The role of identity capital in the development of active adulthood in globalised societies

Abstract

Discussing the effects of globalisation on the changes in life cycles, the article departs from the thesis that the individualisation of the life course requires people to be better prepared in terms of responsible planning of their lives. The transitions from youth to adulthood in particular are becoming ambiguous and flexible, which in turn brings changes to the period of adulthood. As a result, adulthood has lost many of its stable roles and traditional meanings and is increasingly becoming a psychological phenomenon. Of course, all of this means that adults now have to deal with crucial identity work that before was reserved for the period of youth. Here, adult education plays an important role and faces new challenges and tasks. Besides education for work (additional training and retraining) adult education plays an increasingly important social (social and technological inclusion, acquisition of new social competences to understand social developments) and especially psychological function (the development of “identity capital” necessary for an independent adult life in late-modern life circumstances).