In an era marked by democratic challenges, global systemic competition, digital disruptions, and contested senses of belonging, this panel examines what citizenship and democracy education can offer for reinvigorating contemporary democracies and citizen agency. While citizenship is conventionally tied to rights, duties, and participation within liberal democracies, current turbulence reshapes both the meaning and practice of democratic participation and belonging. Building on citizenship education research that positions it as a democratic infrastructure and practice rather than a narrow pedagogical activity, the panel investigates how educational practices and policies as well as governance arrangements enable or constrain political agency and subject formation.
Contributions explore the interplay between curricula, institutions, and actors鈥攊ncluding schools, local governments, civil society, and teachers鈥攁s sites where power, identity, and participation are negotiated and contested in everyday practice. We examine how governance modes (hierarchical, co-governance, and self-governance) influence both formal and non-formal educational spaces, shaping who gets recognised as a capable political subject and how participation is enacted.
By situating citizenship education within broader democratic challenges, the panel contributes to understanding how educational processes mediate power relations, belonging, and participation among diverse groups鈥攊ncluding marginalised and emergent political actors.
The panel explores citizenship education as an organised practice of democratic becoming, responsive to turbulent socio-political dynamics that redefine what it means to be a democratic citizen today. Through theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented insights, the panel advances critical dialogue on the ways education systems both reproduce and transform contemporary regimes of democratic citizenship and democracy more broadly.
