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"Reflections on migration and the
role of lifelong learning"
Reflecting on migration and the role
that lifelong learning plays in the construction of intercultural
societies necessarily implies to reflect on the issue of cultural
identities, taking into account that the social construction of
identities always takes place in a context marked by power
relationships.by Sofía Valdivielso Gender and Education Office of ICAE All identities are cultural constructions. Social and cultural identities can be built from inside and outside. The first one produces closed self-referred identities based on tradition and others do it from the outside giving raise to open identities which are in a permanent process of construction. In the first case, we talk about resistance identities, in the second case, we talk about project identities (Castells, 1997) When identity is generated by those social actors who are in a position of subordination with a dominant group, entrenched in different or opposing principles, we talk about resistance identity. This is the case of cultural minorities that do not feel recognized, nor respected by dominant groups. When we cannot enjoy the benefits of changes, when we live those changes as a threat, as a loss of identity, then we entrench ourselves, we return to essence and those who remain outside those essential frontiers, become our enemies. By feeling that we do not have a place, that we are excluded, we are setting in motion exclusion processes and the excluded people become the excluders. Multiculural societies are those where different cultures coexist. These different cultures share the same physical space but there is no cultural exchange among them, nor a intersubjective space. This is very dangerous because this favors the rise of what Sousa de Santos calls social fascism which translates into racism, intolerance and xenophobia and that favors the development of different forms of fundamentalisms. In the surveys that European governments make to know the problems that most concern citizens, migration holds one of the first places. The social debate is not only on the number of migrants that Europe is able to receive but on the legitimacy of certain cultural practices. There are people who defend the respect of differences, any difference, and others who defend the need to put certain limits because although all cultures are respectable, not all cultural practices are respectable (concerted marriages, female genital mutilation, imposed use of veil, polygamy, etc.) All these patriarchal cultural practices violate women’s human rights, therefore, a constitutional state has to legislate on this, preventing these things to happen within its territory. Laws by themselves do not bring about changes. It is necessary to work to transform certain cultural codes that legitimize practices that violate human rights. And in this sense, lifelong learning plays a very important role. The integration of migrants coming from cultures that legitimize women’s subordination, making them slaves, confining them at home and preventing them from having any contact with the culture of the receiving country, making them marry at an early age and killing them if they dare build their own life project, is a matter of openly criticizing these cultural practices and preventing them. Lifelong education has to favor the construction of identities, projects, with the aim of producing a collective social actor through which individuals build an integral sense of their experiences. In this case the construction of identity is a different life project that pursues the transformation of society as an extension of this identity project. This new identity will be the basis on which really intercultural societies will be built, where not only the same physical space is shared but also the same intersubjective space within a human rights framework.
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