Introduction

In the great majority of the EU countries, the principal emphasis in social policy has been on tackling the risk of social exclusion after people have become unemployed (Gallie, 2002). Increasing youth unemployment levels have resulted in training and labour market schemes becoming significant policy instruments across Europe (Dietrich, 2003).

Generally, labour market schemes aim at preventing labour market marginality through maintaining and strengthening the individual's working capacity by improving his or her chances of finding employment. There is continuing debate on whether these activating programmes do, in fact, have these effects and whether they have an impact on more vulnerable groups of people, such as immigrants and long-term unemployed young people (Craig, 2002; van Oorschot, 2002). The schemes are frequently criticised for having less ambitious functions, such as cleaning up the statistics and just storing the workforce (cf Hyyppä, 1999), or temporarily parking young people in transitional labour market measures, as Reiter and Craig put it in Chapter One. An important issue is, therefore, whether these policies are adequate for ensuring longer-term employability.

When analysing the role of labour market policies, employment is usually seen as a necessary precondition for social integration. There are still other aspects that need to be taken into account, such as the quality of jobs, the role of return to education and motivation. First of all, the extent to which employment offers opportunities for social integration depends crucially on the quality of jobs. As Gallie (2002) has argued, for work to provide social integration it should offer meaningful work tasks that allow permanent employability. The quality of jobs is important while temporary work contracts have been demonstrated to increase the risk of labour market marginality of young people (Harsløf, 2003). Furthermore, measures promoting the (re)enrolment in post-compulsory education may also in themselves lead to integration. For young unemployed people, increased educational motivation and return to education is an important precondition to integration (Hammer, 2003a). An important issue is also the subjective impact of scheme experiences, since results from previous studies have demonstrated that motivational factors are important for increasing the positive outcomes of the schemes (Caplan et al, 1989).