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The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories — forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.

Preface -- The frontline delivery of welfare-to-work in context / Dorte Caswell, Peter Kupka, Flemming Larsen and Rik van Berkel -- State of the art in frontline studies of welfare-to-work : a literature review / Rik van Berkel -- Street-level organizations and us workfare : insights for policy and theory / Evelyn Z. Brodkin -- Activation in the UK : the front line and the "black box" of employment service provision / Roy Sainsbury -- Back-to-work services in france and the flexibility edict / Lynda Lavitry -- Activation "made in Germany" : welfare-to-work services under "social code II" / Peter Kupka nd Christopher Osiander -- On the frontline of public employment services in Austria and Italy : which professionalism for which practices? / Urban Nothdurfter -- Activation work within the social welfare system : the case of Poland / Tomasz Kazmierczak and Marek Rymsza -- The street-level activation of the unemployed remote and very remote from the labour market : the Dutch case / Rik van Berkel -- Frontline work in the delivery of Danish activation policies : and how governance, organizational and occupational contexts shape this / Dorte Caswell and Flemming Larsen -- Conclusions and topics for future research / Dorte Caswell, Flemming Larsen, Rik van Berkel and Peter Kupka -- Index

This book brings together contributions from a range of social welfare settings, including child welfare, unemployment, mental health and substance abuse treatment, to examine how interprofessional collaboration and service user participation are realised or challenged in multi-agency meetings. It provides empirically grounded analyses of specific aspects of multi-agency work and offers a distinctive conceptual framework for understanding and analysing interaction during meetings in various social welfare settings. Based on audio and video recordings, the authors provide clear examples of actual practices of social welfare professionals and demonstrate how the realisation of collaborative and integrated welfare policy is contingent on effective interactional practices between professionals and service users