Toward recognitive justice: emerging trends and challenges in transnational migration and lifelong learning

Abstract

As a result of globalization and transnational migration, many countries are becoming increasingly ethno‐culturally diverse. Unfortunately, lifelong learning has failed to integrate cultural difference and diversity into educational environments. Rather than facilitating immigrants’ adaptation, lifelong learning has become a vehicle for assimilating immigrants into the dominant norms and values of the host society. To build inclusive and socially just lifelong education, this article proposes transnational lifelong learning for recognitive justice and inclusive citizenship that offers a promising alternative to distributive and retributive approaches to lifelong learning. This framework questions the claim that a universality of citizenship transcends cultural difference and particularity. It suggests ‘pluralist citizenship’ as an alternative form of citizenship that recognizes transnational flows of migration and concomitant diasporic allegiances and affiliations. In rejecting the deficit model of lifelong learning, this framework acknowledges and affirms cultural difference and diversity as positive and desirable assets. Transnational lifelong learning seeks to balance freedom of mobility with protection, recognition and membership.

Notes

1. Another important piece of the migration puzzle is internal migration. Although migration is often used to describe the movement of populations between nation‐states, it is important to note that the term is also used to describe movements of population within nation states (Solinger 2008). It is claimed that China has the largest internal migration in human history.