Introduction: Rethinking welfare-to-work for the long-term unemployed

Abstract

Welfare reforms across OECD countries have seen social citizenship rights contractualisedandincreasinglyrepurposedascommodifying ‘tool[s]ofgovernance’ (Patrick,2017: 293) designed to reconfigure people from ‘passive’ benefit recipients into ‘active’ labour market participants. But despite a significant expansion in the groups of citizens targeted for ‘activation’, countries have persistently struggled to support the labour market (re)integration of social groups at risk of long-term unemployment: variously referred to in the social policy literature as social security recipients who are ‘vulnerable’ (Andersen et al., 2017), ‘harder-to-help’ (Whitworth and Carter, 2014: 111), or have ‘multiple problems and needs’ (Dean, 2003).

This themed section brings together contributions from a network of international scholars researching the frontline of welfare reform to examine the ways in which contemporary activation and employability policies impact, and are experienced by...