Neoliberal capitalism and the government of labour market skills: a genealogy of Australia’s foundation skills apparatus

Foundation skills, or language, literacy and numeracy skills, became an issue for Australian governments after a series of results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveys in 1996 and 2006 revealed that just over half of Australia’s working age population had foundation skills to the level needed to meet the complex demands of work and life in modern economies. In 2012, these concerns drove Australia’s first foundation skills policy since 1991, the National Foundation Skills Strategy for Adults (National Strategy). The National Strategy included a target that by 2022, two-thirds of working age Australians would have literacy and numeracy skills at level 3 or above (where level 3 indicates the skills needed to meet the labour market demands). The foundation skills training sector was given significant responsibility to meet the 2022 national target, having transformed from a small, often voluntary, community-driven movement in the 1970 and 1980s to a complex, multiprogram sector spanning multiple levels of government. The strategy is a movement from previous policy, the National Policy on Languages (NPL) of 1987 and the Australian Language and Literacy Policy (ALLP) of 1991, advocating for collective action between Commonwealth, State and Territory governments and the inclusion of foundation skills in broader national social policy development. The National Strategy promotes a neoliberal solution to the problem of foundation skills. By drawing on French philosopher Michel Foucault’s conceptual frameworks of genealogy, governmentality and apparatus to develop an analysis of the National Strategy and other associated discourse, this project argues that the marketisation and commodification of skills, and new forms of accountability, seek to construct ‘enterprising’ foundation skills learners who must carry an individualised responsibility for developing the skills demanded by the globalising, precarious labour markets of neoliberal capitalism.