Migration, cultural encounters and (Peace) education

This issue of the Journal of Peace Education is a special edition focusing on three interconnected topics: migration, cultural encounters, and peace education. Even though migration has been a continuous and integrated part of human history at all times, it increases in certain periods. We are living in such a period.

The causes of migration are not the topic of this special issue. The focus is on cultural encounters that follow from migration, and conflict that may emerge when migration increases rapidly, or comes in waves. However, cultural conflict often follows in the wake of attempts by states or majority nations to subdue indigenous peoples or make them disappear through a process of cultural marginalization or assimilation. This issue of the journal covers both these phenomena.

The idea that education can promote cooperation and friendship across ethnic or other group boundaries, is essential in peace education, and has long roots in peace education and social psychology (Allport 1954; Aronson and Bridgeman 1979; Gaertner et al. 2000; Sherif 1988; Watson 2008; Watson and Huá 2016; Zhu, Jiang, and Watson 2011). However, some of these ideas, inter alia Aronson and Bridgeman’s ‘Jigsaw Classroom’, have been met with criticism that the ideas do not take adequately into account the context of inter-group encounters, and which contextual conditions must be met to facilitate the goals of inter-group cooperation and friendship (Bratt 2008; Salomon 2006) and details as regards teaching methods and composition of the group of learners (e.g. Nusrath et al. 2019, table/fig-4; Salomon 2004).

Educational efforts to increase tolerance, cooperation and integration of people belonging to different cultural groups or communities have no success formula or guarantee of success. Cultural encounters demand work to learn to know and understand one another’s customs, norms, cultural values, ideals and taboos. Without such knowledge and attitudes, mutual tolerance and respect is difficult, if not impossible. But even though such knowledge and attitudes are internalized in most people of a society, we need to integrate groups on a practical, social level, because inter-group boundaries do not disappear just because people understand one another.

The complexity and difficulty of the task may be underestimated in peace education projects. Individuals and/or groups that move across borders have been involved in a long process of socialization into one or more cultures before they moved. They have acquired an identity based on that former socialization, and the territory, community or nation they leave, are part of their identity. So in the context of migration, cultural encounters are encounters between groups, and in inter-group encounters, there are invariably issues of hierarchy and leadership. Hence, the problem of «cultural encounters» involves the problem of hierarchy and potential conflict between and among various groups in diverse societies.

The same applies to the relations between indigenous people and a larger nation that has been and is encroaching on their territory, subdued them or tried to eradicate their language and cultural traditions. In the process of colonization, cultural encounters invariably imply conflict between the cultures, as colonizing powers try to change the culture of the colonized in fundamental ways by means of physical, symbolic, or organizational force.

Spring (2021) describes six development processes of such conflict:

1. Denial of Education: deny access to schools (African-Americans, native – Americans, Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans);

2. Assimilation: absorb and integrate into dominant culture;

3. Deculturalization: destroying culture and replacing with a new culture;

4. Cultural genocide: destroy the culture of the dominated group (examples: Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans);

5. Hybridity: blending of cultures (private and public cultural differences expressed);

6. Cultural Pluralism: primary language and primary culture maintenance, living in difference together (pp. 1–9).

The examples mentioned above are based mainly on the history of the United States. However, the typology can be applied to processes worldwide. Four of the six processes seem to have at least one goal in common: subjugation of minority groups, and/or eradication of their language, culture and/or social web. Education is part of these processes, as education is a tool for cultural reproduction as well as cultural change in all modern societies, not least in processes of colonization. Processes number five and six are much more symmetric and can be elements in a process of reconstruction and strengthening of cultures that have been exposed to attempts at cultural fragmentation, degradation, or annihilation.

For example, the Sami indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, although not exposed to a genocidal policy, were exposed to a process of assimilation, in which children were gathered in boarding schools far away from their homes for long periods. In the boarding schools, the children’s mother tongue was suppressed 24/7 (even during breaks between school hours). The Sami children were exposed only to Norwegian language, history and culture, in curriculum as well as during their spare time (Jensen 2005; Minde 2008, 2016). The goal of this process was explicitly declared as assimilating the Sami people by eradicating the Sami language and Norwegianizing them culturally. The process was initiated by heavy state funding from about 1850/1855 and lasted for over a century (Jensen 2005; Minde 2016), and the ideology, on which it was based, was for a long period a variety of social Darwinism (Jensen 2005, 47). Social Darwinism is a collective term and represents ideas in social sciences arguing that in the process of social and cultural evolution, some cultures and/or ethnic groups had developed to higher ‘stages’ than others and that competition between the groups/cultures would lead to the spread and dominance of the former and extinction of the latter groups/cultures. Indigenous peoples were, of course, considered especially ‘primitive’ and condemned to extinction by such academics (Andersen 2015; Jensen 2005, 47).¹ So despite differences in methods, form and degree of violence in the process, the goals of deculturalization and forced re-socialization into the majority culture and language, a clear example of symbolic and cultural violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2004; Galtung 1996, 197; Spring 2021) are at the heart of the matter. Education has been a main tool in numerous, if not all, cases of assimilation. The articles by Fyhn and Berntsen, and of Nordkil and Haetta in this special edition of the Journal of Peace Education show how education can contribute to promoting and reclaiming formerly suppressed indigenous culture, language and ways of learning by applying local knowledge and known contexts to engage children in activities known to themselves and valued by their parents and the local community.

All people and groups whose identity is under pressure are in need of material and psychological safety in order to mediate and find a way between their retrospective, actual and prospective identity (Bernstein 1996), while trying to cope with a dominant, self-assured national majority. The result is often that people who identify with one another on ethnic, religious or other grounds, form neighborhoods of people with whom they identify, in accordance with the proverb «birds of a feather flock together». This is positive in many ways. However, if monocultural neighborhoods reproduce for generations, they may develop communities that are more-or less culturally disconnected from the larger society or nation. As a consequence, schools and classrooms may also become places of cultural conflict. Especially in countries with comprehensive and inclusive education, aiming at assimilating all citizens into a common national culture and identity, this may become very difficult.

Modern civic nations are described as imagined communities (Anderson 2016) covering a diversity of communities. Under the surface, other imagined or real communities continue to exist, sometimes silently, sometimes loudly claiming their rights. In most Western societies, most citizens want to promote integration of minorities into an already existing state and society and help «them» adapt culturally and practically to their new homeland. From this perspective, the role of educational systems as well as informal social learning, will be to facilitate and help people learn how to tolerate and accept cultural differences and to see the value added in cultural diversity. However, the road from tolerance to acceptance and social integration is often long and full of difficulties. Acceptance, let alone embrace of a multicultural reality in nations that were nearly mono-cultural a few decades ago, presupposes empathy. However, mere understanding of the perspective of the other is not adequate for developing positive cultural peace: Minorities do not merely ‘have’ their own cultural traditions. They are attached to their traditions via positive experiences and emotions connected with traditions and cultural events. In other words, they value their traditions, but they often stay silent and avoid celebrating their traditions due to pressure from the majority culture. When that happens, minority traditions become subculture, living a suppressed life under the surface of society. This fact may be underestimated, or not taken into account by educators as well as mass media.

Three articles in this special edition of the Journal of Peace Education highlight this question. Tatiana Wara shows how and why Russian women, having migrated to Norway and settled there, celebrate the international women’s day in their new country separate from their Norwegian sisters. They want to hold on to a Russian cultural tradition in which women are treated with extra attention on this day because they are women. To a Norwegian citizen, March 8 is a political «protest day», and a day to fight for and move forwards equality and women’s rights. The Russian women find this approach almost too politicized. They miss the feeling of personal respect, care and attention, especially from men, on this day. At the same time, they feel that Norwegian women are a bit condescending, as if unconsciously signaling that they find Russian women «lagging behind» the Norwegian women culturally, and in terms of women’s liberation. This offends them, as they know the proud history of Russian women and their women’s movements.

Two articles in this issue treat the teaching of mathematics (respectively, geometry/space and calculation) in an indigenous context. Fyhn and Berntsen show how engaging both students and families in using indigenous craft and arts to learn the concept of pattern, and then using indigenous craft/arts patterns in mathematical reasoning may improve motivation as well as skills in mathematics among indigenous students. Nordkil and Haetta show how using the space inside a traditional tent (called lavvu) of the nomadic Sami reindeer herders can motivate students to understand geometry and measure 3-dimensional space in a context that is both known and culturally important to the children.

Implications of these articles for peace education can thus be summarized: Children at school are part of families and communities. If teachers or school curricula communicate that the beliefs, values or traditions of the students of minority cultures are inferior to that of a (dominant) national majority, this will alienate the children of the minority, who will then feel rejected or devalued by the school and majority society itself. Forced de- and resocialization of minorities are at the core of the symbolic violence against identity needs (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990; Galtung 1996, 197, table 1.2). Migrants and diaspora communities are often connected for generations to their roots and communities of origin. They inform themselves of the development of conflicts and problems «back home» that made them move from those countries. They try to adapt or mix their cultural traditions and values with the culture(s) of their new country. They also organize locally and develop networks that work as social insurance and social capital (Coleman 1997) to prevent or guard against problems in or with larger society.

Identity needs and identity conflicts may be more central to the second and third generations of immigrants than for first-generation immigrants (Dizon et al. 2021), at least among descendants of immigrants coming to Europe from some Islamic societies (Giuliani, Tagliabue, and Regalia 2018). The reasons for this are contested, but the reactions among this group to negative or derogatory communication are hard, and sometimes uncompromising. In many countries governments try to use education and school curricula as tools to facilitate integration, but school curricula as well as school culture may be promoting assimilation, which is a top-down process, rather than integration based on equality or negotiation. Such a form of integration is in accordance with the definition of cultural violence, as explained by Galtung (1996), Spring (2021), and education may be a central aspect of this form of violence, as explained by Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2004).

Tolerance and mutual adaptation manifest themselves in behaviors on the level of everyday social encounters and organization. Social integration and exclusion take place at the level of (informal) social organization. As shown by Sjøen (this issue), social organization outside-of school is often disregarded by educational interventions designed to prevent exclusion and intolerance, and promote integration. Analysis as well as educational interventions to prevent/counter violent extremism will have limited effect if the interventions disregard social organization. If teachers do not know or disregard this, cultural encounters may develop into cultural conflict in schools. However, the conflict may be silenced due to the lack of consciousness on the part teachers as well as peers of the minority students. Defeatism and high rates of school drop-out among minorities are less visible than street violence, but just as dramatic for the affected students and their families.

A problem that has been investigated in peace education research, is the importance and difficulties in dealing educationally with conflict and trauma of the past, and its impact on present conflicts. For example, Salomon et showed how difficult it is to deal with historical trauma in education for peace in the Middle East (Salomon and Nevo 2002), but also how important it is. Salomon differentiated between three different contexts of conflict:

1. Contexts of tranquility, where conflicts are solved step by step, and treated in ways that include the most important parties to the conflict in peaceful and communicative ways;

2. Contexts of inter-ethnic tensions, but not fully fledged conflicts;

3. Contexts of ‘intractable conflict’, which are «central and total» to the conflict parties. According to Salomon, the latter kind of conflict has a violent past and present, and a «bleak future» (Salomon 2004; Salomon and Nevo 2002).

In a series of educational experiments in the context of the Israeli-Palestinians conflict, the outcomes of educational interventions aiming at integration depend on the basic attitudes of the participants before the intervention starts (Salomon 2004), the social climate and environment of the learners (Tal-Or, David, and Gleicher 2002), the design and duration of the intervention (Watson and Huá 2016), the distance and relations of the learners to the conflict(s) that are being used as learning material (Tal-Or, David, and Gleicher 2002), and the lessons drawn from collective trauma (Salomon 2004).

Regarding collective trauma, Paulgaard and Soleim address how such trauma can impact the prospects of success for peace education projects in the context of high volumes of immigration into an area. However, unlike Salomon et al., Paulgaard and Soleim show how a community’s collective memories and trauma connected with forced migration can be a driving force and motivator for local mobilization to help refugees, and how empathy for refugees depend on knowledge and forms of learning that are often disregarded by school curricula as well as the national agenda of news outlets. One key is how experiences have been communicated down through generations, from (great) grandparents via parents to children, and how the stories of trauma are told and retold in the relevant community. Another key the relationship between the people who are in need of help, and the resident population.

The lessons of such case studies, when compared to the ones mentioned from the Middle East, can hardly be overestimated.

22 July 2023

Vidar Vambheim

(editor in charge of this special issue on Migration, Cultural Encounters and Education).

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vidar Vambheim

Vidar Vambheim holds a PhD in Education, and is an associate professor in Education at the Arctic University of Norway (retired in July 2023). He was the academic leader in establishment and development of the Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) and an MA program in Peace And Conflict Transformation at the Arctic University of Norway. He has since been a teacher in education and peace Studies. Vambheim cooperates with peace educators and peace activists in Japan, Germany, Turkey, Norway, Sweden and the USA. Vambheim is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Peace Education.

Notes

1. In Norway this idea was fashionable among a group of scientists and researchers in the fields of neurology and medicine (Andersen 2015). As an ideology for Norwegianization of the minorities of the north and suppression of their language and cultures, it was promoted by Amund Helland (Jensen 2005, 47). These ideas were rather common all over Europe in the same period.