What Kind of Citizenship for European Higher Education? Beyond the Competent Active Citizen

Abstract

How might European higher education contribute to the promotion and development of European citizenship? In this article, the author addresses this question through a critical discussion of the notions of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’, which play a central role in current policy and research on the role of education in the development of European citizenship. The author argues that there is a tendency within the idea of ‘active citizenship’ to depoliticise the very idea of citizenship because it is based upon a consensus notion of democracy and a functionalist understanding of citizenship and the formation of citizens. The author also argues that the idea of civic competence reduces civic learning and political education to a form of socialisation which undermines rather than supports political agency. For these reasons, the author argues that European higher education should not aim to become a socialising agent for the production of the competent active citizen but should seek to support modes of political action and civic learning that embody a commitment to a more critical and more political form of European citizenship than what is envisaged in the ideas of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘civic competence’.