“Active social policy and labour market integration in the digital era”
Guest editors: Didier Didier Demazière (Sciences Po Paris), Minna van Gerven (University of Helsinki), Magnus Paulsen Hansen (Roskilde University), Stefano Sacchi (Polytechnic University of Turin)
The role played by digitalisation in the design and delivery of social policies is fast becoming beyond dispute (Van Gerven, 2022). One key area in which digital welfare states are emerging are the systems of welfare administration designed to promote labour market integration (Bonoli, 2013; Clasen & Mascaro, 2022). The governance of active social policy strongly relies on digital data and technologies to process entitlement to social benefits and services and to make this conditional on quid pro quos such as active job search (Watts & Fitzpatrick, 2018; Dwyer, 2019). As a main thrust (Hansen, 2019), the digital assessment of access, effort and merit (Knotz, 2018) is also supported by New Public Management-inspired reforms oriented towards standardisation, cost reduction and the search for efficiency and efficacy (Brodkin & Marston, 2013).
Digitalisation has been playing an active role in these developments since the mid-1990s. It has accelerated the shift from passive to active social policy by for example enabling profiling methods designed to calculate the risk of long-term unemployment for each jobseeker (Grundy, 2015). These methods increasingly adopt artificial intelligence and big data technologies (Desiere & Struyven, 2021). User profiling through big-data analysis and inference techniques opens up the way to the introduction of new, highly customised and personalised services. At the same time, it raises concerns regarding both privacy and individual autonomy, with a major impact on the balance between surveillance and the fundamental freedoms of participants (Forgó et al., 2017) as well as between automated decision-making and caseworker discretion.
More generally, digitalisation and activation policies coincide in the development of digital administrations introducing job matching tools, automated decision-making and digital support for caseworkers, digital meetings and training, as well as platforms for logging and documentation purposes that are designed to hold both clients and service providers accountable (Hansen et al., 2018; Hardill & O’Sullivan, 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this trend, closing face-to-face administrative services and restricting direct contact (Scarano & Colfer, 2022).
This special issue aims to shed light on how digitalisation (including e-government, digital welfare and services and data-driven decision-making) is affecting labour market integration policies and services, as well as the nature and pervasiveness of this impact on their various components. These include the work of frontline professionals, the relational component of the service, (in)equalities of treatment, and more broadly, the symbolic and political status of social protection and welfare in the digitalisation process. In particular, we want to elicit and select contributions linking theoretical and empirical approaches that are related to the changes brought about by digitalisation at the institutional, organisational, and normative level of active social and labour market policies and integration.
This involves organisational changes that affect public services in terms of the contribution made by frontline professionals (in employment and social services, in charge of benefit administration,) to the integration of unemployed people into the labour market. The progress of digital administration does undoubtedly have direct consequences for the position of street-level bureaucrats within it (Jansson & Erlingsson, 2014). However, more research is needed on what digitalisation consists of – both in daily routines, and in the overall organisation of service provision. Following Wessel et al. (2021), our special
issue aims to assess how digitalisation brings about ‘digital transformation’, i.e. whether and how digital technologies are shaping not only standard operating procedures and organisational processes but also the very identity of service organisations.
The special issue is particularly focused in empirical studies on the following issues:
- As digitalisation certainly gives rise to changes in both the management and the delivery of benefits and services, does it strengthen pre-existing organisational arrangements and practices, or does it drive an explicit redefinition of the identity and core values that characterise active social policies and labour market integration?
- More fundamentally, does digitalisation affect the core values and functions of the welfare state, equality, inclusion and social protection? Or does it accommodate deeper societal transformation, led by the values and norms associated with austerity (Allhutter et al. 2020)? What potential do digital technologies have to disrupt not only the basic solidarity and trust at the core of the welfare state, but also the social contract it underpins (Iversen & Rehm 2022)?
- How does digitalisation transform the role, tasks and professional identities of street-level bureaucrats?
- What are the ‘administrative burdens’ on users of digitalized public services (Larsson, 2022; Madsen et al., 2022) and what are the consequences (in terms of, for example, the autonomy and discretion of public service) for relations with front-line professionals?
- What impact does digitalisation have on universality of access and potential discrimination against users? Does it entail wider and easier access to public service, improving social rights and equality? Or does it give rise to systematic bias, unequal treatment of citizens, and discriminatory impacts?
- What are the effects of digitalisation on the most vulnerable and the low skilled? Is there a risk of a ‘Matthew effect’ in accessing and using ALMP, which may disproportionately benefit those already more likely to be re-employed to the detriment of those who need it most (Bonoli & Liechti, 2018)?
- The digital divide concerns access to the internet and connected devices, as well as user skills and application proficiency (Hargittai, 2002; Helsper, 2021). In widening this digital divide, does digitalisation of welfare services also exacerbate the social divide?
The special issue invites papers addressing any of these questions from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, covering empirical cases across and beyond Europe. Submitted papers should be in line with the JESP’s aims and scope and should contribute to understanding and knowledge in the field. Scholarly papers which integrate innovative theoretical insights and rigorous empirical analysis are particularly welcome, as well as those which use or develop new methodological approaches. Cross-national comparative papers are expected, but single case studies can be accepted if they make a strong theoretical contribution of relevance to the international social policy community.
Please consult JESP aims and scope here https://journals.sagepub.com/aims-scope/ESP
Abstracts must be submitted to JESP by 1 August 2023.
Abstracts should be max 1,500 words in length (excluding references). They should include the main research question(s), the contribution to the literature, the research design and methods used, and its salient results. They should be submitted as an email attachment to editors@jesp.eu.
The selected contributors will be notified by 1 September 2023.
Final papers must be delivered by 31 December 2023, after which they will undergo the regular peer review process. The special issue is aimed to be published in 2025.
jesp.eu 