'Conduct of Conduct' or the Shaping of 'Adequate Dispositions'?:Labour Market and Career Guidance in Four European Countries

International audienceIn this paper, we provide an analysis of the deployment of labour market and career guidance as an instrument of liberal governmental rationality, and hence as a key tool for shaping attitudes suitable for the labour market. We characterize such processes and their effects on both those in receipt of guidance and those delivering it, on the basis of a three-year study in France, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. This leads us to put forward the problematic character of the notion of 'conduct of conduct', especially owing to the conflation implied between adaptation to governmental ends and freedom. We suggest that Max Weber's categories for depicting active adaptation in bureaucratic capitalism provide a more grounded grasp of the processes involved, and that the radical distinction he establishes between adaptation and the possibility of conduct may provide a new basis for conceptualizing resistance to liberal governmental rationality

Equality, not sufficiency! Critical theoretical perspectives on the inequality-unsustainability nexus

Attention to inequality is increasingly taking centerstage in the fight against climate change and environmental devastation. More and more scholars and activists emphasize the need to put the reduction of inequality at the core of environmental and climate politics, and more and more propose a (socially just) “sufficiency” approach and politics to do so. Just sufficiency is presented as the new desirable societal pact, tasked with taking over from the current dominant growth pact driving “excess,” and replacing it with a politics of “enough,” through “collectively defined self-limitation.” However an excess/enough lens misses the dynamics of production of inequality in the first place, with important political implications. This article thus seeks to contribute a tighter critical theoretical understanding of the inequality-unsustainability relation as a nexus historically powered by specific mechanisms of fossil, metabolic, as well as “green” accumulation. Through the theorization of these relations, one can better apprehend how inequality is not only a question of unfair distribution or exclusion from affluence demanding to be addressed through social and environmental justice, but also the condition for the modes of extraction and exploitation that produce and reproduce unsustainability. I argue that the counterhegemonic struggle must be waged on that terrain: putting limitations (not self-limitations) on the accumulation machine and its inequality-unsustainability nexus. This reading, which builds on critical theory and Marxist and feminist political ecology, is related to notions of class as structured not only by exploitation, but also, crucially by dispossession and status hierarchization. Adopting a nexus approach to inequality and unsustainability offers a critical theoretical method that can hopefully shift the assessments and orientations of the sufficiency movement away from the moral terrain of self-limitation (whose self?) toward the class politics of limits on capital needed today for socio-ecological transformation

Mediating the transitions to work : the role of employment and career advisers in comparative perspective

Labour market and career advice and guidance have received considerable recent research and policy attention and have been heralded as part of the new institutional resources required in reformed, active, welfare states. We seek to understand the meaning of such policy enthusiasm by proposing an analysis of guidance as a "governmental technology" particularly suited for new conceptions of social protection and mobilisation for work. We bring in the results of a three years comparative study of guidance services in France, Slovenia, Spain and the UK, particularly in the form of a cross-national typology. Our review of the conceptions of the user and of the governance mechanisms in place, from target related funding to "softer" staff monitoring, show how they combine to shape staff strategies and user conduct into a limited range of stereotypical attitudes, testifying to the dissemination of a norm of adaptation to the labour market.Labour market and career guidance, activation, governmental technology, comparison, conduct.

Poser un jugement sur les pratiques de conseil, d'orientation et d'accompagnement des adultes

Cet article propose une réflexion sur les instances de jugement d'un segment d'intervention publique transversal aux champs éducatif, formatif et d'emploi : les pratiques de conseil, d'orientation et d'accompagnement des adultes. Il montre que ces instances de jugement sont souvent aussi, et avant tout, des instances de pilotage et de gestion de ces programmes et services

Poser un jugement sur les pratiques de conseil, d'orientation et d'accompagnement des adultes

Cet article propose une réflexion sur les instances de jugement d'un segment d'intervention publique transversal aux champs éducatif, formatif et d'emploi : les pratiques de conseil, d'orientation et d'accompagnement des adultes. Il montre que ces instances de jugement sont souvent aussi, et avant tout, des instances de pilotage et de gestion de ces programmes et services.évaluation; politique d'emploi; comparaison européenne; efficacité; orientation professionnelle;

Mediating the transitions to work : the role of employment and career advisers in comparative perspective

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/CESFramDP2010.htmDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2010.15 - ISSN : 1955-611XLabour market and career advice and guidance have received considerable recent research and policy attention and have been heralded as part of the new institutional resources required in reformed, active, welfare states. We seek to understand the meaning of such policy enthusiasm by proposing an analysis of guidance as a "governmental technology" particularly suited for new conceptions of social protection and mobilisation for work. We bring in the results of a three years comparative study of guidance services in France, Slovenia, Spain and the UK, particularly in the form of a cross-national typology. Our review of the conceptions of the user and of the governance mechanisms in place, from target related funding to "softer" staff monitoring, show how they combine to shape staff strategies and user conduct into a limited range of stereotypical attitudes, testifying to the dissemination of a norm of adaptation to the labour market.Le conseil, l'orientation et l'accompagnement des actifs sur le marché du travail sont devenus une composante essentielle des politiques actives d'emploi en Europe, en lien avec les transformations des systèmes de protection sociale. Ces programmes et services représentent une ressource disponible (ou imposée) pour que les individus puissent renforcer leurs capacités à se mouvoir sur le marché du travail et à faire face aux différents "risques sociaux". Basé sur une recherche comparative européenne (comprenant le Royaume-Uni, l'Espagne, la Slovénie et la France), cet article propose, dans une perspective foucaldienne, une analyse de ces programmes et services en termes de "technologies gouvernementales". Il montre qu'au-delà de la variété des cadres institutionnels dans lesquels ils sont delivrés, ces programmes disséminent des normes de comportement et d'adaptation au marché du travail