GPS to a better future : career guidance for social justice in Catalonia’s adult learning centres

Abstract

In Spain, and to a lesser extent in Catalonia, the economic crisis has caused a dramatic increase in unemployment and poverty in the adult population. Young adults aged 25 years or less have reached unemployment rates of about 50% (Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya [IDESCAT], 2013). These rates have been even higher for those without any educational accreditation and for women and migrants (IDESCAT, 2016; IDESCAT, 2017), confirming not only the links between educational underachievement and poverty (Hawthorne-Steele, Moreland, & Rooney, 2015), but also the exclusion related to gender, origin or race. Due to the lack of job opportunities, a large percentage of young unemployed adults have been returning to education and training assuming that a big part of the situation they face is their own fault (see Chapter 5 for a discussion of this issue in Hong Kong). A good number of those without any accreditation have gone to adult learning centres (ALCs). The career path of these learners is not straightforward and smooth, but steep, full of potholes and jammed with structural barriers. Two of these barriers are social inequality and an educational system which excludes them from public services that are accessed by learners attending other types of education. Since 2010, the guidance programme GPS to a Better Future has helped them to face these barriers.