“What Is the Alternative Then?” Affective Challenges in Citizenship Education for Sustainable Intercultural Societies

Abstract

This study explores the ways in which Canadian teachers construe the complexity of citizenship education, utilizing the key concepts of affect and difficult knowledge to examine the challenges to democratic citizenship within increasingly diverse intercultural societies. The findings from the semi-structured qualitative interviews with six social studies teachers reveal how affective dynamics emerge prominently as they grapple with tensions between idealized conceptions of multi- and intercultural citizenship and ongoing challenging issues (e.g., social inequality and exclusion). The findings reveal a problematic pattern of antinomical attitudes as a dilemma—where teachers outwardly acknowledge ethical obligations to address ongoing injustices while simultaneously resisting the deeper structural changes necessary for sustainable intercultural societies. In doing so, this study illuminates how affective dynamics function as an onto-epistemological power behind social production that shapes our cognitive rational deliberations on citizenship and undergirding ideology(ies). These findings offer critical insights into the ethical challenges of education for sustainable intercultural societies amid a global landscape where extreme nationalism intertwines with neoliberal market-driven imperatives. This study thus provides implications for critical pedagogical approaches for citizenship that embrace myriad affective dynamics to create transformative learning spaces for citizenship education, particularly in addressing systemic inequalities. Such approaches could pave pathways toward acts of citizenship to disrupt already defined orders, practices, and statuses so integrally as to make claims for justice.

1. Introduction

While citizenship has often been recognized as a term that confers legal status and formal membership in a particular country and/or sociopolitical community (Marshall and Bottomore 1992), it fundamentally functions to determine who belongs and who remains excluded from them (Balibar 2014). This power-laden nature of citizenship becomes evident through numerous sociopolitical movements that challenge the structures of privilege as marginalized peoples contest notions of citizenship based on national (and cultural) territory and imagined comradeship among citizens (Rodríguez 2018; Vickery 2017). These challenges reveal ongoing struggles over citizenship regarding who defines the boundaries of our sociopolitical community and what constitutes legitimate membership within it. Addressing these struggles over the complexity of citizenship is essential to establishing a critical foundation for sustainable communities that align with several Sustainable Development Goals suggested by the United Nations (hereafter SDGs). For example, equitable citizenship frameworks directly underpin SDG 10, Reduced Inequalities, and SDG 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (United Nations 2024). More specifically, SDG 4, Quality Education, through its target 4.7, calls for education that ensures all learners acquire knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development through citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity (UNESCO 2019). This target directly positions citizenship education with its multi- and intercultural approaches as central components for establishing sustainable intercultural societies.1

At a time when heightened social conflicts are emerging over citizenship and national identity due to the rise of Trumpism across the globe (Giroux 2023; UNESCO 2018), Canada represents a prominent case where the power-laden nature of citizenship manifests in the divergence between official idealism and persistent issues of social inequality. In Canada, often recognized globally as an increasingly diverse intercultural society, an idealism expressed through official signifiers (e.g., diversity, pluralism, multiculturalism, etc.) has shaped a widespread imagining of multicultural citizenship that defines the good Canadian citizen (Anderson 2017; Wright-Maley 2022). This idealism constitutes a predominant cultural worldview that “prescribe[s] standards and values that define what it means to be a valued member of the culture or group” (van Kessel et al. 2020, p. 430). However, this cultural worldview does not reflect either citizens’ diverse lived experiences or their challenges to Canadian citizenship that confront the ongoing history of colonization, discrimination, and curriculum epistemicide (Gebhard 2017; Howell and Ng-A-Fook 2022; Létourneau 2019; Sockbeson 2017)—those that represent societal struggles over social inequalities and exclusionary citizenship practices, the SDGs’ visions seek to address through their emphasis on reducing inequalities, building inclusive institutions, and providing education for sustainable development (UNESCO 2018, 2019). In this sense, the gap between this predominant cultural worldview and social dynamics challenging the structure of privilege (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, etc.) reveals not only tensions over popularly distributed images of nice Canadian citizens but also their power-laden nature. These tensions have recently intensified with shifting public attitudes toward multiculturalism, which reflects growing anti-immigration sentiment and declining confidence in multicultural policies (Hatton 2025). Given this gap and its concomitant tensions, some critical questions emerge that are central to education for democratic citizenship and sustainable intercultural communities: In what ways does such a cultural worldview exist as predominant, albeit with its dissonance with the reality in which so many Canadians live? And, in what ways, if at all, does that dissonance instigate affective reactions that persist in the power-laden nature of citizenship in Canada?

To respond to these questions, I pay close attention to the ways in which teachers express citizenship and its contentious aspects in Canada, with particular attention to white teachers’ perspectives. While many factors shape and influence the social dynamics of citizenship and education, I focus on white teachers for three reasons: First, as both passive and active social agents, teachers engage deeply with various affairs at multiple and (dis)jointed levels of education, including curriculum and everyday schooling practices. Not only do their perceptions of citizenship indicate nuanced understandings entwined with their lived experiences as members of the dominant cultural group, but these perspectives also reflect their negotiations of variegated dynamics across multiple levels of education. Second, teachers regularly encounter controversial issues related to citizenship education, such as heightened incivility, social inequality, and discrimination toward citizens on the margins (Cassar et al. 2023; Garrett 2020; Geller 2020). Within their pedagogical practices in/beyond their classrooms, teachers engage in contentious issues that can disrupt their prevalent beliefs of citizenship predicated largely upon the predominant cultural worldview and its constituent image of good Canadians (Wright-Maley 2022). This engagement becomes prominent in the current political context, where rising populist nationalism both echoes and intensifies these challenges of citizenship. Third, my attention on white teachers’ perspectives seeks to spotlight specific affective dynamics that constitute the power-laden nature of citizenship education and its entanglement with the image of good Canadians. Not only does this focus reflect a demographic consideration, but it also primarily concerns how whiteness as a position of institutional authority and cultural dominance is intertwined with ongoing dynamics within and beyond educational contexts.2 As Zembylas (2025) indicates, whiteness often functions not simply as a demographic category but as an onto-epistemological position that influences the ways in which educators engage with contentious aspects of citizenship and its undergirding ideology(ies). Whiteness and its specification in this study, thus, enable me to delve deeper into the specific onto-epistemological presupposition with its affective dimensions that include historically accumulated structures of privilege (re)shaping educational institutions and practices—where whiteness manifests through institutional authority, cultural dominance, and widely pervasive ways of knowing, feeling, and imagining (Ahmed 2004; Garcia-Rojas 2017; Matias and Boucher 2023).

The ways in which white teachers construe citizenship, I thus suggest, reflect the ongoing onto-epistemic struggles over collective identity(ies) concerning who we have been, are, and wish to become. These struggles often lead to complex ethical dilemmas when implementing citizenship education in diverse intercultural contexts including (but not limited to) Canada. The teachers’ reasoning and imaginings, shaped and influenced by their roles as educators and their position as members of the dominant cultural group in Canada, offer valuable insights into the ways in which power dynamics in citizenship persist or face challenges within and beyond educational settings. These insights emerge as central in the Canadian context, where educational policies reflect ongoing heightened tensions between neoliberal imperatives and intercultural ideals. Furthermore, such insights resonate with the ongoing severe global context, especially as Trumpism emerges as a dominant political climate that blends white supremacy, voter suppression, market fundamentalism, and authoritarianism (Giroux 2023). This context reflects wider struggles over citizenship and national identity in an era of rising extreme nationalism intertwined with neoliberal market-driven imperatives (UNESCO 2018). These struggles create profound challenges to the inclusive models of citizenship and democratic values we have pursued (Cho et al. 2022)—resonating with the SDGs’ overarching visions of sustainable societies. Hence, the focal point of this study is two interrelated questions:

• In what ways do teachers construe citizenship in/for Canada and its contested nature?
• In what ways do teachers address the dissonance between their emotional attachments to their idealized conception of Canadian citizenship and their encounters with reality that challenges these attachments?

2. Theoretical Framework

Affect and Difficult Knowledge in the Complexity of Citizenship

This study rests on a proposition that citizenship, as a flexible and continually changing concept, is a collective production attached to complex historical, sociopolitical, and cultural dynamics in each nation-state entwined within a globalized world (Balibar 2014; Beaman 2016). Moving beyond discussions over the erosion of the Marshallian framework based on autonomous citizens, a large body of scholarship examines unequal relations of power within the ways to conceptualize (ideal) citizens and citizenship in/for (democratic) nation-states (e.g., Isin 2009; Turner 2016). In Canada, this scholarship connects to critiques of citizenship education and its power-laden nature as reinforcing specific ideals of the legitimate Canadian citizen—white, European, global middle class, heteronormative Man (e.g., den Heyer 2017; Donald 2012, 2019). These critiques frame this study with a crucial assumption: citizenship is an ideological and cultural production that stems from our circumscribed interpretation(s) of an us identity that embodies specific ideals and their constitutive values we wish to pursue. This production serves as institutionally constituted frames of perceptions pervasive from the K-12 curriculum to everyday schooling practices, undergirding the unchanged structures of privilege (Kim 2023; Tupper and Cappello 2012; Wright-Maley 2022). These ideological structures reflect and reproduce social inequality toward citizens on the margins through material conditions and symbolic boundaries that determine legitimate citizenship.

My engagement with citizenship as a power-laden collective production delves into its complexity based on the concepts of affect and difficult knowledge. Affect, here, refers to unstructured force relations that move across bodies and spaces, producing dual movements of affecting and being affected (Massumi 2015; Zembylas 2013, 2022, 2025). Differing from emotions that emerge as readily identifiable personal feelings, affect functions at a more fundamental level—as non-representational physiological and social forces that shape relationships and meaning-making processes prior to our conscious recognition. Affective dynamics thus serve as an onto-epistemological power behind social production, shaping the ways in which individuals and collectives interpret and engage with citizenship through their unpredictably assembled agency “as part of a messy, heterogeneous and emergent social world” (Fox and Powell 2021, p. 782). Here, onto-epistemological power refers to how affect functions at the foundational level where the ways of being, knowing, and imagining are mutually constituted, shaping both how one exists within social relations and how one comes to understand those relations. My attention to affect as an onto-epistemological power enriches an analysis of ideological structures and their ongoing power dynamics that often rest on materialist theoretical approaches. Affect, as Massumi (2015) demonstrates, keeps (re)shaping the ways in which unequal power relations materialize through bodily responses preceding rational deliberations. These affective dynamics reveal the visceral (and often incoherent) dimension through which ideology(ies) functions—not distinct from material relations and class structures, but fundamental to the ways they become embodied in our daily lives. This interconnected perspective illuminates the ways in which power relations persist within social institutions and educational practices, even when consciously recognized (Ahmed 2004; Mulcahy and Martinussen 2023).

Along with this entwined connection between affect, ideology(ies), and circuits of unequal power, the complexity of citizenship with its contentious aspects stems from our fraught relationship with “contradictory sets of existential fantasy and desire about ourselves and others” (den Heyer 2019, p. 296). To delve into this relationship that shapes and/or influences the ways we interpret and enact citizenship, this study also draws upon the concept of difficult knowledge that refers to “both representations of social trauma in curriculum and the individual’s encounters with them in pedagogy” (Pitt and Britzman 2003, p. 755; Britzman 2013; Zembylas 2014, 2022). These representations include the complex and often unbearable social reality that instigates our un/conscious psychic challenges, such as traumatic public histories and ongoing issues that relate to severe conflicts, violence, atrocities, and/or deaths. Pitt and Britzman (2003) contrasts this concept with lovely knowledge, which is constituted by both the easily absorbed prevalent ideas and our emotional attachments to them. Our encounters with difficult knowledge engender affective dynamics at the (trans)individual and collective levels, shaping the ways in which we engage with citizenship through unpredictable assemblages of emotions, bodily sensations, and social forces. These encounters involve affective dynamics as well as our cognitive sense-making process, with myriad affects emerging prior to conscious recognition to shape and/or influence the ways we accept, negate, or challenge (idealized) conceptions of citizenship.

In other words, the ways in which we attend to citizenship involve both cognitive processes and affects that shape (and are shaped by) dynamic systems of knowledge functioning as “infinitesimal mechanism of power [that] have been—and continued to be—invested, colonized, utilized, involuted, transformed, displaced, [and] extended” (Foucault [1976] 1980, p. 99). From this perspective, citizenship education becomes a disciplinary site that materializes citizenship through discourses, institutions, and social practices that shape the legitimate citizen as the subject with its constituents as categorical (Foucault 1982). The circuits of unequal power relations and their affective dynamics entwined with this disciplinary site, in that sense, function as forces and networks that produce knowledge systems, which shape and normalize specific ways of interpreting and imagining citizenship as solely acceptable while rendering others problematic or unthinkable. Based on this integrated theoretical framework, this study pays close attention to the ways in which teachers engage with citizenship, involving both their internal cognitive deliberations and affects that shape the unpredictable dynamic natures of knowledge production. Through this approach, I strive to illuminate the complexity of citizenship that often remains unnoticed.

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Context and Participants

This study conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with six social studies teachers to investigate the ways in which they attend to citizenship in general and citizenship education. To do so, I recruited six experienced secondary social studies teachers working at secondary schools in a large suburban area of Alberta, Canada.3 In Alberta, a curriculum framework for social studies education centers on citizenship and identity, which emphasizes multiculturalism, pluralism, and democratic values: “Social studies helps students develop their sense of self and community, encouraging them to affirm their place as citizens in an inclusive, democratic society” (Alberta Education 2005, p. 1). Not only does this framework highlight the widespread ideals of Canada, but it also requires teachers and students to engage with controversial issues including, importantly, some (ongoing) colonial pasts. This curricular framework, in that sense, establishes the educational context(s) within which the teachers in Alberta shape and navigate their everyday social lives, including in/formal schooling practices in and beyond their classrooms.4 The centrality of citizenship within this framework thus enables teachers to offer insights into what citizenship means for them within constantly changing political, sociocultural, and educational dynamics in (but not limited to) Canada. I thus anticipated that experienced social studies teachers could offer rich, impressive, and refined insights into prevalent senses of citizenship in/beyond Canada. Criteria for experienced included well-established teaching careers (minimum 5 years of teaching), completion of or enrollment in graduate degrees or advanced university courses, and/or recognition by colleagues as exemplary teachers. Based on these criteria, I sought potential participants by asking my personal contacts in education fields (e.g., teachers, administrators, faculty members, and/or graduate students at universities, etc.) to recommend teachers who met these requirements. After six teachers agreed to participate in this study, times and places convenient for the participants were arranged for the interviews. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, most interviews were conducted via Google Meet, with only a few initial meetings held in person.

Table 1. Information about the participants and their contexts.

Participant Pseudonyms	Self-Selected Identifications (Race and Gender)	Subject(s) Taught	Teaching Experience	Highest Qualification
Andrew	White Man (he/him)	Social studies, English literature	30 years	Masters
Lyssa	White and Indigenous Woman (she/her)	Social studies, French	14 years	Post Graduate Diploma
George	White Man (he/him)	Social studies, History, English literature	16 years	Masters
Larry	White Man (he/him)	Social studies, Mathematics	37 years	Bachelor
Freddie	White Man (he/him)	Social studies, Indigenous studies	5 years	Masters
Randelle	White Woman (she/her)	Social studies	21 years	Masters

provides information about the teachers and their contexts during the interviews. All participants selected and used their own pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality. All participants were Canadians of white European descent, except Lyssa, who identifies as both Indigenous and White-European due to cultural influences from her grandmother (adopted by Ojibway parents) and her Cree mother.

3.2. Data Collection

I collected data through three semi-structured interviews with each participant, adapting established approaches for qualitative interviewing and multi-phase design (Creswell and Poth 2018; Kvale and Brinkmann 2015; Seidman 2013): (a) individual interviews using a set of questions to spark discussions about the ways participants understand citizenship and education, (b) individual interviews using materials offered by the participants, and (c) individual task-based activities using selected materials and follow-up interviews. The interviews were conducted over a year in 2020 at a large suburban school district in Alberta, Canada. All interviews were audio-recorded, and each ranged from 60 to 130 min. I also maintained field notes documenting my detailed observations, particularly when participants disclosed unsettled thoughts and emotions during the interviews. All participants completed the participant check of selected interview excerpts. These excerpts, drawn from their recorded interview transcriptions, consisted of sections I identified as crucial data sources. All participants requested no substantial changes, only minor editorial revisions.

Once participants consented, I asked them to respond to a set of open-ended questions with key words and phrases regarding citizenship and education in the first phase of the interview. For the second phase, I conducted individual interviews using artifacts provided by participants. I asked each participant to share three or four items (images, video/audio clips, or other visual resources) that represent their understanding of citizenship and that they use in their citizenship education classes. With these participant-selected items, I posed open-ended questions to explore their reasoning and imaginings about citizenship and the variegated emotions attached to them. The third phase consisted of individual task-based activities and follow-up interviews using two types of materials: selected political speeches and Indigenous artwork. The political materials included three Canada Day speeches by Justin Trudeau (2016, 2017, 2020), Prime Minister of Canada at the time, and two speeches by Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta at the time, on multiculturalism (Kenney 2020b) and educational choice (Kenney 2020a). For artwork, I selected four paintings by Kent Monkman, a Cree artist known for recasting historical narratives in North America (Monkman 2012, 2016, 2018a, 2018b). These materials were chosen based on two criteria: (a) their reflection of Canadian citizenship ideals frequently shared by participants in previous interviews and (b) their potential to challenge participants through cognitive, emotional, and psychic disruptions that might unsettle those particular ideals.

3.3. Data Analysis

This study adopted critical discourse analysis (hereafter CDA) as its analytical method. CDA seeks to critically interpret the concurrent patterns of the participants’ language and their relevant discursive sources, including political, social, historical, and cultural contexts entwined with ongoing meaning-making processes (Fairclough 2003; Luke 2002). Hence, CDA delves into the ways in which words, descriptions, and rationales emerge from participants’ engagements in social practices of knowledge production, revealing unequal relations of power.

After completing the interviews, I analyzed all transcripts following the analytical steps outlined by Fairclough (2003) and Luke (2002)—the macro and micro analyses. For the microanalysis, I first reviewed the interview transcripts multiple times, attending to words, phrases, uses of narratives, and metaphors the participants repeatedly uttered. Second, I assigned codes to specific parts of the data to generate preliminary patterns. I then (re)examined these codes and ascertained recurrent patterns to establish categories in the data. Building on this microanalysis, I conducted the macroanalysis through continual inductive coding and constant comparison processes, identifying discursive structures entwined with particular sociocultural contexts and relevant ideologies (e.g., liberalism, colonialism, and (neoliberal) capitalism).

In line with this analytical process concerning the patterns of language, my analysis also attends to participants’ visceral emotional responses. Following Boler and Davis (2018, p. 81), this study employs the concept of “affect as emotions on the move”. From this perspective, emotions are codifications of affect that are “collectively or intersubjectively manifested, experienced, and mobilized, … [and so] channeled into movement(s)” (Boler and Davis 2018, p. 81). The emotions participants revealed serve as another language describing affect’s ongoing impacts that keep shattering and/or reshaping their solidified interpretations of citizenship. Given that the body registers emotions in various ways, I carefully interpreted the recordings alongside my detailed field notes, focusing on the representations the participants disclosed, including, importantly, intonations, stillness, and speeds of the utterances, breath and sighs, facial expressions, and macro/micro body gestures, amongst others.

For example, when analyzing Lyssa’s response about her interpretation of Canadian citizenship, I noted her cautious voice tone and relatively long pauses between utterances:

We are a model in the world in a lot of ways for how we approach pluralism and multiculturalism, but it’s not without its problems. It’s challenging. (long pause) If you talk about diversity as a strength, okay, but where did the equality come into play there? To what degree should diversity extend throughout our society?

Given her rationale and revealed emotions, I initially assigned this response the codes such as good citizenship, multicultural society, pluralism, deep attachment, and challenges and struggles. These initial codes were then grouped under two recurrent patterns: multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism essential to Canadian citizenship and fraught relationship with diversity. Through this inductive coding process, I traced underlying ideologies (e.g., Western liberalism) and their associated visceral emotions (e.g., irregular oscillations between feelings of pride, discomfort, and frustration). I repeated this process for all participant data, conducting multiple rounds of code refinement and constant comparison to identify broader patterns across cases.

As a result, the final codebook consisted of three overarching themes that captured both the discursive content and linguistic strategies through which participants constructed and negotiated their understandings of citizenship in/for Canada (see

Table 2. Codebook with representative quotes.

Theme	Sub-Theme	Code Name	Definition	Representative Quote
An Imaginary of Good Canadian Citizenship	Lovely Knowledge	Good Citizenship	Idealized civic identity grounded in liberal ideals and values	“Being Canadian is about doing the right thing even when it’s not easy. It’s about values—equality, fairness, and treating others with respect.” (Freddie, Interview #2)
		Multicultural Society and Pluralism	Framing Canada as inherently diverse, inclusive, and pluralistic—a normalized civic ideal	“Canada has now enough of some history that diversity is mostly accepted, pluralism is mostly agreed, multiculturalism has been officially a policy for quite a long time now.” (Andrew, Interview #1)
		Deep Attachment	Expressions of pride or emotional identification with Canadian values or cultural practices	“Even the kids who are most frustrated by Canada, they still say, ‘We’re lucky to live here.’” (Randelle, Interview #3)
Tensions from Contradictions and Affective Disruptions	Difficult Knowledge	Difficult Histories	Recognition of erased, violent, or contested aspects of Canada’s colonial past	“You feel this tension when you talk about residential schools. The kids go quiet.” (Larry, Interview #3)
		Curricular Dissonance	Critique of school curricula for sanitizing or omitting structural and historical issues	“We’re still teaching what’s comfortable. What makes us look good. We aren’t teaching the hard stuff.” (Randelle, Interview #3)
		Challenges and Struggles as Disruption	Emotional and ideological tensions—expressed through hesitation, conflict, or contradiction—when civic ideals are confronted with structural realities	“It’s a hard story to tell, right? The history is really difficult. Especially when you still have to say, ‘But Canada’s great.’” (George, Interview #2)
Discursive Stabilization and Affective Affirmation	Ideological Commitment	Western Liberalism as Frame	Liberalism as the foundational structure of Canadian civic discourses	“All of our political systems, our education, everything—it’s all based on liberalism.” (Freddie, Interview #2)
		Balancing Openness and Realism	Attempts to mediate contradictions through moderation or pragmatic reasoning	“I’m definitely an idealist, but I also know the classroom has limits. You have to balance what’s ideal and what’s doable.” (Larry, Interview #3)
		Hopeful and Critical	Maintaining faith in national ideals while recognizing systemic shortcomings	“Are we perfect? Absolutely not. But I’d like to believe we’re getting better, slowly.” (George, Interview #2)

). These themes also encompassed participants’ visceral emotional responses that revealed how affective dynamics function to shape and disrupt their processes of meaning-making. The first theme, An Imaginary of Good Canadian Citizenship, includes three codes representing the ways in which participants reproduced dominant discourses: good citizenship as an idealized civic identity grounded in liberal values, a multicultural society and pluralism as a normalized discourse of Canada, and deep attachment through expressions of pride or emotional identification with Canadian values. The second theme, Tensions from Contradictions and Affective Disruptions, emerged from discursive disruptions when participants encountered challenging narratives through three codes: difficult histories involving the recognition of erased, violent, or contested aspects of Canada’s colonial past; curricular dissonance through the critique of school curricula for sanitizing or omitting structural issues; and challenges and struggles as disruption expressed through emotional and ideological tensions when civic ideals confronted structural realities. The third theme, Discursive Stabilization and Affective Affirmation, identified legitimation strategies participants employed to manage contradictions through three codes: Western liberalism as a foundational structure of Canadian civic discourses, balancing openness and realism through attempts to mediate contradictions through moderation or pragmatic reasoning, and hopeful but critical approaches maintaining faith in national ideals while recognizing systemic shortcomings.

These analytical steps allowed me to examine each participant’s reasoning and imaginings about citizenship alongside their variegated emotional responses, while facilitating cross-case analysis to identify overarching commonalities in sociocultural discourses, emotional dynamics, and underlying ideologies. Furthermore, the integration of discursive analysis with particular attention to visceral emotions revealed the complex relationship between participants’ conscious meaning-making processes related to citizenship and their unconscious emotional investments that sustain or disrupt these ideological commitments. This integration thus enabled the examination of affective dimensions that illuminate the ways in which affects function as onto-epistemological power behind the social production related to the meanings of citizenship pervasive in discourses participants often reveal.

3.4. A Brief Note on Researcher Positionality

Conducting this case study engages intrinsically with my positionality as a Korean male researcher who received a doctoral degree from an institution in Canada. While my socio-historical position has shaped my experiences as a citizen who is ethnically and linguistically privileged in South Korea, my social life as an Asian researcher has offered me various lived experiences as a perpetual outsider or an internal stranger who is not part of us in Canada. Grounded in lived experiences that stem from infinite encounters with two different positions, my researcher positionality emerges as an assemblage that is always in flux. This assemblage offers self-reflective experiences that enable me to question particular idealisms of citizenship and their onto-epistemological presupposition(s).

My positionality, thus, enables me to examine the ways in which we attend to citizenship and its contentious aspects concerning who we have been, are, and wish to become in the future. The ways I have coded and analyzed the collected data are also closely associated with my positionality, politics, and ethical commitments. Hence, the analysis process was a reflexive activity grounded in my commitment to disrupt narrow approaches to citizenship tied to particular ideals so integrally as to seek another “act of citizenship” to make claims for justice (Isin 2009).

4. Findings

4.1. Multiculturalism, Pluralism, and Diversity for the Good Canadian Citizenship as Lovely Knowledge

While each participant has varying degrees of emphasis on the ideas of multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism, a discernible agreement exists among all participants that these ideas constitute the crucial ideals of citizenship. In other words, the participants deemed that these ideas are deeply intertwined with the socio-cultural context of Canada widely recognized as an increasingly diverse intercultural society, where multiple cultural groups coexist and interact through ongoing engagement with one another. In their view, the ideas of multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism contain (and even premise) active intercultural dynamics between diverse cultural groups that characterize Canadian society. Andrew, for instance, described an instinctive connection between his understanding of Canadian citizenship and such ideas:

‪Canada has now enough of some history that diversity is mostly accepted, pluralism is mostly agreed to, multiculturalism has been officially a policy for quite a long time now.… [Therefore], instinctively, I have always believed that [these ideas] define Canadian citizenship. (Italics added by the author.)

He interpreted that the ideas of diversity, pluralism, and multiculturalism propagated by the Canadian governments shape the ways in which many Canadians attend to citizenship. However, that political background does not mean an illegitimacy of these ideas per se. Larry, for example, posited these ideas as “generic” ideals most Canadians expect to pursue: “It would be really difficult for democratically, like here in this country, to speak out against multiculturalism and pluralism…. I think, politicians [in Canada] have to sing those things”.

Aligned with this tendency, all participants frequently deployed specific terms (e.g., openness, inclusiveness, holistic, etc.) to describe their beliefs of an ideal Canadian citizenship. For instance, Randelle uses the adjective “holistic” to represent her view on multiculturalism for citizenship:

‪Everyone thinks [that] good citizenship is… to know and tolerate different cultures, ethnicities, nationalities, races, genders, sexuality, and the list can go on, but it goes beyond knowing academically historical detail of different individuals…. So, good citizenship is just being holistic.

Her use of “holistic” is indicative of her imagining of good citizenship and its constitutive value. In a similar way, George used “openness” to define citizenship in Canada: “[Openness means] not tied to one particular cultural or racial group or religion. Open as far as when you as a member of Canadian society, you’re not set in certain standards or things that you have to do”. These terms serve to reify the participants’ beliefs of ideal Canadian citizenship and its underlying logics that rest on the ideas of multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism.

What I first identify in the rationales the participants share is the discourses of recognition and inclusion of multiple perspectives. As a core element of the widespread rhetoric (i.e., multicultural mosaic) in Canada, these discourses lie in liberal social justice ideology. This ideology underscores “ideas of the right to one’s identity and to recognition of that identity” so as to establish “a caring and just society” (Pashby et al. 2014, p. 6). All participants, thus, emphasize the abilities for rational deliberations with others (e.g., awareness, critical thinking, empathy, etc.) crucial to undergird Canadian citizenship.

In line with that emphasis, I note many participants’ beliefs in liberal social justice ideology that serve as a crucial way to address the issues of social inequality germane to market-oriented definitions of success entwined with neoliberal capitalism. For instance, George described his sense of good Canadian citizenship for our successful living(s):

To me, social actions or multicultural aspects [Canadians share] are allowing every group of people to be able… to have the same access and the same privileges, goods, standard of life, quality of living as any other group in society.

For him, the recognition of and respect for every group of people and their ways of living create an essential condition that enables everyone to live their own successful lives together. This response echoes other participants’ rationale, such as “Diversity is a strength … and what better way [to live here together is] to truly understand and appreciate different ideas, values, cultures, etc.” (Lyssa, Interview #3). In other words, many participants are deeply attached to liberal social justice ideology to resist success defined solely through wealth and power. The ideals based within this ideology, which contain multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism, permeate the ways participants envision a preferable Canadian society. With this vision, they shape their everyday social life, including, importantly, in/formal schooling practices and curriculum goals.

Given the beliefs and rationales the participants represent, the ideas of multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism serve as a fundamental idealism that shapes a specific sense of being a Canadian citizen. This idealism constitutes a commonsensical conceptual resource that animates an imaginary of the idealized Canada “as full of predominantly ‘nice’ or ‘good’ people” (van Kessel et al. 2020, p. 438). Hence, the participants often exercise their agency with this idealism to imagine citizenship based on that imaginary, which I call the good Canadian citizenship.

Notable in this regard is that the participants’ cherishing sentiments resonate with this fundamental idealism. Many participants often revealed feelings of pride while spotlighting the efforts of multiculturalism in Canada, for example, “I think [that] general people feel a certain amount of pride…. When I work with students, they are proud of multiculturalism as being different from the U.S.” (Andrew, Interview #3) and “There are definitely positive feelings when I talk about multiculturalism. I do feel proud of our community” (Lyssa, Interview #3). This reaction is indicative of the participants’ emotional attachment to this idealism as the familiar, comforting, and easily anticipated narrative. For the participants, this fundamental idealism is their lovely knowledge that highlights the distinct Canada and its constitutive plot lines of hope, progress, and romanticized efforts in the face of settler colonialism and (neoliberal) capitalism. Their emotional attachment indicates the participants’ un/conscious investments in protecting the pervasive imaginary of the good Canadian citizenship as a viable existential fantasy.

4.2. Teachers’ Fraught and Ambivalent Relationship with Their Lovely Knowledge

Tensions, however, often emerged when participants disclosed their struggles with this fundamental idealism as lovely knowledge, especially multiculturalism as a core principle of the good Canadian citizenship. While discussing the traumatic history of Canada depicted in the paintings of difficult knowledge that I chose, the participants often expressed concerns about multiculturalism and its inherited “colonial frontier logics” (Donald 2012) that intend cultural assimilation of minoritized groups, including, importantly, Indigenous peoples across Canada. Freddie described this point as follows:

[Multiculturalism] says that Canada is a space to which all cultures and peoples of the world are welcome. That presupposes a blankness based on the colonial idea of Terra nullius—it’s no one’s land, which means everyone’s land. However, there were cultures here for at least 10,000 years.

These concerns link to the issues of systemic inequality entwined with (settler) colonialism that stems from “the sociogenic principle” of being human (i.e., white, European, global middle class, heteronormative Man) as a pervasive monolithic normativity (Wynter 2001, 2003).

The struggles emerge when the participants grapple with difficult knowledge that shatters this normativity. For instance, George spoke about his struggle with the idea of privilege while discussing the traumatic quality of colonial frontier logic that permeates multiculturalism:

I think that [my struggle] comes from [the] idea of privilege. There is [a belief in that] ‪a European style of living is better than or superior to others. You know, what pervades in North America or Canadian society today is beliefs that capitalism or single way of living or achieving success in our society [is] superior to others.

Given this response, his struggle originates from the dissonance between his ideal of Canadian citizenship and the (in)visible colonial logics in multiculturalism. Not only does this dissonance unravel a popular narrative of an equal, caring, and just Canadian society he keenly supports, but it also collapses his lovely knowledge as his viable existential ground. Lyssa’s candid response echoes this struggle:

I’m struggling with some interview questions because I think what I used to have is maybe changing…. Was it Gandhi maybe who said [this anecdote]? Someone said, “what do you think about Western Civilization?” and he replied, “I think it would be a good idea”. If you heard of that [anecdote], in my case, it’s kind of like “what do you think of Canadian multiculturalism?” I think, “it’s a good idea. It would be a good idea!” (laugh) Ugh…it’s hard! I think that there’s so many great opportunities we can take from living in a world of this make up. But, are we spreading those opportunities to the fullest extent? No. Do we have challenges around us? Absolutely. Are we living up to these values? No… (with hesitance). But, are we getting better? Yeah... (with hesitance). (Italics added by the author.)

As with the anecdote, her challenge involves a question of whether multiculturalism actually serves as a preferable ideal corresponding to her ideological vision. Similar to George’s case, her struggle stems from the efforts to make sense of the dissonance between her idealism (e.g., Western liberalism) as lovely knowledge and her recognition of the actuality as difficult knowledge (e.g., the ongoing (hi)story(ies) of colonization, racialization, and curriculum epistemicide entwined with multiculturalism).

One crucial point is how engagement with difficult knowledge generates affective dynamics in participants’ struggles. Through many moments of hesitancy in their responses, the participants often disclosed unsettled emotions, such as mixed feelings of pride, discomfort, frustration, and anxiety (e.g., “I do feel proud of our community, but at the same time...”). Notable in this regard is the participants’ oscillations between these visceral emotions. Such oscillations always emerge when the participants strive to interpret the ongoing social reality dissonant with their lovely knowledge. Given that the discussions of the traumatic quality of multiculturalism quickly instigated some tensions with the visceral emotions that are on the move (Boler and Davis 2018), I speculate that the moments reveal how difficult knowledge with its affective force was immediately registered by the participants. Affects engendered (or sparked) the unsettled un/conscious dynamics that often rupture the widespread imaginary of the good Canadian citizenship as a wishful existential fantasy. Hence, with the oscillations between the visceral emotions, the revealed struggles indicate fraught and ambivalent relationships with the lovely knowledge. Not only do such relationships spark critical inquiry about the legitimacy of that lovely knowledge, but they also transform the participants’ assembled agencies, enabling desire, thoughts, and actions for the politicized impetus that instigates social change. These affective dynamics, engaged with difficult knowledge, are inextricably intertwined with the ways in which the participants exercise their agency to attend to the good Canadian citizenship and its contentious power-laden nature.

4.3. Dislodging Difficult Knowledge from the Good Canadian Citizenship

Encounters with difficult knowledge lead to the tensions that provoke affective dynamics of disruption. This provocation, however, does not necessarily translate into a new line of inquiry that alters a (in)coherent structure of understanding. Rather, in exploring many responses further, the participants disclosed strong inclinations toward their lovely knowledge, albeit with the fraught relationships described.

Many participants expressed optimism about multiculturalism as a bond of trust among citizens and institutions that is essential for paving the pathways to a preferable future. George, for instance, opined: “I believe [that] multiculturalism can allow for cultural autonomy. If we actually realize a multicultural society, then race/culture would not be a predetermining success factor in society” (George, Interview #3). His response illustrates a belief that the ideals of multiculturalism enable us to overcome its past colonial logics. Not only is this belief indicative of enthusiastic faith in multiculturalism, but it also reveals the participants’ commitment to dislodge difficulties from their lovely knowledge that constitutes their ideological vision.

This optimism emerges from the participants’ strong attachment to the imaginary of the good Canadian citizenship. While discussing counter-narratives of that imaginary, including the traumatic history of relations between Indigenous communities and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), some participants revealed their commitment to protecting their lovely knowledge. Randelle, for example, opined the following:

We need [to be] holistic when we look at the big picture. We need a balance. Yes, we need to pay attention to injustice, imperialism, residential schools, which I believe that, in the past few years, we have been making strides towards reconciliation so forth. But … we have to also balance that other side where showing success stories, where all people—not just white, not just Indigenous peoples—have possibly collaborated, work together, live together, and succeed together. (Italics added by the author.)

I interpret this response with her visceral discomfort as indicative of her attempt to resolve the gap between what she strives to pursue (i.e., being holistic), what she actually recognizes (i.e., injustice, imperialism, and residential schools), and what she chooses for now (i.e., having a balance). Her view on the disjointed relations of citizenship at the individual and collective levels further illustrates this tension:

Canadian identity as a whole? Yes. That’s absolutely multiculturalism, pluralism, mosaic. As an individual? I make a small contribution to them by accepting and embracing multiculturalism. I’m proud of we’re multicultural, I’m proud of we’re having mosaic, I’m proud of the norms that I accept. But I don’t think that [my proud feeling] makes me more or less a Canadian.

This response illustrates her imaginary of citizenship that postulates an ontological presupposition, an idealized individual Canadian citizen “who believes... in the hallmark traits of niceness, good choices, and hard work” (Gebhard 2017, p. 21). The emphasis on balance reflects her un/conscious investment in dislodging difficult knowledge from her ideological vision of citizenship. With that investment, she strives to protect her onto-epistemological certainty as firm existential ground.

Larry similarly represented his struggle over the dissonance between his ideological vision of Canada and the ongoing traumatic history of undeniable injustices:

I recognize that there’s a bunch of stuff that happened in the past. That is terrible... But, to be optimistic, that thing is going to get better. What’s the alternative? to be pessimistic? to disband the RCMP? What are we going to replace it with? Are we going to replace it with something that’s going to be automatically better? Does that erase the past just because we disband the RCMP? All of the sudden, bad things disappear? I’m not trying to cover up the past, I’m acknowledging... So, I guess, I don’t see what the alternatives are. I don’t know. For those who would disagree with that, what’s the next step then? (Italics added by the author.)

With his visceral emotions of discomfort and irritation, what I find noteworthy is his postulation of our lack of “alternatives”. His affirmative questions posit an assumption that we are unable to (re)shape a better and justifiable ideological vision(s) and practices to address undeniable ongoing injustices. On that premise, he deduced the necessity of the current prevalent imaginary and its constitutive narrative that relies on the widespread narrative of hope, progress, and Canadians’ efforts in the face of settler colonialism as the solely socially acceptable ideological vision of/for Canadian citizenship.

One common thread in these responses is the participants’ enthusiastic endeavors to protect their ideological vision(s) based on the good Canadian citizenship, albeit with the effects of difficult knowledge as explored. These endeavors, I speculate, stem from affects entwined with the participants’ un/conscious dynamics of longing to stabilize the precarious natures of being themselves. The affective dynamics here shape “the self-complacency of common grounds” (Simon 2005, p. 7) for onto-epistemological certainty to (re)affirm a stable mode of existence as categorical and transcendent. Given that these grounds stem from “our sense[s] of limits and possibilities, hopes and fears, identities and distinctions” (Simon 2005, p. 3), the affective dynamics the participants disclosed reflect their sets of existential fantasies about themselves (i.e., the good Canadian citizenship) distinct from others (den Heyer 2019). Hence, with the emerging visceral emotions, the endeavors to dislodge the difficulties from the existential fantasy reveal another way affects registered in the participants.

5. Discussion

Affective Dynamics and Power Relations in/Beyond Good Canadian Citizenship

What I note as crucial in the findings is how affective dynamics, emerging through white teachers’ responses, serve crucial roles in shaping and reinforcing the power-laden nature of citizenship. During the interviews, the teachers often demonstrated faith in the good Canadian citizenship and its premise based on a prevalent belief in progress. This faith echoes the historical narrative, highlighting the development of the civilized Canadian nation (Anderson 2017). The good Canadian citizenship on which the participants rely revolves around a popular teleological, ideological vision: “ongoing economic development and progressive improvements in quality of life perceived as derived from God-given license and universalized democratic principles” (Donald 2012, p. 100). This teleological vision enables me to paraphrase the faith the teachers represented: With the universalized principles of citizenship the good Canadian citizens have (i.e., multiculturalism, diversity, and pluralism), things are going to get better in the future. This vision serves as a firm existential ground shaping their onto-epistemological certainty (i.e., a good or nice Canadian citizen).

Noteworthy in this regard is how affective dynamics emerge when teachers strive to suture the good Canadian citizenship as their existential ground, albeit with its precarious nature. These dynamics function as pre-conscious forces that shape and strengthen teachers’ un/conscious responses to challenges of their idealized conception of citizenship before conscious recognition occurs. As described, the teachers actively promote the good Canadian citizenship through their idealism (e.g., multiculturalism, pluralism, and diversity) while avoiding or minimizing contentious issues within those ideals. These antinomical responses emerge as teachers strive to make sense of the dissonance between this idealized conception and the challenging realities they encounter in daily life. The visceral emotions teachers expose when facing difficult knowledge of the good Canadian citizenship manifest as the bodily registered affects, functioning as efforts to remove their un/conscious discomfort. Such efforts lead to “a symbolic place of lovely knowledge” (Miles 2019, p. 489), resulting in their strong yet conflicted (re)affirmation—that good Canadian citizenship is the sole socially acceptable option. Hence, the affective dynamics inevitably incur habitual ignorance about the circuits of unequal power relations in the good Canadian citizenship and its constitutive ideals of the legitimate citizen (i.e., white, European, global middle class, heteronormative Man) (den Heyer 2017; Donald 2012, 2019; Sockbeson 2017). This habitual ignorance obscures (and even conceals) material conditions and symbolic boundaries that reproduce social inequality and discrimination toward citizens who are not legitimate.

In exploring these affective dynamics, I need to clarify that I do not intend to condemn each teacher for their commitment to the good Canadian citizenship. I rather strive to reveal a critical gap that teachers (and we all) often face due to affective dynamics and their resultant antinomical attitudes: contrary to their enthusiastic ethical commitments to establishing a caring, equal, and just Canada, teachers often fail to deliberate citizenship beyond their facile conceptions that inevitably designate minoritized groups as cultural others, internal strangers, and/or not us. This limitation illustrates the confined ways in which teachers attend to citizenship as monolithic and exclusionary (Busey and Dowie-Chin 2021; Vickery 2017). Teachers, albeit with well-intentioned efforts, thus inevitably reproduce the unchanged institutionalized circuits of power and their exploitation of marginalized peoples. This gap highlights one critical point: the absence of critical inquiry about the power-laden nature of citizenship is not the sole issue we need to address.

The significance of these affective dynamics disclosed in the findings extends beyond individual teachers’ interpretation of citizenship, illuminating how power relations (re)produce themselves at structural institutional levels. As members of the dominant cultural group who cultivate (prospective) citizens through everyday schooling practices, the antinomical attitudes these teachers reveal reflect broader patterns within (but not limited to) educational institutions in Canada. Their struggles with difficult knowledge resonate with the ways in which these institutions engage with contentious aspects of citizenship. In other words, parallel dynamics emerge as individual teachers strive to dislodge difficult knowledge from their ideological vision of citizenship, while educational institutions similarly acknowledge past injustices without pursuing deeper structural changes that might disrupt existing power relations (Donald 2019; Madden 2019; Wright-Maley 2022). This pattern exemplifies the ways in which affective dynamics function as forces behind social production that suture the imaginary of the good Canadian citizenship and its inherent power-laden nature. Affect, in this context, serves as an onto-epistemological power that keeps (re)shaping both ideology(ies) and their material conditions, enabling unequal power relations to persist despite conscious recognition of injustice—generating (in)coherent dynamics that interweave individual responses and institutional patterns that continue to minoritize citizens on the margins.

This discussion offers critical insights into recent shifts in the sociopolitical and cultural landscape within Canada—the growing skepticism toward immigration and diminishing public confidence in multicultural policies that starkly challenge the country’s long-standing official idealism. These changing attitudes, which were often expressed through persistent antinomical responses, are actively reproduced and reinforced through the affective dynamics embedded in our daily lives. The findings demonstrate the ways in which these dynamics, pervasive at multiple levels from (trans)individuals to various institutions, undergird and strengthen the persistence of power-laden structures in citizenship.

Furthermore, the insights from this study can extend beyond the Canadian context, revealing intrinsic connections to severe sociopolitical dynamics and tensions across the globe. The rise of Trumpism, coupled with intensifying neoliberal imperatives that prioritize market-driven values, has fueled severe conflicts over citizenship and national identity entwined with extreme nationalism (Giroux 2023; UNESCO 2018). This global landscape illustrates heightening sociopolitical tensions, as strong nationalism and market-driven imperatives (re)shape fundamental definitions of legitimate citizenship that minoritize citizens on the margins within and among countries while reinforcing existing unequal power structures. In this context, the affective dynamics revealed in this study illuminate the ways in which their visceral impacts behind our cognitive and rational deliberations generate and strengthen conditions enabling this severe global landscape. The affective forces continually and often drastically transform how our sociopolitical community(ies) engage(s) with contentious aspects of citizenship, creating profound challenges to inclusive models of democratic citizenship necessary for sustainable communities as envisioned in the SDGs, such as Reduced Inequalities and Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (United Nations 2024; UNESCO 2018, 2019). The tensions over citizenship, in that sense, emerge inevitably in contemporary global flows where such affective dynamics have intensified severe political and social disparities by determining who belongs and who remains excluded, thereby strengthening ongoing power-laden structures in citizenship that undermine the possibility of achieving equitable and sustainable democratic societies.

Education, as both social institutions and dynamics, stands at the center of this landscape, as it serves as a primary site where these tensions over citizenship materialize in everyday practices. Citizenship education, with its emphasis on multi- and intercultural approaches for cultural interaction and transformation, often faces particular challenges as teachers encounter complex ethical dilemmas arising from the affective dynamics. These ethical dilemmas point to a troublesome gap that emerged in this study where teachers’ well-intentioned commitments to address injustice inadvertently generate antinomical attitudes that reinforce the pervasive exclusionary notions of citizenship they seek to transform. Such (un)intended dynamics heighten rather than address the minoritization and exploitation of citizens on the margins. The affective investments in protecting lovely knowledge, in that sense, indicate teachers’ pedagogical approaches that might prioritize balanced perspectives over the critical examination of power structures. These approaches often default to pervasive surface-level celebrations of multi- and intercultural citizenship rather than deeper interrogation of the circuits of unequal power relations embedded in them (den Heyer 2017; Pashby et al. 2014). In this way, such pedagogical approaches entwined with particular affective dynamics function as processes of knowledge production within a disciplinary site, which shape and normalize specific ways of interpreting and imagining citizenship as solely acceptable while rendering others invisible (Foucault [1976] 1980, 1982).

In other words, the affective dynamics within and beyond education shape and intensify current challenges of citizenship through their profound impact on institutional responses and everyday pedagogical practices. This complexity spotlights the crucial tensions inherent in implementing citizenship education for sustainable intercultural societies, as teachers’ affective investments in ideal citizenship and their (un)intended consequences often remain unaddressed in educational frameworks for multi- and intercultural citizenship. Given this complexity as a critical challenge, research and practices for democratic citizenship and sustainable communities need to examine more deeply how affects shape and influence our un/conscious engagements with citizenship. This recognition points toward reimagining citizenship education in ways that acknowledge the inseparable relationship between affects and our rational deliberations. Such engagement provides new pathways for the political and ethical obligations to challenge systemic inequalities toward marginalized citizens and their power-laden structures within and among countries. This approach enables us to reshape the ways in which we understand and practice citizenship with others, creating an essential foundation for sustainable intercultural societies.

6. Concluding Remarks and Implications

I return to the beginning of this study, which examines citizenship as a contested site of struggles over onto-epistemological principles concerning who we have been, are, and wish to become in the future. Based on my analysis of six white Canadian teachers’ engagements with difficult knowledge, this study illuminates affective dynamics functioning as onto-epistemological power behind social production. This power operates at the foundational level where the ways of being, knowing, and imagining are mutually constituted, shaping our prevalent notion(s) of citizenship and its inherent power-laden nature. In the context of Canada, such dynamics often serve to suture the imaginary of the good Canadian citizenship that (re)produces power-laden structures that minoritize citizens on the margins. My analysis delves deeper into the ways in which these affective dynamics emerge prominently as the teachers strive to reconcile dissonance between idealized conceptions of citizenship and challenging realities, resulting in antinomical attitudes—acknowledging ethical obligations to address ongoing injustices while resisting deeper structural changes for social justice.

The insights from this study suggest implications for transformative education. By examining our fraught relationships with difficult knowledge in (but not limited to) citizenship, research and practices can evolve to recognize how affective dynamics consistently (re)shape our multifaceted ways of imagining and practicing citizenship across various intercultural contexts at multiple levels of (trans)individuals and collectives. Such recognition invites critical pedagogical approaches that embrace difficult knowledge and its affective forces to create transformative learning spaces, engaging deeply with both cognitive and affective dimensions. These spaces enable critical awareness of both affective constraints and possibilities in citizenship education, opening pathways to embrace fraught uncertainties essential for imagining and establishing transformative potentials with others (Garrett 2017; Simon 2005; Zembylas 2022). These potentials become increasingly vital in our current global context. More specifically, given heightened social conflicts over citizenship in the global landscape where extreme nationalism intertwines with market-driven imperatives, these pedagogical possibilities become crucial for educational transformation. By spotlighting affective challenges in citizenship education, we can develop approaches toward sustainable intercultural democratic societies as envisioned in the SDGs, especially in addressing systemic inequities that undermine social justice for the inclusive model of citizenship we have pursued.

The findings in this study and their (potential) implications suggest crucial directions for future research in citizenship education. Given that this study pays particular attention to white Canadian teachers as a specific onto-epistemological position, future studies can expand the scope to examine teachers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and their complex relationships with affective dynamics. Comparative research could also illuminate whether the antinomical attitudes revealed here manifest differently across various positionalities. Such research would enrich our understanding regarding teachers’ affective relationships with specific beliefs (and/or convictions) about citizenship across diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Furthermore, future studies could critically examine the SDG framework as it relates deeply to various discourses of citizenship education. While this study used the SDGs as examples of widely endorsed normative goals, researchers could explore their potential neo-colonial dimensions so integrally as to develop other frameworks that better serve current diverse intercultural contexts. Such critical engagements with the SDGs could follow the decolonial imperative to disclose the unchanged institutionalized structures of unequal power and their complex circulating networks, serving as another “act of citizenship” to disrupt “already defined orders, practices, and statuses” in order to make claims to differences for justice (Isin 2009, p. 384).

Future research, building upon the findings of this study, could also examine how teachers’ ethical dilemmas and affective investments translate into everyday schooling and pedagogical practices. While this study focused on revealing the ways in which teachers’ relationships with affective dynamics generate the antinomical attitudes, prospective studies could delve deeper into how these un/conscious struggles manifest in specific teaching approaches that might impact students’ development as citizens. Such studies would illuminate how the troublesome gap identified in this study unfolds in specific educational practices, providing crucial insights for developing more inclusive and critical approaches to citizenship education in diverse intercultural contexts. The affective dimensions entwined with this troublesome gap, I suggest, represent a crucial yet relatively unexplored aspect of citizenship education as well as intercultural citizenship—one that profoundly influences our efforts to educate citizens essential to establishing sustainable intercultural communities across the globe.