Going global: Internationally mobile young people as caring citizens in higher education

Abstract

The current literature on global education is dominated by a neoliberal framing of students, either celebrating or critiquing the youth subject as competitive, individualistic, and driven by the acquisition of economic capital. In contrast, this research incorporates theories of care into an analysis of the citizenship practised by college students on a global education programme. By attending to young people's relationships of mutual dependency and responsibility, which are inflected by race and class, this article examines students’ global experiences beyond a purely neoliberal framing. This research suggests that a care‐based approach to citizenship may more accurately capture the nuanced intricacies of young people's lives by taking into account two factors that have received little theoretical exploration in global education. First, young people make sense of their time abroad according to relations of love, dependency and care with others, rather than primarily in terms of future financial gain. Second, students engaged in global opportunities find themselves traversing historical trajectories of oppression that result in them reflecting on their position in the world, engendering feelings of responsibility in terms of addressing historical inequalities and current injustices. Student citizenship cannot be explained by neoliberalism alone, but instead encompasses deep relationality as well as the development of radical concern. This research demonstrates that producing student‐centred geographies of global education makes visible young people's manoeuvrings in and through various relations, which are illustrative of their political agency as caring citizens in the midst of neoliberalism.