Local Identities and Global Citizenship: Challenges for Universities

This is the prospective title of the 6^th Communique of the Big Tent, to be finalized and issued at the end of the 12th PASCAL Conference in Catania, Sicily, on 9 October this year.

Big Tent is a loose, voluntary, network on international bodies owned by those who participate – a network of networks to do with university engagement formed in 2010. The main visible evidence of its collaboration is the five statements or communiques issued so far that address issues important to societies and so for the work of community-university engagement. They declare shared purposes; and they commit to action by universities and their partners for the public good. We want our voice to be heard more clearly by others, and to increase our influence with policy-makers. For the full story of Big Tent see http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/unesco/resources/ with the texts of previous communiques.

The idea for Big Tent 2015 came from arose the location of the PASCAL Conference ‘on the frontier of fortress Europe’. The theme of the first communique was ‘Enhancing North-South Cooperation in Community-University Engagement’. What is happening in southern Europe today, and in other North-South frontier situations globally, is the antithesis of North-South cooperation (see Budd Hall - Engaging communities and universities in the public good).

Nearly half the populations of Asian countries are young people below the age of 25; these billion plus youth have grown in the post Berlin wall era; they have been hearing globalisation since their childhood. They now have access to smart phones and internet which connects them  globally with their peers in the cyber world. They now have begun to share global aspirations of One World. For them, movements from villages to small towns to mega cities of their own country, and beyond its historical borders, is one seamless aspiration. This generation is beginning to experience global citizenship. yet, the 'host' communities in cities and beyond are resistant to this 'invasion' of youth; they are afraid to change, and they are uncertain about the future that comes in with these waves of youthful migrations.

How can the possibility of global citizenship driven by the youth of today be embraced by communities in  a sustainable manner?

We hope that the PASCAL Conference can disentangle and somehow resolve in the real circumstances of southern Europe an apparent contradiction: between local identity and place-based active citizenship, which we applaud, and the ethnocentric separatism typical of political responses to South > North migration. A successful Big Tent VI will set out what universities should and can do, and are perhaps doing by engaging, to nurture healthy local identity and community learning: that is to say of a kind which is generous, equitable and reaches out to others in North-South amity instead of conflict.

Chris Duke
May 7, 2015

Further reading on the Big Tent:

Big Tent V Declaration - Third Draft: Learning to Build Inclusive Cities with the joint-effort of community, city government and higher education

Big Tent Communique IV - The grand global challenges and the transformation to sustainable societies

Big Tent IV - Global communiquè 'Great Transformation'

Release of Big Tent Communique on Sustainability, Knowledge and Higher Education

Second Global Dialogue Communique - How Should Universities respond to global pressures for social and economic change?

Enhancing North-South Cooperation in Community-University Engagement - Communiqué of September 23, 2010