Europeanisation through elective affinities: Active social policy model and national control policies of the unemployed. GSPE Working Paper 05/05/2009

Dubois, Vincent. (2009) Europeanisation through elective affinities: Active social policy model and national control policies of the unemployed. GSPE Working Paper 05/05/2009. [Working Paper] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The increasing control of the unemployed observed since the late 1990s in Western countries raises two questions. How did control, both a long-time practice and a marginal one in employment policies, become a major issue? Why do national policies on employment benefits converge on the issue, even though the EU has no direct competences in the matter? Three levels of analysis are explored in order to answer these questions. First, the historical evolutions that have affected unemployment and its public treatment are studied, and specifically the process of desobjectivation of unemployment and the development of increasingly unfavourable socio-political power relations for the unemployed. Then, the focus is placed on the establishment of elective affinities, in Max Weber’s meaning, between the active social state model promoted at supranational level and the rigorist orientations of the management of the unemployed at national level. Eventually, using the French case, the analysis of the uses of international comparisons shows how policies underpinned by national logics can have European tendencies that in return, they contribute to fulfil.

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