Reterritorializing the global knowledge economy: an analysis of geopolitical assemblages of higher education

Abstract In this article, we analyse the geopolitics of higher education, which we understand as an assemblage through which the functioning of the ‘borderless’ and ‘deterritorializing’ dynamics of the global knowledge economy are respatialized. Discourses, objects and bodies constitute a geopolitical assemblage. We scrutinize in particular the geopolitical discourse of the knowledge economy, the construction of material and immaterial learning environments as one of its governmental technologies as well as the subjectification of individuals as specific kinds of professional citizens. We concretize this with an enquiry into the set of recent university reforms in Finland and the ways in which these contribute to the formation of transnational citizenship.