Neoliberalism, Citizenship, and Education: A Policy Discourse Analysis

Abstract

In this chapter, I draw on various literatures and theories spanning different academic disciplines to explore some of the connections between neoliberalism, citizenship, and education. Not to be confused with studies of citizenship education, this chapter documents how users of education services, specifically parents, are invited, even compelled, to perform certain responsibilities and obligations as bearers of consumer rights and champions of their own self-interest. Building on literature which likens citizenship to a “governmentality” (Hindess, Citizenship Stud 6(2):127–143, 2002; Ong, Neoliberalism as exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Duke University Press, Durham, 2006), this chapter examines the ways in which parents are invited to manage themselves responsibly and rationally through the proliferation of ever-greater forms of choice making and calculated risk in their navigation of and access to education provision. To evidence the range and reach of these interventions, this chapter adopts elements of Foucauldian discourse analysis (Sharp and Richardson, J Environ Policy Plan 3(3):193–209, 2001) through a study of key education policy texts to show how parents are imagined and activated as consumers (or “citizen-consumers”) in the field of education.