Less-standard claims to justice through the lens of media debates on minority education

The coexistence, not always peaceful, of multiple and often rival, conceptions of justice in education policy and practice is well recognized and problematized in the academic literature. Relatively little is known, however, about what kind of justice-related considerations occupy the ‘public mind’ and/or inform what Nancy Fraser calls ‘folk paradigms of justice’. The current article seeks to shed light on the public construction of the ‘what’ of justice in the realm of education by analysing selected debates on minority education politics that occur in news and social media in five European countries. Fraser’s tripartite model of justice as redistribution, recognition and representation constituted the starting point of the investigation. The results of a qualitative analysis of selected media content show that while Fraser’s framework resonates well with the popular understandings of justice, the tripartite typology is not exhaustive in accounting for all justice claims evoked in the public domain. In the light of the debates analysed, three types of ‘alternative’ claims seem particularly relevant for theorizing justice in education and/or seeking legitimacy for education policy: claims that appeal to civil rights and liberties, claims that appeal to procedural justice and claims that appeal to epistemic justice.