Intercultural learning in European youth work: time to rethink?

Since the 1980s, the theory and practice of intercultural learning have increasingly come to influence the activities of European and international youth work. The Council of Europe and the European Commission have adopted intercultural learning as a key methodological approach within their youth programmes and it has become a quality feature of European youth work. Today, whether in the formal sector (education, training, employment) or in the non-formal sector (youth work), it is hard to find European or international youth programmes which do not consider a sustainable intercultural learning process as essential. Nevertheless, Europe has changed beyond recognition since the first steps were made to mainstream intercultural learning in the European youth programmes. The multicultural composition of European society has become an issue of significant political controversy, to the point where immigration in any form has come to be seen as a threat by the public at large and the political classes. Fundamental aspects of the European project considered acquis, such as the right to asylum, protection for refugees or freedom of the media, are regularly put into question by national governments, even those bound by the conditionality of membership in the European Union. Europe has enlarged to include member states with very different democratic traditions, and by extension, very different approaches towards young people and their participation. The political conditions under which discussions of intercultural learning are taking place in Europe have changed radically. It is, therefore, unsurprising that recent articles and papers addressing intercultural learning in the European youth field have critiqued its apparent de-politicisation. While some authors have levelled accusations of intellectual laziness and a lack of political courage at current practices of intercultural learning, others have treated questions of the quality of intercultural learning as practised in the European youth programmes and the general utility of intercultural learning for education and society. Others again have challenged the ways in which intercultural learning methodology translates key concepts into learning experiences and the usefulness of elevating “intercultural dialogue” to European panacea for all societal problems, from civil war to educational failure. The changed conditions of contemporary European multi-cultural societies alluded to above, and the continued failure of state policies to achieve social integration and peace, are putting the mobilisational value of intercultural learning to the test. The comfortable centrality of intercultural learning in European youth work needs to be questioned. The time is ripe an in depth reflection on renewed and revised ways of conceptualising and implementing intercultural learning in the context of youth work in Europe. The German National Agency of the Youth in Action Programme, in cooperation with the Institute for Applied Communication Research in Non-formal Education (IKAB), invites you to an exciting and challenging seminar during which the intercultural learning and its role in European youth work and youth policy will be reflected upon and discussed.