Employability: Training as a magic formula for structural unemployment in Flemish community services?!

Neighbourhood and proximity services (NPS) in Flanders are socio-economic initiatives for the activation of the (long-term) unemployed, focussing especially on people from disadvantaged groups. They create a wide range of different services: the maintenance of green public spaces, neighbourhood watches, delivery services, transportation services, social restaurants, child care… In Flemish policy documents NPS’s have three combined functions: : to foster employment of the long term unemployed, to meet needs through the creation of services, and to establish a climate of participation involving the unemployed in the decision making of the service.. Our research has different objectives. A first aim is to clarify howthe different stakeholders (people in poverty, fieldworkers, and policy makers) give meaning to this initiative. A second aim is to deepening an existing theory on ‘restrictive and reflexive activation’ (Weil, Wildemeersch & Jansen, 2005). NPS’s have the ambition to be an alternative to the rather restrictive labour-market oriented activation approachs that nowadays are dominant in Flanders and elsewhere. While struggling to make room for elements of reflexive activation they encounter pressure from an efficiency-driven managerial discourse, which finds its expression inthe restrictive activation discourse. NPS’s are inceasingly requested to account for their activities on the basis perfomance indicators with regard to the employment of their clients ). NPS’s also have the ambition to create a base of democratic citizenship through experiences of participation. This function is aimed at improvingthe quality of life in neighbourhoods that are considered to lack social cohesion.Also here the results should be accounted for in quantitave terms, however difficult this is., . Participatory observation in the NPS practices was one of the main strategies to collect empirical data. During the data collection and interpretation, several fields of tension were identified in collaboration with the professionals involved in the NPS’s. First, we identified the classical tension between achieving better results through participation (participation as an instrument) and creating a forum for democratic decision making (participation as a goal in itself). Second, we discussed the tension between constrained labour-market oriention towards ‘employment’ and a wider, more comprehensive definition of work and engagement. Finally we identified a tension between ‘efficiency’ on the one hand and ‘proximity’ on the other hand. The professionals involved try to make room an their alternative discourse of reflexive activation.status: publishe