Is there still a place for social emancipation in public policies?

The consolidation of the welfare state in Europe after World War II allowed for the development of adult education programmes aimed at social inclusion, economic growth and democratic citizenship. Lifelong education, proposed by UNESCO (1970s), allowed countries to build adult education policies combining the needs of economic growth and increasing democratic social demands, based on adults’ emancipation. In the last two decades, the European Union (EU) orientation for lifelong learning has stressed the formation of education and training to prepare workers to be more productive, and the creation of partnership (public/private) provision, according to managerial rules and procedures. These two distinct political approaches have influenced the evolution of adult education in Portugal. In this paper we argue that the civil society organisations (CSOs) of Portugal today are trapped within a set of technical procedures that have been established in the name of lifelong learning and that EU programmes have made it very difficult for CSOs to escape national state control. This situation impedes innovative and alternative attempts to promote social emancipation