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The main objective of this paper is to examine the role of students' aspirations and expectations in affecting school achievement among 7th and 8th grade students in Qatar's schools. The study draws on data collected in Qatari schools from a randomly selected sample of 841 students and their parents. The findings indicate that students' educational aspirations have a stronger effect on students' school performance when compared to students' educational expectations, even when controlling for demographic factors, school attitude, and parental expectations. This finding directly contributes to the debate in the literature about the relative importance of aspirations and expectations, while also confirming what other studies have suggested- that the meaning and the way in which both aspirations and expectations operate is contextually relative. Context plays a significant role here, and consequently, leaves the debate over what matters more, aspirations or expectations, widely open.

The issue of working out a viable relationship between accepting and/or living with diversity on the one hand and fostering integration on the other has occupied public debates, political agendas, and social sciences for decades. Our point of departure is that the contemporary European context provides distinct challenges. We need to understand how postmigrant integration is shaped and conditioned by the European public space understood as a geographical space; a composite of legally and institutionally constituted entities; covering nations, regions, and cities mainly within but also beyond the EU; and a site of interaction, and public expression of contestation and cooperation. In so doing, we have to contend with the fact that such important perspectives for handling diversity as multiculturalism, interculturalism, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism occupy distinct roles within the European public space whose governance is multi-levelled yet not reducible to a single tiered system. The European public space is more encompassing than the EU even while that level of governance has some important regulative functions upon member states and to some extent even on non-EU states such as Norway and the UK, especially in what we refer to as the outer circle. While the national level is the most powerful normatively and by most other measures on the inclusion of difference (our inner circle), municipalities also contribute to the constitution of this space. We explore the logics of our four 'isms' and of the tiers of governance and their interaction with each other, both the isms in tensions and syntheses with each other and differentially in relation to the levels of governance. This is an exercise that has not been done before. Our purpose is to suggest a new normativity that might feasibly achieve a broader degree of support and success than any of the isms have achieved alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses whether multiculturalism, interculturalism and cosmopolitanism find themselves in tension or, rather, coexist in UK politics. This is done through the analysis of recent policy and civil society documents, complemented with semi-structured interviews with race equality organizations. Results suggest a complementary relationship between these normative perspectives, with interculturalism and multiculturalism jointly shaping the central government's policy as well as the discourse of civil society organizations. As for cosmopolitanism, it manifests itself primarily in civil society's support for a more humane system for asylum seekers, as well as in the endorsement of EU intervention in the governance of cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between religion and the state, focusing on cases of establishment in which one religion is formally recognized. Arguing that religious establishment is wrong if it causes some citizens to feel alienated, we reject the criticism that feelings of alienation are too subjective a foundation for a robust normative case about establishment. We base our argument on an account of collective identities, which may have an 'inside' but are also subject to a process of othering in which a dominant group imposes an identity on a subordinate group. The establishment of a religion may contribute to othering, and the othered group may consequently be alienated from the state. However, since establishment does not always cause alienation, it is necessary to seek evidence and engage in a dialogue in order to understand a group's own account of its experience of its situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of multiculturalism as a public discourse has been caused by various socio-political factors – such as 9/11 and its aftermath and the growth in migration – and new pro- and anti-diversity isms have been offered instead. One such pro-diversity discourse is interculturalism. Whilst some of its advocates, especially in Quebec and Europe, have seen it as a replacement of multiculturalism, a closer examination shows a high degree of complementarity. We demonstrate this by a theoretical-normative unpacking of multiculturalism and of the claims of interculturalism, and by evidence that Australian publics see multiculturalism as supportive of interculturalism, perceived as a renewal of multiculturalism. We express the hope that the sometimes oppositional debate between these two isms may now move forward into a phase of complementarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European/UNESCO interculturalism (IC) emerged as a critique of multiculturalism (MC) (complicated by the fact that there is an alternative interculturalism, not discussed here). I suggest that this relationship has gone through three phases. Phase one begins in the 1990s with a general dissatisfaction with MC from many political and intellectual sources. Phase two, roughly from about the middle of the last decade, is when IC scholars, mainly sociologists, though also in cultural studies, policy studies, migration studies, geography as well as education emerge in significant numbers. The engagement with multiculturalism is limited and serves the purpose of clearing the ground in order to get on with a new research approach and then getting on with it. Phase three is the political theory justification of IC. I argue that these three phases have not established a pro-diversity 'ism' which can replace MC. While I hope we may move on to a phase four, where MC and IC are seen to be complementary, I here re-state what I think are the key concepts of MC. I hope it will be evident that firstly, that these concepts are not out of date or redundant; and secondly, therefore, that IC is wrong to abandon them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]