摘要:Over the last few years there has been a debate about the concept of lifelong learning. It has often been reduced in a functionalist way, although it should be more related to formal, non-formal and informal learning processes. We can see how education throughout life both instrumentalizes and emancipates at the same time, so we can approach this concept from a double perspective. The first focuses on exploiting economic and cultural resources in Western societies. The second is a vision more focused on the science of education, on individual social actors and their biographies. This paper focuses on the tensions between these two perspectives.