Democracy Lived and Contested: Schooling, Participation, and Political Subjecthood in Everyday Contexts

Abstract

This panel examines how democratic citizenship is produced, constrained, and contested through everyday practices in schools, educational institutions, and local political arenas in turbulent times. Rather than treating democracy as an abstract ideal or formal status, the contributions focus on how power, participation, and belonging are experienced in lived settings where democratic norms are enacted, negotiated, or undermined. Several papers analyse schools as key sites of democratic socialisation, highlighting how institutional cultures, governance structures, and teacher–student relations shape students’ experiences of participation and authority. Attention is paid to tensions between hierarchical governance and participatory ideals, revealing how regulatory frameworks, curriculum demands, and professional expectations affect the scope for democratic practice in everyday schooling. Empirical studies of student councils and school-level participation across national contexts demonstrate how formal participatory structures may either enable meaningful agency or reproduce symbolic and superficial forms of involvement. Other contributions foreground action-based and embodied practices—such as collaborative foodmaking—as spaces where democratic competences, collective responsibility, and resilience emerge through interaction rather than instruction. The panel also extends beyond educational institutions to examine migrant voters’ experiences in local elections, exposing invisible barriers to political participation and contested forms of belonging within democratic systems. By connecting school-based practices with broader electoral and civic contexts, the panel highlights how political subjecthood is shaped across the life course. Collectively, the papers interrogate who is recognised as a legitimate democratic subject, under what conditions participation becomes meaningful, and how power operates in everyday democratic settings. The panel contributes to critical debates on citizenship in turbulent times by showing how democracy is lived, learned, and challenged through ordinary practices that profoundly shape political agency and belonging.

Title	Details
Challenges of Making Space for Education for Democracy Through Democratising School	View Paper Details
Democratic Values and Participation as a Part of the Basic Education System and Everyday Schooling Life	View Paper Details
Democratic Citizenship Competences Through Foodmaking: Action-Based Group Work in the Context of a Science Kitchen	View Paper Details
Invisible Experiences: An Ethnography with Migrant Voters in Municipal and County Elections	View Paper Details
Preparing First-Time Voters: Civics Education, Street-Level Bureaucracy, and Active Citizenship in Estonian Upper-Secondary Schools	View Paper Details