In the postmodern world of the last decades we have assisted to the worsening of economic and social cleavages as well as to the labor disqualification and the increasing of social exclusion.

In this context, marked by simultaneous crises, arises the Active Welfare State (Rosanvallon, 1995), from which emerge the activation policies that currently are profoundly tied with the problem of exclusion management (Hespanha, 2002; Fitoussi e Rosanvallon, 1996).

The change of social protection to the activation logic has been quite evident in several European countries, especially since the 90’s. A several number of documents, policies and summits have been carried out, namely the White Book on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (1993) and the Luxembourg Jobs Summit (1997), in which each State Member committed to promote activation policies involving at least 20% of the total number of unemployed, through the implementation of national employment plans (Hespanha, 2002). Central goals for social policies such as the promotion of the employment and the consolidation of social rights, guaranteed by the Welfare State and sustained by economic growth, were defined in the European Union.

On the other hand, the defense of a contractual or partnership approach of public policy became usual in speeches, documents, public social policies and funding programs of the European Commission since the early 90’s, notably in the White Paper on the Future of European Social Policy in 1994; the Anti-poverty programs (Hespanha, 2008) or the United Nations Human Development Reports in 1995. In most European Union countries, and in line with the social policies of activation, a notorious growing trend towards the decentralization of competences and the involvement of local governments and populations in the production of local intervention devices is being felt, in particular in the context of social action (Castro e Gonçalves, 2002).

At the same time, several national and international agencies, state that the deficit of economic and social structures is a consequence of the lack of education and training. The European Commission, at the beginning of the 21^st century, has defined the aim that by the end of the first decade of this century, 12.5% of the European population between 25 and 64 years old should have participated in some form of lifelong learning (Boeren, Nicaise e Baert, 2010).

The focus on continuing training strategies has emerged at the international (OECD, EU, UNESCO) and national levels as standing recommendation, since it supposedly would satisfy the need of a functional flexibility imposed by the changing nature of the markets and the increasing technological change.

In the current political and social context of globalization (in the Portuguese case it’s also important to consider the inclusion in the EU), the policies that advocate a subordination to the market, based on approaches that emphasize competition, efficiency and effectiveness, employability and the empowerment of consumers (but not the empowerment of citizens) are dominant (Lima e Afonso, 1995).

In this sense, it seems pertinent to deepen the knowledge about the tension between: a) the cognitive categories and policies driven, to understand and intervene in the phenomenon of exclusion (produced by the inclusion/training policies and by speeches defined at European level) and b) the reality of inclusion/exclusion as meant by the actors who are the subject to these policies.

In this way, the goals of this research are:

i)                    Discuss the sociological, economic, political and intervention speeches that define the field of social inclusion and training policies, at European and national levels;

ii)                  Understand the role that Europe and more specifically the Portuguese State has been attributing to education/training in the current policies of employment and inclusion.

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