Expectations on collaboration between public authorities and civil society organizations (CSOs) have increased in Sweden the past decades, partly due to changes in the organization of welfare ...services. This article investigates a collaborative project within the migrant integration policy area. It is a collaboration between the employment offices in a region of Sweden and local CSOs with the common goal of easing the integration of migrants. Theories about civil society as service providers emphasize a possible added value of these non-statutory services related to CSOs distinct character. This link has seldom been empirically investigated. This article explores the distinctive character and added value of CSOs as they unfold in a collaborative project. Two previous studies were conducted by the researchers and this study is an extrapolation of the results. The analysis shows that discrepancies between CSOs and public authorities related to both ideology and organizational logics can be linked to an added value for the participants of the project. Paradoxically, the tensions and discrepancies enabled activities revolving around a more personal and informal understanding of integration that departed from the government agencies' agenda whilst at the same time being enabled through the collaboration with them.
After a long period of employment growth that led to the lowest unemployment rate since the German reunification, Berlin's labour market is now tightening. Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ...global labour market megatrends such as the automation of production processes and the increasingly advanced digital skills required to perform many jobs pose new challenges to Berlin's policymakers.
The article presents the results of a research project aimed at identifying the impediments to employability of Bolivian immigrants in the city of Buenos Aires in 2015. Qualitative research ...methodologies were used, through interviews and observations carried out in two employment offices: a service linked to the Catholic Church and a municipal employment agency. Employment services are understood as a right, a means of transmitting the rules required to get a job or as a “web platform” to achieve a job. The inputs of the project contribute to the critical reflection of the professionals in charge of managing the social resources of the State.
Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación que pretendía conocer las dificultades para favorecer la inserción laboral de las personas inmigrantes bolivianas en la ciudad de Buenos Aires en 2015. En la investigación se emplearon metodologías cualitativas, con entrevistas y observaciones realizadas en dos oficinas de empleo, en un servicio vinculado con la Iglesia católica y en una oficina municipal de empleo. Se entiende que los servicios de empleo son un derecho, un medio que transmite las reglas que hay que seguir para obtenerlo o una “plataforma web” para lograr obtener un empleo. Los insumos del trabajo aportan a la reflexión crítica de los y las profesionales que administran los recursos sociales del Estado.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the process that occurs within public employment offices (PEOs) and its consequences for unemployed people. Specifically, it analysed some practices ...needed to implement activation programmes developed in some PEO in Lombardy (Italy) and the role of front-line officers, promoting a dialogue between the literature on activation policies on one hand and the literature on street-level bureaucracy on the other.
Design/methodology/approach
The fieldwork has been conducted in Lombardy, which is one of most economically developed areas both in Italy and in Europe. The empirical research integrated quantitative and qualitative research tools; specifically a CATI survey of 994 persons; participant and non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and an analysis of documents in four PEOs.
Findings
The paper describes and analyses both practices needed to implement activation programmes and the perceptions of the social actors (unemployed people and front-line officers) who build and address these practices daily. Specifically, the attention is focussed on the different forms of discretion used by PEOs’ front-line officers and a mix of technical, relational and psychological support received in the PEOs. Moreover, the authors noticed that the front-line officers’ discretion seemed to be more limited in those parts of the activation process in which it should be more relevant, that is, the identification of training courses aimed at increasing unemployed workers’ skills. Notwithstanding these limits, many users expressed positive opinions of these courses, which could be explained by secondary functions of training courses.
Research limitations/implications
The qualitative portion of the fieldwork has limited generalisability because it focussed on few PEOs.
Practical implications
The findings are relevant to policy makers who deal with activation policies and to public and private organisations that implement those policies.
Originality/value
Many studies have analysed the implementation of the welfare-to-work model that has oriented the reforms of labour market activation policies in most countries, focussing on the more tangible outcomes (essentially their efficacy in terms of re-employment rates). A growing stream of recent literature has begun to place more attention on the non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing mainly on countries with quite a long tradition of activation policies while remaining scant in countries where the implementation of activation programmes is still fragmented and more recent (like Italy). This paper aims to begin filling this gap by improving the knowledge on some non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing on user-officer relations and on daily practices in PEOs.
This paper focuses on the differences in the levels of accessibility to public employment offices in the Spanish municipalities. Hence the main purpose is to evaluate the role of the public ...employment services in local labour markets by considering the physical distance to employment offices and the spatial structure of their catchment areas. First, we propose an accessibility measure and, second, we estimate a spatial model and test whether a higher accessibility to employment offices could contribute to reduce local unemployment rates. The results suggest that policy‐makers should strive to improve the accessibility to employment offices so that adequate assistance to find suitable employment may be ensured to every jobseeker.
Resumen
Este artículo se centra en las diferencias en los niveles de accesibilidad a las oficinas públicas de empleo en los municipios españoles. El objetivo principal es por tanto evaluar el papel de los servicios públicos de empleo en los mercados laborales locales, en función de la distancia física a las oficinas de empleo y la estructura espacial de sus zonas de influencia. Primero, se propone una medida de accesibilidad y, a continuación, se estima un modelo espacial y se comprueba si una mayor accesibilidad a las oficinas de empleo podría contribuir a reducir las tasas de desempleo local. Los resultados sugieren que los responsables de formular políticas deberían esforzarse por mejorar la accesibilidad a las oficinas de empleo, a fin de poder asegurar a cada demandante de empleo la ayuda apropiada para que logre encontrar un empleo adecuado.
This article investigates the efficiency of the matching process by panel stochastic frontier estimation of the matching function in Croatia. The empirical analysis is conducted on a regional level ...using regional office-level monthly data obtained from the Croatian Employment Service for 2000–2011. The results suggest that the efficiency of the matching process is rising over time, although with significant regional variations. In order to explore these variations, structural characteristics of the labour market together with some policy variables are included in the second-stage estimation. Various structural variables have different impact on the matching efficiency, while policy variables are mostly positively correlated with it. For instance, both active labour market programs and the number of high-skilled employees in regional employment offices positively affect matching efficiency. Additionally, when regional income per capita is included in the model, it shows positive impact on the matching efficiency, indicating that demand fluctuations predominantly affect the matching process. Finally, in order to get consistent estimates, panel stochastic frontier model transformation is applied. The obtained results show that there is no major difference in estimated mean technical efficiency coefficients in comparison to the original estimation.
In The Poverty of Work, Van Arsdale offers ethnographic and historical accounts of employment agency labor. Employing sixty million temporary workers globally and growing, the case is made for ...rethinking the function of employment agencies and their impact on economic inequality.
Este artículo se propone contribuir a la reflexión sobre la implementación de las políticas nacionales de empleo a nivel municipal. Tiene como objetivo analizar el aporte que realiza el Programa ...Oficinas de Empleo Municipal, del Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social de Argentina, a la inserción laboral de los trabajadores y a la gestión local de las políticas de empleo, en tres municipios, en el período 2005-2010. Con estos casos se pretende mostrar que el Programa Oficinas de Empleo Municipal adapta su funcionamiento a las características de la estructura productiva local, contribuyendo a la intermediación laboral, la mejora de la empleabilidad, la implementación de diversas políticas de empleo y/o la creación y mantenimiento de puestos de trabajo en el sector formal e informal de la economía. Al mismo tiempo, se señalan algunas debilidades en la implementación de la política pública y se formulan algunas recomendaciones.
V článku se zaměřujeme na projevy nejistoty ohledně získání vhodného zaměstnání u různých skupin nezaměstnaných. Využíváme koncept životní situace, s nímž pracujeme v případě deseti náhodně vybraných ...nezaměstnaných registrovaných na úřadu práce ve třech odlišných regionech České republiky. Zajímáme se také o způsoby, jakými úřady práce reagují na tuto nejistotu. Provedené hloubkové rozhovory se 62 nezaměstnanými ukazují, že ve všech třech regionech existují skupiny nezaměstnaných s nízkým nebo vysokým rizikem setrvání v nezaměstnanosti. Z hlediska vztahu mezi úředníky a nezaměstnanými i typu poskytovaných služeb je zřejmé, že sledované úřady práce můžeme podle jejich přístupu označit za byrokraticky, profesionálně nebo byroprofesionálně orientované.
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