EDITORIAL Gender, class and ‘race’ in lifelong learning: policy and practice in the UK and EU Almost a decade ago, Edwards (1997) used the metaphor of ‘moorland’ to refer to the—then—relatively new and unexplored intellectual and policy terrain that was being termed ‘lifelong learning.’ Since that time, lifelong learning has remained a highly fluid, slippery and contestable concept with multiple overlapping and differing meanings within both the European Union (EU) and UK contexts. However, despite such potential hybridism of meaning, and although more amplified in contemporary policy take-up, there are some discernible consistencies with the past terms of lifelong education and recurrent education. For example, at the EU level, lifelong learning is directly related to the ‘knowledge economy’ and as such forms a key aspect of both the Lisbon Declaration and the European Employment Strategy, both of which contribute to a strong framing of UK policy where lifelong learning is high on the political agenda. Currently, in the UK, ‘lifelong’ learning is focused primarily on economically active 18–30 year-olds. The discourse of lifelong learning is linked, through the labour market and the development of skills and training, to economic participation and the knowledge economy. Of concern in this strongly economically driven agenda is how, and indeed whether and in what circumstances, such a learning agenda (re)constructs the structural inequalities of key social divisions where certain types of knowledge, skills and work are valued above others. In addition, are structural barriers to participation, like those of the gendered, ‘raced’ and classed divisions of labour, accounted for in such policy or are they displaced and/or ignored? These concerns frame the focus of this special edition, which critically considers lifelong learning Christina Hughes* a , Loraine Blaxter a , Jacky Brine b and Sue Jackson c a University of Warwick, UK; b University of West of England, UK; c Birkbeck College, University of London, UK *Corresponding author: Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Email: christina.hughes@warwick.ac.uk British Educational Research Journal Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2006, pp. 643–648 ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/06/050643-6 # 2006 British Educational Research Association DOI: 10.1080/01411920600895668