Introduction

This chapter seeks to shed light on the complex dynamic that produces cultural, economic and normative frames of reference for popular adult education, a type of adult education that stimulates learners to critically appraise their lives, and to act to change social conditions (Arnold and Burke, 1983). The authors take the example of the Università della Terza Età e del Tempo Disponibile (University of the Third Age and Free Time) (UTETD), a public provider of popular education in the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy), as an illustrative case of resistance to the dominant neoliberal discourse. Neoliberalism values adult education in the same way as any other goods that provide utility in a global market, resulting in decontextualised forms of provision that do not favour emancipatory learning.

Early European studies centred attention on the working of the European Union's (EU’s) institutions, its outputs (that is, European policies) and their domestic implementation. Accordingly, research dealing with European education and lifelong learning policy was primarily concerned with the ‘fabrication’ of a European educational space (Nóvoa and Lawn, 2002), in an attempt to explain educational convergence (that is, the consequence of integration within Europe) or policy harmonisation (that is, the adjustment of differences in support of European integration).

However, since the late 1990s, domestic adaptation (rather than implementation) has come to serve as a broader concept in Europeanisation research, which comprises the study of administrative adaptation by (national) executive governments, other interest groups and civil society to new institutional opportunities and structures, and their normative consequences (Graziano and Vink, 2008). Accordingly, the study of domestic implementation has been slowly replaced by the study of domestic adaptation, which sought to uncover the direct and indirect effects exerting pressure on single countries towards European regional integration.

Among the direct effects are the adaptation of European legislation and other regulatory frameworks at the domestic level, like the Youth Guarantee agreed between the EU and its member states to ensure that young people under the age of 25 receive a quality offer of continued education, an apprenticeship or traineeship (when not employment), or the Upskilling pathways targeting adults with a low level of skills so that they can progress towards an upper-secondary qualification or equivalent through skills assessment, validation and recognition and/or participation in new learning opportunities. Among the indirect effects is increased cooperation.