Neoliberal Governmentality in the European Union: Education, Training, and Technologies of Citizenship

Abstract

In this paper I argue that increasingly neoliberal forms of governmentality are evident in the educational sector of the European Commission. This is especially the case vis-α-vis the institutional philosophy of how immigrants and second-generation ‘minorities’ should be best integrated into European society. Both the policies and the programs associated with education and training are becoming more oriented towards the formation of mobile, flexible, and self-governing European laborers and less oriented towards an institutionalized affirmation of personal development and individual or group ‘difference’. This represents a fairly substantive philosophical and practical transformation over the past five to ten years, with significant implications for conceptions of European citizenship, multiculturalism, and social belonging.