Governing the production of digital citizens: policy translations among OECD, Brazil, Ghana, and Sweden

Abstract

The growing influence of global educational governance, shaped by the technopolitical rationalities of multilateral organisations such as the OECD, has steered national agendas towards developing educational policies on the use of digital technologies in basic education. Such influence is discursive and takes diverse forms in national contexts. This research analyses one effect of those policies: the digital citizen or the discursively constructed, governable subject present in OECD documents, with reverberations in national curriculum documents in Brazil, Ghana, and Sweden. Anchored in Foucault’s concept of governmentality and Ball, Maguire, and Braun’s notion of policy translation, we deploy a contrastive and documentary analysis of these regulatory frameworks, observing how global guidelines are interpreted in different socio-historical contexts, and how they constitute similar yet distinct constructions of who should be and what characterises the digital citizen. The analysis identifies three recurring but locally differentiated subject positions: the tech-savvy digital citizen, the adaptable digital citizen, and the productive digital citizen. The results show that, although the OECD presents digital competence as a neutral technical imperative, national policies translate these discourses and refract them through national concerns and priorities. In conclusion, we argue that education acts as a space for the fabrication of subjectivities geared towards neoliberal productivity and competitiveness. Understanding these translations is essential for questioning the political rationalities of contemporary educational reforms and imagining forms of citizenship that transcend market imperatives amid increasing pressure to embrace the promises of a digitalised world.