Capabilities for unemployed adults: active labour market policy-based adult education programmes in Austria and Italy

Labour market-oriented adult education (AE) is a policy focus, nevertheless an ambivalent topic in academia. Policy attracts significant critique because it favours instrumental provision to support economic interests over emancipatory provision to support learner’s personal development. In this article, we contextualise this critique. We apply the capability approach (CA ) to make room for both a moderate human capital and a humanistic understanding of AE. As a conceptual framework, the CA underpins an idiographic research interest in understanding how far active labour market policy (ALMP)-based AE programmes in Austria and Italy provide unemployed adults with the opportunity to choose educational and occupational pathways in a non-enforced fashion. Access, processes, and outcomes of the AE programmes are considered as dimensions where individual resources are converted into capability – the freedom to choose what one has reason to value. Differences among the countries emerge from the conceptual model, the modes of governance, and how the programmes are related to the education system. The article contributes a contextualised and critical, yet pragmatic view of labour market-oriented AE to the academic discourse and encourages empirical research focussing on the experiences of programme participants.