“We will do everything we can, for you too to get back to work. Maybe you will have to upgrade your skills. Even if your memories from school are not the best, my call still is: Do it. It can be your way out of the crisis”. In her speech to the nation January 1^st 2021, the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, referred to the loss of jobs especially among low-skilled workers, resulting from the restrictions related to the Covid19 pandemic, mentioning education as a way for the individual to recover from the crisis. Her speech marked how adult education since early March has been put back on the political agenda as a tool to support companies and (un)employed people through the COVID-19 crisis.

Since the 1980s/1990s, neo-liberalism has been the dominant economic theory, while other economic theories and understandings has been pushed into the background and practically invisible (see e.g. Harcourt, Kiesler & Nevile, 2018). However, in the beginning of the crisis there were hints of Keynesian economic theory being dust off with voices arguing for creating new jobs through public investments in e.g. the infrastructure. Among the latter was (and is) the Danish economist Jesper Jensen, who, in an opinion piece in a Danish newspaper (Jespersen, 2020), compared the current situation to the crisis in the 1930s, the backcloth for introducing Keynes’ economic theory in public policies. In addition to the economic consequences of the pandemic and the initiatives aimed at reducing transmission of the virus, research also points at significant psychological and mental consequences (e.g. McCracken, Badinlou, Buhrman & Brocki, 2020).

In our contribution, we will take a closer look at the roles adult education has been assigned in relation to the pandemic, and the underlying assumptions behind the roles identified. Theoretically, the presentation, among other theories, will build on Biesta’s (2016) distinction between three functions of education as well as Esping-Andersen’s (1990) welfare state models.

According to Biesta, education (or in his word, schools) serves three purposes: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In the opening quote by the Danish prime minister, the focus was clearly on qualification as a way to avoid unemployment by offering companies compensation for sending employees on courses during the lock-downs and creating possibilities for unemployed people to up- or reskill. However, in the light of the psychological consequences of the pandemic, we are also interested in investigating whether adult education is assigned other roles in public policies and debates, e.g. related to the mental well-being.

Drawing on the work by Esping-Andersen and his typologies of welfare states, we will look into the changes following the Corona crisis and whether it changes the employment policies implemented since the 2000s. These policies have focused on creating incentives for unemployed people to return as quickly as possible to the labour market, e.g. by offering activation schemes or financially supported, temporary work in companies. The Covid-19 turn of adult education seems, however, to be a return to the first phase of active labour market policies introduced in the early 1990s where education and training played a central role. The question is whether Covid-19 has created a state of exception or adult education again becomes a central part of Danish employment policy also post Covid-19.

Though Denmark, compared to some European countries, has not been that severely hit by restrictions due to Covid-19, we look at Denmark as a case of how the Covid-19 has influenced adult education policy and the discourses in relation to adult education. We, thus, consider the findings relevant not only for a Danish audience, but for a European audience in general.

The analysis will be inspired by Bacchi’s (1999, 2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be’-approach. We will, thus, look closer into what the problem is represented to be in the public debate about adult education during the first year of the pandemic (e.g. unemployment, mental health, labour market changes) and which assumptions are underlying the problem representations. We will further explore what is left unproblematic and finally, what are the effects of the way the ‘problem’ is represented. In order to be able to identify what the problem (or the problems) is/are represented to be, we will focus on the proposals forwarded by central actors in the political debate on adult education. Underlying assumptions will be identified by a focus on how the ‘problem’ of adult education is represented i.e. which discourses are activated and put into play? This could be im- or explicit references to economic theory as for instance human capital theory, neo-liberal theory or Keynesian economic theory or to the functions of adult education (cf. Biesta). By looking into the silences and what is left unproblematic, we will contextualize present problem representations historically (see e.g. Larson & Cort, 2019) as well as look into the debates in other Nordic countries which are – at least to some extent – similar in their approaches to adult education. The empirical data will consist of adult education policy papers presented in/by the Danish Parliament and government from March 2020 to February 2021; videos/transcripts of debates in the Parliament; and statements/opinions put forward by policy makers in news media. Policy papers presented in/by the Parliament and government will be found on the website of the Danish Government, as will debates in the Parliament. We will also identify statements and opinions put forward in the news media by stakeholders in adult education, e.g. the trade unions, employer associations, and other relevant interest groups. In order to obtain these, we will search Infomedia, which is a Danish database covering articles and opinion pieces from printed as well as digital media in Denmark. In order to contextualize the Danish situation, we will furthermore look into the debates about adult education in Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, adult education has been revived as a central policy tool offered to companies in order to support them through the crisis and not least ensure that they keep their work force rather than laying them off (Beskæftigelsesministeriet, 2020). This has resulted in numerous support packages for specific sectors including initiatives aimed at many different groups of employees. The unions have encouraged the Government to offer unemployed people the opportunity to re- or upskill themselves during the crisis and a number of political parties (from mainly the centre and right side of the political spectrum) agreed on a plan for strengthening reskilling (2020) from 2020 to 2023 with a specific referral to the Covid-19 pandemic. This all points to adult education being re-introduced as an important tool in the employment policy – a role which was abandoned in the 2000s in favour of an activation scheme which focused on rapid re-entrance to the labour market combined with a reduction in the eligible period for receiving unemployment benefit, a so-called workfare regime. The question is if the revival of adult education is a shift in employment policy, a temporary interruption or a new policy, which will renew the role of adult education in a changing world. Though this question we are not able to answer in the middle of the crisis, we expect there to be some hints at possible answers in the documents we analyse. These will be discussed at the presentation.

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