James, Jonathan Simon; (2023) French republican integration, British multiculturalism, and educational responses to terrorism. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis investigates how teachers and other local actors in France and England have enacted national-level responses to the context of terrorism. These include the Great Mobilisation of the School for the Values of the Republic and the duty to promote fundamental British values, which aim to promote core national values among young people to promote social cohesion and build resilience to radicalisation. France’s Policy for Preventing Violent Radicalisation in Schools and England’s Prevent duty outline procedures for identifying and reporting suspected cases of radicalisation. The common emphasis on shared values reflects the transnational trend towards civic integration, wherein Western democracies have placed a greater emphasis on liberal-democratic values as a tool for the integration of migrants and minorities. Despite these convergent trends, there is a tendency in the comparative literature to contrast the British ‘multicultural’ approach to immigrant integration with the French ‘republican’ or ‘assimilationist’ approach. Drawing on eight school-based case studies and further interview and observational data, this thesis provides an empirically grounded account of how these particularistic policy traditions and convergent trends are reflected in the enactment of the policies at the local level, as well as in teachers’ ideas. It finds that in both countries, policymakers and practitioners have drawn on institutionalised ideas and practices in their responses to recent terrorist attacks or their enactment of national policies, leading to some path dependencies. However, policymakers have also looked beyond prevailing paradigms in the face of emerging challenges. Some of the convergence observed at the national level is evident at the school level. The comparative research design also provides new insights into the governance of the two education systems and reveals that local actors in France have greater decision-making capacity than earlier comparative work would suggest.

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