Unemployed citizen or ‘at risk’ client? Classification systems and employment services in Denmark and Australia

Abstract

The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories — forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.

The Darker Side of Integration Policy

“…The idea of the active society is that exclusion from the labor market can be avoided through social and cultural investment (Caswell, Marston, & Elm Larsen, 2010). In Sweden, this idea manifests itself in a push for cultural and social investment to counteract the exclusion of marginalized groups from the labor market.…”

Street-Level Bureaucrats and the Welfare State

“…Fifth, the outcome of the caseworker-client interaction will depend to a considerable degree on the range of discretion granted to the caseworkers by the middle management, which in turn is highly contingent on the degree to which the middle management is made responsible for aggregate casework outcomes by the top management (Lipsky, 1991, p. 215). Finally, organizations use both computerized classification tools and conversation guidelines for assessing clients' needs or readiness to work as a means to structure the caseworker-client interaction, eliminating certain client concerns as "irrelevant" from the conversation and thereby redefining the client's life conditions in a way that matches the institutional prerequisites of the organization (Caswell, Marston, & Larsen, 2010).…”

Dualising activation. Responses to unemployment and mental health-related disability retirement in Finland at the turn of the millennium

“…(Cf. Taylor-Gooby 2008;Caswell et al 2010;Jenson 2012;Morel et al 2012. ) As well as emphasising the importance of understanding the abovementioned division between these two types of activation measures, our analysis will also question the observation that activation necessarily improves the economy or helps the unemployed (e.g.…”

“…The results of the analysis presented in this paper are more in line with interpretations arguing that the practised activation measures may further marginalise the 'activated' (Gallie 2004;Elm Larsen 2005;Holmqvist 2010;Blasco and Rosholm 2011). Correspondingly, the measures have been criticised for (a) tending to concentrate on 'activation' operations instead of helping the unemployed find work (Haikkola 2015), (b) perceiving the main problem to be the benefit claimants themselves rather than their unemployment, (c) being unable to tackle insider-outsider divisions, and (d) embodying a generally neoliberal agenda (Clarke 2005;Bambra and Smith 2010;Caswell et al 2010;Kananen 2012).…”