NSF Award
1233492
This doctoral dissertation research project will focus on the citizenship in a multi-cultural context. Modern citizenship denotes membership in a political community and the rights and responsibilities attached to that membership. It also denotes membership in a national community defined by cultural norms, values, and ethnocultural markers. Those deemed unassimilable in the national community often lack full, substantive access to the rights and privileges enjoyed by dominant groups. Thus, universalistic conceptions of citizenship exist in tension, to varying degrees, with the de facto marginalization or exclusion of particular groups. Estonia has seen growing social and political divisions between the ethnic Estonian majority and the large Russian minority since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. With its accession to the European Union in 2004, Estonia expressed its commitment to Europe's post-national political project. In practice, however, the EU's directives regarding multiculturalism and minority rights have coexisted uneasily with Estonia's post-Soviet nation-building prerogatives. This project will study the politics of citizenship in Estonia from the perspective of secondary school students in Tallinn, Estonia's largest and most ethnically mixed city. Schools traditionally are key sites of citizenship formation, and the doctoral student will explore how educators and administrators as well as EU youth-policy makers articulate and implement particular citizenship ideals and national narratives through school curricula. She will explore how current secondary school students (part of the first wholly post-Soviet generation in Estonia) interpret, respond to, and act upon the citizenship narratives that they learn in school as well as how their experiences within and outside of school inform their understandings of citizenship and belonging in Estonia. To explore these issues, she will conduct focus groups with students in seven secondary schools, including schools that are predominantly Estonian, that are predominantly Russian, and that have mixed ethnicity. Focus group participants will participate in mapping exercises and a walking tour of Tallinn's controversial memorial sites and monuments, the purpose of which is to explore how young people's understandings of citizenship and their sense of belonging are informed by, and shaped within, material spaces within and beyond the school.<br/><br/>The results of this research will enhance basic understanding of citizenship as sets of political discourses, policies, and practices that people encounter in their everyday lives. This research will demonstrate how citizenship, while often conceived of in universalistic terms, has uneven meanings or outcomes, both spatially and socially. The project will shed new light on the role of young people as political actors, illuminating the ways they engage in the politics of citizenship even as they may be excluded from formal modes of political participation. In doing so, the project will bring together the fields of youth geography and civic education, and it will help focus attention on schools as key sites of citizenship formation and negotiation. This project also will contribute to current discussions about ethnonational politics in the former Soviet Union and will help clarify tensions between EU norms and nation-building projects in post-communist states. Project results will help inform discussions about divided societies, providing important insights into the role of youth and education policies in addressing ethnonational tensions in divided societies. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
