Informal Learning in Contexts of Vulnerability: A Relational Ontology of Education

Abstract This article analyses the role of informal learning in contexts of vulnerability and discusses its implications for an ontological reconceptualisation of education in relational terms. Adopting a non-individualising definition of vulnerability—understood as a position produced by institutional structures and structural inequalities—the article offers a conceptual review of the literature on poverty, forced migration, socio-economic marginalisation and systemic crises. It argues that the informal sector supports three interrelated functions: daily survival, biographical and cultural continuity, and agency (individual and collective), while often remaining invisible within educational systems regulated by epistemic hierarchies that privilege formal and certified knowledge. The article then develops a five-step framework (produced vulnerability, functions of the informal, epistemic (in)justice, learning ecologies, relational ontology) and discusses its implications for recognition-oriented research, practices and policies.