Activation policies which promote and enforce labour market participation continue to proliferate in Europe and constitute the reform blueprint from centre-left to centre-right, as well as for most international organizations. Through an in-depth study of four major reforms in Denmark and France, this book maps how co-existing ideas are mobilised to justify, criticise and reach activation compromises and how their morality sediments into the instruments governing the unemployed. By rethinking the role of ideas and morality in policy changes, this book illustrates how the moral economy of activation leads to a permanent behaviourist testing of the unemployed in public debate as well as in local jobcentres.
Table of Content
The active turn(s);
PART I: MODELLING;
Tests, compromises and policy change;
Cities of unemployment;
PART II: ACTIVATION REFORMS;
From looking backwards to forwards;
Turning solutions into ‘structural’ problems;
Testing thresholds;
Intimate scandals;
PART III: PATTERNS;
Chemotherapy;
Infinite testing.
About the author
Magnus Paulsen Hansen is an assistant professor of political sociology at Roskilde University. He specializes in the role of ideas and evaluation in the legitimation of welfare state transformations.
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