Unemployed citizen or 'at risk' client? Classification systems and employment services in Denmark and Australia

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories – forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.
Original languageEnglish
JournalCritical Social Policy
Volume30
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)384-404
Number of pages21
ISSN0261-0183
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010

ID: 21610137