1 Being a Citizen, Belonging to a Society

However, to fully associate reflection on collective entities with a reflection on citizenship, it is necessary to specify the former’s nature. Belonging to a nation as a citizen is not the same as belonging to a university, an ETS department or a gourmet club. A major difference lies in the ability to leave the collective entity: this is easier for a member of the gourmet club than for a citizen. Can I be a member of a collective entity if I do not respect its rules of procedure? Probably, but maybe not for very long. However, as a citizen, disobeying the laws is not a direct reason for exclusion: deprivation of citizenship by a state only happens for very specific reasons. One can be excluded from a particular social life in the case of imprisonment, but prisoners, in general, remain citizens. Even the death penalty in the United States does not deprive the person of their American citizenship (this is only the case if it can be assumed that the criminal act was carried out with the intention of renouncing it).

There are too many other possible examples and it is not necessary to reflect comprehensively on the subject; let us rather indicate that researchers of the holist current, notably Descombes, have worked on the tools to ask these questions. In what sense can one say that the Sorbonne is the same today as the Sorbonne of the 13th century, even though it disappeared in the meantime? How about Poland, that has disappeared three times in recent history? The point is not to provide a definitive answer, but rather to guide our reflection on the nation as a collective entity. The question is both important and difficult, see Gilbert’s aborted attempts (Chapter 3). One of the difficulties is related to the need to feel obliged by collective decisions: where, for instance, can we situate the eminently citizen phenomena of conscientious objection and civil disobedience? This touches on the paradox of political liberalism in its contractarian form, which derives from Hobbes and Locke: that of dissolving individuals’ consciences in the private arena, just as it is claimed they must be respected in order to expand political freedom.

However, in the modern era we regularly see refusals to obey laws that cannot be equated with simple private opinions: protests against the US war in Vietnam, campaign for civil rights in South Africa, mobilisations against climate change including blockades and sabotages, etc. How then can the idea of civil disobedience be reconciled with that of collective obligation? This paradox is actually not as great as it seems: one can have a sense of obligation towards collective decisions whilst contributing collectively, through disobedience, to a reorientation of the purposes of the collective entity. Here is the crucial point: if one can practice civil disobedience, it is because one does it on behalf of the collective entity, even if one acts alone. Indeed, contrary to some appearances, conscientious objection leading to civil disobedience is not fully individual: “the conscience that protests perceives itself as tied to other members of a community by virtue of a collective moral responsibility” (Saada & Antaki, 2018, p. 27).

Here lies the ambiguity of conscientious objection: invoking the sacred domain of conscience, it can destroy the conditions of equality between citizens made possible by law (and the associated mutual obligations) just as well as it can accomplish higher and fairer purposes. The refusal by conscientious objection to administer an abortion as a doctor, or to marry a same-sex couple as a mayor, has little to do with civil disobedience, because the professions exercised have been defined collectively, via liberal laws. However, to alert on the radical spying practices of the United States can be considered civil disobedience. At least this is how Edward Snowden managed to justify his behaviour by taking into account the superior ends of his own nation.

Thus, to say that citizenship is a matter of collective obligation to a political society does not amount to denying the content of disobedient individual conscience since it is asserted in the service of higher collective ends. This is how Durkheim goes beyond the theories of the social contract. The non-pathological division of labour (integrated and regulated by the state) deepens the autonomy of individuals, whose social aspirations are in turn always likely to challenge the established order, in particular the rules and norms laid down in relation to a previous stage of the division of labour. This holistic line, considering that society in its morphology and physiology is at the principle of deepening individualism, provides a guideline for analysing cosmopolitanism.

Republican cosmopolitanism emphasises that the feeling of belonging to a modern political society is a condition of cosmopolitanism, and this feeling is none other than patriotism. Certainly, by not being a patriot one benefits from a feeling of detachment that is undoubtedly liberating – one can claim to be a full citizen of the world for example – but also does not invite one to correct the mistakes of the nation to which one belongs. Indeed, we might then consider the attachment to one’s country as a simple individual preference. This is the difference between a Frenchman and a Francophile: the second cannot, as such, contribute to the cosmopolitan order. This is why the Republican cosmopolitan, on the other hand, does not say “my country right or wrong”, but rather “my country, if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right” (Erez & Laborde, 2020, p. 197).

Nor is it necessary, to preserve the sacred idea of individual consciousness (cf. Durkheim), to dilute citizenship in ethics. On the contrary, the notion of citizenship must be taken seriously, because it appears that defensive loopholes – declaring that citizenship in fact is only a question of ethics, perspective or commitment – have their limits, which are due to the fact that our modern ideology conveys a principle of radical equality. Therefore, it does not say that humans must be generous, or ethical, or tolerant, or sympathetic to each other. What individualist ideology suggests is that all humans are truly equal and should therefore be considered as such, at least legally. This is an ideal, but it is nevertheless the logic of moral individualism, transpiring in land egalitarianism, in social contract theories that are artificial, varied and ambiguous; and yet that make sense to us, if only in the structuring of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, this “triumph of the Individual […] that would exert a powerful action, in truth irresistible, throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present day” (Dumont, 1991, p. 120).

2 Global Citizenship as a Type of Citizenship

What happens if one seeks to grasp global citizenship without defining it in terms of ethics but only by involving the law, in order to understand the radical meaning of global citizenship as a component of the ideology of the modern? To answer this question, we invoke four examples: the Conference of the Parties (COP), which meets under the auspices of the UN Climate Change Agency; the status of NGO s; the International Criminal Court (ICC); finally, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

1. The COP. The COP echoes global citizenship: its subject is global; sustainable development is explicitly mentioned by UNESCO as a quintessential theme of GCE; ‘citizen’ and ‘responsible’ attitudes are expected of individuals in order to limit the consumption of fossil fuels, etc. However, according to our theoretical guidelines, no indicators allow us to see here the emergence of a global citizenship. Indeed, it is not so much citizens who are obliged by the decisions of the COP, as it is nation-states: “The Paris Agreement [2015] builds upon the Convention and – for the first time – brings all nations into a common cause”.¹ If citizens are obliged by these collective decisions (carbon tax, polluter pays principle, taking into account negative externalities), it is because they are part of the nations that are committed – and especially say that they are committed – to limiting climate change in the context of the COP. Furthermore, when citizens feel that the commitment has not been met, their legal action is not clearly situated within a global framework. In the ‘Case of the Century’, conducted by NGO s (Greenpeace-France, Oxfam-France), the litigation was handled by the Administrative Court of Paris that ended up condemning the French state.² What remains then of global citizenship? The task of identifying it deserves further investigation.

2. NGO s. Though the ‘Case of the Century’ is circumscribed within a national legal framework, the fact is that the NGO s that initiated it benefit from an important international or even global recognition. However, the existence of NGO s depends on the states, which alone are empowered to give them a legal identity. The question becomes more complicated when states have signed international conventions guaranteeing freedom of association; but this does not change the nature of the question. Thus, the European Convention on the Recognition of the Legal Personality of NGO s establishes that “the legal personality and capacity of an NGO as acquired in the Party [that is, the state] in which it has its registered office shall be automatically recognised in the other Parties”.³ Therefore, the anchoring is at a state level. It may be objected that NGO s can be interlocutors of global bodies such as the UN. Examples include Oxfam, Amnesty International, Rockefeller Foundation, Qatar Charity, the Christian Embassy for Campus Crusade for Christ … The commitment of individuals within these organisations is therefore global. However, they are not thus attributed a status of world citizen: individuals remain citizens of their own state (unless they are stateless). So is it global citizenship, or global mobilisation?

3. The ICC. While NGO s lack the status of subjects of international law, the International Criminal Court (ICC) appears to be a quasi-global entity. The decisions it takes apply directly to all the state Parties and as such, it can be considered a true political community. Admittedly, the ICC concerns only very limited areas of human actions (war crimes). But on the principle, one could speak here of world citizenship. On the one hand, actions are judged neither at a national arena level, nor at a pseudo-federal level (such as the ECHR), but in a much broader framework. On the other hand, as a citizen member of a state Party of the ICC, one must for example recognise Ratko Mladic as a war criminal, on the basis of a collective decision that was not conducted in a national framework. That being said, experts on the subject agree that the ICC is not very effective, if only because it does not include major states such as Russia, the United States or Israel. The establishment of ad hoc tribunals by the UN Security Council does not seem to allow the trial, and even less the conviction, of suspects of war crimes from these countries such as George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon and Vladimir Putin. Indeed, although an ‘arrest warrant’ was issued in 2023 against the latter, its implications are very limited since the two main belligerents in terms of military spending, the United States and Russia, are precisely not members of the ICC.

4. The ECHR. The ECHR is transnational, but it should be remembered that, under the principle of subsidiarity and the doctrine allowing member states a “margin of appreciation”, the Court makes judgments only in the light of national regulations. This is why it can, for example, ban a teacher from wearing a hijab (in a Swiss canton), while allowing crucifixes on classroom walls (in Italy). This is not to highlight the inconsistency of European judgments (McCrea, 2018), but to recall the powerful national anchorages of a European political community gathered, through interstate treaties, around common principles.

Given these examples, how can a global citizenship be imagined without a corresponding political society? The question can once more be avoided, if one argues that rather than being about citizenship, it is about an ethical an educational ideal that can eventually lead to changes in the law. The fact remains that aiming for an ideal, especially if it is distant, requires taking into account what fits it (or not) and the conditions that can make it happen.

3 The Multiple Paths of Cosmopolitanism

The majority of GlobalSense members remain convinced of the relevance of the concept of global citizenship, including in official educational requirements. These are particularly present in Germany, driven as they are by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (hence the ambiguity of this educational slogan carried by an economic ministry). However, other GlobalSense members remain sceptical and want to discuss this concept. Thus, rather than bend researchers and teacher trainers from all five countries to a prescription that does not necessarily make sense to them, the goal is to find a common vocabulary and common ground.

One possible compromise is to dilute or relax the notion of citizenship, admitting that though global citizenship does not exist, our project is about giving pre-service teachers a global outlook. This is an invitation for teacher trainers to deal with local issues with a broad approach and through the study of directly global issues such as rising waters, economic inequalities between continents, world hunger or prospects of perpetual peace. Though this is an attractive path, it tends to render the term of global citizenship useless, since it is enough to use the notion of global outlook and global issues.

Several colleagues of the GlobalSense consortium reply that the expressions ‘global outlook’ and ‘global sensitivity’ may be conducive to neoliberal exploitations, while the word ‘citizenship’ suggests political mobilisation, in favour of protecting migrants’ rights, or to fight climate change, for example. The concern is commendable, but is it sufficient to justify the use of the word ‘citizenship’? In any case, the fact that global citizenship is already being taken up by neoliberalism is documented (Mannion, Biesta, Priestley & Ross, 2011). Therefore, what can replacing one word with another achieve? Rather, by promoting the global outlook, are we not de facto in the field of ethics or social and civic skills, even though they are broadened to the extent that they claim to exceed, in terms of curriculum content, the national framework?

The point here is not to answer these questions – it seems more fruitful to keep them open so that each national team can make them its own – but to affirm that if we really wish to move towards an ideal, then we might as well identify the limits of the notion we idealise. This requires a (meta) theoretical reflection: “GCE is an intervention in search of a theory. […] I believe what we need now is a meta-theory” (Torres & Bosio, 2020, p. 107).

4 Teachers, Citizenship, the State

In order to establish this theory, it is useful to revisit Durkheim’s work. We must however overcome certain ambiguities, which Durkheim had not clarified but undoubtedly perceived, as evidenced by his hesitations about the state.

On the one hand, he maintained that “collective activity is always too complex to be expressed by the one and only organ that is the state” (Durkheim, 1893/1996, p. 32). On the other hand, he maintained the need for “an equal force greater than all the others”, embodied by the state, which was certainly to be counterbalanced by secondary groups, but nevertheless led to a radical requirement of probity of civil servants to “contain [secondary groups and] prevent their excesses” (Durkheim, 1905/2020, p. 175). Thus, Durkheim denied civil servants the right to unionise (a right granted later, in 1925), “neglecting the multiple dysfunctions of the state as an institution that occur under the Third Republic”, and revealing, ultimately, a “quasi-contradiction, in the work of Durkheim, between the role attributed to the division of labour and that for which the state is responsible” (Birnbaum, 2018, pp. 219, 224).

Thus appears the GCE slogan’s worth: it consists in opening a plural field of studies to treat this quasi-contradiction. To do this, we must take into account on the one hand, the contemporary phenomenon of “trend dissociation between citizenship and nationality”; and, on the other hand, the deep will of individuals to “be the first actors of a citizenship outside of the state’s control” (Déloye, 2018, p. 257). Having not fully been a contemporary of these developments, Durkheim had an essentially statutory conception of citizenship. However, a more recent definition, in terms of ‘acts of citizenship’, values people’s concern to ‘co-produce’ their citizenship. Thus, it is not so much a question of possessing it, as it is of exercising it. This is how the many vocabulary shifts identified above are illuminated. Indeed, if we consider a citizenship in action, co-produced by people rather than by the state, then we can think of the idea of global citizenship as a global commitment.

Though Durkheim had not perceived the distant consequences of deepening individualism in the field of citizenship, his theory nevertheless provides tools for studying it. Because fundamentally, Durkheim “makes citizenship a sort of indicator of modernity [and] thus invites [us] to […] move away from the analysis of the strictly legal field […] towards the historical field” (Déloye, 2018, p. 254). This is why, after theorising the abandonment of major religions, then national communalisation, the author remained able to envisage a ‘human homeland’ by suggesting that ‘the human ideal’ was a latent aspiration of our societies, whose individualism today seems less and less compatible with a citizenship (pre)defined by specific states.

5 Undertaking the Necessary Reflexivity in Research and Training

It has been said that while the ideological content of citizenship can be potentially global, it is exercised locally. However, contrary to this dichotomy, the regulated division of labour in modern societies makes it more and more plausible that people, so different from each other in terms of beliefs, profession, culture (etc.), have only one thing left in common: their humanity. Hence contemporary moral individualism not being naturally satisfied with this contradiction, as illustrated by the success of the global citizenship slogan. If organic solidarity values differentiation and interdependence, then it is no longer necessary for people to be similar (in terms of beliefs, profession and culture) in order to be considered, without distinction, as human beings. Is that not a good enough reason to imagine each other as fellow citizens on a global scale?

Hence the importance of the GlobalSense research. Inviting future teachers to consider how citizenship (statutory or active) might be taught in a transnational framework is a Durkheimian way of accompanying and co-regulating the division of labour, between our five countries, in an area where European (Erasmus+) and quasi-global (UNESCO) directives are growing.⁴ This is how the sociological framework is gradually refined – to be confronted with the empirical field resulting from GlobalSense – concerning secondary groups, of which the trainers and the (future) teachers are part.

But here too, it is necessary to distinguish between, on the one hand, the Durkheimian toolbox and its contemporary extensions; and on the other hand, the Durkheimian theses on the state in its relationship with secondary groups. On this second level, the Bordeaux sociologist’s analysis is rather dated. In addition to the fact that today, a large minority of teachers are not civil servants, it is necessary to underline the extreme variety of configurations in terms of division of labour, communities of practice, collegiality (spontaneous or forced), decision-making power, degree of responsibility, uncertainties on how to define the teaching profession, relationships between training and the profession’s realities, reasons for becoming a teacher, attractiveness, recognition and occupational prestige.

Whilst taking these aspects into account, this book nevertheless must identify priorities to avoid dispersion. This is why the focus is on the renewal of the Durkheimian and more broadly the holistic thinking, to grasp citizenship education from an international perspective. The questions usually dealt with by sociology of teachers and of teacher training will therefore be more secondary here, since our approach so far is based on the following conviction: studying the words we use, as researchers, provides reflexivity, essential to the scientific approach. For if educational notions are tools, they are also objects to be scrutinised. The question therefore is less about promoting GCE than about

questioning, from a comparative and transnational perspective, how the notion of citizenship circulates in educational and social spaces in the era of globalisation, and explore the observable variations and circular relationships between policies that promote these notions and their manifestations in context in educational and cultural practices.

(Malet & Garnier, 2020, p. 16)

To this end, let us study the most visible recommendation in favour of GCE, which is the one from UNESCO. As academics in ETS, we must take it seriously, since ETS undertake a social project, whilst also submitting it to a necessary criticism.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, peace and sustainable development continue to be threatened by human rights violations, inequality and poverty. Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is UNESCO’s response to these challenges. Through its work, the Organisation empowers learners of all ages to think about these issues globally, not just locally, and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, safe and sustainable societies. GCED is a strategic area of UNESCO’s Education Sector programme, which benefits from the Organisation’s work in the fields of peace and human rights. It aims to instill in learners the values, attitudes and behaviours that underpin responsible global citizenship: creativity, innovation and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development.⁵

This means thinking about problems from a different (global) perspective and actively promoting better societies (peaceful, inclusive, safe, tolerant, sustainable), by inculcating values, attitudes and behaviours. We see here the theme of learning and skills, but not of citizenship as such. Indeed, it is not enough to inculcate values, to give pause and arouse certain behaviours (in the learner) in order for a global citizen to emerge (this is something the GlobalSense pre-service teachers often acknowledge, as we shall see). At most, the approach can lead to a form of active citizenship, different from a statutory citizenship. But is it global?

This is not to say that UNESCO’s action does not concern (global) citizenship, for the historical stake is undeniable. In 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon launched the Global Education First Initiative with three objectives:

1. –Getting all children of the world to go to school;
2. –Improve the quality of learning;
3. –Develop global citizenship.

However, this is an institutional framework whose content still needs to be clarified: “the concept of global citizenship is subject to polarizing forces, diverse and divergent interests, ideologies and, by implication, contestation” (Torres, 2015, p. 10). It remains to be seen what exact form GCE can take, while avoiding the ‘dissolving consensus’ (Rosanvallon, 2006) specific to such political initiatives.

For Carlos Torres, the most legitimate content to ‘fill’ the GCE without sacrificing it to divergent interests is that of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of emancipation. Though the path is seductive, Torres’ vision is fundamentally liberal, in Rawls’ sense (Torres & Bosio, 2020, p. 107). The author does not hide this, defining citizenship education as developing virtues such as loyalty, autonomy, open-mindedness, work ethic, as well as analytical and critical ability. Torres admits that these are values defined in the context of Western philosophies, while suggesting that they are shared, to varying degrees, in other civilisations: “Though these values are defined and defended in the context of Western philosophies, the question that one could raise is whether these values are shared by other civilisations such as the African, Arab or Asian civilizations” (Torres, 2017, p. 15).

This interpretation was confirmed during the Torres conferences in Bordeaux, on October 24 and 27, 2022. The speaker strongly emphasised a world division between a liberal bloc (whose central pole is in Europe and North America) and an illiberal bloc (composed of Iran, China, Russia, India). In this context, the promotion of GCE can only be of the liberal conception of citizenship, i.e. geographically implanted in the liberal pole, made up of liberal societies. This is what gives relevance to arguments that underline the national, therefore relatively local, anchors of political liberalism (Miller). Citizenship is potentially global because it is liberal, and it is liberal because it is defended primarily, as Torres acknowledges, by Western liberal philosophies.

In this, Torres’ position remains consistent, because it admits the subjective aspect of the researcher’s commitment on behalf of the GCE, which is firstly a narrative mobilised according to very diverse interests. Nevertheless, UNESCO’s initiative in favour of GCE must be seen from a broader perspective. Indeed, it concerns the

transformations [which] take place [in part] as a result of an integration into supranational political groups and the dissemination of organisational principles and common transnational school standards, generating a certain formal convergence of the school’s regulatory framework […]. The pressures on education systems converge, but nevertheless do not lead to a homogenisation of the solutions implemented, despite the adopted reforms’ congruence. National societies […] are called to reformulate their democratic and civic education project, because of these circulation phenomena, but also because they no longer constitute the exclusive or ultimate scope of reference for the individuals who compose them, themselves stretched between different spaces and scopes of achievement and recognition.

(Malet & Garnier, 2020, p. 12)

Educational projects related to citizenship are therefore reformulated on a global scale, yet, according to the authors, national societies remain the actors of this reframing. In other words, if educational conceptions of citizenship can no longer remain within the exclusive horizon of a single nation, this does not eliminate the question of how citizenship and its education can become global, and thus how national societies reformulate their respective projects.

6 GlobalSense Pre-Service Teachers: Which Scale Is Pertinent to Approach Global Issues?

The exploration of student teachers’ perspectives within the GlobalSense program unveils a narrative that to some extent transcends borders, delving into the interactions of individual perceptions, national influences, and the broader global landscape.