered the possibility for dialogical and critical engagement with the concept of citizenship and British cultural values, was removed in 2013; now all migrants who are eligible and wish to apply for British citizenship must pass the computer-based test and present evidence of having achieved a pre-defined level of English language. Despite the apparently transparent discourses, the language requirements and citizenship test filter out migrants from the poorest parts of the globe who have the lowest literacy and language skills, and fails to recognise diverse citizenship practices. Hidden and gendered disadvantages operate to contain diversity and ensure that migrants from wealthiest Western nations gain access and security of stay while other racialised migrant bodies remain excluded or marginalised (Morrice 2016).

The harnessing of education in pursuit of social goals and the shifting of responsibility from the state to the individual is not new (Griffin 2002; Martin 2003; Billett 2010). In this case, the migrant is the pathologised social problem, obliged to engage with lifelong learning and demonstrate their commitment to the values and cultural traits of the country they are living in. From the outset, the identification of migrants as requiring citizenship testing constructs them as being in deficit and in some way lacking meaningful knowledge, skills, culture, histories or values which might be worthy of exploration. Masoor-Mitha (2005: 375) describes how groups such as migrants, children and others are constructed as what she terms ‘not yet citizens’ or ‘less than’. In a similar vein, Biesta argues that citizenship education is mobilised to ‘make ready’ these unformed citizens: ‘[e]ducation thus becomes a process of socialisation through which “newcomers” become part and are inserted into the existing social and political order’. Only after completing a particular developmental and educational trajectory can an individual achieve the status of citizenship (Biesta 2011: 94). Although designed to have a placatory effect on the general public, reassuring them that something is being done to solve a social problem—too much cultural diversity brought by newcomers—the actual effect is quite possibly the reverse: ingraining in the national imaginary that cultural diversity is to be feared.

The assumption underpinning these policies is that learning is an acquisitive process in which a predetermined body of knowledge is appropriated or ‘banked’ in Freirean terms, without the need for critical engagement or meaning making on behalf of the migrants. Learning is conceptualised as a largely cognitive and disembodied process, with scant recognition of the affective and moral dimensions of learning. It also sees learning as somehow existing in a dis-embedded state, separated from global, national and local contexts and influences, separate from everyday social relations and interactions, and unencumbered by either biography or material circumstances. The expectation that migrants can prepare for the computer-based test via self-study of online materials or study books reflects the growing significance of technology in lifelong learning policies, but also the reduction and narrowing of learning to an isolated and individual endeavour. There are few opportunities for migrants (or indeed longer term resident communities) to ‘become agents of curiosity, become investigators, become subjects in an ongoing process or quest for the revelation of the “why” of things’ (Freire 1992/2014: 96). Instead, cultural values are handed down with little acknowledgement that they can be understood and interpreted differently, or how they might fit with pre-existing ideals or understandings of good citizenship or positive virtues. It is a model of learning which does not see the need for democratic spaces for self-reflection and examination of citizenship practices and beliefs systems in relation to the other citizens with whom neighbourhood spaces are shared. It is also a model which assumes that history can be reduced to one simple and enduring narrative of national unity to be consumed, rather than a chosen story, open to debate, critique and alternative readings (Morrice 2016).

The growing anti-migrant sentiment across Western nations suggests that these policies of compulsory integration measures might not be successful in either altering negative views towards migrants, or in addressing their stated aims of improving social cohesion. Part of the problem lies in the rather impoverished view of learning which underpins these policies, a view which leaves unacknowledged the fact that individuals live in the social world and it is through our experiences and interaction with others that we make meaning and learn about ourselves, our lives and our place within the world. Partly it also reflects more fundamental assumptions about the nature of the contemporary social world, both at the level of the nation state and the local level of community. Rather than taking the learning needs of the individuals, both migrants and long-term settled, as their starting point, the policies start from the perceived needs and social problems of the social world and then distill these down to the individual level. In the next section, I will outline the growth and characteristics of transnational migration and how we might conceptualise and reframe the effects it is having on contemporary society.

Transnationalism and Intercultural Spaces

In 2015 approximately 4.8 million people permanently migrated to OECD countries, 10% more than in 2014. Two thirds of these new migrants came from outside of the OECD (OECD 2016). 2015 also witnessed record numbers of refugees entering the OECD, of the 1.65 million newly registered asylum seekers, almost 1.3 million came to European countries. (OECD 2016). Not only has the scale of migration increased, but patterns and characteristics of contemporary migration have changed dramatically. Whereas, post-war migration was characterised by migrants coming from discrete places to join increasingly large and well-organised communities in particular parts of the UK, today’s migration patterns are characterised by smaller, transient, more legally differentiated and less well-organised groups and individuals coming from a much greater number of countries of origin (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). Criteria of collective belonging which might have had more resonance in the past are no longer applicable as with any particular groups there will be important distinctions in ethnicity, religion and religious practices, country of origin, regional and local identities, kinship and tribal affiliations, political affiliation, and so on. The shift in migration patterns has resulted in the multiplication and increasingly complex axes of identification and difference; a condition Vertovec describes as ‘super-diversity’ and the ‘diversification of diversity’. This is not just about the addition of further variables of difference; it is also about ‘new conjunctions of interactions of variables’ (Vertovec 2007: 1025). Coupled with the growing diversity of minority ethnic communities is the increase in transnationalism which ‘…broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states’ (Vertovec 1999: 447). Advances in communication technology, especially social media, and relatively cheap travel have meant that links between countries are stronger and more sustained, rendering the strictly bounded sense of community or locality obsolete.

Transnationalism is an important conceptual tool for understanding the scope and lived experience of migrants across space and time, and reminds us that migrants are always emigrants from somewhere before they become immigrants of the country in which they live. It underscores the fact that migration is not just about geographical movement, but also involves movement and ongoing connections between cultures, memories and values. Migrants can maintain their connection and involvement with family, friends and community in the country they have left in a way not previously possible; this can take the form of political or trading activities, participating in family events, cultural celebrations and so on. This means that for migrants there is always a ‘backstory’, a narrative of a life lived, or being lived, elsewhere; this might be a life in the past with which few ties remain, but it is equally likely to be a life being lived contemporaneously somewhere else. The scale of these connections is manifest materially through the sending of remittances; officially recorded remittances to developing countries are estimated to have been $404 billion in 2013, equivalent to more than three times the official development budget (World Bank 2014). Less visible, but of no less significance, are the social and emotional ties which bind people across space and time. Back-stories are powerful narratives which are always present, although not necessarily foregrounded, shaping and informing migrant lives in a way not possible in the past when migration generally meant the severing of ties and relationships. This makes biographical and life history approaches particularly relevant when working and researching with migrants as it enables recognition of these other lives, and the skills, education, work, culture, identities and social positions which migrants occupied prior to migration; and how these characteristics and relationships influence and shape engagement with learning and aspirations in the new social context (Morrice 2011). The significance of existing skills, qualifications and competences and the difficulties migrants face in transferring these to new contexts is the subject of a growing body of scholarship (e.g. Andersson and Guo 2009; Guo and Shan 2013; Sprung 2013). A life history approach also enables us to see beyond the administrative labelling of the immigration system and instead to see individual lives not only with the past, but with a future, with hopes and fears and dreams.

Transnationalism also draws attention to the way that migration is experienced by those who have never physically moved: for example, the first and second generation children born to migrants, who may never have lived in their parents’ country of birth, but who, through regular contact (virtual or actual) with family members elsewhere, are raised knowing and shifting between different cultures and value systems. It enables a focus on the communities in which migrants come to live; migrants are not simply inserted into communities, they transform those spaces creating new transnational spaces. The effects of migration are experienced by the longer term settled community such that in the twenty-first century very few lives are left untouched by transnational migration. Finally, as Espiritu (2003) argues, transnationalism shifts attention from a narrow focus on modes of integration or degrees of assimilation, and instead highlights the lived experience of migrants in and across diverse sociocultural sites. Within these transnational spaces the strategies that migrants use to fashion themselves are shaped by the local context: the national policies and culture of the new society, along with structural forces such as poverty and racism (Espiritu 2003).

This understanding of transnational spaces resonates with Brah’s concept of diaspora space which she describes as:

… ‘inhabited’ not only by those who have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’. (Brah 1996: 181)

Brah goes on to describe England as a diasporic space where different groups of migrants intersect among themselves as well as with the entity constructed as ‘Englishness’, an identity which becomes re-inscribed in the process. This reworking of national identities is an inevitable aspect of migration, and it is one which, as I will outline below, has given rise to ever more muscular assertions of national identity which have dominated policy debates around lifelong learning and migration over the last decade.

The quietly shifting nature, and gentle re-inscription of national identities (and indeed the identity of Europe itself) has been going on throughout history. In Britain we could trace influences on what we now consider to be national identity back through Roman, Viking and Norman settlers (amongst others), and on to British colonisation of the ‘New World’. This complex circulation of symbolic, cultural and material resources, people and activities over time has made, shaped and remade national identity. Despite this long history, it is only relatively recently that Britain has moved from a mono-cultural national identity based on descent and articulated by Conservative politician Enoch Powell in his declaration that ‘the West Indian does not by being born in England become an Englishman’ (Powell 1968 cited in Yuval-Davis 2011) to a multicultural national identity. This shift is what Stuart Hall refers to as ‘multicultural drift’ (Hall and Back 2009), an acceptance that British society has irreversible moved from a perceived stable and mono-cultural foundation and is now a multicultural, even hybrid nation. Migrants who came to the UK in the 1940s and 1950s are generally acknowledged as forming part of British national identity, and are generally embraced within an inherently multicultural Britain. Race, understood as based on phenotype or descent, is not considered an obstacle to belonging in the same way it was forty years ago, but there remain deep and irreconcilable ambiguities towards some cultural differences, most notably faith. This has given rise to new ‘hierarchies of belonging’ in which minority communities are positioned differently and afforded greater or lesser degrees of tolerance and inclusion, with newly arrived migrants, particularly asylum seekers and Muslims, subject to increasing suspicion and hostility for their ‘problematic’ cultural identity and values (Back et al. 2012). The growth in migration, and in particular from countries which are culturally more distant from an assumed British culture, has enabled new lines of exclusion to emerge, intersecting with older and more established inequalities. We witness this in the current influx of refugees when calls are made for Syrian Christian refugees to be given priority for resettlement (Medhora 2015), and in the Hungarian prime minister’s claim that the building of a fence and use tear gas to prevent migrants entering his country was to defend Europe’s Christian identity against a Muslim influx (Traynor 2015). Faith is advanced as an acceptable criterion on which to establish and enact distinctions between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ refugees, who can belong and who can be excluded.

Towards Meeting the Challenges of Transnationalism

For migrants, learning and making sense of a new culture is a process that starts from the point of arrival (and for those who migrate voluntarily even before) and continues through quotidian experiences, social interactions and reflections on the world about them. These encounters with difference involve continual affective engagement which enliven and awaken individuals to learning which is embodied and sense oriented: feelings of coldness, shapes of buildings, styles of dress, the colours and sounds of neighbourhoods, the new smells and taste of food, the emotions imbued in the interactions with others, and so forth. These instantaneous and necessary navigations through culture are shaped by biography, by pre-existing expectations, diverse migratory journeys, gendered, raced and classed relationships, resources and aspirations. It is through this that habits of perception and frames of reference are disrupted and incremental learning and change occur. Although perhaps not as intense, but no less embodied, the long term settled population in and between whom migrants move and settle, are inevitably pushed into unplanned and spontaneous learning with various degrees of interest, excitement, tolerance, discomfort, anxiety and hostility. It is precisely at these encounters with cultural differences that learning occurs; for adult educators and researchers it suggests a focus on the emerging spaces and sociocultural configurations which provide platforms from which to observe and shape the dynamics of intercultural living and learning. This inevitably involves a broad lens which takes in both migrant and longer termed settled communities. It also suggests a focus on interculturalism, which underscores cultural dialogue and exchange, rather than multiculturalism, which either stresses cultural difference rather than communication between cultures, or assumes a gradual erosion of difference through mixing and hybridisation (Amin 2002).

Just as national identity has been gently re-inscribed to take on diversity and acknowledge the changing nature of the social world, so too our individual identities are moulded and shaped to take on difference. Hall (1990) reminds us that cultural identities are never complete and are constantly being remade:

[c]ultural identity … is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’… It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. (1990: 225)

To this we can add that cultural identities do not exist in silos, and do not come into being in isolation from each other. The formation of cultural identities is a relational process—formed, reformed and transformed with reference to the cultural discourses, cultural identities, social relationships and values of those around us. This recognition of our cultural ‘becomingness’, that is, that as cultural beings we are constantly drawing upon the norms, values and identity resources around us to make sense of our lives and the lives of others, is important. It positions learning as an ongoing and an open-ended process, what Freire describes as ‘… men and women as beings in the process of becoming – as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality’ (1996: 65). We are also sentient beings, constantly engaged in evaluative judgements about the world, which means we are capable of both flourishing and suffering, and particularly vulnerable to how we are perceived and treated by others (Sayer 2011). From a learning perspective, this suggests that in the diversifying world around us we pay particular attention to the moments when we are presented with difference, as it is precisely these points which provoke and vitalise learning and reflection. It is at these moments that we can either ‘lean in’ to difference, and, finding our reference points inadequate, have cause to look beyond our own cultural interpretations to make new meaning and establish new reference points. Or, we ‘lean away’ from difference, unable or unwilling to bridge the gap and make new meanings. The extent to which we are prepared to shift towards or away from difference will ultimately depend upon the context, the degree of cultural difference involved and the perceived challenge to our existing identities. Viewed in this way, unplanned and unintentional pedagogical relations are an inevitable accompaniment to transnational migration as individuals are permanently engaged in evaluation and cultural judgements as they attempt to establish and re-orientate themselves in relation to new social relations and ways of being.

The pedagogic process here refers to an experiential and relational endeavour, in which interpersonal relations and our encounters with the social world have the potential to be pedagogic. In order for this potential to be realised and for individuals to be prepared to orientate themselves towards others, rather than away, there are some points to consider. The first is an understanding of neighbourhood or context, and just as it is not helpful to conceptualise either national or individual identities as existing in some boundaried, essential or pure state, neither is it helpful or accurate to conceptualise neighbourhoods and localities as closed, homogeneous, with an ‘always having been there’, uniform indigenous population. Such a conception suppresses recognition of previous migrations and of existing cultural diversity, and is more likely to lead to new migrants being perceived as problematic (Hickman et al. 2012). A more fruitful conception is suggested by Massey’s (1994, 2005) concept of place not as an insular and bounded entity/location but rather as spaces of connections. She argues that places are ‘made of’ social relations and do not pre-exist them, they are porous and constituted relationally as ‘products of other places’ (Massey 1994: 59). Stressing a strong temporal dimension she suggests that space is always in process, and can be imagined as ‘a simultaneity of stories-so-far’ (Massey 2005: 9). This enables us to move away from ideas of us and them, migrants and locals, here and there; rather places become spaces of inevitable heterogeneity, flux and interconnected liveliness. Communities and neighbourhoods become transitional spaces characterised by interruption and disjuncture. This conception of place disrupts the binary of ‘us’ and ‘them’ implicit in integration discourses; it also challenges the assumptions underpinning integration strategies that places can be imagined as future cohesive communities based on social stability and common values. Instead it suggests a commitment to ongoing open dialogue and exchange, constant negotiation and trial and error towards living with difference.

A few caveats and further explanations are needed here. First, this is not to suggest that differences will be dissolved through mixing, or that contact with others necessarily translates into respect; indeed contact can lead to a cementing of attitudes and values, rather than to challenging them (Amin 2002; Valentine 2008). Valentine’s research demonstrates the gap that can exist between individuals’ practices in public spaces and the prejudices they hold; that is, everyday practices of civility do not translate into changed attitudes and values. Amin (2002) points to the way that urban spaces are often either territorialised by particular groups and subject to heavy surveillance, or they are spaces of transit, populated by strangers who have no reason to engage with each other. In order to bring about any form of social transformation or intercultural understanding, Amin argues that contact has to be meaningful and involve purposeful activity. It is within what he terms sites of ‘micropublics’ such as the workplace, colleges, youth centres and other centres of association that the required interdependency is created and common place negotiations are inevitable. Micropublics enable ‘… moments of cultural destabilization, offering individuals the chance to break out of fixed relations and fixed notions, and through this to learn to become different through new patterns of social engagement’ (2002: 970). Cultural understanding and change is most likely where ‘people are encouraged to step out of their routine environment, into everyday spaces that function as sites of unnoticeable cultural questioning or transgression’ (2002: 969). However, this is also an unpredictable pedagogy, in which the outcome is not known; as Biesta (2006) suggests, learning always involves the risk of change in unforeseeable and unwelcome ways. The ways in which learning has deconstructive and negative aspects has been illustrated with reference to refugees for whom learning can be about ‘unlearning’, and letting go of much of who and what they were (Morrice 2011, 2014). It is also highlighted in Mojab’s concept of ‘learning by dispossession’ to describe how learning in capitalist social relations can produce alienation and fragmentation of self and community (Mojab 2011).

The role of educators then is to attempt to create such spaces and to bring together strangers in a common activity which disrupts fixed cultural assumptions and identities. Learning here is conceptualised as a ‘response to what is other and different … as a reaction to a disturbance, as an attempt to reorganise and reintegrate as a result of disintegration’ (Biesta 2006: 27). The educational responsibility lies in providing opportunities ‘for the “coming into the world” of unique, singular beings, and a responsibility for the world as a world of plurality and difference’ (Biesta 2006: 9–10). It is through these pedagogical encounters, based on participatory values, critical debate and engagement whether in community centres, libraries, parks, community gardens, playgrounds or other public spaces, which are most likely to enable the everyday practices and strategies of cultural engagement and exchange with culturally different, unfamiliar strangers. Of importance here is recognition that cultural identities are not only shifting and multiple, but are also only one of many sources of identity formation, including experiences based on gender, class, education, age and consumption. This not only disrupts assumptions of homogeneity of migrant communities, but also opens up the possibilities for common ventures and purpose. Empirical research by adult education scholars suggests practical ways of working with these ideas. For example, Roets et al. (2011) used narrative practices to develop an educative space in which inhabitants of a multicultural neighbourhood in Flanders could acknowledge and explore the ambiguities of living with diversity; an approach which they suggest enabled the questioning of binary notions such as ‘us’ and ‘them’. Similarly, Wildemeersch (2011) suggests how artistic and cultural practices in public spaces can be used to ‘disrupt’ the taken for granted sense of place; rather than emphasising homogeneity and continuity such practices can foster the learning of democratic citizenship through ‘…creating opportunities for the differences to come into presence so that they can be negotiated in a continuous process “in the making”’ (2011: 91). These studies which explicitly engage with intercultural differences augment an established body of research on the contribution of community based and informal learning to social inclusion and issues of belonging (e.g. Foley 1999; McGivney 1999; Tett 2006; Jackson 2010). For example Sue Jackson (2010) has drawn attention to how informal learning in social spaces can enhance a sense of belonging for migrant women, alongside enabling them to develop skills and resources to resist constructions of difference and otherness.

The second caveat is that just like classrooms, places of contact are imbued with power relations and inequalities (real and perceived); they will be differentially experienced by individuals and social groups who will have different capacities to participate. Encounters occur in conditions of material, political and social inequality; they are located in specific discourses, representations and social relations. They are approached through particular identifications, and draw on particular biographical understandings and cemented histories. These will shape the feelings, attitudes and prejudices, and consequently the degree of openness (or closedness) to others. One of the major challenges is that areas with the greatest diversity as a result of migration, are also generally areas with the highest levels of social and economic deprivation, which encourages the perception of competition and conflict over scarce resources (Reicher and Hopkins 2013). Such issues and concerns have to be acknowledged, but importantly, Reicher and Hopkin’s report also suggests that poverty is a stronger predictor of social divisions and community tension than diversity, and that once socioeconomic deprivation is taken into account, the inverse correlation between cohesion and diversity decreases or disappears (Reicher and Hopkins 2013). Efforts to unpack the dynamics of poverty and inequality must be locally inflected, globally situated and cognisant of migration patterns. They will, for example, recognise the ongoing historical processes and patterns of employment and unemployment locally, their entanglement with global processes, and how these interact and intersect with successive and multi-layered histories of migration in such areas.

Conclusion

Transnational migration is now a prosaic part of everyday living in Western societies such that living with varying degrees of cultural diversity has become a fact of life for all of us. Learning the language and understanding culture are a crucial part of the integration process and European and other Western governments have approached this challenge through focusing their lifelong learning efforts on migrants, and on mandating levels of language and predetermined bodies of knowledge deemed necessary. These efforts can be seen as an attempt to stabilise and secure collective identity in the face of rapid social change and growing public concern, and to foreclose debate about society, and who ‘we’ are. This position reflects one side of the duality between a state conceptualisation of education as dis-embedded and disembodied, measurable, accountable, having clearly defined outcomes (such as controlling who can belong and who will be excluded), and based on cognitive and acquisitive understandings of learning. This approach, and the model of learning on which it is based, does not respond to the embodied, spontaneous, evaluative, unpredictable and open-ended pedagogic processes that occur in everyday transnational spaces. It is this other side of the duality which attends to learning, which I have suggested invites an alternative and more productive framing of the challenges posed by transnational migration.

This suggests a research agenda which places everyday pedagogy, understood as an experiential and relational endeavour, centre stage and considers how, and in what spaces, migrants learn to belong and have a sense of ‘fitting in’, and where and how they learn to become alienated and marginalised in their new country. It requires attention to the spaces of commonplace negotiation and a shift away from the pathologising logic which holds individual migrants as the source of social problems. Fundamental to this reframing is a rejection of homogenising and stable versions of culture and cultural identities at national, local and individual levels: identities are not fixed and unchanging at any of these levels, all have been shaped by previous histories of migration, in the case of Britain this not only includes immigration to Britain over the centuries, but also the colonial history of migration and its impact on ‘British’ culture. Nations, places and individuals will continue to be moulded by engagement with other cultures as people move around the globe. The difference is the speed of change and levels of diversity which contemporary migration entails. Herein lies the role and challenge of educators: to open up and to explore spaces which enable moments of ‘cultural destabilisation’ and opportunities for learning to change and see things differently. This requires attention to how we see ourselves, as much as how we see others.