The street-level activation of the unemployed remote and very remote from the labour market: The Dutch case

Abstract

This chapter focuses on activation support offered to Dutch social assistance recipients considered remote or very remote from the labour market. As a consequence of several policy reforms, social assistance recipients remote and very remote from the labour market have become more similar in terms of the importance formal policies attach to their activation and in terms of the pressure exerted on them to promote participation. But welfare-to-work practices look quite different for both groups: the activation of unemployed people remote from the labour market is given priority. The chapter argues that frontline welfare-to-work practices are influenced by a complex set of context factors, that these factors include but are not limited to formal policies, and that they shape frontline practices that ‘redefine’ social policies in a way for which no explicit justification can be found in those policies.