Globalisation, the research imagination and deparochialising the study of education

This paper works in dialogue with Arjun Appadurai's paper, 'Grassroots globalization and the research imagination' in an attempt to outline some necessary changes in researching education in the multiple contexts of globalisation. The paper provides two narratives as part of this project, which Appadurai calls the 'deparochialisation of the research ethic'. The first narrative deals with the emergence of a 'world or global educational policy field' and suggests that Bourdieu's epistemological disposition, work on fields and his late political critiques of neo-liberal globalisation provide a way to begin to deparochialise the national focus of educational policy studies. The second narrative deals with my own pedagogies in relation to a full time MA course in educational policy and practice in Sheffield, where most of the students are from China, and my work in the Caribbean on Sheffield's masters and doctoral programmes. The two narratives demonstrate that Bourdieu's work inflected by postcolonialism, the creolisation of research and theory as a two-way process of retranslation, and challenges to the dominant research ethic from post-positivist epsistemologies of many sorts collectively offer an important contribution towards deparochialising research in education

Has Multiculturalism Failed in Europe? Migration Policies, State of Emergency, and Their Impact on Migrants’ Identities in Italy

This chapter analyzes migration policies in Italy within the larger frame of the debate on multiculturalism and its failure in Europe. The first part focuses on the exceptional flow of migrants that after the recent conflicts in Northern Africa was directed toward Europe across the Italian coast. The emergency raised issues for the defense of territories, social security, and preservation of identity. The author demonstrates the inefficiency of the Italian migration and emergency policies that has been adopted at the arrival of undocumented migrants from Northern Africa in 2011. The chapter uses the case of Italy to show the weakness of Europe in developing effective forms of coexistence and integration among different ethnic groups

Strengthening national capital: A postcolonial analysis of lifelong learning policy in St Lucia, Caribbean

This paper provides a postcolonial policy analysis of the Education Sector Development Plan: 2000-2005 and Beyond in the small Caribbean island nation of St Lucia. The specific focus is upon the nature of the lifelong learning policy as incorporated in the Plan. This is shown to be a globalised policy discourse. Drawing on a number of postcolonial theorists, the paper works with a concept of the postcolonial as an aspirational politics. Bourdieu's concept of 'national capital' is also utilised in the analysis in relation to the attempt to manage some autonomy for the nation in the process of policy text production in education. The analysis demonstrates the way a postcolonial politics, manifest as strengthening national capital, worked in relation to the production of the Plan in its consultative mode of production and in its extensive cross-sector coverage. However, the analysis also shows evidence of the effects of residues of the colonial past in the hegemony of English in the Plan's recommendations, in the restriction of lifelong learning facilitation to schools and in the denial of a place for indigenous knowledges. The mode of lifelong learning supported is also dominated by a human capital framework and neglect of other capitals (social, cultural, etc.) for constituting what might be seen as a postcolonial and creole learning society. The paper also reflects upon the extent of the postcoloniality of the analysis provided

Paradigms of postcoloniality in contemporary Italy

Questo saggio, che funge da introduzione al volume Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, e' la prima teorizzazione sistematica della condizione postcoloniale italiana, uno dei fattori più significativi che dà forma alla cultura e alle esperienze di vita dell'Italia contemporanea. Questo saggio mette in relazione le grandi emigrazioni, il colonialismo italiano e le migrazioni transnazionali verso l'Italia del presente per ridefinire il concetto di cultura nazionale e per mostrare come questo concetto si sia formato anche a partire da eventi e fenomeni che si sono svolti al di fuori dei confini nazionali