Scott K. Phillips

This book makes an innovative, sociologically informed contribution to academic and policy discussions about informal work, skills and training for Lifelong Learning (LLL) and the promise of decent work and just transitions for sustainable development. It does so with an explicit focus on challenges and opportunities as they shape informal economies and the experiences of informal workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The authors highlight historical and contemporary characteristics of informality in different regions from a political economy of LLL perspective. This political economy approach draws on theories of post- and neo- colonialism, space, place and globalisation, critical accounts of curriculum and pedagogy in skills and vocational education and training. The book will appeal to students and scholars of education, particularly adult education and LLL and technical and vocational education and training, as well as sociology, labour economics, and international and sustainable development.

This book explores the complex ways in which belonging, identity and time are entangled in shaping young people engagement with the middle years of school. The authors argue that these ‘entanglements’ need to be understood in ways that move beyond a focus on why individual young people engage with the middle years. Instead, there should be a focus on the socio-ecologies of particular places, and the ways in which these ecologies shape the possibilities of young people engaging productively in the middle years. Drawing on extensive qualitative data from an outer-urban metropolitan context, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, education and policy studies.

This book explores the complex ways in which belonging, identity and time are entangled in shaping young people engagement with the middle years of school. The authors argue that these ‘entanglements’ need to be understood in ways that move beyond a focus on why individual young people engage with the middle years. Instead, there should be a focus on the socio-ecologies of particular places, and the ways in which these ecologies shape the possibilities of young people engaging productively in the middle years. Drawing on extensive qualitative data from an outer-urban metropolitan context, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, education and policy studies.