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This introductory chapter provides an overview on the events in Birmingham that came to the public attention in March 2014 involving an alleged plot by conservative and hardline Sunnis to Islamicise a number of state-funded schools where there were significant numbers of Muslim pupils. Attention was focused on one particular school, Park View Academy, and its associated Park View Educational Trust (PVET), incorporating two other schools, Nansen Primary and Golden Hillock secondary. The affair also drew in many others who were suspected of extremist activity — with 21 schools in Birmingham subjected to snap Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspections and included in the various inquiries into the affair. The government cites the 'plot' in its argument about the need to develop a new counter-extremism strategy that confronts extremist ideology and not just threats of violence. However, the Kershaw Report and some other commentators argue that there was, in fact, no evidence of extremism.

This chapter discusses the importance of promoting ‘British values’. The Trojan Horse affair has shaped subsequent debates on community cohesion and the counter-extremism agenda, but it was, in its turn, shaped by preceding events. These earlier events — urban disturbances, claims that communities are self-segregating, perceived threats of terrorism, and specific acts of terrorism themselves — have produced a variety of political interventions. These have included policies designed to mitigate what were understood to be problems of community cohesion, threatening the social fabric and security. The interventions helped to create the narratives that were drawn upon in interpretations of the Trojan Horse affair, just as the latter has been taken as evidence of the veracity of those concerns and as a motivation for further interventions.

Chapter 1 considers the social and political contexts to the FBV requirement, as it argues that the enactment of particular policies cannot be understood without reference to the broader political and social climate. It discusses belonging in twenty-first century Britain, tracing policy approaches to diversity from multiculturalism through cohesion, back to an emphasis on integration, although emphasising that this is by no means a linear progression. It highlights the positioning of Muslim populations in particular, as suspect, as lacking in the desire to integrate. The chapter traces the development of the FBV requirement and immediate reactions to it. It discusses the requirements of both counter-extremist policy and the Equality Act 2010 as they apply to schools.

Chapter 2 is split into three main parts. The first part discusses an approach to citizenship that stresses affect, and then moves on to explore some of the vast literature around citizenship and nationalism, focusing on what Conversi refers to as the ‘deliberate cultivation of common [national] allegiances’ (2014 p.28) and the role of universal democratic principles in so doing. I draw attention to the arguments of several commentators that asserting a national identity through commitment to apparently universal liberal democratic principles often obscures the existence of narrower cultural and ethnic understandings of belonging. Second, Chapter 2 considers the role of citizenship education in promoting national and global belonging, and identifies some of the recent developments in the subject. Third, it discusses these recent developments in England and elsewhere, including the entanglement with counter-extremist policies.

This chapter highlights the changes in the scope and scale of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants over the past thirty years and explores the likely trajectories of DDR in the twenty-first century. Over the past two decades the expectations of what DDR should achieve have dramatically expanded. It is not only a regular feature of conventional UN-mandated peace-support interventions, but also increasingly a component of counter-insurgency, stabilization, crime prevention, and counter-extremist operations. In the process, DDR has transformed from a carefully sequenced and discrete set of activities mandated by a peace agreement to an ever-widening array of security and development measures that can include the negotiation and implementation of the terms of peace. These changes in the policy and practice of DDR are precipitated by a transformation in the dynamics of organized violence around the world and the corresponding exigencies of diplomatic, defence, and development experts.