“What Is the Alternative Then?” Affective Challenges in Citizenship Education for Sustainable Intercultural Societies

This study explores the ways in which Canadian teachers construe the complexity of citizenship education, utilizing the key concepts of affect and difficult knowledge to examine the challenges to democratic citizenship within increasingly diverse intercultural societies. The findings from the semi-structured qualitative interviews with six social studies teachers reveal how affective dynamics emerge prominently as they grapple with tensions between idealized conceptions of multi- and intercultural citizenship and ongoing challenging issues (e.g., social inequality and exclusion). The findings reveal a problematic pattern of antinomical attitudes as a dilemma—where teachers outwardly acknowledge ethical obligations to address ongoing injustices while simultaneously resisting the deeper structural changes necessary for sustainable intercultural societies. In doing so, this study illuminates how affective dynamics function as an onto-epistemological power behind social production that shapes our cognitive rational deliberations on citizenship and undergirding ideology(ies). These findings offer critical insights into the ethical challenges of education for sustainable intercultural societies amid a global landscape where extreme nationalism intertwines with neoliberal market-driven imperatives. This study thus provides implications for critical pedagogical approaches for citizenship that embrace myriad affective dynamics to create transformative learning spaces for citizenship education, particularly in addressing systemic inequalities. Such approaches could pave pathways toward acts of citizenship to disrupt already defined orders, practices, and statuses so integrally as to make claims for justice.