Keywords

FormalPara Learning Outcomes

After reading this chapter, the reader should be able to

  • understand global citizenship (education) as a new framework of thinking, and using it

  • as a lens for analyzing and criticizing global developments, as well as the development of globalization;

  • apply this new approach to the (forced) migration and refugee issue, understanding it not just as a challenge but also as a chance to broaden “popular sovereignty” and to establish, in the long run, more just and democratic transnational political structures;

  • appreciate the fact that the UN and UNESCO have assumed leadership for the international implementation of GCED and to make use of this support for the necessary transformation of mind-sets, policies, and social structures.

Migrants’ bodies, both dead and alive,

strew the path of state’s power.—Seyla Benhabib

International borders are more porous

to capital than to displaced bodies.—Jennifer Hyndman

Taking the border as an “epistemic” angle

provides productive insights on the tensions and conflicts

that blur the line between inclusion and exclusion,

as well as on the profoundly

changing code of social inclusion in the present.—Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson

1 Introduction

Global citizen, global citizenship, and even education for global citizenship or global citizenship education (GCED) as terms have been in use for a long time in the scholarly world, as well as in civil society. Yet more often than not, they have been used in a negligent way, simply to stress the need for some kind of global thinking or of political awareness beyond the borders of the nation-state. However, since the beginning of the new millennium, these terms have increasingly become an object of reflection in academia, eventually appearing in a number of articles, edited volumes, and monographs. At the very latest, since former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the necessity of GCED and since UNESCO decided to dedicate its educational efforts to GCED, this approach has become more popular among educators and teachers all around the world, even if there is still no universal consensus on the exact meaning of GCED.

Moreover, we notice an interesting phenomenon. It is not only educators but also the corporate world that has now also discovered global citizenship and global citizenship education. Nowadays, global citizenship has become part of the language of global capitalism. What this means specifically is shown in a study by the British Council: “Three out of four business chiefs fear that the UK will be left behind by emerging countries, such as China, India and Brazil, unless young people learn to think more globally” (ICM 2011, p. 3). In accordance with this way of thinking, GCED is sometimes narrowed down to knowledge about “the wider world,” where “global awareness” simply means preparing learners to work with people from abroad or to work and live abroad. Or to put it more directly, GCED is understood as a formula for education for global competition, not for global solidarity.

Mass migration or mass flight is one of the reasons, or at least one of the driving forces, behind GCED gaining so much momentum over the last few years. It represents a paradigmatic shift in education: while migration, over the last 50 years, was mainly understood as a question of intercultural encounters and understanding between different cultures, scholars and educationalists now consider the lens of multicultural education too narrow, for living together in a migratory society is a question not simply of cultural encounters, understanding, and misunderstanding but also of hierarchies and power relations. The paradigm of human rights education seems much more appropriate since it is indeed human rights that are at stake. However, human rights merely form the much-needed basis of any approach, but a more specific pedagogy is called for to tackle this new situation. Global citizenship education is just such a comprehensive pedagogy, combining global awareness, a human rights-based system of values, and a focus on political structures and ideological mind-sets with nonviolent activism, inspired by peace education.

Meanwhile, the literature on GCED is permanently growing, and different definitions and approaches compete for the defining power. It is necessary, therefore, to provide a working definition of the term GCED upon which this chapter must be built.

2 GCED: The Concept

2.1 Different Meanings of Global Citizenship Education

Global citizenship education (GCED) is a “response to the sense of need to encourage global interconnectedness and global responsibility through citizenship education” (Pashby 2012, p. 9). It can be understood as an approach within the broad field of development education, global learning, civic or citizenship education, intercultural or multicultural education, education for sustainable development (ESD), human rights education, and peace education, a specific approach that does not replace other terms but that has the capacity to provide them with a shared perspective.

Historically, GCED has many roots in development education. Some scholars still count it as a dimension or characteristic of development education, for example, Bourn (2015). It is very closely linked to global learning and global education. Many scholars use both terms or see GCED as a more thorough version of global education (Andreotti 2006, 2014). Multicultural (intercultural) education is a field that is often viewed as being connected to GCED (Banks 2003). In important international documents, GCED and ESD are often mentioned in the same breath (UNESCO 2015b). Peace education refers to global citizenship as one of its aims (Reardon and Cabezudo 2002). Human rights (education) can very often be found as the foundation of global citizenship (education) discussions (Andreotti 2006). Global citizenship education is, by nature, citizenship or civic education. While some still regard these as separate fields and others consider GCED a special topic of citizenship education, many scholars argue that GCED should replace citizenship education as the generic term since it also includes (national) citizenship education but is embedded in a broader cosmopolitan concept (Nussbaum 2007; Cohen 2001).

It seems we can find three types of definitions of GCED, depending on the degree to which the “global” is conceptualized and to which the concept of “citizenship” is taken seriously.

We can call the first type the standpoint of a “responsible national citizen with an international or global perspective.” He or she is aware of the wider world, feels committed—as a national citizen—to make the world a better place but does not directly challenge the international division of work or the international political system and is not systematically exploring new duties and new opportunities provided by the weakening of the nation-state.

In contrast to this first concept, a classic and often cited definition of global citizenship education established by Oxfam goes a step further. Its global citizenship education curriculum reads:

Global citizenship goes beyond simply knowing that we are citizens of the globe to an acknowledgement of our responsibilities both to each other and to the Earth itself. It is about valuing the Earth as precious and unique and safeguarding the future for those coming after us. It includes understanding the need to tackle injustice and inequality, and having the desire and ability to do so actively (Oxfam 2003, p. 5).

In this perspective, a global citizen whose scope clearly lies beyond national citizenship appears. National identity is not renounced, but the focus lies on the global dimension of citizenship. However, while this definition takes the issues of inequality and ecological disasters into account, holding each of us responsible, it neglects or underexposes the issue of (postcolonial) power structures and (ideological) colonial heritage; it does not fully address what Andrew Dobson calls our complicity or “causal responsibility” in transnational harm (Dobson 2006).

A third, much more comprehensive and critical type of understanding comes from Brazilian researcher Vanessa Andreotti. She argues that global citizenship education, presented in the common sense, runs the risk of promoting a new “civilising mission,” an educational form of neocolonialism. She argues (in line with Dobson) that a moral engagement based on feeling like a global citizen is not enough and can easily “end up reproducing unequal (paternalistic) power relations. […] justice is a better ground for thinking as it is political and prompts fairer and more equal relations” (Andreotti 2006, p. 42). She refers to Dobson’s “distinction between being human and being a citizen: being human raises issues of morality; being a citizen raises political issues” (ibid.). Therefore, she proposes a critical global citizenship approach, addressing issues of inequality and injustice and aiming to empower “individuals to reflect critically on the legacies and processes of their cultures, to imagine different futures and to take responsibility for decisions and actions” (Andreotti 2006, p. 48). Andreotti defines

critical literacy as a level of reading the word and the world that involves the development of skills of critical engagement and reflexivity: the analysis and critique of the relationships among perspectives, language, power, social groups and social practices by the learners. Criticality, in this context, does not refer to the dominant notion that something is right or wrong, biased or unbiased, true or false. It is an attempt to understand origins of assumptions and implications. [… It is about] how we came to think/be/feel/act the way we do and the implications of our systems of belief in local/global terms in relation to power, social relationships and the distribution of labour and resources (Andreotti 2006, p. 49).

With her critical approach, Andreotti goes far beyond a traditional understanding of global citizenship education. She thus provides much stronger arguments for the need for GCED. It is no longer an ideologically or morally driven option but a human-rights-based duty. With Andreotti’s perspective, we can understand GCED not so much as forming but as transforming education: transforming the mind-sets, basic assumptions, and paradigms of classic citizenship education.

GCED is a new way of thinking and feeling, leaving behind many beliefs and positions that are taken for granted and that are part of the problem, not the solution:

As an ideal, the concept of educating for global citizenship encourages students to adopt a critical understanding of globalization, to reflect on how they and their nations are implicated in local and global problems and to engage in intercultural perspectives (Pashby 2012, p. 9).

Furthermore, Andreotti’s argument helps us to distinguish two tendencies within GCED—the citizen and the citizenship approach. GCED can, on the one hand, be understood as education of a global citizen as a member of a common humanity, and the focus is on the qualifications and characteristics of a global citizen as a responsible person—as is the case in the Oxfam approach described above. On the other hand, it may address the global dimension of politics and civic education, whereby the focus is more on structural obstacles and opportunities. This aligns with the investigations of Luis Cabrera (2010, p. 17 ff.), who also differentiates between two manners of use for the term: first, global citizenship as a personal stance, a revised edition of cosmopolitanism as an individual attitude. He then contrasts this with an institutional approach, which opens up further perspectives for political reforms. Only this second approach offers a crucial measure for denouncing legal injustices and exposing social inequalities as scandalous.

Obviously, the educational challenge is to combine the core elements of both tendencies in a creative way. This is where Dobson’s argument of thick cosmopolitanism comes in. His approach combines the focus on personal commitment as a global citizen with a focus on the structural injustices of an imperfect system of citizenship that hinders the development of its global dimensions. Instead of appealing to the morality and social conscience of global citizens, he argues, we should concentrate on their “causal responsibility.” In line with Linklater, he explains that

we will feel more strongly obliged to respond to the suffering and disadvantage of others if we are responsible for it in some degree or other […]. Causal responsibility produces a thicker connection between people than appeals to membership of common humanity (Dobson 2006, p. 172).

Thus, the educational task is to help learners discover their manifold entanglement in an unjust international system and their coresponsibility for the suffering of the losers in the global division of labor. The concept of a common humanity, to which the individual global citizen approach refers, is not abandoned but politicized: the common humanity turns out to be a deeply divided “society.” So-called global challenges such as climate change, scarcity of fresh water, or air pollution do not affect all citizens and all countries to the same degree. The fortune of some is forged from the misery of others. In order to allow all people to exercise their rights and opportunities as global citizens, a fairer system of (global) citizenship must be established, a new world order. This makes GCED a transformative pedagogy that provides a new framework of thinking.

2.2 GCED: A New Framework of Thinking

GCED as a form of thick cosmopolitanism is what distinguishes it from other approaches. Obviously, the idea of the unity of humanity is ancient; it is predetermined in religions and myths that view the whole of “creation” as a unity. And they have always extrapolated humanistic behavior patterns from this. The cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment invented a secular version of this way of thinking. Since then (since Comenius), although cosmopolitan education is still by no means a practice that is alive everywhere, it is, at least, on the pedagogic agenda. In the nineteenth century, despite it being the era of nationalism, cosmopolitan education nonetheless finds an echo in the newly emerging peace education and in the internationalism of the labor movement. The twentieth century, with the “European civil war,” as some historians summarize the two world wars (Traverso 2007), was more of a setback for global interconnectedness in the economy, politics, and culture of the old European powers. But at the same time, in fact, with the onset of decolonization, new protagonists were entering the scene worldwide. The nuclear threat and the global ecological threats to (human) life on the planet also contributed to the formation of a new consciousness. The development of the media allows more and more people to follow the life of the whole of humanity in detail day by day (Appadurai 1996). In this way, a “planetary consciousness” (Morin and Kern 1999, p. 19) develops that was hitherto unparalleled in this form and in this universality. This planetary consciousness is more than just an updated version of the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment. The recognition of the common earthly fate has—following the loss of heavenly consolations, the recognition of the ecological connections and the previously inexistent threats that have been created by humans themselves—taken on a new quality, has gained a truly political dimension:

We all share a common destiny. We all live in the common garden of living beings and dwell in the common house of human beings. We are all drawn into the common adventure of the Planetary Era, all threatened by nuclear and ecological death. […] We are citizens of the Earth and, thus, we share the same fate as the Earth (Morin and Kern 1999, p. 146).

In its full sense, GCED is a comprehensive and radical pedagogical answer to the new challenges now faced by societies all over the world. However, the way in which they are affected by these challenges depends largely on the extent of their wealth or “development.” GCED is a tool for studying and understanding these processes in their complexity and their interaction. To explain this in detail, some core features will be briefly discussed. Mainly, GCED takes a critical view of common beliefs about the local, national, and global politics, and—on a deeper level—it questions our Western understanding of the world as such.

It is important to keep in mind that it is misleading to focus exclusively on the distinction between a (wide) global and a (narrow) local perspective. A wider or even universalistic view is by no means automatically “better” or “more progressive” than a local view. On the contrary, a universalistic view is predominantly the position of the powerful. The opposition of global versus local is just one “axis” in the field. The other axis is “power”—the opposition between the powerful (and mostly rich) and the powerless (and poor) countries and communities on the planetary scale.

Thus, phenomena such as the decline of the absolute sovereignty of the nation-state cannot only be examined along the first axis. Global thinking is not automatically more open-minded, and the national perspective is not necessarily better at protecting the rights of weaker and poorer people. The second axis must also be considered. Who profits tangibly from the reduced sovereignty of the state? Who loses out when international regimes overrule its authority? For instance, nationalism can be a justification for colonial expansion, as well as an argument for protecting a country against this expansion.

This leads us to the differentiation between two kinds of globalization, the so-called “business globalization”—a global connectedness under neoliberal premises, dominated by the economic paradigm—and a so to speak “human rights globalization”—a distinction that in the Romance languages, such as French, is mirrored by the opposition of globalisation and mondialisation. Seyla Benhabib takes this differentiation as the starting point for her reflections on the global citizenship issue:

My thesis is that whereas cosmopolitan norms lead to the emergence of generalizable human interests and the articulation of public standards of norm justification, global capitalism leads to the privatization and segmentation of interest communities and the weakening of standards of public justification through the rise of private logics of norm generation. This results in the deterioration of the capacity of states to protect and provide for their citizens (Benhabib 2007, p. 22, emphasis in original).

A consequence of this way of understanding is the focus on the civil society as a political actor, not instead of but beside and sometimes against state politics. Benhabib calls this the extension of “popular sovereignty”:

This emergent global civil society is quite complementary to republican federalism, which in my opinion constitutes the only viable response to the contemporary crisis of sovereignty (Benhabib 2007, p. 31).

Going a layer deeper, GCED is challenging our own (Western) belief systems, including some basic assumptions about knowledge and knowledge production. Global citizenship education is probably the first genuine global pedagogical approach with an explicit decolonizing claim, the first time that decolonial education is becoming mainstream (or has a chance to become mainstream). For instance, Lynette Shultz sees the decolonial dimension characterized by three (highly contested) questions (Shultz 2011, p. 13):

  • Whose knowledge counts in a globalized and globalizing world?

  • Do current knowledge creation and dissemination practices in education institutions mark or perpetuate traditional colonial and neocolonial relations and/or raced, gendered, and classed exclusions?

  • How can education contribute to a strengthened global sphere?

However, the standpoint of global citizenship education itself is not global but is always shaped by the background of the respective educator or researcher. While GCED is not a “Western” or “Northern” project, and despite several important publications from the viewpoint of the Global South (Andreotti and de Souza 2012; Abdi et al. 2015), as far as I can see, the GCED literature is still “dominated” by Western scholars.

3 GCED and the Refugee Issue

Viewed from the perspective of GCED, the issue of migration and the flight of refugees is not simply one topic among many; rather, it is at the core of any cosmopolitan concern. There are two (interlinked) reasons for this. Firstly, the fact that so many people are forced to become migrants and refugees is in itself an important characteristic of today’s world politics. According to the newest data provided by UNHCR, an

unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement. In a world where nearly 34,000 people are forcibly displaced every day as a result of conflict or persecution […] (http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html, retrieved April 30, 2017).

However, I object to call this a “refugee problem” since this would already constitute an ideological use of language, implying that the refugees are “guilty” of their situation or are “the problem” for the receiving states. And this leads me to the second reason GCED and the refugee issue are so closely linked: mass migration and flight are challenges for the traditional nation-state understanding of citizenship:

Two aspects of globalization have implications for citizenship. First, the movement of people across national boundaries to live and work calls into question issues of national identity and belonging, of membership in a polity, and of the rights that accrue to that membership. Second, a hallmark of globalization is the existence of transnational and multinational organizations that are overlays on national sovereignty. These exist in parallel with the nation state and both complicate and diffuse the rights and privileges that accrue to citizenship (Gans 2005, p. 1).

Thus, the refugee issue is not only a topic of global citizenship education but also a general political and (therefore) educational issue to which GCED can contribute a unique, enriching, and—if taken seriously—radically controversial perspective. Understanding the reasons for and the consequences of (forced) migration is vital in order to grasp the current geopolitics, and to this end, global citizenship is a lens for analyzing and understanding the issue in a deeper and more comprehensive way than other approaches. It offers a new paradigm—far beyond the narrow worm’s-eye view of the nation-state—for comprehending and resolving the many problems that result from this issue.

A renowned advocate of global citizenship, political scientist Raffaele Marchetti, contrasts the usual viewpoint with the cosmopolitan approach:

Usually this interpretation implies considering migrants in the negative light as aliens, or non-citizens or non-subjects, the state being accepted as the only agent entitled to confer such privileged status […]. This approach typically corresponds to the image of concentric circles, according to which the starting reference is the group (or even the family) and from there on progressive enlargements are envisaged. This mechanism inevitably generates exclusion. By contrast, the approach that this paper advocates is diametrically opposed to it: it is, instead, cosmopolitan and all-inclusive from the beginning. Migrants are considered cosmopolitan citizens entitled in certain degrees to rights which extend to different spheres of political action, for they have as great an ultimate right to freedom of choice and control over the decision-making processes worldwide as do “permanent” residents. In accordance with a new concept of universal membership based on a de-territorialized notion of person’s rights, this paper develops an argument for a consistent global democratic regime able to grant not only civil and social, but also political rights to migrants, through a legitimate migratory regulatory system (Marchetti 2009, p. 59).

This indeed presents a challenge to the monopoly of the nation-state on exclusively deciding the fate of asylum seekers and migrants. In fact, for a long time now, international standards have existed to protect the rights of refugees, namely the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (189 UNTS 150) and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (606 UNTS 267). However, since the circumstances of flight have dramatically changed since these conventions were instated and since the lines between “refugee” and “migrant” are always blurred, the decision of who is granted or refused permission is, in fact, still up to the nation-state. Marchetti flatly denies the right of the nation-state to make single-handed decisions about immigration. His core argument is the fact that (especially the rich) recipient states have contributed in one way or another to the causes of migration and flight and thus are to be held at least partially responsible for the consequences. The states are therefore deeply involved in generating a global problem, and global challenges cannot be confronted with national solutions. Dobson argues, as we have observed in Sect. 1, along the same lines as Marchetti, speaking about the generalized “causal responsibility” in times of globalization. Given the manifold economic, political, and cultural connections between all countries of the world, global citizenship is the only adequate answer:

The globalization of trade [and our impact on climate change] converts us ineluctably into participating in the lives of people we have never met and are never likely to meet. We are as complicit in their lives as if they sold us their produce over the garden fence. […] As we make our way through the world, we “produce” political space, in the sense of space where strict, as opposed to supererogatory, humanitarian, obligations come into play. The ties that bind are […] chains of cause and effect that prompt obligations of justice rather than sympathy, pity, or beneficence (Dobson 2006, p. 178).

Questioning the right of nation-states to autonomously decide the fate of migrants does not automatically imply arguing for an unlimited, borderless flow of migrants and refugees, as Marchetti also concedes. Rather, it is a plea for international regimes based on a human rights approach, including the universal right to movement. “The only viable solution to the distributive problem of admission,” Marchetti explains, “consists in a kind of ‘regulated openness’ […] or ‘fairly open borders’ […] to be managed by an all-inclusive global institution in charge of balancing the conflicting claims of residents and migrants” (Marchetti 2009, p. 63).

Some authors go even deeper, demonstrating that there is “geopolitics of mobility” at work. Migration is not just an issue to be examined by itself but an issue that helps us to study and understand today’s power politics: “The securitisation of migration, in particular, is a defining feature of current geopolitics,” says migration researcher Jennifer Hyndman (2012, p. 243). Presenting refugees and migrants as a threat to security justifies not only measures to contain migration but also measures to restrict civil rights for all citizens: “Fear and insecurity are linked across scales from the bodies of migrants […] and states may even create crisis in order to legitimate grounds to implement what might otherwise be controversial security measures” (ibid., p. 247). Hyndman also problematizes the ideological language used by receiving states to describe migration and flight:

The spatial vocabulary of political geography and international relations is likewise interrogated as a step towards changing geographical imaginations and framings of war […]. Terms like “homeland”, “international community”, “failed/rogue state”, “illegal immigrant”, and “terrorist network” are too often rendered as already-given and unproblematic (Hyndman 2012, p. 244).

At a deeper level, she identifies “the metaphysical assumption of sedentarism” (Hyndman 2012, p. 249) as a neocolonial framework of thinking, typical for modern (Western) societies:

The metaphysics of sedentarism is a way of thinking and acting that sees mobility as suspicious, as threatening, and as a problem. The mobility of others is captured, ordered, and emplaced in order to make it legible in a modern society (Cresswell, 2006, p. 55, quoted after Hyndman 2012, p. 249).

Hyndman also criticizes UN policy as increasingly becoming an instrument of the containment politics of rich nations: she argues

that the United Nations has become the medium through which the Global North exerts and imposes its powers. In the post-Cold War era, Western nations reacted to global displacement by demanding that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) control the displacement by creating safe zones that it and NGO agencies would establish and maintain. UN donor agencies would thus differentiate populations deserving of need and protection from undeserving populations, which would increase the “politicization of needs and the politics of needs, that is, questions of who is deserving and who has the power to decide” (Quoted after Asadi 2015, p. 192).

Hyndman’s argument is further evidence of just how much a truly global citizenship approach is needed to overcome this entire framework of thinking that justifies and stabilizes a short-sighted, ultimately illusory policy of containment—in contradiction to human rights and to the interests of large parts of the world population.

Seyla Benhabib likewise rejects the state-centric and ultimately neocolonialist standpoints condemned by Hyndman. She takes the view that transnational migratory movements are a “legacy of empire,” of European colonialism and imperialism (Benhabib 2007, p. 23). While she also argues for cosmopolitan norms regulating the admission of migrants, she goes a step further and considers mass migration a chance for a renewed, enriched democracy. Since many migrants (and refugees) develop multiple identities and political interests, this can lead to an enhancement of what she calls “popular sovereignty,” as opposed to “state sovereignty.” In opening new avenues for political participation, a global citizenship viewpoint allows for a transnational democratization of the nation-state. The result is, according to Benhabib, a “citizenship of residency”—instead of or alongside national belonging—which includes all residents and which also offers possibilities for new transnational forms of democracy:

My question is: how does the new configuration of state sovereignty influence popular sovereignty? Which political options are becoming possible? Which are blocked? Today we are caught not only in the reconfiguration of sovereignty but also in the reconstitutions of citizenship. We are moving away from citizenship as national membership increasingly towards a citizenship of residency which strengthens the multiple ties to locality, to the region, and to transnational institutions (Benhabib 2007, p. 22).

Table 1, GCED and nationalist perspectives, compared, summarizes the new thinking on the part of global citizenship with regard to the refugee issue. The nationalist approach is described from the viewpoint of a rich (Northern) receiving state. In actual fact, it is not simply a nationalist approach but the power politics of the rich neoliberal states.

Table 1 GCED and nationalist perspectives, compared
Full size table

All these arguments for a genuinely global citizenship approach to the migration and refugee issues provide GCED with important food for thought and a framework for thinking. The task of GCED, obviously, is not to enforce political changes that make cosmopolitan refugee politics possible. Rather, the task is to make a viewpoint other than the dominant one conceivable. As this section has shown, migration forms an essential component of the cosmopolitan model of citizenship education that GCED stands for. We can clearly see that it is not the soft but the critical version of GCED (in Andreotti’s terminology, as described in Sect. 1 of this paper) that provides a radical new and productive way to deal with migration and flight. In the wake of Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and of the American radical pedagogy, GCED proves to be a pedagogy designed to extend the space of democratic movement, to strengthen what Seyla Benhabib calls popular sovereignty.

Even if GCED does not always tackle migration and refugee issues directly, it lays the foundation for a new perspective that can be adopted with regard to all major political issues. It is all the more important, therefore, that the UN and an international organization in the UN family, namely UNESCO, have declared themselves champions of global citizenship education.

4 UN, UNESCO, and GCED

4.1 Beginnings, Frameworks, Activities

In September 2012, then the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented his Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), which included three priorities: first, putting every child in school; second, improving the quality of learning; third, fostering global citizenship (Ki-moon 2012). In the spring of 2013, in his message for the International Day of Peace, September 21, he added:

The theme for the Day this year is “Education for Peace”. The United Nations will examine the role education can play in fostering global citizenship. It is not enough to teach children how to read, write and count. Education has to cultivate mutual respect for others and the world in which we live, and help people forge more just, inclusive and peaceful societies. This kind of education is a central focus of my Global Education First Initiative, which calls on Governments to place education at the top of their agenda (Ki-moon 2013).

With these important statements, the UN Secretary-General extended the scope of the UN’s educational efforts to ensure quality education and, for the first time, made it clear that citizenship education is just as important as learning the basic skills for the job market. This was a new and inspiring emphasis in global educational policy, even if—behind the scenes—the global citizenship approach was highly contested.

In order to support this initiative, to implement it in practice and to assume leadership within the international community, UNESCO chose global citizenship education as one of its pedagogical guidelines. Global citizenship education has thus joined the tradition of previous political pedagogies to which UNESCO has committed itself, such as human rights education, education for democracy and sustainable development, and peace education.

Since 2013, UNESCO has elaborated the concept of GCED, namely in its 2014 programmatic document Global Citizenship Education. Preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century (UNESCO 2014). This was followed by a practitioner-oriented document, GCED: Topics and Learning Objectives (UNESCO 2015b). In order to gain a wider audience and create a truly global network of educators, teachers, and education policy officers, UNESCO holds Global Forums on GCED on a biennial basis (Bangkok 2013, Paris 2015, Ottawa 2017). Some UNESCO bodies, such as the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet), the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), and the UNESCO Chairs that deal with GCED and similar approaches, support UNESCO’s endeavors.

The most important activity, however, was probably the Incheon (Korea) conference and the resulting Incheon Declaration in spring 2015. The aim of this high-level conference was to prepare—in coordination with the UN leaders—the educational segment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be voted on by the UN General Assembly in autumn 2015.Footnote 1 UNESCO worked on integrating GCED into its Education for All (EFA) goals.Footnote 2 The Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action, a product of fierce negotiations between countries and trends, is the first international document to include GCED as a goal toward which the international community is striving. For instance, paragraph 9, discussing the topic of “quality education,” reads (among other things):

It [quality education, WW] also develops the skills, values and attitudes that enable citizens to lead healthy and fulfilled lives, make informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges through education for sustainable development (ESD) and global citizenship education (GCED) (UNESCO 2015a, p. iv).

The Incheon Declaration describes the need for GCED in various passages, and it contains the exact wording of the respective paragraph stating the educational objectives of the SDGs, namely target 4.7:

By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development (UNESCO 2015a; UN 2015).

In the framework of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), education plays an important role. In contrast to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000–2015), these goals are intended not only for developing countries but also for all countries and societies. Whereas the MDG education-related goal was to achieve universal primary education (UN 2000), the corresponding SDG goal is more complex and ambitious: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UN 2015, p. 17). This goal is divided into seven targets, so it follows that education for global citizenship (and sustainable development) is understood as part of “quality education.” This seems to be of vital importance, for it makes clear that GCED is a necessary and indispensable part of any education.

With the 38th session of the General Conference of UNESCO in November 2015, UNESCO officially took the leadership in implementing SDG 4. It is noteworthy that GCED is once again highlighted as one of two specific strategic goals:

Strategic objective 1: Supporting Member States to develop education systems to foster high quality and inclusive lifelong learning for all

Strategic objective 2: Empowering learners to be creative and responsible global citizens (UNESCO 2017, p. 13).

It can be seen as a “historical” achievement that not only UNESCO and its member states, but the whole international community, represented in the UN and its 193 member states, voted for a strategic document, the SDGs, that codifies Global Citizenship Education as a main objective of their educational policy. Obviously, this does not mean that GCED will necessarily be implemented in any single state in the near future, much less that all states subscribe to the critical interpretation of GCED as presented in Sect. 1 of this paper. However, it seems that—to my knowledge—for the first time, the UN has defined common educational goals and standards for all member states and that a roadmap for common action has been established, not only for the UN and UNESCO but in principle for all organizations in the UN family.

4.2 The UNESCO Concept of GCED

Ban Ki-moon’s initiative prompted new push, but it was certainly not the very start of UNESCO’s efforts to develop transnational concepts of education. Since its foundation, UNESCO has been working on the question of how education can prepare individuals to live together peacefully and in solidarity. This is at the core of UNESCO’s mandate. As early as 1946, it passed its Resolution on the revision of textbooks, which was followed by a number of related activities. The aim was the revision of textbooks regarding their role in improving the mutual understanding of peoples and nations. In 1953, the Associated School Project was started, which has grown considerably since then. In 1968, the International Bureau of Education (IBE), which is connected to UNESCO, issued its Recommendation on Education for International Understanding. In 1974, UNESCO developed—as a joint document of all its member states—its Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, co-operation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms. This Recommendation on “international education” examines the connection between international understanding, peace, human rights, cultural education, and, quite early on, environmental education. In a key passage, the Recommendation pursues an education policy aimed at “international solidarity and cooperation, which are necessary in solving the world problems” (UNESCO 1974, p. 148). On all educational levels, the international dimension and the global perspective should be taken into consideration, and central “world problems” (such as equality of peoples, peace, human rights) should always be addressed. Despite some of the document’s weaknesses, discernible in retrospect (see Wintersteiner 1999), the text is an important milestone. To this day, UNESCO monitors the implementation of the Recommendation every four years based on national reports. Clearly, this is UNESCO’s basic document for any education for peace and international understanding and therefore also the context of UNESCO’s GCED concept, as the current UNESCO webpage on global citizenship education reads: “The normative foundation for UNESCO’s approach to GCED is determined by UNESCO’s 1974 Recommendation concerning education for international understanding, co-operation, peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms” (http://en.unesco.org/gced/approach, retrieved May 20, 2017). The sixth Consultation on the implementation of the Recommendation, which started in 2016, resulting in a report to be submitted to the General Conference in 2017, explicitly focuses on target 4.7 of the SDGs and on GCED (UNESCO 2016).

The Recommendation is obviously the most important document of its kind but surely not the only one. For instance, the Declaration and Integrated Framework of Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy (1995) goes much further. After the end of the Cold War, societal problems such as racism and intolerance and also the growing divide between the North and South were identified as the most urgent issues. No longer were solutions sought solely in the understanding between nations but also by looking at civil society. This text is arguably the most comprehensive depiction of a systematic pedagogic program for worldwide peace education. In later documents, the focus shifts to other aspects, such as education for sustainable development or education for a global culture of peace, which was developed even further in the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace in 2000 and the subsequent decade of 2001–2010. In the most well-known document concerning this matter, the 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, it states in a key passage (Article 4): “Education at all levels is one of the principal means to build a culture of peace. In this context, human rights education is of particular importance” (UN 1999). In this and a range of other documents, an educational concept is developed that no longer merely advocates civic education, education for democracy, human rights education, peace education, and intercultural understanding as such but does so with a global perspective, i.e. with an awareness of global interconnectedness. Thus, the groundwork for what is today known as global citizenship education was laid, and UNESCO still refers explicitly to these and similar documents as its “normative foundation”:

UNESCO’s approach to Global Citizenship Education builds on the Organization’s long standing experience in human rights and peace education (PHRE), which remain specific areas of work for the Organization (http://en.unesco.org/gced/approach, retrieved May 30, 2017).

UNESCO describes its approach to GCED as holistic, transformative, value based, and quality education:

Holistic: addressing learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment in formal, non-formal and informal learning settings

Transformative: enabling learners to transform themselves and society

Value based: promoting universally shared values such as non-discrimination, equality, respect and dialogue

Part of a larger commitment to support the quality and relevance of education (http://en.unesco.org/gced/approach, retrieved May 30, 2017).

In an attempt to combine these different approaches conceptually and to create a common understanding of GCED, UNESCO, supported by an international network of scholars and activists, developed its first programmatic publication in 2014, Global Citizenship Education. Preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty-first century (UNESCO 2014). Even if more publications on GCED have been released by UNESCO since then, especially the previously mentioned brochure Topics and Learning Objectives (2015b), Preparing learners remains UNESCO’s only systematic and comprehensive publication on GCED to date. In said document, which is—like almost all similar texts—not an official UNESCO resolution but a paper written by experts and published by UNESCO, global citizenship education can be understood as an integrative approach, building on the abovementioned concepts, yet without attempting to ignore their respective significance and independence:

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is a framing paradigm which encapsulates how education can develop the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes learners need for securing a world which is more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable.

It represents a conceptual shift in that it recognizes the relevance of education in understanding and resolving global issues in their social, political, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions. It also acknowledges the role of education in moving beyond the development of knowledge and cognitive skills to build values, soft skills and attitudes among learners that can facilitate international cooperation and promote social transformation.

GCED applies a multifaceted approach, employing concepts, methodologies and theories already implemented in different fields and subjects, including human rights education, peace education, education for sustainable development and education for international understanding. As such, it aims to advance their overlapping agendas, which share a common objective to foster a more just, peaceful and sustainable world (UNESCO 2014, p. 9).

One special quality of the publication is that it does not hide differences and contradictory positions within the educational community but describes and discusses ongoing tensions between different values and conflicting educational approaches.

While this is without a doubt a groundbreaking publication that initiated an ongoing and deepening discussion of GCED within UNESCO, it also contains some weak points, which we will briefly discuss: firstly, it is regrettable that the three Western “burdens” that still play a central role in citizenship education—the colonial domination, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima—are not addressed as learning issues and guidelines for GCED.Footnote 3 Secondly, in my opinion, the notion of citizenship itself is not taken seriously enough. The publication declares:

There is a common understanding that global citizenship does not imply a legal status. It refers more to a sense of belonging to a broader community and common humanity, promoting a “global gaze” that links the local to the global and the national to the international (UNESCO 2014, p. 14).

It is true that global citizenship does not imply a legal status. However, global citizenship is not simply a metaphor for a “global gaze.” What distinguishes the term global citizenship education from similar terms such as global education is precisely the fact that it refers to the political order. Global citizenship is a criticism of the existing order, as well as a demand. As Louis Cabrera states:

while it is formally true that individuals cannot be global citizens in the absence of some overarching set of global governing institutions, they can enact significant aspects of global citizenship by seeking to protect the core rights of others who do not share their state citizenship. Further, they can advocate for the transformation of the current system into one that would more effectively protect the right of the globally most vulnerable (Cabrera 2010, p. 258).

This is an important statement, but it is only half of the truth. As we have seen in Sect. 2, the very social dynamic of the global citizenship approach is not to “protect the core rights of others” but to emancipate these “others” so that they can start to claim their rights as if they had the same rights as the nationals. “Politics is fundamentally about contesting political exclusion by enacting equality,” as Schaap, in line with Jacques Rancière, puts it (Schaap 2011, p. 23). The French movement of the sans papiers is an often-cited example. Krause considers these “activists as conscious pariahs who really do translate their status in political terms” (Krause 2008).

Thus, a detailed discussion of the possibilities of expanding citizenship beyond the nation-state (e.g., through the UN system, the European Union, and others) and of extending citizenship to those who are denied their rights must be an integral part of global citizenship education. Obviously, this is of particular importance when it comes to the refugee issue.

Furthermore, the publication addresses the challenge of economic competition as a potential hurdle for global solidarity, trying to reconcile these two approaches. It simultaneously promotes global solidarity and individual competitiveness. I concede that this may be possible (or even necessary) at an individual level. However, as a publication dealing with global citizenship education, it cannot treat this issue at a personal level but must address the questions of international power relations, the heritage of colonialism, and a neoliberal market economy. Viewed from this angle, global solidarity versus global market rivalry between unequal social groups, nations, countries, and regions does not look like two reconcilable approaches but looks like an irreconcilable antagonism.

To sum up, it is the great merit of UNESCO to have made GCED one of its flagship programs, putting it clearly in line with its concepts of human rights and peace education, as well as of international education. Strategically, the most significant achievement is the integration of GCED into the SDGs, in point 4.7. This is a huge step in propagating and legitimating GCED in order for it to be accepted by a wider community. It is an efficient way to oblige the UN and UNESCO member states to pave the way for GCED. Certainly, this does not mean that a critical understanding of GCED is currently prevailing, as discussed in Sect. 2.1 of this chapter. UNESCO itself has elaborated a very broad concept of GCED that includes all tendencies, and it is now dealing with more practical questions such as targets and learning objectives for the classroom, and evaluation of progress, rather than with conceptual issues.

4.3 UNESCO, Other UN Bodies, and the Refugee Issue

So far, the discussion has demonstrated two things:

  • The refugee issue is a very sensitive one, not so much due to the practical problems that it presents but rather because it challenges a world order built around the exclusive monopoly of the nation-state to make decisions regarding the motion of populations and their right to participate in all political issues.

  • Global citizenship (and global citizenship education) is an approach that helps us better understand the “transformative” dimension of the refugee issue, as well as establish a new and more just world order based on what Seyla Benhabib calls “popular sovereignty” (2007, 21 pp). Therefore, GCED is also a sensitive and contested concept, even more so when applied to the refugee issue.

This is just another example of the “generic contradiction” of the UN and all its sister organizations such as UNICEF or UNESCO. Their declared aim is to help create a peaceful and just world order. Yet the agents enlisted to achieve this noble task are the same nation-states that have created the war-torn, unjust world order that must be overcome. Accordingly, the UN agencies, between the ideals of their constitutions and the realpolitik of the member states, have only little room for maneuver. This is especially true for the refugee issue.

Just how difficult it is to make progress with this sensitive issue becomes evident, for instance, in the New York Declaration. In September 2016, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a set of commitments to enhance the protection of refugees and migrants, named the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (A/RES/71/1). In particular, it stipulates that states commit to negotiating Global Compacts on refugees and on safe, orderly, and regular migration by 2018. According to the UNHCR, this declaration, signed by all 193 member states of the UN, acknowledged the importance of the international refugee protection regime and pledged to provide more predictable and sustainable support to refugees and the communities that host them by creating a “Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework.” Volker Türk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, hopes above all that the deplorable situation of the education of refugee children will improve (http://www.unhcr.org/afr/news/latest/2016/9/57ee3af54/qa-new-york-declaration-once-lifetime-chance-refugees.html, retrieved May 24, 2017).

However, these two compacts are not intended to have the status of international treaties but will remain legally nonbinding political commitments. “As currently envisaged, they represent a disastrous missed opportunity,” judges Emma Larking, Australian migration law specialist (Larking 2016). Furthermore, she criticizes that the narrow refugee definition of the 1951 Convention will not be expanded. The consequence, according to Larking, is as follows:

This means the Convention will continue to be used as a containment mechanism, allowing states that are parties to the Convention to exclude people who are fleeing natural disasters, civil war, or poverty. […] It says host states should – not must – “provide legal stay” for refugees. It does not call for legal status for other forced migrants (Larking 2016).

Larking quotes Philip Rudge, the former General Secretary of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, who once said:

I have received many lectures about the realism, the realpolitik of … States and the unrealism, even the irresponsibility of the NGO sector. [But it] seems to me self-evident that the true realpolitik of the modern world, if we are to survive, is tolerance, pluralism, bridge building rather than protectionism, fear and all the defensive aspects of the fortress mentality that we currently live with. Why do the strong States persist with policies that are demonstrably inhuman, very problematic legally and do not work anyway? (quoted after Larking 2016).

There is no doubt that any progress, as small as it may be in this case, is welcome if it helps to improve the situation of (forced) migrants and refugees. However, the global citizenship approach offers a much broader perspective, a “true realpolitik,” more expansive than what is currently accepted by the international community.

As a matter of fact, the SDGs, into which target 4.7 and GCED are embedded, do not deal explicitly with the refugee issue in a substantial way. In the official document, the resolution Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1), refugees are only mentioned twice: paragraph 23 states that “People who are vulnerable must be empowered” and also lists, among these vulnerable people, “refugees and internally displaced persons and migrants.” Paragraph 29 is dedicated to the “positive contribution of migrants for inclusive growth and sustainable development.” It continues with a statement that underlines the importance of the issue but offers no new approach (which would hardly have been approved by the UN member states). The paragraph reads:

We also recognize that international migration is a multidimensional reality of major relevance for the development of countries of origin, transit and destination, which requires coherent and comprehensive responses. We will cooperate internationally to ensure safe, orderly and regular migration involving full respect for human rights and the humane treatment of migrants regardless of migration status, of refugees and of displaced persons. Such cooperation should also strengthen the resilience of communities hosting refugees, particularly in developing countries. We underline the right of migrants to return to their country of citizenship, and recall that States must ensure that their returning nationals are duly received (UN 2015, p. 8).

While one could not expect the international community of states to abandon their immigration policy strictly based on the principle of national sovereignty, it is also remarkable that global citizenship plays no major role in the document either. With the exception of target 4.7 (see above), it appears only in paragraph 36, which reads:

We pledge to foster intercultural understanding, tolerance, mutual respect and an ethic of global citizenship and shared responsibility. We acknowledge the natural and cultural diversity of the world and recognize that all cultures and civilizations can contribute to, and are crucial enablers of, sustainable development (UN 2015, p. 9).

All in all, in this context, global citizenship is meant as an ethical principle, as well as an educational aim, but it is not perceived as a lens to understand and to radically reorder the world. The full potential of GCED as a transformative approach, transforming not only the individual learners but also the social structures, is not exploited. Although the UN document does not go into much detail on the topic, its concept of GCED is modeled more after what Vanessa Andreotti calls “soft Global Citizenship Education” (see Sect. 2.1).

This criticism is not to say that the SDGs and, in particular, goal 4 have no relevance for refugees. Quite the contrary. The Secretary-General’s Global Education First (GEFI) Initiative and the SDGs are very important for refugee education. The substance of goal 4, to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care, and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education; that they enjoy comprehensive free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education; that they have access to affordable and quality technical, vocational, and tertiary education, including university, applies explicitly for all young people. While the elimination of gender disparities is listed as a specific target, and persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations are specifically addressed, no mention is made of a restriction related to citizenship, nation, language, etc. This is a strong argument for an inclusive education of all kinds of refugees. Providing refugees with quality education is a duty even in the countries where it is not possible to integrate them into the national school systems. This is a very important topic, as UNHCR data show.Footnote 4

As for UNESCO itself, in the aforementioned programmatic publication Global Citizenship Education – Preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty-first century, the organization addresses the refugee and migration issue briefly but very directly. Fully aware of the (national) educational systems’ “role of education [and especially of GCED, WW] in challenging the status quo” (UNESCO 2014, p. 20) and of the sensitivity of the topic, the document states:

[S]ome would argue that citizens (such as environmentalists or political refugees) showing active concern for global issues could be perceived as challenging local/national authorities if their actions are deemed to be in conflict with local or national interests. The role of education in challenging the status quo or building skills for activism may be a concern for those who see this as a threat to the stability of the nation state.

These points of tension should be approached with sensitivity, care and a commitment to open dialogue. Although global citizenship education does entail resisting the status quo and imagining alternative futures, this should be considered and presented as a positive challenge that can enrich and broaden cultural, local and national identities (UNESCO 2014, p. 20).

Thus, UNESCO proposes—as a compromise—considering global citizenship as a supplement to or extension of national identities, not as an alternative. The nation and the nation-state continue to make up the mental framework, especially when it comes to questions such as the refugee issue. This is understandable, given the constraints of the member states. The cited passage is, incidentally, the only section in the entire publication in which refugees are mentioned. In another UNESCO document, Global Citizenship Education – Topics and Learning Objectives (2015b), intended for use by teachers and curriculum planners, migration and refugee issues are addressed relatively frequently as themes and topics for different age groups. However, in accordance with the nature of this document, each topic is only listed yet not discussed in greater detail.

My argument is that UNESCO has already done its job by placing the subject on the agenda and putting GCED at the forefront. On the one hand, it is deplorable that UNESCO managed to address extremism and violence (http://en.unesco.org/preventing-violent-extremism/edu-as-tool), as well as nationalismFootnote 5 in the context of GCED, but—so far—not so much migration and flight. On the other hand, it is perhaps not necessary for UNESCO to tackle any theme related to GCED because other partners can make use of and carry forward what UNESCO has laid the groundwork for. Even if, in the context of GCED, UNESCO does not focus explicitly or officially on the refugee issue, it inspires other UN bodies to do so. For instance, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) refers directly to the UNESCO documents on GCED in conceiving its Human Rights, Conflict Resolution and Tolerance Education Programme. As Ozlem Eskiocak, Human Rights Education Programme Coordinator, points out, according to UNESCO, “global citizenship refers to a sense of belonging to a common humanity. And the values of that common humanity are underpinned by human rights.” This is the basis, he continues, for UNRWA’s refugee education program (Eskiocak 2016).

Likewise, UNICEF, which traditionally focuses on education and peace building, now combines this approach with GCED. UNICEF Canada, for instance, published a Global Citizenship Education Guide in 2011, which was, in fact, a year before Ban Ki-moon’s initiative (UNICEF Canada 2011).

5 “At the Core of Political Life.” Conclusion

Obviously, mass migration in its current form is a consequence of globalization, of the “complex connectivity” in all fields, from economy, traffic, communication, and politics to media and culture (Tomlinson 1999). It is a consequence that has consequences itself and in particular has an impact on the very idea of the nation-state as we know and have known it since the modern era. Migrants, refugees, and among them, first and foremost, nondocumented migrants and stateless peopleFootnote 6 are, as I would like to put it, a “paradigmatic challenge” to the ruling system of nation-states and the uncontested state sovereignty. By their sheer presence, they remind us that “we are moving away from citizenship as national membership increasingly towards a citizenship of residency which strengthens the multiple ties to locality, to the region, and to transnational institutions” (Benhabib 2007, p. 22). So far, these developments are mostly denied and repelled. If accepted, they would open up new opportunities not only for the migrants and refugees concerned but also for all people and their democratic emancipation. A society that excludes large sectors of its population from essential parts of their citizen rights cannot be democratic. The democratic life, the “political,” begins when this situation is no longer accepted. As Andrew Schaap reminds us, referring to Jacques Rancière, “The political is constituted when those who are not qualified to participate in politics presume to act and speak as if they are” (Schaap 2011, p. 35). The paradigmatic distinction between residents and foreigners, the multiple obstacles to immigration, and the hurdles to becoming a national citizen obscure our understanding of the democratic scandal constituted by the denial of rights for all. As a consequence, we often see a lack of solidarity from the resident population toward migrants and refugees struggling for their rights. By contrast, the global citizen perspective “enables us to see contests over human rights as part and parcel of social struggles that are the core of political life since they entail the enactment of equality within conditions of inequality” (Schaap 2011, p. 24). This is to say that we should understand the refugee issue not exclusively as a challenge (which it indeed is) but also as a chance to widen popular sovereignty and to establish, in the long run, more just and democratic transnational political structures. The fact that UN and UNESCO have taken the leadership for the international implementation of GCED demonstrates huge support for this necessary transformation of mind-sets, policies, and social structures.

Viewed at this angle, GCED is a much-needed and powerful approach for any citizenship education. It is essential for alternative knowledge production, the indispensable substance of any critical thinking. American philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2007) identifies three competences “crucial for citizenship in a pluralistic, democratic society enmeshed in a globalized world” (2007, p. 38):

  1. 1.

    The capacity for Socratic self-criticism and critical thought about one’s own traditions

    In line with Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore and philosopher John Dewey, Nussbaum explicitly connects critical thinking to the survival of democracy. This is even more in demand in a globalized society where different and often controversial opinions directly collide. Critical thinking is a prerequisite in order to be able to face this situation and to learn from others instead of repelling any “otherness.”

  2. 2.

    The ability to see oneself as a member of a heterogeneous nation and world

    Students should develop an understanding of world history, including the philosophies and religions of the world, and learn foreign languages. All this is necessary to acquire the capacity of decentring oneself and to “step away from the comfort of assured truths” (2007, p. 39).

  3. 3.

    The ability to sympathetically imagine the lives of people different from oneself

    This competence goes beyond the cognitive dimension and includes emotions and feelings. Nussbaum calls this “narrative imagination.” With this, she means the ability to imagine and understand the emotions, wishes, and desires that other people might have.

Indeed, these competences are the very basis for any cosmopolitan education. But they do not suffice. In my view, contrary to other texts by Nussbaum, they do not sufficiently reflect the full extent of the increasing interconnectedness of the world that we call “globalization.” The changes that globalization entails and that are occurring in the economic, technological, cultural, and political realms, namely the large-scale movement of people across national boundaries and the existence of multinational organizations that are overlays on national sovereignty, have consequences on our understanding of citizenship. In order to grasp these changes and to be able to find adequate political answers to them, I believe that the following competences are also required (some of them can be considered a specification and radicalization of Nussbaum’s three points):

  1. 4.

    The ability to conceive of (and to experience) the globe as our “homeland earth” (Morin)

    This means the ability to consider oneself first and foremost as a global, not national, citizen and to explore the opportunities of transnational political action.

  2. 5.

    The ability to decolonize one’s mindset and open oneself up to postcolonial thinking

    This is based on critical thinking but goes a step beyond it since it is about accepting not only new facts but also new ways of thinking, an epistemological change. The overcoming of Eurocentrism is not limited to the acceptance of certain historical facts but is a revolution of our entire way of thinking.

  3. 6.

    The ability to understand the need to be an active citizen, and to behave as such

    Critical thinking is not enough; the role of observer does not suffice. Students must learn to become citizens in the full sense of the word. To put it in the words of Karl Marx: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

  4. 7.

    The ability and the willingness to detect the utopian potential of one’s own thinking, which can help find new solutions for new challenges

    “If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility,” said Austrian writer Robert Musil. Utopian thinking means nothing more than the capacity to imagine that another world is possible. This paper has given an example by arguing the transformative capacity of the global citizenship approach when it comes to the refugee issue.

UNESCO plays an important role in providing these competences. Teachers and educators are well advised to use the many learning opportunities created by UNESCO. With regard to paradigmatic questions and the concept of GCED, they should be open to exploring the full potential of the global citizenship approach. For anybody dealing with GCED, it is useful to always keep in mind Vanessa Andreotti’s admonition:

If educators are not “critically literate” to engage with assumptions and implications/limitations of their approaches, they run the risk of (indirectly and unintentionally) reproducing the systems of belief and practices that harm those they want to support (Andreotti 2006, pp. 49–50).

Questions

  1. 1.

    How can global citizenship become an instrument to profoundly transform receiving societies and help decolonize the minds of their citizens with respect to refugees, borders, and rights; to make them better equipped to receive refugees; and to fight the root causes of flight?

  2. 2.

    How can the different UN bodies and organizations, such as UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, etc., combine their efforts to reach explicitly and “legally” binding common goals, like SDG target 4.7? How can this common effort help to implement GCED into formal school systems?

  3. 3.

    How can (academic and school) teachers and educators, as well as NGO activists, make use of UNESCO’s rich experiences and multiple activities for GCED without limiting themselves to the constraints that UNESCO has to assume?

  4. 4.

    How can global citizenship education be implemented in the education of refugees in practice?

  5. 5.

    How can GCED become, in reality, what it is purported to be an educational approach as an alliance between the Global South and the Global North?