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The Role of Civil Society Organizations in the Field of Unemployment: For or by the Unemployed?

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Modernizing Democracy

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Abstract

This chapter critically discusses the capacity of civil society organizations to keep unemployed people engaged with their social environments through a range of activities. Contrary to normative assumptions of civil society, the data presented in the chapter reveal a civil society made of professionalized organizations treating the unemployed as clients rather than as members or constituencies. The chapter is based on data collected through an organizational survey across seven European cities: Cologne, Geneva, Karlstad, Kielce, Lisbon, Lyon, and Turin as part of a larger research on youth unemployment funded by the European Union.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although the focus of this chapter is on organizations and how they are capable of engaging constituencies or members (in our case unemployed people) through various activities, individuals’ participation in civil society has also been affected by changes having occurred at the individual level. As shown by various scholars (e.g., Putnam 2000; Wuthnow 1998), a combination of social and individual sociodemographic changes have modified the way people perceive and experience participation in groups and associations. In this chapter, however, I shall focus on the meso (organizational) level only and as such I will not discuss these individual level-related changes.

  2. 2.

    YOUNEX, grant agreement n. 216122.

  3. 3.

    In the Younex project, and as a consequence also in this chapter, the concept of “civil society” has been used in an inclusive sense applying it to a range of societal organizations (including trade unions and political parties). The acronym CSOs is used in this chapter with reference to such a range of diverse societal organizations.

  4. 4.

    However, in some countries, such as Sweden, for-profit organizations play a crucial role in addressing unemployment issues at a local level; hence, the Swedish team’s decision to include for-profit organizations in their survey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Simone Baglioni

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  1. Simone Baglioni
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Correspondence to Simone Baglioni .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Münster, Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Matthias Freise

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Thorsten Hallmann

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Baglioni, S. (2014). The Role of Civil Society Organizations in the Field of Unemployment: For or by the Unemployed?. In: Freise, M., Hallmann, T. (eds) Modernizing Democracy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0485-3_13

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