Learning, labour and employability

Abstract

Public policy in the UK has adopted employability to define the relationship of globalisation, work and learning. This article claims that employability serves the interests of capital. It helps capital to exercise its domination/hegemony over labour and employs a redefined vision of learning as its principal vehicle. Employability is a term that has emerged from the important changes occurring during the late 1970s and 1980s. This article will argue that this change is symptomatic of other changes and occurred alongside a major realignment of the relationship between capital and labour. This change is most graphically identified in literature and research from the late 1970s and 1980s witnessing, as it did, the emergence of a neo-liberalism.

Keywords:

• Employability
• neo-liberalism
• adult learning
• skills policy