Global citizenship and the geographical scale of young people’s political engagement

In recent years, the concept of global citizenship has been widely incorporated into educational programmes worldwide, ranging from primary schools to higher education. Nevertheless, scholars in the field of political geography have tended to view this concept as less relevant to young people’s political engagement. Based on this foundation, this paper discusses how notions of geographical scale can offer a more comprehensive understanding of global citizenship education. The discussion focuses on identifying descriptive and pragmatic/normative conceptions of global citizenship. The paper concludes by suggesting that research on the political geographies of young people can contribute to a critical approach to global citizenship education by offering an alternative to conventional notions of the geographical scale as a hierarchical organisation of society.