Vocational education and training: just transistions in the global south and north

The paper calls for an expansive conceptualisation of VET that moves beyond instrumentalism, stressing the needs of employers and labour market. The global south has been marginalsed in VET, as have climate emergency, race and ethnicity. These concerns rest alongside a literature addressing ‘just transitions’. The paper is framed by a series of conceptual steps, initially engaging with the social construction of VET in the global north, specifically Europe. It relates these to policy science and scholarship arguing doxic constructions have difficulty in accommodating wagelessness and those labouring in informal economies of the global south. Discussions of just transitioning serve to challenge doxic constructions of VET rooted in waged labour. The section Anthropocene and Capitalocene argues that dominant constructions are complicit in unsustainable practices but could be more than this. The next section engages with the World Economic Forum (WEF) focusing on debates about education, sustainability and green agendas. This is followed by an examination of speeches of leading English politicians that reprise previous themes but also reflect realpolitik and the pursuit of political advantage. The Complexity that is VET concludes the paper, noting that VET is both a resource and site of struggle set within a specific socio-economic context.