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Oct. 2021 Research towards a better future: neoliberalism, global citizenship and international volunteering Mark Griffiths Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a PhD in Interdisciplinary Policy Studies King’s College London 2014 Abstract This thesis discusses the British government’s construction of global citizenship on its recently launched (2011) International Citizen Service (ICS) programme that sends volunteers abroad to work on international development projects. The thesis has two objectives. The first is to understand global citizenship on the ICS programme as it takes shape in a climate of neoliberal policy making. The second is to produce a piece of ‘socially engaged’ research that looks towards a better future. The thesis unfolds as an account of global citizenship as it is produced through the discursive rationalities and circulated affects that have come to define contemporary modes of neoliberal governance. This part of the discussion argues that through ICS the government constructs a markedly neoliberalised version of global citizenship, based on “soft” understandings of development and a heavy emphasis on self-advancement. The inquiry then moves on to consider research performances and how best to conceptualise the relationship between power and people. The case is made that power-centric accounts can reinforce the dominance of power and consequently ‘a better future’ in research might explore the aspects of social life that do not defer to expressions of power. Taking this position to ethnographic data collected from ICS project sites in India the thesis then examines the ways that volunteers contest, subvert and resist the government’s version of global citizenship. As a response to the earlier exploration of rationalities and affects, the presentation of the data illustrates the ways that volunteers on the one hand critically engage with development issues while on the other establish strong affective relationships with host communities. Together, these perspectives show volunteers capable of resisting neoliberal iterations of global citizenship. Instead, the volunteers on the ICS programme practice creative and affective interpretations of global citizenship that, in important ways, transcend the impositions of power and, in so doing, look towards a better future. 2 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 7 1 Current debates in volunteering: neoliberalism, global civil society and global citizenship ..... 10 1.1 Global Citizenship .......................................................................................................................................10 1.1.1 Global citizenship and international volunteering ............................................................................15 1.1.2 Lessons from literature on volunteering and global citizenship: ambiguities and approaches to research ..............................................................................................................................................................21 1.2 Global Civil Society ......................................................................................................................................23 1.3 Understandings of neoliberalism ...............................................................................................................29 1.4 Lines of inquiry and structure of the thesis..............................................................................................34 2 Methodology and research design ............................................................................................. 38 2.1 Research for a better future: approaching issues of power ...................................................................38 2.2 Approaching power: discursive and affective aspects of neoliberal governance ..............................39 2.3 The case study and data collection ...........................................................................................................41 2.3.1 ICS-DfID iterations of global citizenship: secondary data ............................................................41 2.3.2 ICS-DfID iterations of global citizenship: ethnographic data .......................................................42 2.3.3 Analysis of data in Chapter 3 ...............................................................................................................45 2.3.4 Analysis of data in Chapter 4 ...............................................................................................................47 2.4 Volunteer understandings of global citizenship ......................................................................................49 2.4.1 Interviews and focus groups: positionality .........................................................................................53 2.4.2 Analysis of data for Chapter 6..............................................................................................................55 2.4.3 Grounded theory, ‘balance and disclosure’, and the conceptualisation of discourse .................57 2.5 Subsequent revisions to the understanding of “research towards a better future” ..........................59 2.6 Participation, the significance of question 12 and the turn to affect ...................................................59 2.6.1 Participation ............................................................................................................................................61 2.6.2 Affective methodologies: Chapter 7 ...................................................................................................62 2.6.3 The problem of representation ............................................................................................................63 2.7 Ethics .............................................................................................................................................................64 2.7.1 Disclosure and consent .........................................................................................................................65 2.7.2 Unused data ............................................................................................................................................66 2.7.2.1 Unused data from stakeholders .....................................................................................................66 2.7.2.2 Unused data from in-country volunteers .......................................................................... 68 2.8 Closing comments .......................................................................................................................................73 3 The neoliberalisations of International Citizen Service ............................................................ 75 3.1 Introduction: the Big Society agenda and the “rolling out” of International Citizen Service .........76 3.1.1 International Citizen Service ................................................................................................................79 3.2 Global Citizenship on the ICS programme .............................................................................................87 3.2.1 The coalition, development and the ‘global’ of global citizenship.................................................88 3.3 Neoliberal ideals of the self in global citizenship ...................................................................................95 3.4 Reflexive neoliberalism ............................................................................................................................ 101 3.4.1 Co-optive neoliberalism, Big Society and ICS ............................................................................... 104 3.5 Closing comments: advancing the understanding of neoliberalism and its reflexivity .................. 112 4 The affective push to global citizenship ..................................................................................