‘How do we marry the two things together?’: a Swedish education company expanding its business to India

Abstract

This article focuses on a Swedish school company and its operations in India, examining how setting up and operating schools in another national place forge particular spatial imaginaries. It contributes to literature on the Global Education Industry by focusing on international moves of commercial non-Anglo-Saxon actors. Drawing on interviews and extensive fieldwork in India, we show how the ‘marriage’ between the global (represented by the Swedish company) and local (the ‘Indian’) are manifested in the spatial imaginary of the ‘glocal school’, encompassing hierarchical otherings rooted in discourses of both globalisation and colonialism.