ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a critical feminist reading of lifelong learning. The two emerging notions of lifelong learning, one which is concerned with job training and recurrent education, and that aimed at social transformation, will be interrogated in the context of immigrant women’s struggles for learning, working, and transforming their lives in diaspora. In particular, the chapter draws on the results of my research project entitled War, Diaspora, and Learning: Kurdish Women in Canada, Britain, and Sweden.1 One of the objectives of this project was to study the impact of war and displacement on Kurdish women’s learning. There are about 25 to 30 million Kurds who, since the latter part of twentieth century, have been subjected to ‘transnationalization’ as a result of war, displacement, and re-constitution of nation and ethnicity in the diaspora (Mojab and Hassanpour 2004). Kurdish women face enormous challenges in the process of resettlement and gaining full citizenship rights in their adopted countries. They have to learn about a whole universe that differs from their previous world – learning to live in different economic and social systems, acquiring different languages, and integrating into different legal and political regimes.
