Lifelong Learning in Europe

Educationalisation of youth unemployment through lifelong learning policies in Europe

“…the European Commission) have taken advantage of the political opportunity offered by the crisis to reinforce the neoliberal orientation of their social policies and to continue 'business as usual' (Jessop, 2015). As part of this neoliberal social agenda, the objectives of European LLL policies have focused on recovering and improving economic growth and, at the same time, guaranteeing social inclusion through access to employment, particularly for young people (European Commission, 2010;Moutsios and Kotthoff, 2007;Saar et al, 2013).…”

“…Lifelong learning (LLL) policies became strategic tools in the EU's political response to the youth unemployment challenge and, thus, an area of intense activity and reform (Heyes, 2013). While EU LLL policy trends following the 2008 GFC have been increasingly documented and critically analysed within the comparative education literature (Milana and Holford, 2014;Zarifis and Gravani, 2014), much less is known about to what extent these supranational policy orientations have actually been adopted by national governments and how they have been translated into concrete LLL policy initiatives (Saar et al, 2013), particularly in relation to young people. This paper presents a comparative documental analysis of 54 national LLL policy initiatives targeting young people in nine European countries between 2010 and 2016.…”

Social innovations for social cohesion in Western Europe: success dimensions for lifelong learning and education

“…In the LL context, the emergent themes from EU policy revolve around the two-fold idea that LL should majorly contribute towards economic competitiveness, whilst supporting inclusion and social cohesion (Saar and Ure 2013). Cases for new strategies and structures for LL (Section 3.5) are oriented towards the paradigm shift from an institutional to a learner's perspective.…”

Lifelong Learning Policies for Young Adults in Europe

“…This literature pointed to several dimensions along which countries vary in terms of institutional design, patterns of relationship between the public and private spheres, funding and support/guidance schemes. Comparative research from a range of disciplines has contributed vastly to coming to terms with this enormous complexity by designing classificatory and typological frameworks that help us to understand different systems as ideal-typical cases, thus yielding interesting insights into the central characteristics and peculiarities of their systems (Allmendinger, 1989;Shavit and Müller, 1998;Ashton et al, 2000;Greinert, 2004;Saar et al, 2013;Pilz, 2016).…”