Call for Papers: Civic Integration and the Uses of History: Narratives, Boundaries, Belonging

Over the past twenty-five years, civic integration trajectories have become an important instrument in integration policies across Europe. These programmes typically combine language instruction, social orientation courses and examinations, and seek to prepare in this way newcomers for participation in the host society. In doing so, citizenship is increasingly embedded in shared values, norms, and traditions (Duyvendak et al., 2016). Civic integration courses make a broader tendency of the culturalization of citizenship especially visible. Beyond offering practical information about daily life, they articulate what are presented as the core values and social expectations of the receiving society. Rather than a formal status, civic integration policy reflects who is allowed to belong according to policy.

Within these trajectories, history education plays a particularly prominent role. This has, however, received remarkably little scholarly attention. Yet this domain merits closer examination for several reasons. Civic integration courses constitute a highly specific pedagogical setting in which historical knowledge is presented as socially consequential for newcomers’ civic participation. Moreover, historical narratives can render visible how history is employed for community-building efforts and can reveal how states negotiate boundaries between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. Studying history within civic integration offers a unique vantage point onto the contemporary politics of memory, including which pasts are highlighted, which are marginalised, and how these choices both articulate and shape understandings of citizenship.

Moreover, the context of civic integration courses enables not only to analyse the production of state-sponsored historical narratives, but also to examine how newcomers receive, interpret, and negotiate these narratives. This can offer important insights into the effects of nation- and community-building practices based upon historical narratives, and may show when, how, and for whom such histories foster a sense of belonging, and when they fail to do so, or even exclude peopled and, thus, promote the opposite.

This workshop aims to focus on what it is newcomers want to know, how countries differ in the historical narratives they emphasize and what this may reveal about broader processes of nation-building, boundary-making, and the politics of belonging. We aim to bring together scholars from history, political science, migration studies and other related fields. We welcome contributions that reflect on how (integration) policy is related to practice, how historical narratives are selected, taught, and experienced, or how they (fail to) shape newcomers’ sense of belonging.

Central questions include, but are not limited to:

• What are the (theoretical) consequences of the use of state-sponsored history and the construction of culturalist boundaries?
• How do civic integration policies mobilise history, and what kinds of historical knowledge are deemed necessary for newcomers?
• How are official narratives translated into teaching practices, classroom interactions, or examination formats?
• How do newcomers engage with, interpret, or contest the historical knowledge presented to them?
• What are the differences in practices of (history in) civic integration across Europe, and what may this reveal?
• How does historical culture intersect with broader questions of identification, recognition, and belonging?

Submission guidelines

Interested participants are invited to submit an abstract of 300–500 words in .docx or .pdf format to anthe.baele@ugent.be by 1 June 2026. Please name your file: Surname_Title of the abstract.

Practical information

This workshop will take place October 21-22, 2026, in Ghent (Belgium).
The workshop is organised by the Center for Meta and Public history (M&P) and will be free of charge.
The coordinator is Anthe Baele.