Globalization, privatization, marginalization: Mapping and assessing connections and consequences in/through education

Abstract

This special issue brings together scholars who are working on new aspects of the intersection and implications of globalization, privatization, and marginalization. While globalization’s relationship to education has been of great interest to scholars (e.g., Dale, 1999; Green, 1997; Rizvi & Lingard, 2009; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004; Verger, Novelli, & Kosar-Altinyelken, 2018). While the relationship between globalization and various forms of privatization has received significant attention (e.g., Adamson, Astrand, & Darling-Hammond, 2016; Ball, 2009, 2012; Carnoy, 1999; Mohamed & Morris, 2019; Robertson, Mundy, Verger, & Menashy, 2012; Verger, Lubienski, & Steiner-Khamsi, 2016), we seek to extend scholarship in these areas by examining the current connections and continuing consequences of both globalization and privatization for marginalization in/through education, as well as the ways in which the latter (marginalization) creates opportunities for the former (globalization and privatization). Exploring the relationships among globalization, privatization, and marginalization is vitally important for scholars not only because they are related in multiple yet, we argue, insufficiently understood ways, but also because their relations have real consequences for education policy and practice and for the exacerbation of marginalization itself in and through education. As the introductory essay for the special issue, this article (a) presents a framework for understanding the connections among globalization, privatization, and marginalization in relation to education; (b) distills, visually presents, and expands upon the dialectical connections evident “in” and “through” the cases that make up the special issue; and (c) emphasizes a number of lessons for the globalization-privatization-marginalization nexus.