Introduction

Recent developments in European social and employment policy represent fluid and contradictory conditions and trends for street-level practice in employment-related services. This chapter addresses these issues in three different European contexts: Italy, Austria and Denmark. The chapter is based mainly on two separate studies, one covering street-level work in the employment services in Vienna and Milan, the other covering a variety of Danish municipal jobcentres. The aim of the chapter is to discuss the challenges for street-level, employment-oriented work, including the question of the relevance of professional knowledge and practice, with reference to similarities and differences between the three European contexts mentioned. The chapter is theoretically framed by a street-level bureaucracy perspective (Lipsky, 2010), highlighting the important role of street-level workers whose interactions and uses of discretion on the front line of employment-related services make a significant contribution to employment policy implementation.

Developments in European social and employment policy represent a shift from a ‘one size fits all’ welfare state towards more decentred and individualised forms of welfare state intervention (Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer, 2004; Heidenreich and Aurich Beerheide, 2014). In this context, factors related to the operational side of policy, including frontline practice in employment-related services, are increasingly taken into account (Brodkin and Marston, 2013). The day-to-day operation of the activating welfare state strongly relies on the changed interaction at the front line of services (Meyers et al, 1998; McDonald and Marston, 2005) and the call for tailormade services implies a stronger and more discretionary role for front-line practitioners (van Berkel et al, 2010). However, complexities and professional boundaries in the street-level implementation of employment policy still need to be better explored in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the ambiguities and contradictions of activation eventually unfold in practice and of how practitioners move between the de-professionalised, administrative routines on the one hand and the demands of professional practice on the other.

These questions are even more topical as professional work in public welfare services is generally challenged (Noordegraaf and Steijn, 2013). Professions once perceived as agents in the establishment and further development of the welfare state have been increasingly under pressure and their knowledge base represents a challenge to policy developments.