The subject of this article is the right of adults to education, with a focus on the critical analysis of education policy. We discuss human rights as a framework for citizenship in two national contexts of Southern Europe with the purpose of underlining key differences and similarities in countries with diverse histories but a similarly high number of low-qualified adults among their population. In view of the above, this paper provides a detailed historical context for adult education policy in those countries and expounds on how current Portuguese and Italian educational policy agendas have considered the right of adults to education in the context of their democratic regimes. For critical analysis we use Tomaševski’s theoretical 4A framework, built mainly for school contexts, and apply it to adult education policy. The objective is to understand ways of realizing the right of adults to education by means of policy measures undertaken by governments in those national states. Thus, we employed as an object of analysis the study of availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of adult education and learning against the backdrop of current changes occurring in Europe. This heuristic exercise makes a significant contribution to adult education literature in times of neoliberal trends.

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成人受教育的权利：葡萄牙和意大利政策议程的比较分析

本文的主题是成年人受教育的权利，重点是对教育政策的批判性分析。我们在南欧的两个国家环境中讨论将人权作为公民身份的框架，其目的是强调具有不同历史的国家中，但其人口中相当多的低素质成年人的主要差异和共同点。有鉴于此，本文为这些国家的成人教育政策提供了详细的历史背景，并阐述了当前的葡萄牙和意大利教育政策议程如何在其民主制度下考虑成人的受教育权。对于批判性分析，我们使用Tomaševski的理论4A框架（主要针对学校环境而构建），并将其应用于成人教育政策。目的是通过民族国家政府采取的政策措施，了解实现成年人受教育权的方法。因此，在欧洲当前变化的背景下，我们将成人教育和学习的可用性，可及性，可接受性和适应性研究作为分析的对象。在新自由主义时代，这种启发式练习对成人教育文献做出了重大贡献。