Spatialised governmentality of Blue Economies: English learning as a stratified youth skilling regime

As public schools reopened in the Dominican Republic after the COVID-19 pandemic, national campaigns for English learning to ‘live better’ and to revive tourism through job creation and recovery simultaneously emerged. Based on one year of ethnographic and youth participatory action research, this study interrogates the linkages among language learning, workforce development, and the governance of time and space in pursuit of economic betterment. Drawing on the theoretical concept of governmentality – and its spatialised and neoliberal forms – the author illustrates how skilling regimes that target language development are linked to larger discourses about optimising coastal landscapes and expanding tourism under Blue Economies frameworks. This research reveals how language is a prerequisite for making other skills intelligible amidst the devaluation of labour in tourism and related services, interrogating common-sense notions in policy discourses about the economic value of specific industries and languages in youth futures.