Social Learning among People Who Are Excluded from the Labor Market. Part One: Context and Case Studies. NALL Working Paper.

This working paper lays groundwork for a Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning study on informal learning by people displaced from the labor market or chronically unemployed, in the context of community organizations. Section 1 examines the context and two particularly significant features--wider changes in the nature of work and related changes in the welfare state--that arise from structural changes caused by globalization of the economy. Section 2 describes three community organizations working with people excluded from the mainstream labor market that are attempting to create new forms and traditions of labor under considerable pressure to place people in the mainstream labor market. (The Homeworkers' Association is an example of how a labor union responded to work restructuring by departing from traditional tactics of collective bargaining and strike action in favor of creative alliances and innovative strategies for working with displaced workers. Chic Resto-Pop illustrates the complex interaction among business development, job training, political advocacy, and linkages to the wider culture of the community movement. A-Way Express Couriers demonstrates similar connections from within a framework of self help and with a goal of not integration but building an alternative labor market that redefines, accommodates, and organizes the capacities of a heavily stigmatized community.) Section 3 provides comments on directions the research is pursuing into informal learning. (Contains 52-item bibliography.) (YLB)