A plurality of informational bases of social judgment to assess correctly inequalities in Lifelong Learning practices : the French APL process

Lifelong learning is promoted in a context of predominance of individual responsibility about employability: make people capable of finding a job, keeping it by means updating occupational skills. Nevertheless, to manage to give real individual opportunities of lifelong learning is very complex, asking the question of the "fair" sharing between collective and responsibility. The Accreditation of Prior Experience Process (VAE) is a pertinent illustration. This new right makes people responsible to put work experience to advantage, through getting qualification on the basis of experience. But, to open up a new legal way doesn't make this right a reality. Actually, the VAE itinerary is a complex process without certain outcome. The candidates have to mobilize some resources and factors to progress through the various difficult steps within the VAE path. But candidates are unequal and many disparities seem to exist between candidates' trajectories, depending of different individual, social and environmental opportunities and constraints. From a Capability perspective, we built an original framework to analyse VAE candidates' paths with regard to individual's structures of choice and action. Through confrontation between informational basis of employability and capabilities, the work's originality consists in highlighting existence of different types of individual logics of choice and action. This article is based on an econometric work using a new national sample of 4500 VAE candidates. Firstly, from an informational basis of employability, we measure the gross effect of standard economic factors (individual characteristics and financial resources, individual rights) on the candidates' pathway. Then, we assess the crossed effects between theses factors with conversion factors which have influences to put resources and rights into operation. In it adds a systematically observation of deliberate or suffered nature of choices during the VAE pathway. Candidates have the same right but not the same capability to put it into operation. To assess individual situations, on the hand with the basis informational of employability, and the other hand with the capability perspective, highlights overestimated, underestimated and invisible inequalities. Informational basis of employability is insufficient to assess correctly individual situation within the VAE process