The Growing Emphasis on Social Citizenship in Nordic Education: Inducing New Social Risks While Trying to Alleviate Them

The development towards a post-industrial society that has taken place in the Western world has led to new forms of social exclusion (Esping-Andersen 1999). Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) discuss a late-modern society permeated by risks induced by the increasing individualization in a gradually more market-oriented welfare system and society. It has been argued that social risks are becoming ‘democratized’, progressively affecting a broader part of the population (Taylor-Gooby 2004). These developments call for the fostering of citizens who are active, entrepreneurial and self-governing and who are competent consumers in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres (Trentman 2007, Clarke 2007, Mitchell 2003, Roberts 2008).