Human capital approach in terms of the CA

As the chapter has illustrated, the participants strongly associate the value of the self to employability. The participants reproduce the employability discourses by resorting to descriptions of their value with regard to their conception of the labor market situation as well as focusing on personal aptitudes, skills and weaknesses. Worth noting here is that the institutional context, in which such discourses have taken effect has most likely had an influence on the way the participants express themselves. Hence, interviews conducted in another context might have differed to some degree. Due to the contextual effects (and to the general aims of discourse analysis), the aim of the chapter is not to analyze to what degree such discourses have been internalized by the actors or to what degree they have shaped their identities. Rather, the aim is to describe the institutional discourses of activation as they are reproduced by the stakeholders.

The focus on employability is developed within discourses on the problematic and active client that simultaneously illustrate the troubles that the individuals are facing and their motivation to overcome them. In the political field, employability refers to the requirements directed at the individuals to maintain their professional competitiveness and illustrates a shift from demand-side policies focusing on lack of employment to promoting full employability by supply-side policies (Weichold 2009). With these policies, individuals and their employability become the focus as opposed to the systemic view of the demand- side policies.

The high focus on participants' employability in terms of skill formation implies the adoption of the human capital approach of the program. Human capital refers to the general perception of labor as an investment principally by means of education and skill formation, which is seen as central for economic success in the information economy (Giddens 2000). The discourses on human worth as something accumulating as the skills and aptitudes of the individual increase over time entail a social investment state (Giddens 1998). As already noted, this investment logic leads to the perception of individuals as instruments for enhancing economic growth. Social expenditure as an investment on human capital, thus, means a logic that reproduces the necessity of productivity by the employees. Social rights in the Anglo-Saxon conception of citizenship depend on active participation in the market economy. The notions of social rights and citizenship entail an idea of 'market' citizens whose work gives a political legitimacy for social protection and for participation in collective decision making in terms of social protection (Salais 2011).

The labor market logic in SeMo gives indications of the human capital approach by its high concentration on the development of features within the participants

that increase their employability by participating in a labor market measure. The 'educational/social' strategies in the program are mainly focused on the problematic issues of the individuals that specifically inhibit their integration into the labor market, by removing these obstacles. Instead, the employment strategies aim at directly enhancing skills and affecting those features that need to be improved for the realization of integration aims. The logic is further strengthened by work pervasiveness that views human value solely from the perspective of their worth as employees, which is determined by the economic revenue they are able to produce. This value is significantly decreased in unemployment where the individual becomes a burden to the society.

Moreover, the focus of SeMoNord on productive activities brings a flavor to the human capital perspective by the construction of the simulated employee as a participant in a simulated enterprise. The labor market logic of the program goes in line with the current trends of marketization of public services. The market actors are now increasingly involved in the provision of social services, emphasizing the factors of output, outcome and performance and introducing market mechanisms in service provision. The main aim with this logic is higher expectations of efficacy and quality of services (Van Berkel and Valkenburg 2007). As the market logic normally refers to the co-operation of the private sector with public services, in the case of the particular SeMo, the logic starts from within the service by marketization of the organization itself, creating a new emphasis on social and educational work. With such a perspective the participants are given an illustration of productive labor market, of which they are not yet a part. The implications of such reproduction of reality can be seen as a higher tendency of the participants to strive for profit based activities and professions as well as their self-image as an instrument for the societal aims for economic growth. The related discourses constructing an active and motivated client highlight the specific image promoted by the human capital approach of the individual responsible for increasing their employability.

By focusing on individual competencies, the human capital approach attempts to increase the appeal of the job seeker for an employer. This perspective differs from workfare policies in that it promotes skill formation rather than the low costs of labor as a leading strategy in inducing the employers' will to hire and keep employees (Bonvin and Moachon 2008). While the workfare logic does get a share in SeMo, the creation of schemes increasing the employability by means of supply-side policies is overwhelming. The low focus on demand-side policies becomes evident in the normative discursive climate at the implementation level of SeMo supporting adaptation of the individual to the labor market demands.

This is the subject of the next chapter that will discuss it in more detail. However, the discourses relying on individual responsibility described earlier also illustrate the high degree to which finding an apprenticeship in the end is a task left to the individual herself. The constant references to individual aptitude and the demands for their adaptation to labor market needs illustrates the responsibility of the individuals to fulfill their part of the contract.

From the capability approach perspective the simplistic understanding of employability implied by the human capital approach can be criticized precisely because it conceives individuals as means to increase economic productivity.

Instead, the CA perspective effectively promotes the value of a human being as

an end per se (Sen 1999). Economic development from the CA point-of-view is seen as a means rather than the ends in enhancing human capability. While capability enhancement is difficult, if not impossible directly by policy means, this particular target has to be highlighted in the design and evaluation of policies (Büttner 2011). In the case of employment this means focusing on the capabilities and functionings that are enabled by having a job rather than holding employment as a sufficient goal in itself (Sehnbruch 2004).

With the logic of human capital, the state is seen as the provider of opportunities and the individuals' duty is to make use of them by maximizing their employability in exchange for welfare benefits. The responsibility imposed on the individual is problematic when the necessary resources are not supplied.

According to Sen’s ideas of capabilities, the capacity to act should be complemented by freedom of choice along with the resources and conversion factors allowing for the real functioning of the person. In order to legitimately hold the individual responsible, 'the individual agency', i.e. what the individual is able to do, needs to be combined with 'social agency', i.e. the opportunities available to her (Bonvin and Thelen 2003).

As demonstrated by the discourses on activation, work pervasiveness and self-responsibility, the focus of intervention is heavily on the young people themselves. Individual agency is clearly more visible in these narratives as activation towards employment is formulated with a marginal role for social responsibility. This is evident in the frequent references to individual skill formation, self-worth with regard to the labor market and deservingness instead of bringing forward the duty of institutions to provide adequate means for such processes. As the problematization and high focus on evaluation in the program demonstrated, individual conversion factors are stressed at the institutional level of the Swiss employment policies as well as in the implementation of the SeMo program. This is particularly evident when it comes to the young people whose labor market integration receives a high role of importance in the agenda of social and employment policies. Moreover, this group is largely considered as one of the most difficult groups amongst the unemployed to be integrated.

Therefore, human capital perspective is particularly present in the discourses related to the young unemployed whose fast and durable labor market integration is considered as an important policy aim for the sake of sustainable welfare state development.

According to the CA, the welfare state should bear a part of the responsibility by providing the opportunities for enabling the individuals to bear their part of the contract. With regard to the problematization of individuals, their rights should be unconditional upon their behavior since they ought to be entitled to fundamental rights irrespective of whether or not they have actively been involved in their creation and implementation (Bonvin and Galster 2010). In other words, the balance between individual and collective responsibility should be considered in a way that promotes individual responsibility to the point that it can reasonably be expected of the individuals. In the analysis of public policy for marginalized youth, the individual conversion factors (such as the marketability of individuals in the labor market) should not be the only subject of intervention but should be complemented by social conversion factors (Bonvin and Moachon 2008). Here, the main resource is commonly seen as the provision of the labor market

program, which, according to the prevalent discourse within the organization, is perceived as an exceptional opportunity for the participants. The opportunity to engage in a variety of activities provided by SeMo, the individual guidance by professionals and the professional experiences provided by the internship is, indeed, a valuable opportunity. Following the contractual base of the program, the state as a partner in the contract with the citizen has fulfilled its obligations by providing this opportunity for the participants, who in their part are held under obligation to use the measure to increase their employability.

However, as promoted by the CA, resources and commodities such as goods and services do not provide adequate information on the individual capabilities.

In order to achieve valuable functionings, the individual ought to be able to use these resources properly and convert them to a realized capability, that is, a functioning (Leßmann 2009). Therefore, the provision of a labor market measure should not be the end of the contractual responsibilities, to which the state is subject. The promotion of the quality of such measures becomes important when taking into consideration the social conversion factors in addition to the individual ones. In this context, the social conversion factors refer to the way the program has been organized to enable labor market integration while promoting individual wellbeing and capabilities and to the informational base, on which the assessment of individuals leans.

It is worth mentioning here that as SeMos are based on an individual intervention, they allow a profound scrutiny of the social situation of the participant and the personal factors that prevent labor market integration. With such a perspective, the measure does, indeed, go further than mere resource provision for the unemployed by going deep into the roots of the unemployment.

For the particular SeMo service provider, this is further enabled by the extra resources allowed by the profit made by the workshops, which is spent on recruitment of additional staff. The outcome of such measures is that individualized intervention is facilitated as the program allows one personal educator per three participants as opposed to one educator per five participants, which is the SeMo average.

Having said that, the high focus on individual conversion factors becomes clear in the fact that the ultimate responsibility for entering into the labor market is lies upon the individual. The individual conversion factors receive an overwhelmingly high focus in the normative expectations of self-motivation. Such expectations can be traced back to the LACI reform in 1995 following a high increase in unemployment rates in Switzerland, particularly concerning the young people.

The reform led among others to the establishment of regional placement offices (ORP) as well as the creation of SeMos. At the same time, the reform introduced conditionality of welfare benefits upon participation in a labor market measure for the young unemployed people. Where the people having finished their obligatory schooling were entitled to unconditional benefits, after the revision they were now subject to activation measures along with other categories of beneficiaries.