Anti-austerity adult education in Canada: a survey of a nascent field

As the realities of austerity agendas exert pressure on adult education around the globe, this paper attempts to map the developing, albeit small, field of anti-austerity adult education in Canada. In doing so, I attempt to trace the connections between anti-austerity education and existing fields of adult education. I argue that the cases we see of anti-austerity education have distinctive features of new political realities. While not unrelated to popular pedagogical projects of the past, anti-austerity adult education sits in compulsory opposition to what Albo and Fanelli describe as the austerity initiated ‘disciplinary democracy’ project of neo-liberalism. As a result, new adult educators and educational initiatives are emerging in relation to a morphing political-economic hegemony.