Settler VET and postcolonial possibilities

This chapter moves the focus of discussion to the countries where the majority of the world’s population, and especially its young population, live: the neoliberal discourse with which our account opened issues primarily from international agencies that seek to impose models of vocational education and training (VET) based in the ‘metropolitan countries’ of Western Europe on the majority of the world’s people. We begin by discussing the colonial conquest and the significance of its imposition of colonial models of vocational education, whilst the marginalisation of surviving forms of skill transmission constituted a ‘settler VET’ contributing to domination. We examine the imposition of European models in the period following independence and review attempts to develop alternative vocational traditions during the anti-colonial struggle and in the development of newly independent nations. Finally, we discuss what understandings might be developed through a dialogue between the material conditions and theories of these countries and traditions outside neoliberal normativity in the metropolitan countries.