| dc.description.abstract | This study casts Global Inclusive Education Policy (GIEP) as a travelling policy, one anticipating reinterpretation as it engages with contextual dimensions in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In this study, GIEP concerns the ensemble of antidiscrimination policies produced by UNESCO, for use within the United Nations Development System (UNDS), rooted in the Right to Education (UN, 1948). It offers a reflexive interpretative account of in-depth interviews with elite policy actors working for or advising multilateral and bilateral organisations, and the state governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The aim is to understand how GIEP is recontextualised within wider socio-political contextual dimensions.
The recontextualisation process is framed through a combination of Migdal’s (2001) paradox between state image and practice, and Wagner’s (2012) concepts of structural-institutional and interpretative-plural modernities. This frame situates GIEP in a tension between the structural-institutional image of Pakistan and Bangladesh, which views social inclusion as secured through laws, rights, norms and citizenship, and the interpretative-plural practice of each state established in political kinship and patronage. This thesis emphasises the limitations of a state-centric approach to GIEP in generating ‘mutual recognition’ between states and marginalised groups, particularly in ethno-federal, postcolonial, or deeply divided societies. Similarly, it notes the importance of considering patronage and political kinship as central forces shaping GIEP but without necessarily identifying these systems as ‘bad governance’.
The findings indicate the recontextualisation of GIEP is anchored in complex wider socio-political issues and is reworked according to other agendas, travelling in name only. The results stress socio-political history as the foundational layer for all other recontextualisation processes. In both countries, GIEP is used as a convergence platform across which disparate domestic and international political agendas are worked. These agendas are subsequently rearticulated according to the moral frameworks of policy actors as they ‘broker’ GIEP. The findings imply GIEP is not necessarily adopted by Pakistan and Bangladesh because of its efficacy or moral values but because it brings with it access to other things which secures state and elite survival. Thus, when considering the recontextualisation of GIEP, it is imperative to consider the position of educational inclusion within the wider sociopolitical and historical context.
This study offers possibilities for refining our understanding of the recontextualisation of GIEP, particularly in countries outside the industrialised North. By emphasising overlap and convergence, as well as resistance, I conclude it is useful to view the recontextualisation of GIEP as comprised of layers rather than levels. ‘Layers’ expands reflection on the breadth and depth of recontextualisation to include socio-political state history, state practice, the position of GIEP in the wider socio-political arena. | en_GB |
