Individuel aktivering i feltet for det arbejdsmarkedsservicerende arbejde: en historisk konkret analyse af tovtr?kkerierne om og forandringerne i de arbejdsmarkedspolitiske foranstaltninger

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to produce insight into the struggles over the activities of Danish labour-market policy. With inspiration from the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this is done by constructing what is called 'the field of labour-market servicing labour'. This work of construction is done by making visible the different strategies in the field and by showing the changes in the relations of power between the contending positions that these strategies represent. The construction of the field takes its point of departure in an observational study of an activation course held by the Danish labour-association for unskilled workers and financed by the public employment agency. The study is focusing on the relations between the activities of the course and the habitual dispositions of the participants. Thus the first part of the thesis is a presentation of this study, which is done by presenting edited interviews with tree of the participants in the activation course, in an attempt to construct their point of view. Although the course is assumed to focus on a very homogeneous group (unemployed unskilled workers with 'social problems' the tree interviews show that the participants have very different dispositions and therefore have very different ways of perceiving the activities of the course. By constructing their different point of views in relation to the activities different strategies in the field are made visible; a strategy of availability and individual market-competition, a strategy of investment and hierarchical educational advancement and a strategy of collective distribution of jobs and security for the unemployed. And by showing that some of these strategies seam more realistic than others under the present circumstances the current relations of power in the field are made clear. This is also seen by the fact that some of the participants' dispositions are seen as 'valuable properties' in the field wile others are viewed as 'resistance' and 'inflexibility'. Breaking with this individualising understanding of the activities of labour-market policy, the second part of the thesis is an attempt to make visible the struggles over what is 'valuable properties' and 'realistic strategies'. This is done by a more systematic construction for 'the field of labour-market servicing labour' through at historic analysis of the symbolic and organisational struggles over Danish labour-market policy. And the analysis shows the changes that have occurred over the last thirty in the relations of power between the tree major strategies in the field; from the period where the field was dominated by a welfare-orientated strategy of producing a labour-market of security and equality, over a period where the field was dominated by a investment-orientated strategy of producing a labour-market of growth and productivity and towards the present day where the field is being increasingly dominated by a service-orientated strategy of producing a labour-market of self-interest and efficiency. But this analysis is constructed in a way that makes it clear that these changes do not occur by them self. It is shown how the political new right, the association of employers and the bureaucrats of the central administration has united there effort in changing the agenda in the field. And it is shown how they have weakened their traditional opponents in the labour associations and the political centre by producing new principles of vision and division. Furthermore it is emphasised that this new doxa is not just a change of discourse, but also a change in the administrative organisation of the institutions in the field. And that it therefore reproduces its own legitimacy, because it is internalized in the durable dispositions possessed by the agents of the field. This is illustrated by an analysis of the changes in the working conditions of the street level bureaucrats and the change in mental schemata of perception that this produces.