It has long been recognised that Europe is facing a number of socio-economic and demographic challenges. Increasing globalisation, rapid technological change, an ageing population, improving the level of education; increasing social and labour risks and the demands of a more knowledge- and skills-intensive European labour market, have resulted in the need to provideadults with opportunities to increase their skill levels in order to meet these challenges. These societal transformations in the EU have produced substantial changes in the perception of education and training and its interrelation with other socio-economic policies. The continuous participation of the citizen in education and training is seen as key to assure quality of life and work. It has become a component of active labour market policies in order to transform the European social model to a more dynamic version which avoids the incidence of social need through ‘proactive social investments’. This strategy advocates a market-oriented approach, reinforcing the link between social rights and social obligations, and fostering social inclusion through active participation in the labour market.

More recently, the Transitional Labour Market approach (TLM) emerged as an alternative to these activation policies. This approach links social risk management in transitional work periods with concepts of social equity dating back to Rawls, Dworkin and Sen. TLM stresses the role of public institutions in managing situations of social risk, promoting proactive, flexible public engagement to forestall individual social risk, and reinforcing the qualitative dimension of labour market policies in contrast to a reliance on mere quantitative results. TLM thus provides a framework to identify specific social risk situations (transitions) and ways to provide appropriate measures aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of life changes. This suggests that in involuntary transitional periods, citizens should be able to rely on different forms of institutional support, for instance direct financial support or the funding and organising of Lifelong Learning (LLL) activities. However, in this report only institutionally supported formal LLL activities with a clear labour market orientation are considered to be relevant to transitional labour markets. In particular, university programmes for adult learners have a considerable potential as institutional support to manage life and labour market transitions. The TLM approach can thus be seen as an effective ‘social bridge’ that prevents individuals from (transitional) social exclusion and as a means to increase the probability that, for example, nonstandard jobs become ‘stepping stones’ to sustainable job careers.

In the THEMP Project, we distinguish between social danger, social risk and individual risk. The difference between risk and danger is the degree of knowledge of the possibility that certain events may occur. Social vulnerability, on the other hand, is a measure of individual responsiveness – in short whether it is limited to acting preventatively in responsive mode, or whether there is the capacity to react in advance of the risk situation. In other words, citizens’ vulnerability is assumed to grow in relation to the limits of their capacity for action. Without denying the self-responsibility of citizens, a ‘bounded knowledge’ of social-economic developments limits the citizens’ ability to avert labour market upheavals. Further, limited action capacity restricts their possibility to avoid (or stimulate) undesired (or desired) labour situations, to act proactively and to react in advance of potential negative events.