Corporate Educational Philanthropy for Racialized Latin America: A Provocation for More Critical Studies

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the corporatization of humanitarian aid and the expansion of private donors have filled the gap left by declining government investment in public education worldwide. As these corporate philanthropies take over work once done by governments, they gain spaces of power. This phenomenon has intensified with the global crisis of 2008. The paper asks what are the modalities of domination in corporate philanthropic educational interventions for racialized students in Latin America today, and how the critical literature interprets this phenomenon. It proposes a narrative review that reveals three main analytical trends. First, some studies examine how many corporate philanthropic interventions in education actually have a market colonizing motive. Second, other research focuses on the role of sponsored academic discourses, conventions, networks of influence, and social movements in shaping education policy reforms. Third, research shows that philanthropic efforts, despite their claims to “uplift” racialized students, often fail to disrupt the cycles of exclusion and subalternization they face. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for a broader critical framework for analyzing corporate philanthropic interventions in education, challenging the reductive and paternalistic representations of racialized students that often underlie these efforts, and understanding them within broader historical processes.