When the Axiom of Supranational Communication in Intercultural Citizenship Theory is not Met: Enriching Theory and Pedagogy

Abstract

Inspired by Mike Byram’s latest concept of intercultural citizenship, and developed from ongoing inspiring conversations with him over the last twelve years, this chapter departs from a thorough analysis of the ‘axioms’ of intercultural citizenship theory stated in the book Education for intercultural citizenship: concepts and comparisons (Byram et al., 2017). The way these axioms are thought is in terms of people acting together, where the essence is that people act differently as ‘intercultural citizens’ than they would as ‘national’ citizens. This is why one of the axioms is that “intercultural experience takes place when people from different social groups with different cultures (values, beliefs and behaviours) meet” (p.xxiv) and one characteristic is the creation of “a community of action and communication which is supranational” (p.xxv). But what happens when this supranational communication is not possible and when the people who work together do not belong to different social groups With the aim to investigate whether intercultural citizenship is possible pedagogically in classrooms where this axiom and this characteristic are not feasible, this chapter describes a project that challenged nationalist thinking in a way not identified in the theory.