Learning for Livelihoods in the Global South: Theoretical and Methodological Lenses on Skills and the Informal Sector

This edited volume explores how youth and informal sector workers in the Global South are pioneering learning and livelihoods that exist at the intersections of, and beyond, the boundaries of the state, market, and other formal institutions.

Underpinned by research undertaken in the Global South, this book discusses how we might better theorise, conceptualise, and critique what skills and vocational education and training mean for young people with diverse livelihoods - people who rely substantially on the informal and social economy. Rather than envisioning education and skills as oriented towards profit-making or increased productivity, chapters offer fresh perspectives that move beyond the dominant neoliberal and human capital orthodoxies. This book features chapters that are global in approach, uses case studies from contexts as diverse as India, South Africa, West Africa, and Colombia, and focuses on how education can be used to empower people, strengthen livelihoods, and expand human agency, skills, personal growth, and the capability for voice.

Issuing a clarion call, it appeals for recognition of the ways in which learning, working, and living take place in the informal sector in the Global South, arguing that this matters for the vast majority of the world’s population. This book will be of relevance to scholars, academics, and postgraduate students in vocational education and training, skills development, the informal sector, international and comparative education, international development, and adult education.

Lesley Powell is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Adam Cooper is chief research specialist in the Equitable Education and Economies Research Division, Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa.

Trent Brown is Associate Professor at Tokyo College at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Simon McGrath holds the established chair in Education at the University of Glasgow, UK.