Activation in social work with social assistance claimants in four Swedish municipalities

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practice of activation in social work with social assistance claimants in four Swedish municipalities. Since the 1990s, social policies across the OECD countries have stressed activation as society's main tool to (re-)integrate unemployed SA claimants into the labour market. Two diverging activation models, the Labour Market Attachment model (with a focus on quick job entry) and the Human Resource Development model (with a focus on claimants’ resources), constitute the analytical framework. Social workers were interviewed retrospectively about activation during one year in a random sample of 372 social assistance claimants’ cases. Findings suggest that the extent of activation varies significantly between municipalities, from 20% to 60%. There was no distinct alignment toward the Labour Market Attachment or Human Resource Development models in the municipalities’ activation. Irrespective of work- or resource-orientation in the activation programmes, participation was for the most part obligatory and the participants were facing sanctions.