Lifelong Learning, Young Adults and the Challenges of Disadvantage in Europe

Abstract

The body of international human rights law developed in the wake of the Second World War envisaged adults as citizens, playing an active part in society and government. The chapter explores how viewing adults as agentic citizens (yet also objects of state policy) relates to the notion of bounded agency, and summarises and discusses the implications of the Enliven project. These include the need for a rich and broad education throughout the lives of adults, the limiting effect (especially for the ‘socially excluded’) of framing the education for adults through the language of ‘markets’, the need to listen to those most excluded, the importance of work, workplaces, and labour markets to adult learning, and how organisationally stunted workplaces impoverish workers’ learning.