Overview

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 organisations. 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 sediment 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 job centres.

Full Product Details

9781447349969

Table of Contents

Reviews

In this well researched and theoretically sophisticated book, Magnus Paulsen Hansen sheds new and important light on the moral economy of activation. Daniel Beland, McGill University

In this well researched and theoretically sophisticated book, Magnus Paulsen Hansen sheds new and important light on the moral economy of activation. Daniel Beland, McGill University This book is an absolutely necessary and vital contribution to comparative and cross-national study into how social policy, obsessed by the idea of activation, became mired in a detailed moralisation of those who are among the most vulnerable to the vagaries of contemporary capitalism, the unemployed. Mitchell Dean, Copenhagen Business School Drawing on French pragmatism in a highly original way, Hansen is able to nuance and shed new light on activation research as we know it. A most welcome contribution! Kerstin Jacobsson, University of Gothenburg

Author Information

Magnus Paulsen Hansen is Assistant Professor of Political Sociology at Roskilde University. He specializes in the role of ideas and evaluation in the legitimation of welfare state transformations.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available