Globalization has meant that universities are under increased pressure to internationalize through mobility, research partnerships, and internationalised programing. Global citizenship is an increasingly mainstream term being used by the UN and OECD regarding education for the 21st century, yet research about its conceptualization in higher education comes largely from English-speaking contexts (e.g. Jorgenson & Shultz, 2012). This paper presents a piece of an inter-disciplinary, international mixed-methods research project funded through the Academy of Finland and involving 20 universities in 10 countries. It responds to concerns that current economic crises have resulted in an intensification of those internationalization policies in universities that prioritize profit-seeking over those that prioritize ethical alternatives (Khoo, 2011). Drawing on critical and post/de-colonial theories (e.g. Andreotti, 2009), the project considers how, when left unchecked, internationalisation is normalized so as to re-direct social and political values such as global citizenship and social responsibility towards economic values thereby reproducing ideals of exceptionalism, entitlement, and (market) expansionism (Rhoads & Szelényi, 2010); and denying reproduction of systems of inequities (King, Marginson, & Naidoo, 2013; Rizvi, 2007). Selecting social cartography as a method to analyze the findings, the project aims to create a socially accountable map of shifting imaginaries of higher education as expressed in trends in internationalization (Paulston, 1999). In this paper, we focus on imaginaries of global citizenship. We will present a heuristic co-created by project partners and use it to analyze responses from teacher-education students studying in two Nordic universities, focusing on two specific survey questions: Do you see yourself as a global citizen? How do you think global citizens should think, relate and/or act in the world? The heuristic consists of three discursive orientations—neoliberal, liberal and critical—and four interfaces—neoliberal-liberal, liberal-critical, critical-neoliberal, and all four. Interfaces indicate where signifiers are deployed with multiple meanings. The mapping helps to identify dominant discourses, articulating where there are foreclosures of and possibilities for an ethical approach. The project contributes data and frameworks for understanding existing possibilities. By making discursive configurations and interfaces jointly intelligible, processes in higher education can be more informed by ethically oriented versions of international education.