Our contemporary world is characterized by highly dynamic, growing inequalities between and within societies, as well as increased insecurity and vulnerability. Under such conditions, there are no ready, easily applied, and transferable answers about how individuals and societies can cope with these emerging challenges. Facing such new challenges, all individuals and societies become susceptible and vulnerable to various extents. Against this background, the present paper focuses on the importance of lifelong education and learning (we use the term ‘lifelong education and learning’ in order to grasp both institutionalized and uninstitutionalized forms of learning) for individual empowerment. Until now, the empowerment role of lifelong education and learning has been discussed only in relation to some social groups who have been defined as disadvantaged. Acknowledging that all contemporary individuals and societies can be susceptible and vulnerable (Fineman 2008), albeit to different extents, we argue that the empowerment role of lifelong education and learning becomes crucial in contemporary societies, penetrating all its other roles, and applies to all individuals and societies.

Theoretically, the paper builds on a combination of insights from the capability approach (Sen 1999, 2009) and Nancy Fraser’s (2009) theory of social justice. On this basis we propose a social justice perspective towards empowerment and its role in lifelong education and learning in order to grasp the emergence of two phenomena: empowerment as a universal need in the face of universal vulnerability; and education as a lifelong and life-wide process in contemporary societies.

Empowerment and lifelong education and learning have a common characteristic – both are lifelong processes. In the contemporary world in which all individuals and societies become susceptible and vulnerable, empowerment is not only a universal need; it is a need which is present at all stages of an individual’s life. 

We regard the empowerment role of lifelong learning as having two sides: a subjective one, referring to an individual’s capability to gain control over the environment with the aim of improving their own well-being and that of society, and an objective one, reflecting the available opportunity structures. A social justice perspective towards the empowerment role of lifelong education and learning requires taking into account both the subjective and objective sides of empowerment.

            The subjective side of empowerment through lifelong education and learning is related to its role in further developing the individual’s capability set and, thus, in increasing her/his potential to make high-quality choices and her/his freedom to act. Empowerment is not identical to agency enhancement, i.e., to the expansion of agency for any purpose and for the development of any capabilities – it is about developing capabilities which can ensure gaining control over one’s environment with the aim to improve individual and societal well-being.

The objective side of empowerment through lifelong education and learning refers to the available institutional structures and hierarchies (economic, political, and cultural) that influence and constitute the social sphere of lifelong education and learning, thus enabling or constraining empowerment through lifelong education and learning.

Taking into account these considerations and previous research, we think that there is a need for further research on the link between lifelong education and learning and empowerment which applies a more sophisticated understanding of empowerment and pays attention to its embeddedness in different socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts. More concretely, we will try to answer the following research questions:

(1) To what extent is participation in lifelong education and learning associated with individuals’ empowerment?

(2) Does the relationship between individuals’ participation in lifelong education and learning and their empowerment differ across different socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts?

Empirically, the paper relies on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 6 (ESS Round 6: European Social Survey Round 6 Data 2012). The ESS is a biannual cross-national survey that is representative for the population aged 15 and over. Our sample consists of 24 countries for which there are data available on all country-level variables of interest. In line with our theoretical understanding of empowerment, we have measured empowerment with two dependent variables which provide proxy information about its essence – gaining control over one’s environment with the aim to improve individuals’ and societies’ well-being. The first dependent variable refers to question D30: “How difficult or easy do you find it to deal with important problems that come up in your life?”. The second dependent variable refers to statement D1: “In the past 12 months, how often did you get involved in work for voluntary or charitable organizations. The main independent variable included at the individual level was the dummy variable of whether people participated in any work-related learning activities over the previous 12 months. It measures participation in lifelong education and learning. The main independent variables at the country level capture the available opportunity structures. To measure the socio-economic context, we used information for GDP per capita in PPS (Volume indices of real expenditure per capita) available at the Eurostat website. To measure the political context, we relied on information from the Democracy index (The Economist Intelligence Unit 2012). To capture the cultural context, we used information about the level of generalized trust from the ESS in a given country. These three variables were standardised and entered into our analysis, being mean-centred and having a standard deviation of one. This was done in order to have comparability for these variables. We have further included five individual-level control variables for age, the respondents’ levels of education, and three dummy variables: gender, parents’ education as an indicator of social background, and belonging to a minority ethnic background. In order to analyse these data, we have employed a multilevel modelling technique. This technique was chosen because separating the variation between the individual and macro levels and allowing the constant terms to vary between countries allows us to take into account the nested structure of the data (Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal 2012). Furthermore, multilevel models are attractive because they allow for the estimation of cross-level interaction effects.

The present study shows that participation in work-related learning activities is positively associated with individuals’ capacity to deal with the important problems they face as well as their involvement in voluntary work. This suggests that either lifelong education and learning has the potential to empower individuals to cope with everyday challenges in ways which take into account not only their well-being but also the well-being of other people or that coping with everyday problems and involvement in voluntary work encourage participation in work-related learning activities. Further studies are needed to prove the causal influence of participation in work-related learning activities on people’s empowerment. Our results also demonstrate that the empowerment role of lifelong education and learning is embedded in different social contexts and depends on the available opportunity structures. The associations between measures of available opportunity structures (GDP per capita in PPS, democracy index, and generalized trust) and individuals’ capacity to deal with important problems and their involvement in voluntary work were relatively lower among those who had participated in work-related learning activities than those who had not. This deserves special attention and can be interpreted as suggestive evidence that participation in lifelong education and learning enhances individuals’ capacities and thus makes them more autonomous actors who are less dependent on their social environment in comparison to those not involved in lifelong-learning activities. In our highly complex contemporary societies, and in the face of the universal character of vulnerability, the empowerment of individuals becomes indispensable. It is beyond doubt that individuals themselves and lifelong education and learning as a policy and practice have their responsibility for dealing with fragility of human reality. Acknowledging this, however, should be inseparable from paying due attention to the embeddedness of individuals’ empowerment in different social contexts and its dependence on the available opportunity structures.

ESS Round 6: European Social Survey Round 6 Data 2012. Data file edition 2.4. NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data, Norway – Data Archive and distributor of ESS data for ESS ERIC. doi:10.21338/NSD-ESS6-2012. Fineman, M. (2008). The vulnerable subject: Anchoring equality in the human condition. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 20(1), 1–23. Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press. Rabe-Hesketh, S., & Skrondal, A. (2012). Multilevel and longitudinal modeling using Stata (3rd ed.). College Station, TX: Stata Press. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. London: Allen Lane. The Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). Democracy index 2012. Democracy at a standstill. A report from The Economist Intelligence Unit. Retrieved May 8, 2020, from https://etajikistan.fles.wordpress.com/2019/01/eiu-democracyindex-2012.pdf