EAEA’s Angeliki Giannakopoulou: “We must reshape unjust systems, not merely endure them”

“In digital environments, the goal of resilience should not be to produce individuals better equipped to survive broken systems, but communities able to reshape them,” writes Angeliki Giannakopoulou in her Speakers’ Corner column, produced with the European Association for the Education of Adults.

Resilience has become one of the most celebrated concepts in education and policy. It is praised as a universal solution: a skill that enables individuals to adapt, cope and survive in times of crisis.

But this widespread enthusiasm masks a critical danger. Resilience, when stripped of its political and structural dimension, risks becoming a tool of compliance rather than a force for change. Moreover, too often, resilience is framed as an individual responsibility. People are encouraged to “be resilient” in the face of inequality, instability and exclusion.

In digital environments, this translates into expecting individuals – particularly women and marginalised groups – to navigate unsafe, exploitative and exclusionary digital systems. The burden shifts quietly but decisively from those who design and benefit from these systems to those who must endure them.

The burden of adapting is shifted onto those who must endure exclusionary digital systems.

This is where resilience, if perceived as mere adaptation, becomes problematic. Because resilience, in this form, is not about empowerment. It teaches individuals how to cope with flawed digital systems instead of questioning why those systems remain unchanged. It asks learners to become “responsible users” of digital spaces shaped by corporate monopolies, algorithmic control and data commodification, without addressing the power structures behind them. It normalises digital exclusion by reframing it as a personal challenge rather than a systemic failure.

In this context, the goal of resilience cannot be to produce individuals who are better equipped to survive broken systems but rather to supporting communities that are able to reshape those systems altogether.

RESILIENCE IS PARTICULARLY prevalent in the contexts of Digital Citizenship Education (DCE) and media literacy. I have worked closely with both topics in recent years.

Competence is often reduced to technical skills: the ability to use tools, access platforms and navigate information. But this is not enough. True competence is critical and political. It is the ability to ask who designs digital environments, who controls them and whose voices are excluded.

It is about recognising that digital inequalities do not exist in isolation, but intersect with gender, race, class and migration. Without this perspective, even well-intentioned initiatives risk reinforcing the very structures they seek to challenge.

Digital inequalities do not exist in isolation – they intersect with gender, race and class.

This is why I strongly believe that an intersectional lens is not an optional addition but an essential, instinctive part of how we perceive the environment around us. Generic approaches to digital literacy often fail precisely because they ignore the political context in which technologies operate. They overlook how exclusion is produced and reproduced, and in doing so, they leave existing power relations intact.

Reclaiming resilience as a force for change means shifting from compliance to democratic ownership. Digital citizenship cannot be defined solely by those who already hold power: it must be co-created by the communities it affects. This includes reducing dependence on commercial platforms, questioning the commodification of education and ensuring that learners are not just participants, but decision-makers.

THIS MAKES EVIDENT the central role of adult education, especially in understanding that the digital divide is not merely generational, but structural. Adults are already navigating their unwilling exclusion from essential services, public participation and social life.

Addressing this requires more than formal education systems can offer. It calls for inclusive, participatory spaces where learners can critically engage with technology and collectively shape the conditions of their digital lives.

Resilience, if left unchallenged, risks becoming a quiet form of acceptance, a way of adapting to conditions that should never be accepted. But resilience, reimagined, can be something else: a collective capacity to question, resist and rebuild.

The question is not whether we need resilience. People have always been resilient. It is what kind of resilience we are willing to stand for.

Looking for more articles on the role of adult education in strengthening resilience?

This article is part of the theme ‘Adult Education and Resilience 2026’.

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