Migration poses a big challenge to adult education in Germany. Looking at recent research into the implications of migration in European societies and considering today's developments in the adult education policy, the author focuses on "inclusion". More than "integration", this concept has a great potential for adult education.

One of the central implications of globalisation is the movement of people across borders for diverse reasons. These include educational and occupational opportunities, asylum-seeking, political refuge and natural disasters. Currently in Germany, the percentage of migrants is estimated to be above 20 percent and is expected to increase in the coming years. While migration has been a constant factor at least since the 1960s (Gastarbeiter), the implications of the diversity of migrant lifestyles and their resources as well as the resulting specific challenges in adult education, both in theory and practice, remain relatively unexplored.

Recent relevant studies, such as “Migrants in Europe as Development Actors: between hope and vulnerability” (www.socialwatch.org/node/11385), launched in December 2009 plead for the discourse on migrant integration, also in Germany, to be focused on their assimilation achievements and their rootedness within society and not too narrowly on a deprivation outlook. During the years 2006 and 2008, Sinus Sociovision conducted a representative study about the social environments and lifestyles of people with migrant backgrounds in Germany (cf. Link above). This study reveals a highly faceted image of the migrant population and relativises many negative clichés that are widespread in Germany. This has also been strongly focused upon as a task for the future of Lifelong Learning in Europe through the Charter of Life Long Learning of the UCEN and also at the 17^th Annual Conference of the European Access Network under the title “Crossing Borders: Diversity in Higher Education (Migration, Integration and Lifelong Learning).The discourse embedded in such scholarly documents, however, still needs to be concretised.

Recognising this challenge to adult education, the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Life Long Learning (DIE) has, in the past two years, expanded its research into the specifics of this thematic and included migration in its research programme Inclusion through Further Education. A concrete result of this research is an interdisciplinary study on the implications of changing socio-economic conditions in current society on various disadvantaged groups, including migrants. The DIE will be continuing its focus on migration and further education in the coming years. The results of the research until now have been published in a joint publication (Reddy 2010). The publication raises relevant points for discussion that would also highlight the steps that adult education policy and practice might need to implement in order to effectively act in the context of migrant population and lifelong learning.

Recognition of migrants’ resources of cultural potential is an important factor for strengthening efforts in adult education in the coming years. Thus, the goal of future studies would be focusing on the everyday world (Life World) of migrants, their values, life goals, desires and expectations for the future in a manner that is as free of prejudice and is as authentic as possible. An important conceptual element is not to see their ethnic origin as a segmenting and predetermining preliminary filter but to recognise migrants as creative actors in and contributors to building the future in Germany, including their contribution to adult education efforts. Thereby, the efforts would be to initiate a paradigmatic shift from integration to inclusion. Efforts at integration thrive on the discourse of putting immense demands on migrants to integrate themselves into an apriori perfectly functioning society (in the context of this article: Germany). (Social-)Inclusion, on the other hand, works with an expanded view of “integration”. Inclusion does not presuppose an already perfectly functioning society into which migrants should integrate, but the onus or the task of integration is distributed over all sections of society, both migrants and non-migrants. In that sense, adult education is community education – a process designed to enrich the lives of individuals and groups by engaging with people living in a geographical area, or sharing a common interest, to voluntarily develop a range of learning, action and reflection opportunities determined by their personal, social, economic and political needs (cf. Tett, p. 8). An inclusive approach to adult education thereby identifies and builds upon the resources of the people involved and in the case of migrants, it concretely implies recognising and respecting their strengths, their intercultural competencies and their prior academically and informally acquired qualifications.

References:
Reddy, P. (2009). Inklusive Weiterbildungsforschung und -Praxis in einer Migrationsgesellschaft. In: Inklusion in der Weiterbildung. Reflexionen zur gesellschaftlichen Teilhabe in der Gegenwart. Reihe: Theorie und Praxis der Weiterbildung. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 2009. pp. 102-140

Tett, L (2006). Community Education, Lifelong learning and Social Inclusion. Edinburgh