Global citizenship education as a project for decoloniality

Abstract

Youth from every continent used online tools to exchange ideas, debate alternatives, and create a document that represents their voice on the relationship education should have with global citizenship: the International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship. This paper applies de Sousa Santos’ sociology of absences and emergences to trace the ways in which the White Paper extends—and limits—decolonial thought in relation to global citizenship education. Through document analysis of the White Paper, we note particularly the students’ emphasis on a decolonial and processual notion of relationality that challenges current neoliberal notions of the global community and instead is oriented toward justice. Further, the students connect political resistance to epistemological resistance, asserting that diverse ways of being, knowing, and seeing are necessary to ensuring those who are marginalized are included in the decision making processes that affect their lives.