Living on the Edge: Lifelong Learning, Governmentality and the Production of Neurotic Citizen

Living on the Edge: Lifelong Learning, Governmentality and the Production of Neurotic Citizen (ONELLL) – Research project Funded by Academy of Finland (01.09.2020 – 31.08.2024)

In education policy studies applying the governmentality perspective, mainly policy documents have been analyzed, not the consequences of policies to people’s lives. Not all effects and consequences of LLL policies are intented, and therefore also the unintented and perverse consequences need to be studied. In the context of this project, individually felt pressures for learning and self development is a part of the landscape where LLL policies meet the diversity of agents in their class positions. Quantitative and qualitative data will shed light on different aspects of our main question which is: How do individuals in different social and economic positions perceive and feel the pressures for learning lifelong and life-wide, and how do they cope with the concerns and anxieties caused by the hegemonic discourses of LLL and the Learning Society? The new emotional and individualized reflectiveness is constructing a new conception of citizen, “neurotic citizen”.