Petra E. Schedler

Lifelong Learning as Transitional Learning.

Globalization and individualization have radically changed both the economic system and the personal life world in industrial or postindustrial nation-states. To survive hypercompetition and volatile consumer choice, learning organizations and a workforce engaged in lifelong learning are needed. Constructing “the good life” has become an individual responsibility demanding reflexivity and skills. The question pursued in this article is how current policies in the context of lifelong learning relate to the requirements of a competitive economy, on one hand, and the good life on the other hand. To be able to evaluate dominant and alternative answers thoroughly in terms of lifelong learning, the authors look at the consequences of globalization and individualization. After having analyzed lifelong learning policies in the Netherlands, the article examines an important alternative, the so-called biographicity approach. In conclusion, the authors outline their own “transitional learning” perspective as an integral approach to lifelong learning as life-wide learning.

Education and the contested empowerment of migrants on the Dutch labour market

Abstract In this paper, we analyse the emergence of a sub‐field of educational initiatives which aim at the empowerment of migrants on the Dutch labour market. Although the sub‐field attracts a lot of money, its effective margins are small, since the empowerment of migrants is a controversial affair and the growth of the employment volume is staggering. Drawing on Bourdieus ‘field theory’, we trace the most important approaches of tackling the problem, and relevant ideologies informing them. Our analysis shows that the consensus with regard to interethnic relations in the Netherlands has been broken, and a social obligations ideology is presently asserting itself.