ABSTRACT
Research into adult learning, particularly learning that occurs outside institutions, can be conceptualised as biographical learning, learning in everyday life, or lifelong learning. With an interest in learning beyond formal settings and in the lifeworld, the individual’s engagement with and learning through life course transitions come into focus. Such transitions can theoretically be described as individual processes of learning and coping and also as embedded in discourse and institutional regulation. This chapter focuses on the influence of those norms and regulations and examines how their particular configuration – the discourses, the institutions, and the individual processing – configure opportunity spaces for learning. In doing so, it draws on the concept of regime, which refers to networks of rules, norms, and procedures that regularise behaviour and control its effects. This regime perspective sensitises understandings of learning and transitions in the life course to the complex and contingent interplay of different participants in practice that shape transitions and thus opportunity spaces for learning. This concept is explained through two empirical studies focusing on learning processes related to migration and work-life transitions. Drawing on migration regimes and labour market regimes respectively, the chapter discusses how a regime perspective can broaden our conceptual understanding of learning during life course transitions.
