Affect, citizenship, politics: implications for education

This article analyses the role of emotions in the constitution of political identity and boundary formation, and discusses the educational implications of that analysis in the context of citizenship education. The author begins by examining how affect is fundamental to the formation of borders, nationhood and citizenship, and discusses the role of the nation-state as a mobilizer of political emotion. The article goes on to describe how a sentimental citizenship education perpetuates economies of exclusion/inclusion through emphasizing immanent distinctions between hosts and strangers. In the last part of the article, the author argues that there is an urgent need for reconceptualisation of citizenship education and that this effort can be grounded in the notions of conviviality and hospitality. This new citizenship education paradigm operates through a different affective economy that deconstructs the host/stranger polarity and establishes the conditions for a hospitable community that embraces criticality.