The presentation wants to discuss the conceptual framework of a comparative study investigating construction of ‘the international’ in social studies/citizenship textbooks in the three national contexts of Sweden, England and Germany, which are characterised by different perspectives on how state and individuals interact. This involves looking at how the state regulates the welfare security of its citizens by deciding how e.g. democracy, equity and equality should be reproduced and secured in society. In this study we make use of Esping-Andersen’s (1990) Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, in which he presents three prototypes: a universal type, a corporatist-statist type such as that found in Germany, and a liberal type, commonly found in England. Our empirical approach draws on analyses of global literacy/global citizenship as product of global learning as it has been manifested in curriculum and textbooks for secondary students today. This kind of literacy apparently needs to be learned in order to cope with the demands and challenges of a globalising world. Here we assume significant context-related variances in the description of the ‘world we live in’ and the competences we apparently need to be able to cope with. It is thereby illuminated how the ‘international’ is constructed as a product of local circumstances.