Traditionally, skills for the informal sector have been acquired informally, in family and community settings. Within these settings, the acquisition and utilisation of skills entails (a) active, improvisational engagement with materials and local ecologies; (b) induction into ethical or normative frameworks; and (c) connection to a community of practitioners and the assumption of socially meaningful identities. In recent decades, formal training programmes have emerged in relation to skills in the informal sector, as have attempts to integrate informal learning for informal sector skills within formal qualifications frameworks. Given the corporate dominance of much of the TVET sector in the Global South, such transitions may introduce pro-corporate biases into skill systems. Drawing on neo-Marxist theories, I suggest that through such transitions, skills are subsumed in the sense that skills and processes of skill acquisition are prioritised that enhance possibilities for capitalist growth and are alienated in the sense that people are removed from modalities of skill acquisition that are sources of connection, meaning, identity, and belonging. They supplant a rich, socially imbricated understanding of skills with one in which skills (and life) are seen to be in service to maximising efficiency. I illustrate this through reference to emerging attempts to promote formal sector training for informal sector agricultural workers in India. I argue that despite processes of alienation and subsumption being at play, there are nonetheless instances where less alienated understandings of skill and skill acquisition intervene. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Lesley Powell, Adam Cooper, Trent Brown and Simon McGrath; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.
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