The time and society of lifelong learning: opportunities, contradictions and new forms of marginalisation

Abstract

Over the past few decades, adult education, as a fluid set of theories, intentions, and social and individual practices, has gone through a number of different characterisations (training for work, self-care, individual and social emancipation); all of these have come to fruition within that contradictory fulfilment of modernity in our country that has contributed to outlining adult identities, which are radically different from previous ones. Has this process occurred without contradictions and conflicts? Do the multiple and changing identities, the processes of lifelong learning and the development of autonomy etc. preserve their original emancipatory and progressive connotations? Or are they also the translation of the aggressiveness of cosmopolitan and/or sovereign neoliberalism into the field of educational policies aimed at adults?