Challenges and Prospects

This book was written in the spirit of elevating the young participants’ voices and experiences as co-researchers in the study. The research bore testimony to the obscure workings of politics and the dividing practices that have spread hate, fear and violence among many of the youths and their diverse communities. The data has shown the governmental discourses that have impacted the many lives of citizens from ethnic minority groups in Britain. At the outset, it was noted that the book sought to extend the research findings to complement the work of many scholars who criticised the workings of legislations, governments and institutions to reveal the interplay of power and governmentality particularly within education. The hope is to encourage further research that involves the youth in a critical dialogue on issues of race, religion, Britishness, identity and belonging. As shown in Chaps. 2 and 3 , for many of the British Muslim participants their status in Britain was portrayed as one of stigmatisation and marginalisation, an effect magnified by negative media representation. For other participants, it was a story of confusion, bewilderment and dismay at the world that has been divided by man-made labels and inherited fear and worry for them as the next generation. In this concluding chapter, I open with a brief overview of immigration and asylum in Britain and around the world to shed some light on the youth’s feelings towards such contemporary issues (as a sub-category theme that emerged from the data). Secondly, I offer a final discussion of the findings and the theoretical frameworks to consider the possible ways in which the education system—and educators—can tackle incidents of racism, discrimination and inequality. I believe this to be paramount if we are to consider ways in which we can move towards the decolonisation of the curriculum away from the superiority of Fundamental British Values (FBVs) and the notion of the stigmatised ‘other’.