Towards 'activation-friendly' integration? Assessing the progress of activation policies in six European countries

Over the past decade, we have seen the development of a range of active labour market and social policies. In this article, we present an analytical framework (Activation-Friendly Integration, AFI) in order to analyse these policies through the lens of their integration. AFI provides a synthetic analysis of the nature and intensity of the changes brought about by developments in the fields of employment and social cohesion policies. The core components of AFI are territorialisation, cross-sectoriality, conditionality/individualisation and contractualisation/marketisation. These key concepts are discussed on the basis of six national governance schemes implemented over the last decade, with regard to the levels, dimensions and actors involved. This comparison of French, British, Swedish, German, Italian and Polish activation policies points at a problematic misfit when the public is targeted for activation policies and there is a stronger use of tools for profiling and filtering beneficiaries, a greater reliance on contracting processes and a paradigmatic shift in the conception of welfare states' aims, tools and organisations