Introduction

In the preceding chapters attention has been paid to the rise of individualised approaches in activation, adopting a theoretical as well as an empirical point of view. As all authors have argued, the trend towards individualised service provision is not a merely ‘technical’ or ‘methodical’ issue regarding the way in which services should be delivered. Instead, it is embedded in, and part of, processes aimed at reforming social policies and their governance; which, in their turn, are taking place in order to cope with broader economic, cultural, demographic and social developments. In other words, discussing individualised activation services unavoidably raises questions regarding the necessity, feasibility and desirability of the welfare state transformations of which they are an integral part. This is one of the reasons why the individualisation of activation services is a controversial issue, certainly so among social scientists – and also among the authors who contributed to this volume. It was not the objective of this book to resolve these controversies. Instead, we set ourselves some less ambitious tasks. First, the controversies partly stem from the various interpretations of the concept of ‘individualisation’ that lie at the basis of individualised service provision. Debates about individualised activation services raise many questions that are often formulated in an either/or form: is individualised activation an instrument to erode universal and decent welfare, or is it an intervention strategy needed to adequately support a very heterogeneous target group? Is it a disciplinary tool to enable case managers to enforce (work) obligations upon their clients, or an alternative to traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ services that were designed to service an ‘average client’ that may exist in statistics but not in real life? Is individualised activation a device to worm information out of individual clients or an attempt to put them in charge of, and involve them actively in, their activation process? Rather than giving answers to these questions, the theoretical chapters in Part One tried to contribute to understanding the background of these controversies, to unravel the discourses on individualisation and to analyse different strands of thinking about individualised service provision. Second, the book wanted to gain insight into the state of the art of individualised activation by exploring policies and practices in various European Union (EU) member states.