Vando Borghi

Individualised service provision in an era of activation and new governance

Purpose – This article aims to discuss the individualisation trend in the provision of social services, focusing on activation services specifically.Design/methodology/approach – The individualisation trend in the provision of activation services is analysed against the background of public sector as well as social sector as well as social policy reforms: the introduction of new modes of governance and the rise of the active welfare state respectively.Findings – Concrete manifestations of individualised service provision are often based on various interpretations of individualisation and reflect different meanings of citizens’ participation, and refer to different modes – or rather, mixes of different modes – of governance. The general argument of the article is illustrated and elaborated by analysing three national case studies of individualised service provision in the context of activation: the UK, The Netherlands and Finland.Originality/value – The trend that is analysed in the article – individualise...

Review article: the governance of activation

This article presents a review of relevant literature on the issue of the governance of activation. The article starts with some general comments on the state of the art of research on the governance of activation. Putting governance into practice in new service provision models in the policy areas of activation and social policy, the review continues with a discussion of publications on some of the characteristics of these models: marketisation, decentralisation, inter-agency cooperation and individualisation of service provision. It also looks at literature on the implementation of activation, as this provides insight into governance issues from an organisational and street-level perspective.

New modes of governance in activation policies

Purpose – This editorial aims to introduce the first of a set of two special issues on New modes of governance in activation policies.Design/methodology/approach – The article explores the concept of governance, distinguishing a broad and more narrow use of the concept. Then, it argues that issues of governance should be an integral part of studies of welfare state transformations. Not in the last instance, because governance reforms do have an impact on the content of social policies and social services such as activation. The article continues by discussing three models of the provision of social services.Findings – The article states that the development of the modes of governance in activation in various countries reveals that a mix of service provision models is being used.Originality/value – The article introduces the articles of the special issue.

Contextualising new modes of governance in activation policies

Purpose – The first part of the paper aimed to interpret the changes addressed by the concepts of governance and activation in their context, in order to grasp the larger picture of the societal transformation underlying them: the starting point is the assumption that new modes of governance in activation policies are a fruitful entry point for effectively understanding deep waves of change of contemporary society. The second part aims to briefly introduce the papers included in this issue.Design/methodology/approach – The paper insists on a perspective according to which there are two main dimension characterising the context of addressed transformations: the paradoxical torsion of the historical process of individualisation in the new spirit of capitalism; the profound redesign of the institutional programme, implying a new horizon for the instances of publicness.Findings – Different and contradictory trends are pointed out in the actual pursuing of objectives of governance and activation, as far as the...

I capricci della merce : produzione di merci come produzione di rapporti sociali

Karl Marx, in un contesto sociale a dire il vero molto diverso da quello presente, ha dimostrato come il processo di produzione delle merci e, allo stesso tempo, anche un processo di (ri)produzione sociale; un processo in cui non solo le merci, ma anche i rapporti sociali, sono continuamente prodotti in una forma adeguata allo stesso sviluppo capitalistico. Il saggio parte dalla considerazione che questa certamente ancora oggi valida assunzione, deve pero essere interpretata alla luce di due principali metamorfosi: da un lato la dicotomia tra produzione e consumo non puo piu essere considerata in modo cosi netto e radicale (come invece in una considerevole parte delle interpretazioni di origine marxista); dall’altro lato il fatto che le nuove catene di produzione globale del valore coinvolgono, sempre piu direttamente, nuove risorse che riguardano le facolta umane fondamentali (lingua, comunicazione, socievolezza, capacita cognitive e simboliche, capacita sociali, ecc.). Alla fine del saggio, ci si propone inoltre di evidenziare alcune contraddizioni che i piu recenti sviluppi della relazione tra merci e rapporti sociali di produzione stanno causando in termini di rischio di auto-distruzione delle basi morali del capitalismo e di persistenza e crescita di rilevanza economica di pratiche di lavoro che cercano di evitare, come modalita intrinseca della loro organizzazione, l’esercizio dello sfruttamento capitalistico.

Empirical analysis of the risk of social exclusion of long-term unemployed young people in Italy

The general state of youth unemployment in Italy may be summarised as follows2: Table I-1 Youth unemployment figures in Italy 1985 1992 1995 1996 1997 youth unemployment rate (15–29) 23.9 21.0 25.0 25.7 26.1* youth unemployment/ total unemployed 76.6 69.1 61.3 60.7 60.8 long-term youth unemployment/youth unemployment 69.3 56.8 64.2 65.7 67.0 Source: Eurostat: in the 1985 figures for unemployment rates, subjects 14 years old and over were still included. *Istat.

Youth Unemployment and Health in Italy

The present report2 will give an overview of the issue of unemployment and specifically youth unemployment in Italy, followed by an analysis of the available research on the correlation between youth unemployment and health. It is necessary to bear in mind that until now the latter aspect has not received much attention both on a theoretical and empirical level. Therefore, the analysis will also incorporate additional useful data linked only indirectly with the subject of this report in order to understand how the condition of exclusion from work can affect the state of health of young persons in Italy.

Youth Unemployment and Social Exclusion in Italy

In order to correctly analyse the different aspects that characterise unemployment, and youth unemployment in particular, we need to start from the criteria which underlie the definition of unemployment according to the official survey criteria. From the 1950s onwards, the Central Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) has conducted what can be defined as the primary source of statistical data on employment and unemployment in Italy, namely the Rilevazione trimestrale delle forze di lavoro (Quarterly Survey of the Labour Force). This sample survey is subdivided into two parts2: 1,318 city councils (a stratified sample based on the principle of demographic width), and families (in 1997 around 70,000 families; that is, almost 200,000 persons). Among the several labour market indicators that exist, those of most interest from the point of view of this report are the following: a) unemployed persons (i.e., persons who have lost their job), persons seeking their first job, and other persons seeking a job; b) unemployed persons aged 15 years3 or older who lost a previous subordinate job due to dismissal, end of a temporary job, or resignation; they had not worked in the reference week and claimed that 1) they were looking for subordinate work and were immediately available for work, or that 2) after the work survey they were going to start a subordinate job which they had already found, or that 3) after the work survey they were going to start a new activity and had already procured all the necessary means to carry out this activity; c) persons seeking their first job: people aged 15 years or over who had never worked, or who had been self-employed, or who had decided to stop working for a period of at least one year, finding themselves in one of the positions 1–3 listed under unemployed persons (Starting from 1992, in order to make surveys conform as much as possible to the Eurostat indicators, the definition “persons seeking their first job” was limited to all those who had actively looked for a job within the 30-day period prior to the interview; d) other persons seeking a job: persons aged 15 years or over who declared themselves as not being part of the labour force (such as housewives, students and retired persons), but who were in fact seeking a job and were immediately available for work. This group also includes those who, even if they satisfied some of the previously described conditions for unemployed persons seeking a first job (see conditions outlined under group c), had not yet arranged all the things they needed to be able to look for a job, as well as those who declared themselves to be unemployed for reasons other than dismissal, end of a temporary job, or resignation.