The ideology of access: Young adult experiences in transition from Literacy and Basic Skills to postsecondary education

Expanding the forms of educational access available is one response to crises in unemployment, housing, migration, pandemics, wealth disparity, and discrimination. Young, racialized, immigrant adults are often the target of efforts to expand access. I analyze the social relations that organize the experience of educational access from the standpoint of young, immigrant, racialized adults in basic literacy programs who pursue transitions to postsecondary education in Toronto, Canada. I argue that access to education entails ideology as young adults are reduced to a fragmented consciousness and reproductive praxis in human capital development that maintains the social and material relations of class struggle. I walk through the journey of registering for, participating in, and exiting access programs from the standpoint of young adults to explicate the relations that organized their reproductive praxis, with special attention directed to the Canadian state. Young adults’ access was mediated by a promise of ‘barrier-free’ participation through Canadian Multiculturalism and the state’s use of competency-based pedagogies and performance management tools, all within the context of under-resourced, publicly funded adult learning. Reproductive praxis emerged as individuals considered going ‘back to school’ when educational access did not resolve the immediate contradictions of their lives. I conclude by considering a transformative praxis for educational access.