This book develops critical ways to engage with international debates about lifelong learning and social justice through a range of competing and contested definitions, setting out some of the complexities and challenges of linking the two concepts. It was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of

Introduction: Lifelong learning and social justice 1. Learning to labour in regional Australia: gender, identity and place in lifelong learning 2. Raising expectations or constructing victims? Problems with promoting social inclusion through lifelong learning 3. Widening participation, social justice and injustice: part-time students in higher education in England 4. Personal stories: how students’ social and cultural life histories interact with the field of higher education 5. Parents, partners and peers: bearing the hidden costs of lifelong Learning 6. Later life learning for adults in Scotland: tracking the engagement with and impact of learning for working-class men and women 7. Learning by dispossession: democracy promotion and civic engagement in Iraq and the United States