‘It’s all bollocks!’ and other critical standpoints on the UK Government’s vision of global citizenship

ABSTRACT The UK Government’s International Citizen Service (ICS) sends volunteers abroad to ‘fight global poverty’ as ‘global citizens’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the construction of development on the ICS programme forecloses important political and historical contexts, resulting in a model of global citizenship we might term ‘soft’. This article presents data from interviews with ICS volunteers with a specific methodological concern of recognizing the agency of young people and allowing their responses to lead discussion. The outcome is a range of themes across the data that critique the Government’s model of citizenship and, I argue, shows the volunteers to be ‘critical’ global citizens. I then ask whether we can consider this a mode of resistance. I conclude with a final data set that – the case is made – presents an imperative to allow these volunteers to have their perspectives on historical and contemporary North–South relations recognized as a critical mode of global citizenship.

[1]  Teresa Barrio Traspaderne.  Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World , 2015 .

[2]  M. Griffiths.  I’ve got goose bumps just talking about it!: Affective life on neoliberalized volunteering programmes , 2014 .

[3]  L. Gibbon.  National Citizen Service , 2014 .

[4]  Gavin Fridell.  Introduction—Politicising Debt and Development: activist voices on social justice in the new millennium , 2013 .

[5]  Adam Morris.  Whoever, Whatever: On Anonymity as Resistance to Empire , 2012 .

[6]  Kristina Diprose.  Critical distance: doing development education through international volunteering , 2012 .

[7]  Nina Laurie,et al.  International volunteering and development: global citizenship and neoliberal professionalisation today , 2011 .

[8]  V. Andreotti.  (Towards) decoloniality and diversality in global citizenship education , 2011 .

[9]  M. Smith,et al.  Disconnections and exclusions: professionalization, cosmopolitanism and (global?) civil society , 2011 .

[10]  J. Sharp,et al.  The Violence of Aid? Giving, power and active subjects in One World Conservatism , 2010 .

[11]  Suzan Ilcan,et al.  Developmentalities and Calculative Practices: The Millennium Development Goals , 2010 .

[12]  D. Archibugi,et al.  The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights: Four Learnt Lessons and Four Theses , 2009 .

[13]  Cheryl McEwan,et al.  Postcolonialism and Development , 2009 .

[14]  J. Gibson‐Graham.  Diverse economies: performative practices for `other worlds' , 2008 .

[15]  C. Barnett,et al.  THE ELUSIVE SUBJECTS OF NEO-LIBERALISM , 2008 .

[16]  J. Clarke.  Living with/in and without neo-liberalism , 2008 .

[17]  April R. Biccum.  Marketing Development: Live 8 and the Production of the Global Citizen. , 2007 .

[18]  A. Ross.  MULTIPLE IDENTITIES AND EDUCATION FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP , 2007 .

[19]  J. Pykett.  Making citizens governable? The Crick Report as governmental technology , 2007 .

[20]  Patrick Brantlinger.  Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" and Its Afterlives , 2007 .

[21]  Simon Springer,et al.  A Brief History of Neoliberalism , 2007 .

[22]  William Easterly.  The White Man's Burden , 2006, The Lancet.

[23]  Rebecca Dolhinow.  Caught in the Middle: The State, NGOs, and the Limits to Grassroots Organizing Along the US–Mexico Border , 2005 .

[24]  U. Kothari.  Authority and Expertise: The Professionalisation of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent , 2005 .

[25]  L. Bondi.  Working the Spaces of Neoliberal Subjectivity: Psychotherapeutic Technologies, Professionalisation and Counselling , 2005 .

[26]  M. Goodman,et al.  Consuming narratives: the political ecology of ‘alternative’ consumption , 2004 .

[27]  J. Urry,et al.  Enacting the social , 2004 .

[28]  G. Spivak.  Can the Subaltern Speak , 2003 .

[29]  J. Robinson.  Political geography in a postcolonial context , 2003 .

[30]  Michael Kunczik.  Globalisation , 2002 .

[31]  N. Barnett.  Including ourselves: New Labour and engagement with public services , 2002 .

[32]  Kieran Allen,et al.  Globalisation and its Discontents , 2002 .

[33]  A. Dirlik.  Rethinking Colonialism: Globalization, Postcolonialism, And The Nation , 2002 .

[34]  W. Levinson,et al.  The heart of darkness , 1992, Journal of General Internal Medicine.

[35]  Hunt Hawkins.  Conrad's Critique of Imperialism in Heart of Darkness , 1979, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.

[36]  V. Andreotti.  Soft versus Critical Global Citizenship Education , 2014 .

[37]  S. Wearing,et al.  Gap year volunteer tourism: Myths of Global Citizenship? , 2012 .

[38]  A. Mycock,et al.  A Big Idea for the Big Society? The Advent of National Citizen Service , 2011 .

[39]  H. M. van de Bovenkamp.  Creating citizen-consumers: Changing publics and changing public services , 2009 .

[40]  C. Barnett,et al.  The elusive subjects of neoliberalism : Beyond the analytics of governmentality , 2009 .

[41]  Masuhiro Kogoma.  総論;総論;Introduction , 2006 .

[42]  Joseph E. Stiglitz,et al.  Globalisation and its discontents , 2003 .

[43]  Jamie Peck,et al.  Neoliberalizing Space , 2002 .

[44]  Ha-Joon Chang.  Kicking away the ladder : development strategy in historical perspective , 2002 .

[45]  D. Gilmour.  The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling , 2002 .

[46]  T. Willett.  Understanding the IMF Debate , 2000 .

[47]  Thomas Frank,et al.  Commodify your dissent : salvos from The Baffler , 1997 .

[48]  Cary Nelson,et al.  Marxism and the interpretation of culture , 1988 .

[49]  Patrick Brantlinger.  Heart of Darkness: Anti-Imperialism, Racism, or Impressionism? , 1985 .

[50]  C. Watts.  "A bloody racist": about Achebe's view of Conrad , 1983 .

[51]  P. Curtin,et al.  The Image of Africa , 1964 .