Tensions, Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Inclusion and Citizenship

In a globalized world, the need for orientation, self-localization and negotiation of individual group memberships as well as the requirements for the self-determined action of individuals are increasing. The analysis of these processes of socialization from the perspective of inclusion and citizenship reveals increasing options for action, opportunities for personal and institutional learning and possibilities for increased sustainability as well as inevitable tensions between inclusion and exclusion, grueling dilemmas between competing normative demands and paradoxes in the structure of socialization processes that block action. The various projects of the interdisciplinary Center for Inclusive Citizenship (CINC) at the Leibniz Universität Hannover are dedicated to the investigation of these processes from educational, historical, political science, special education, sociological and didactic perspectives. 

Citizenship as (legal) status configuration

- Group-specific configurations of (non-) membership
- normalization

Citizenship as civic practice

- bottom-up-perspective
- "Acts of Citizenship"

Citizenship, understood at the CINC as a duality of civic status and civic practice, is itself always in a dichotomous state between desired or propagated inclusion and actual co-produced exclusion. Citizenship refers to both membership status and membership roles in a socialization process. In terms of status and practice, citizenship controls specific configurations of exclusion and inclusion across different socialization processes.

These two approaches are examined from different perspectives in the various research clusters.