Making sense of the GATS debate: semiotic analysis of the conflicting ideas on the education/free-trade relationship

Abstract

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization has generated an intense and passionate debate about the relationship between free-trade and education and, specifically, about the effects of trade liberalization in national education systems. This article explores in detail this debate from a critical discourse and semiotic approach. Its objective is two-fold. First, it aims at identifying and systematizing the core axes of the debate, as well as at confronting ideas within each of the axes. Second, it aims at explaining how and why the agreement has generated such an intense and polarized discussion in the educational field by, among other analytical strategies, appealing to the broader institutional and ideational contexts in which the debate is inscribed. Arguments are based on observation in public debates on GATS and education and a corpus of 86 texts on the topic coming from different sources including academic journals, conference proceedings, policy reports and newsletters of international and civil society organizations.

International organizations, educational development, and conflict: A (world) cultural perspective

“…In the same vein, the World Bank's education policy is interpreted as the "handmaiden of the market" (Rivera 2009, p. 289) and new imperialism (Tikly 2004), imposing neoliberal policies on weak states (Bonal 2011;Klees 2012;Verger, Edwards, and Altinyelken 2014). Similar criticism can be found in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Robertson, Bonal, and Dale 2002;Verger 2011). Even nongovernmental organizations, often seen as goodhearted workers on the ground supporting local communities, have come under attack (e.g., Rappleye 2011).…”