Research Papers

Globalisation challenges citizenship and puts specific demands on citizenship education. A citizenship limited to the nation state is in important respects ill-suited to meet the demands of a global order characterised by deep-going transformations in space and time. These changes have direct implications for the citizens’ control of decision-making and their exercise of democracy and, thus, on citizens’ ability to perform their citizenship. We think that citizenship education in an era of globalisation must see citizenship as a category including the nation state but, also, going beyond it. In this paper we argue that the European Union (EU) can be seen as a vehicle for citizens’ possibility to influence important issues outside the immediate reach of the nation state. Citizenship education thus should include the EU as an arena for action and relevant ‘EU knowledge’ should be part of the curriculum. Environmental issues will be used as a case to show how this can be done as part of citizenship education. The paper is divided into four parts. In the first, criteria for citizenship in a European setting as well as suggestions on the contents of an EU-related citizenship education, are explored. The cycle of the political process is introduced in the second part, as a means to show possible points of citizen influence. In the third part the political process cycle is applied to our suggested case, environmental policy. Examples taken from a Swedish context of citizenship education will be used in parts two and three. In the final part of the article we present our conclusions regarding citizenship education and how the EU can be considered a part of the solution rather than simply be viewed solely as part of a democratic deficit problem.