Dramatic global events such as: Brexit; the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump; and the rise of far right charismatic leaders across Europe; have been unprecedented in recent times, and have disrupted the taken-for-granted order of global, social and political arrangements. The intensification of neoliberal globalisation has worked concomitantly with the rise of nationalist populism, (strategic political action designed to mobilise the alienated), and popularism, (a political doctrine designed to appeal to the masses). How discourses on internationalisation and global citizenship, as now dominant discourses within educational institutions and the social domain, respond to this new confused common sense (Swanson, 2015) is critical for socially just educational futures. This symposium draws together and frames interrelated discussions around these themes, while engaging in productive interplay on the interrelationships between populism and popularism, in embracing the neologism of popu(lar)ism.     

Popul(ar)ism has recently attracted interest (Muller, 2016) and while contested, articulates “fluid, contingent and processual elements” (Arnott & Ozga, 2010, p. 337). Variously defined as “a thin-centered ideology" (Mudde, 2004), a discursive style (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007) and political strategy (Urbinatti, 1998), a number of explanations are offered (Muller, 2014, 2016). One view suggests that widening inequalities resulting from economic globalisation have produced a “sacrifical” neoliberal citizen (Brown, 2016). Another interpretation is of people with a social-psychological profile marked by “angry minds”, “paranoid”, driven by a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” (Hostaddler, 1964, p.77) and resentment at the loss of status. But there is something profound that these explanations do not capture: popul(ar)ism as a “moralistic imagination of politics” as a “way of perceiving a fully unified - but…ultimately fictional - people against the elites who are deemed corrupt or… morally inferior” (Muller, 2014, p.485).  In this popul(ar)ist imagination, “only some people are really the people” (p.485) and this anti-pluralist stance illustrated by deligitimising or walling out “Others”: unemployed, immigrant, refugees, asylum-seekers, constitutes such popular identities.

In its anti-pluralist stance, popul(ar)ism calls to reassert the primacy of the national country in its citizens, its technologies for assembling the virtuous citizen by classifying, labelling and problematising others constituted as objects of hatred, elimination, fear and regulation. This “moralizing and monist” popul(ar)ism (Muller, 2016) shifts the register of citizenship by calling for its disentanglement from relationalities occasioned by “geographical wondering” (Drabinski, 2011). Against this background, internationalisation within Higher Education invokes a vision of liberalised borders, inclusion and equality and a demand for a critical, politically responsive and historically-informed global citizenship (Stein, 2015; Swanson and Pashby, 2016).

This symposium addresses the rise of nationalistic popul(ar)ism, articulating how nationalist popul(ar)ism is mobilised in educational policy in Canadian, Irish and Scottish Higher and Further Education contexts. Karen Pashby’s contribution unpacks the concept of global citizenship, providing a conceptual map of discursive orientations developed within the Ethical Internationalisation in Higher Education project (EIHE), of which all symposium contributors are members. Su-Ming Khoo argues that current global trends of rising populism, racism, and misogyny ethically demand that public HEIs replace empty entrepreneurialism with an educative mission to foster social cohesion, global solidarities and public good. Dalene Swanson argues that Scotland’s nationalist popularism has arisen around calls for independence from the UK, appearing leftist at face-value, but aligning unproblematically with neoliberal governance logic emanating from the Scottish government, thus conflating contradictory ideological discourses. She argues that postcolonial/decolonial perspectives and ethical commitments to work towards global justice, democracy and equality can foster sustainable political alternatives. Lastly, Emma Guion Akdağ and Mostafa Gamal take up Scottish Higher and Further Education in order to explore the ways in which national populism is played out in this context.

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