Activation Policies: Potential Enhancement and Factual Restraints of Citizens’ Autonomy

Abstract

The aim of this collective volume was to analyse the overall effect of the ‘activation turn’ on social citizenship. Our starting point was the assumption that activation policies emanate from a normative shift, bringing to the fore a redefinition of the state-citizen relationship, including the attribution of self-responsibility and a new understanding of reciprocity. In this perspective citizens’ employment is considered as the predominating legitimate basis of social security. Policies stemming from the activation paradigm are in most cases not limited to a reform of unemployment protection schemes but include changes in the regulation of labour markets as well as changes in the profile of active labour market policies (access mechanisms, volume and instruments) and their governance and administration. Institutional changes derived from activation reforms permeate several fields of social policy, but they are not necessarily systematically coordinated.