Transformative learning theory and migration: a systematic mapping of the literature (2000–2025)

In the context of neoliberal globalisation and intensified human mobility, transformative learning theory (TLT) has increasingly been used to examine complex processes of meaning-making and change. Drawing on 35 English-language empirical studies published between 2000 and 2025, this article presents a systematic mapping of empirical research on TLT, migration, and adult learning and education. The study examines how TLT has informed understandings of migration experiences and how insights from migration scholarship have, in turn, challenged TLT. Studies were identified through four databases and analysed through iterative thematic analysis. The findings suggest that migration, as a transnational and transcultural process, complicates individualistic and stage-based interpretations of TLT by conceptualising transformation as relational and processual. Shaped by displacement, uncertainty, and shifting forms of belonging, transformation entails painful, contradictory, or negative dimensions. Rather than a single disorienting dilemma, migrants experience multiple disruptions. The literature points to a broadening of TL scholarship beyond formal settings, towards community-based, informal, and transnational learning contexts. By examining twenty-five years of empirical inquiry across a period of intensified global mobility, the article offers new insights into the relationship between migration and TL, calls for more relational, ethical, and humanising approaches, and suggests new directions for future research.