A.03. Education Against Democracy? New Right Assemblages and the Politics of Social Justice

This panel examines how the rise of the New Right is reshaping education and disputing its historical role in sustaining democracy and social justice. Across diverse national contexts, contemporary right-wing movements do not merely revive traditional conservatism: they strategically combine neoliberal market logics, identity-based neoconservatism, authoritarian populism, and technocratic management. What is “new” in these assemblages is their capacity to intertwine economic, moral, and cultural registers in projects aimed at restoring order and redefining the public meaning of education (Apple, 2001; Gandin & Lima, 2016).

Education thus becomes a key battleground where claims of meritocracy, “freedom of choice” and inclusion are mobilised alongside demands for ideological neutrality, anti-gender discourses and cultural control. These agendas work simultaneously at multiple levels —curriculum design, teacher training, school governance, and regulatory frameworks— producing tensions that erode inclusive democratic spaces and constrain critical pedagogies. Recent work shows how this convergence of neoliberal and traditionalist rationalities fuels educational reforms that normalise market values while policing moral boundaries (e.g., Giudici et al., 2025).

This panel welcomes theoretical, historical, and empirical contributions that interrogate how New Right actors mobilise policies, narratives, and institutional reforms to reconfigure education as a domain of political struggle. We especially encourage works that examine democratic erosion, moral regulation, and the disciplining of diversity within schools, as well as research exploring countermovements, resistant pedagogies, and collective practices that reclaim education as a space for democracy, ethical responsibility, and social justice.