A New approach to Helping the hard-to-place Unemployed
| Author | Dorte Caswell,Flemming Larsen,Niklas A. Andersen |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1388262717745193 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJSS
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2017, Vol. 19(4) 335–352
A New approach to Helping
ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1388262717745193
The promise of developing new
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knowledge in an interactive
and collaborative process
Niklas A. Andersen
Aalborg University, Denmark
Dorte Caswell
Aalborg University, Denmark
Flemming Larsen
Aalborg University, Denmark
Abstract
The reforms of the social and employment services that have swept across most of the developed
world since the 1990s have enormously expanded the groups of citizens receiving active
employment measures. Nevertheless, up until now, most countries have only seen limited results
from enhancing the labour market participation of the most vulnerable groups. We argue that the
goal of including a greater share of the harder-to-place unemployed in the labour market is not
likely to be achieved through the tried and tested ways of developing knowledge, policy and
practice. Rather, we propose a different approach to generating and exchanging the necessary
knowledge for developing active employment policy and practice. As an alternative to the
evidence-based knowledge paradigm, we set up a model for knowledge production that is made
through co-operation between practice and research. This model investigates the potential for
integrated services and for co-production by acknowledging the importance of the experiences of
frontline professionals and clients in developing employment services.
Keywords
employment policy and services, evidence-based practice, vulnerable unemployed, innovation,
knowledge-production
Corresponding author:
Flemming Larsen, Department of Political Science, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 1, 9220 Aalborg.
E-mail: flemlar@dps.aau.dk
336
European Journal of Social Security 19(4)
Introduction
The development of active employment policies and the governance systems supporting them in
Denmark, as well as in many other countries, pose a substantial societal challenge when it comes to
enhancing employment for the most vulnerable unemployed.1 The research on active employment
policies and measures is increasingly modelled on the ideals of evidence-based knowledge, which
entails a somewhat reductionist view on the problems experienced by this group of unemployed
people. Until now, evidence-based knowledge has mainly been concerned with the effects of active
employment policies and measures on the unemployed with few problems besides their unem-
ployment. Nevertheless, this knowledge has, to a large degree, been used to develop policy
measures and reforms for a wider and more heterogeneous group of unemployed people. The
concerns of this article are, therefore, to propose a research agenda that will help to solve the
societal challenge posed by the most vulnerable unemployed. This is done by developing a con-
ceptual framework in which the success (or lack thereof) of the employment services for the
vulnerable unemployed is developed through a complex interplay of institutional, organisational
and client-specific contexts, and where evidence-based knowledge promoted by the scientific
community does not replace or subvert the (often tacit) knowledge of frontline personnel.
There are many arguments for giving the most vulnerable unemployed political priority, rang-
ing from the competitive argument for enhancing employment to maintain economic sustainability
in the welfare state to the social argument of giving vulnerable citizens a meaningful life. The
political attraction of this challenge has been accentuated because of the limited success so far in
increasing employment for this group of vulnerable unemployed clients. If we look at the devel-
opment since the beginning of the millennium across different types of welfare state, even in those
countries with high employment rates in northern Europe, a consistent rate of 15 to 25 per cent of
the population of working age are placed outside the labour market with no chance of gaining
employment in the foreseeable future (Bredgaard et al., 2015).2 The most popular political
response to this challenge is to be found in welfare-to-work, or activation policies, that have swept
across the western world in the last two decades. Although there is considerable debate on how
these policies should be defined, which partly reflects the debates about varieties of activation (see
Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer, 2004; Heidenreich and Rice, 2016), the consequences of these
policy reforms can be seen in the strengthened conditionality of benefit entitlements and in the
activation obligations of benefit recipients (Van Berkel et al., 2017). The political solution has
mainly been to transfer the more disciplinary and regulatory approach used for the easier-to-place
unemployed to the harder-to-place and more vulnerable unemployed. Thus, there has been a
considerable broadening of the target group for welfare-to-work and activation policies. The
preferred knowledge documenting the effects of this approach and legitimating it, has placed
evidence-based studies – defined as studies conducted by Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT)
or other (quasi) experimental methods – at the top of the knowledge hierarchy. However, this poses
1. We define the vulnerable unemployed as recipients of social assistances with extensive problems in addition to
unemployment that hinder them from securing a job. These problems are typically of a social, psychological and/or
physical nature, which make it unlikely that these social assistance recipients will obtain regular employment in the
foreseeable future.
2. These comparative data are drawn from OECD statistics on ‘inactive citizens’. As the OECD definition includes stay-at-
home men/women and students but excludes people on in-work benefits, it is likely that the group of vulnerable citizens
outside the labour market is a bit smaller, at around 15 to 20 per cent of the working age population.
Andersen et al.
337
a problem as reviews of this knowledge base indicate that the bulk of these studies focus on the
easier-to-place unemployed while there have been few studies of the more vulnerable groups of
unemployed (Danneris, 2016). The transfer of evidence-based knowledge from easy-to-place
unemployed to vulnerable unemployed rests on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that disregards the
specific problems and challenges faced by the vulnerable unemployed (Ibid.).
The success of this strategy for enhancing the employment of the vulnerable unemployed
has, so far, been limited, as shown by the fact that the percentage of vulnerable unemployed
across European welfare states has not declined (Bredgaard et al., 2015). The starting point
for this article is therefore the need to address some of the blind spots in the dominant ways
of producing and disseminating knowledge of labour market policies. In our experience of
undertaking research in the field of labour market policies and practices, we have witnessed
an increasing mismatch between the mainstream scientific research agendas and the actual
challenges facing ‘street-level organisations’ (SLOs) responsible for delivering active
employment services. The goal of this article is therefore to propose a new direction for
research that prove to be innovative in the field of labour market participation for vulner-
able groups in society. We especially address the following two issues within the current
research agenda:
1.
The sharp division of research between studies of formal policies and studies of the
contexts in which frontline workers and clients navigate.
So far both empirical and theoretical research have tended to pursue a one-sided insti-
tutional focus on either policy content (policy, programmes and services) or on the govern-
ance of policy (implementation, management, and organisation). The increasing
interdependence between ways of doing policy and policy delivery makes this academic
division of research increasingly problematic (see, for example, Borghi and Van Berkel,
2007; Brodkin, 2013; Larsen, 2013). Furthermore, the client perspective is paid surprisingly
limited attention in research on the policy and governance of activation services. Combining
a policy perspective with an institutional perspective and a client perspective may therefore
have positive potential for developing knowledge that can improve the labour market par-
ticipation of the vulnerable unemployed.
2.
The one-sided knowledge production and how it is applied in policymaking and everyday
practices.
The rise of evidence-based policy and practices in the areas of employment and social services
during the last decade has illustrated a stark contrast between the knowledge that frontline pro-
fessionals find useful in their everyday interaction with clients and the evidence-based knowledge
disseminated by central administration and politicians (see, for example, Diaz and Drewery, 2016;
Krejsler, 2013; Petersen and Olsson 2015).
To illustrate our alternative approach to studying the employment services, we use examples
from recent developments in Denmark. Denmark constitutes an exemplary case being one of the
world’s top spenders on welfare-to-work and activation policies as well as a country that has had
limited success in relation to enhancing the employment of vulnerable groups. Despite numerous
policy reforms and a complete revamp of the governance structure of the employment services,
around 15 per cent of the population of...
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