Keywords

One of the explicit goals of social policies, especially welfare-to-work policies, is to tackle vulnerability processes. For this purpose, they provide resources in the form of cash benefits, services and support to their beneficiaries, who are affected by multiple forms of vulnerability. It would, therefore, seem logical that social policies serve to reduce vulnerability and enhance their target groups’ resilience and capabilities. Such, however, is not always the case. Indeed, social policies are often unable to adequately tackle vulnerability processes, sometimes because they convey misleading behavioural norms and expectations (Widmer & Spini, 2017) that act as stressors for their beneficiaries, other times because the resources they provide are inadequate to beneficiaries’ specific situations, and still other times for other reasons. In sum, contrary to what they claim to achieve, social policies can, in some cases, be viewed as stressors that reinforce rather than counteract disadvantage.

This chapter aims to analyse the reasons for such an apparently paradoxical situation and claims that it can be better understood if one considers the complex nexus between vulnerability and social policies as a multilevel process. Vulnerability is experienced by individuals at the micro level: it is then characterised by multidimensionality, in which diverse spheres of life (family, work, health, income, etc.) can be affected. Vulnerability is also framed as a social issue at the macro level, requiring the establishment of policy. This construction of vulnerability as a social problem that calls for intervention relies on a specific view of what vulnerability is (its causes and its main forms) and how it should be approached (its solutions). This macro notion of vulnerability, which differs from vulnerability as experienced by individuals, is then implemented at the meso level by so-called ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs), i.e., public (or publicly subsidised) agents who are called to translate the macro-level notion of vulnerability into actual public action, which often takes place in specific organizations (hospitals, welfare agencies, social services, NGOs, etc.) and in face-to-face interactions between an institutional representative and a potential user. As such, there may be a gap or a discrepancy among the different notions of vulnerability as a) experienced at the micro level (a multidimensional and complex fact), b) framed by social policies at the macro level (vulnerability as a norm detailing the expectations with which beneficiaries ought to comply to be lifted out of their situation and enjoy so-called professional and social integration) and c) implemented at the meso level (vulnerability at the crossroad between fact and norm). More specifically, the normative conception of vulnerability underlying social and welfare-to-work policies may act as a ‘misleading norm’ (Widmer & Spini, 2017) and reinforce vulnerability as experienced at the micro level. Consequently, SLBs are placed in an ambivalent and challenging position in which they are confronted with the inconsistencies between vulnerability as a multidimensional fact and vulnerability as a misleading norm. The role of SLBs is, therefore, key in the interaction between social policies and vulnerability; following Lipsky (1980), they can even be interpreted as policymakers who are in a position to (re)define social policies to better meet what they themselves define or consider the needs of their clients. While the bulk of social policy literature focuses on a single level—mostly the macro (e.g., Esping-Andersen, 1990; Taylor-Gooby, 2001) or meso level (e.g., Brodkin, 2011; Lipsky, 1980)—this chapter suggests that a multilevel focus that sheds light on the interdependencies among the macro, meso and micro levels allows for a deeper understanding of social policies and their impact on all actors involved (Bonvin, 2016).

Empirical analysis, then, requires attention to the multiple dimensions of vulnerability and how they are approached by social policies. It can indeed be the case that, while adequately tackling one dimension of vulnerability (e.g., increasing the educational capital of a so-called NEET—a young person who is not in employment, education or training—or supporting the professional integration of a poor single mother), social policies still miss other dimensions (e.g., lack of concern regarding employers’ readiness to give unemployed youth a second chance or no due attention to the availability of childcare solutions). Such examples shed light on the complexity of the impact of social policies on individuals.

These introductory remarks show the crucial importance of situating the empirical investigation of social policies at the crossroads of these various levels and their different notions of vulnerability (Bonvin, 2016) to account for their impact on vulnerability. Indeed, a multilevel approach to social policies is key to explaining their ambivalent outcomes and how they can simultaneously provide resources and contribute to the construction of reserves and act as stressors and factors reinforcing vulnerability.

This chapter is articulated around three main findings that resulted from work within the LIVES research program. First, the content of public policies defines the objectives pursued and the expectations regarding vulnerable individuals. Although these official discourses vary along categories of social policy beneficiaries, they are extremely powerful and exert a strong, though mostly ambivalent, impact on how individual vulnerability can be addressed. The cases of vulnerable youth, poor single mothers and senior workers are considered. Second, the power of official discourses does not prevent individual differences in how social policies are perceived and received by their beneficiaries and, most importantly, in individual beneficiaries’ potential for agentivity within the frame of social policies. LIVES research has shown that for individuals to benefit from social policies, their compliance with official norms is a prerequisite, which means that resistance takes place mainly outside social policies through forms of reasoned non-take-up. LIVES research has also demonstrated that target groups are unequal regarding the expectations purported by official norms: Some are able and willing to ‘play the rules of the game’, as for them, social policies are mostly adequate; others are unwilling to abide by these norms but still choose to ‘play the game’ to enjoy the benefits and services offered by social policies, thus adapting their preferences and aspirations to the official expectations; still others are unable to comply with official norms due to a lack of resources or reserves. The cases of people with disabilities, vulnerable youth and reasoned non-take-up are emphasised in this section of the chapter. Third, LIVES research has shown the importance of social workers or SLBs to close the gap between official expectations and individual beneficiaries’ aspirations as much as possible. The issue here is to identify the extent to which the working conditions (available time, objectives, budgetary resources, training, etc.) of social workers and SLBs allow them to complete this intermediary role in a way that may reduce the ambivalence of social policies. The case of vulnerable youth, as well as an experiment conducted in local disability offices to boost the adoption of a life course perspective among SLBs, are mobilised to illustrate these points. Overall, this research review suggests that a life course approach to social policies and a more encompassing understanding of vulnerability mechanisms could help improve the effectiveness of social policies in overcoming their beneficiaries’ vulnerability or in supporting them in the development of more adequate coping strategies.

The Power of Official Discourses within Social Policies

Social policies define vulnerable categories of people and shape social interventions towards them. In doing so, they define what is problematic and what is not, i.e., what is ‘normal’ at a given time for a man, a father, a woman, a mother, a young, middle-aged or senior person, etc. In particular, such policies endorse normative behavioural expectations that are imposed upon beneficiaries if they wish to be eligible for benefits and services. Hence, access to social policies is conditional upon meeting these expectations on behalf of their potential beneficiaries. Those who refuse these conditions will be labelled ‘undeserving’ of the benefits and services offered by social policies, which may place them in very difficult situations if no alternative resources (family networks, own savings, etc.) are available to them. Thus, official discourses largely frame both the kind of resources that will be devoted to tackling vulnerability and the expectations placed upon the beneficiaries of such resources.

LIVES research has emphasised the high relevance of one such impactful discourse in the contemporary context, namely, that of social investment (Bonvin & Dahmen, 2017). In this view, social policies should be designed as productive economic investments that will have positive economic returns in the long run. Thus, active labour market programs aimed at training people or increasing their work experience are considered investments because they enhance people’s employability and thus their ability to be economically productive in the long run. In the same way, policies supporting the reconciliation of work and family life are presented as profitable investments since they promote women’s participation in the labour market. Lifelong learning is the third pillar of the social investment strategy, which aims at equipping people to contribute to economic growth in the long run. This discourse has strong implications, as it conditions access to social benefits and services upon the ability and willingness to develop one’s economic potential. A human capital approach lies at the very core of this notion of a ‘social investment state’ and implies that people must be ready to develop their human or educational capital to enjoy the full extent of social policies. Availability for training, motivation and capacity to do so are presented as prerequisites (Bonvin, 2019), which tends to turn social policies into educational policies (Bonvin & Laruffa, 2020) with exclusionary impact for those who are unavailable (e.g., women with childcare duties), unwilling (e.g., due to previous bad experiences with schooling—Bonvin & Dif-Pradalier, 2011) or unable to train (e.g., those with limited linguistic literacy). This discourse applies to all working-age categories who are considered fit for employment.

Research conducted in LIVES has shown the pervasiveness, in Switzerland, of such a discourse for young adults (from 18 to 25 years old) on welfare. Empirical analysis conducted from 2010 to 2016 encompassed three regional cases as well as a discourse analysis at the national level based on documentary analysis of legislative and administrative documents (also grey literature) and extensive semidirected interviews with policymakers, heads of public services and local agents. It demonstrated that the target group of young adults on welfare were expected to be in employment or in training and illustrated the coincidence of the norm of autonomy with the requirement of financial independence from social policies (to avoid so-called careers of welfare dependency). Being on welfare is, hence, considered a kind of abnormality (Perriard, 2017a, b). At all policy levels investigated, whether national or regional, there is unanimous agreement on the necessity of a public intervention regarding this category, with the aims both of dissuading young people from long-term financial dependence on welfare and of supporting an age group perceived as victims of the economic and social crisis (Tabin & Perriard, 2014).

To help young people on welfare (NEETs) reach autonomy, activation programs turning welfare into time-limited scholarships are introduced. The objective is that the acquisition of a professional degree will make these individuals autonomous, i.e., they will be financially self-sufficient (Young, 2003), thus converging towards the standardised life course pattern for their age category. This policy is inspired by the ‘education first’ motto (Bochsler, 2020; Dahmen et al., 2018), which is conceived as the solution to all problems experienced by young people on welfare. It is modelled on the norms of the standardised life course (Kohli, 1987, 2007; Levy et al., 2006), with all the ensuing problems for people, especially women, who do not fit into the expected tripartition of the life course, i.e., an educational stage, a full-time working stage and retirement. The newly adopted legislation makes it possible to move from a negative image (welfare recipient) to a positive image (trainee). The training of NEETs must begin as soon as they start receiving welfare, and a ‘coaching’ intervention is developed that aims to create behavioural dispositions and the necessary know-how for career development. Young beneficiaries will, for example, be taught how to manage their emotions, gain self-confidence, show motivation and build a professional project or acquire sufficient school and administrative knowledge. The development of resources, in the form of educational capital and individual know-how, is at the core of this policy frame. The training programs designed for NEETs invite them to acquire what can be called ‘full autonomy’. Participants must gain enough educational capital to access a job with a sufficient salary to meet their vital needs. They are accompanied through their training by a coach and benefit from social interaction and support.

LIVES research has shown the exclusionary impact of such policies, as many NEETs do not meet these expectations and must, consequently, make their living with lower benefits and services. As an SLB interviewed stated, young people involved in such programs are perceived as ‘the cream of the crop’. For the others, who have been categorised by SLBs as too vulnerable to enter education or employment, social intervention takes a slower pace (e.g., one meeting every year), and they do not enjoy the potential benefits of social interaction and support. This difference demonstrates how an official discourse based on a rhetoric of inclusion may translate into two-tier welfare practices, where the most compliant beneficiaries (those who are available, willing and able to participate in ‘education first’ programs) are privileged. Dimensions connected to gender (especially regarding availability), migration and family background are particularly relevant in this respect and illustrate the potentially deleterious impact of misleading norms in social policies (Widmer & Spini, 2017).

Interestingly, research conducted in LIVES has also focused on two other categories, to which the norm of autonomy and the notion of social investment do not equally apply. The case of poor single working mothers belonging to the category of the working poor was investigated in one specific regional setting based on in-depth, semidirected interviews with social workers and beneficiaries, together with an analysis of relevant documents. In this case, the social problem to be solved is attributed to the inability of ‘single mothers’ to ‘reconcile’ family work and employment (Perriard & Tabin, 2017). The tension between parenthood and employment (Hays, 1996) makes the latter difficult to access in full. According to the legislation of the local state investigated, working mothers must be removed from welfare and receive other—less stigmatizing—financial support in the form of cash supplementary family benefits. To access these, they do not have to increase their employment rate, thus enacting the gendered division of labour in Switzerland, where part-time jobs are mostly characterised as women’s work. A ‘coaching’ intervention is also added to help such women ‘reconcile’ family duties and employment. Like the case of NEETs, the coaching intervention focuses on individual dispositions, but here the main objective is to push them to accept part-time work. The development of educational capital is not a main concern for this target group. This discrepancy reveals the presence of a gendered notion of autonomy within social programs, which includes the issue of reconciling work and family life as a women’s responsibility. Autonomy in this case is not defined as financial self-sufficiency, since families receive a financial income supplement if they enter the labour market, even in a part-time poorly remunerated job. Thus, this policy risks trapping people in working-poor positions. By proposing such a solution, local authorities show that they do not expect this category to become fully self-sufficient, unlike NEETs. As a consequence, this program may leave mothers in low-income jobs and lead them to become dependent on family relationships that reproduce gender inequalities. Furthermore, its beneficiaries lose the support they previously received from social intervention in various dimensions of their lives. Consequently, further stress may arise from a successful implementation of the program.

Senior workers illustrate yet another situation. This category refers to people who have become unemployed within two years of the official retirement age, meaning 62 years for women and 63 for men. In this case, empirical analysis also focused on one regional setting, using the same methodologies (documentary analysis and semidirected interviews) as for single poor mothers. Senior workers were described by the local state as socially vulnerable and as victims of the labour market situation, with very low chances of professional reintegration. Since there is little hope of regaining employment, the government organises a specific exit from welfare, which is perceived as stigmatizing for this category, because, in their case, being on welfare constitutes a temporary solution before retirement (Perriard & Tabin, 2017). To this end, the government has developed a bridging pension two years before retirement age so that its beneficiaries can leave welfare and regain some ‘dignity’. There is no question of training or human capital development for these people approaching the third phase of the ternary male life course (Kohli, 2007). The aid takes the form of a financial transfer, lower than the average wage, without any obligation of employment or activation. No coaching is available either, as the social follow-up is reduced to a minimum and is targeted mainly at accompanying senior workers towards the end of their employment period.

Autonomy for senior workers is not defined as financial self-sufficiency or participation in the world of work. By offering a bridging pension to senior employees, the state shows that it has renounced the standard of autonomy for this age category. In doing so, this approach gives senior workers less stigmatised financial support, yet it also reinforces negative subjective impacts on these people, who have been labelled as too old to be fully autonomous. This labelling is badly perceived by some recipients, mostly men. The modest benefits paid, together with the kind of resignation they entail (i.e., the acceptance that this category is no longer in a position to participate in the labour market), result in ambivalent outcomes for this target group. First, as they are pushed out of the labour market, they lose the dominant social status associated with adulthood, which can cause self-deprecation accompanied by stress. Second, interactions with social workers almost cease, which can have negative consequences for some individuals.

Thus, research conducted within LIVES has shown the diversity of normative expectations underlying social policies and their differential anchoring in the notions of financial autonomy and social investment. For most target groups, social policies in Switzerland, as in many other advanced capitalist countries, rely on a liberal individualistic conception of autonomy, defined as an acquired set of capacities to live one’s life, and are based on the idea that individuals realise such autonomy by gaining independence from others, mainly through employment (Anderson & Honneth, 2005). This approach constructs a misleading idealization of individuals as self-sufficient and self-reliant, which is also based on a lack of consideration for a genuine life course perspective (Widmer & Spini, 2017). This conception fails to conceptualise the neediness, vulnerability and interdependence of all individuals within society. As Anderson and Honneth have shown, ‘individuals—including autonomous individuals—are much more vulnerable and needy than the liberal model has traditionally represented them as being’. The mythical character (Anderson & Honneth, 2005, p. 128) of this misleading norm of autonomy acts as a stressor for many people. Empirical analysis has also shown that this view does not apply to all target groups and that other categories, such as poor single mothers and senior unemployed workers, are constructed as unable to attain the standard of full autonomy. Nonetheless, policies designed for these groups can also act as misleading norms and stressors.

Individuals’ Differential Agency Towards Social Policies

Empirical work conducted in LIVES has demonstrated that vulnerable people are not passive recipients of social policies. For various reasons, they often do not behave or (re)act as policymakers and people in charge of supervising the implementation of social policies would have it. A study on individuals with disabilities, for instance, revealed how, in a context emphasizing the activation principle, such individuals remain reluctant to take up the benefits and services provided by social programs. Empirical analysis conducted from 2010 to 2015 focused on a discourse analysis at the national level, together with a mixed-methods investigation at the local level that relied on both a sequence analysis of beneficiaries’ administrative trajectories and in-depth semistructured interviews with local agents and beneficiaries (Rosenstein & Bonvin, 2020). Despite an increased emphasis on activation in recent reforms of disability insurance in Switzerland, fieldwork observations revealed that the understanding of these reforms is often misleading among potential recipients. Indeed, many perceived the objective of reducing access to pensions as a disincentive and chose not to take up benefits, at least in the first stage. This decision leads to phenomena of delayed take-up of benefits and services, which runs counter to the notions of early intervention and detection purported in recent policy reforms in this field. Such phenomena illustrate that the issue of non-take-up must be analysed at the crossroads between individual perceptions (of the relevance of social policies, of one’s situation and needs, and of how the two align) and official discourses (Lucas et al., 2021; Rosenstein, 2021).

The case of vulnerable youth also offers important insights. As mentioned above, empirical analysis has underlined the importance of the social investment discourse (Bonvin & Dahmen, 2017) for this target group. All the same, all regional programs investigated emphasised the necessity that young people on welfare develop realistic and realizable professional projects. This approach entails a so-called ‘cooling out’ process (Goffman, 1953) where young people must be persuaded to abandon oversized aspirations and adjust them to the aspirations allowed by ‘reality’. In official discourses, SLBs are supposed to enact this ‘reality’ test, i.e., to decide upon what young people can realistically do. In such a view, young people’s agency is denied. Our empirical observations have shown, in a more nuanced way, that young people’s agency cannot be fully occluded or manipulated. Facing such ‘cooling-out’ attempts by SLBs, individuals react in three different ways (Hirschman, 1970): first, complying with SLBs’ suggestions (loyalty) either because they are convinced of their relevance, or because they want to access benefits and services and, therefore, accept abiding by the rules of the game, or because they resign themselves to adapting their preferences to institutional expectations; second, voicing their aspirations and trying to negotiate and adjust the content of social interventions as much as possible (voice); third, renouncing benefits and services altogether (exit) rather than submit to conditions they assess as unacceptable. In the case of young people on welfare, observations show that loyalty and compliance (due to conviction, strategy or resignation) are the most frequent behaviours, with some opportunities for negotiation for the least vulnerable young people (Bonvin et al., 2013). In such a context, beyond beneficiaries’ inability to participate in social policy design, agency during the implementation of social policies seems limited, as access to benefits and services is largely conditional upon the individual’s acceptance of institutional expectations. This does not mean that there is no space for individual agency, but it signals that such agency is shaped by normative discourses. In contrast, exit and non-take-up, which could open up larger spaces for unfettered individual agency, remained exceptions among our interviewees.

Research conducted within LIVES has also provided evidence of reasoned non-take-up, i.e., non-take-up of benefits and services as the outcome of individual agency and free choice (Leresche, 2018; Tabin & Leresche, 2019). In such cases, non-take-up is envisaged as a refusal to abide by state injunctions. Beyond this individual protest, it can resonate as a call for transforming social policies, placing more emphasis on enabling dimensions (providing resources and contributing to the construction of reserves) and less weight on constraining aspects such as eligibility or behavioural conditions and, most importantly, highlighting the importance of involving beneficiaries in the social policy design process. Ongoing research in LIVES continues to investigate how such reasoned non-take-up is variously conceived and distributed along gender lines.

The Mediating Role of SLBs

The previous sections have shown the potential gaps between official notions of vulnerability purported within social policies and what happens at the micro level (individual situations and perceptions). Various illustrations concerning youth on welfare, poor single mothers, senior unemployed workers, people with disabilities and reasoned non-take-up have shed light on the consequences of such gaps in terms of vulnerability and resilience and shown how these may take different forms for each target group and each policy. In all cases investigated, a specific category of actors plays a key role in the policy process, namely, SLBs, who are at the crossroads between macrosocial policies and their beneficiaries. SLBs embody the meso level of social policies. This last section of the chapter explores the conditions under which SLBs could contribute to closing the aforementioned gaps and what could help them in this direction. Research conducted within LIVES has shown that three dimensions are key in this respect: available resources and the ability to convert them into more capabilities for beneficiaries; endorsement of a life course perspective by SLBs, in which living conditions and past trajectories are taken as the main points of reference when designing interventions; and spaces for negotiation and participation in which personalised and tailor-made interventions can be constructed.

LIVES empirical research has revealed the relevance of an encompassing conception of the resources provided by social policies. Cash transfers are doubtless an important component, but SLBs also need to devote sufficient time, mobilise adequate competencies, and have appropriate infrastructure if vulnerability is to be alleviated. Such an expansive view of resources may also facilitate their translation into reserves (Cullati et al., 2018) for the long term. In terms of objectives pursued within social policies, three dimensions have been demonstrated to have a potentially detrimental effect for some beneficiaries:

  • First, the focus on work- and education-related dimensions of individual trajectories obscures other important aspects of vulnerability and prevents a holistic view of beneficiaries’ needs. This limited focus may have negative consequences, e.g., when poor single mothers are pushed to the labour market without due attention to the availability of childcare facilities. Such limitations suggest the need to adopt an encompassing ‘life first’ approach to social policies rather than a narrower ‘work first’ and ‘education first’ focus (Dean et al., 2005).

  • Second, a focus on the present state of the person at the expense of the overall past trajectory leads to reductionist views of social interventions, as it only considers a limited portion of the relevant information, which may again translate into inappropriate policies, for example, when emphasis on current unemployability occults the importance of the migration background or family trajectory. This also entails taking a long-term perspective rather than targeting quick-fix solutions, as SLBs repeatedly emphasised in the case of young people on welfare, for instance.

  • Third, an excessive emphasis on individual human capital (the supply side) may coincide with a neglect of dimensions connected to the labour market (the demand side). Such a focus may then act as an undue stressor on people who risk blaming themselves for something out of their reach (e.g., job unavailability).

This threefold enlargement of the policy focus—life-first, life course and demand side—calls for an extension of SLBs’ margin of manoeuvre that allows them to include these dimensions in their daily work. It equally invites the creation of spaces of participation and negotiation with beneficiaries themselves to avoid cooling-out effects or paternalistic practices. Such developments would be in line with the objective of closing the gap between the norms of autonomy underlying social policies and the actual situations and perceptions of vulnerable people.

A randomised controlled trial conducted in 2018 in two Swiss local disability offices was established to test the feasibility and relevance of some of these recommendations. The idea was to provide SLBs with a nudge to adopt a life-course perspective when assessing beneficiaries and deciding whether to give them access to rehabilitation measures. The results, although modest, suggested that a stronger intervention, such as a training program, could be efficient in boosting such a life-course perspective among SLBs (Visintin et al., 2021).

Conclusion

This chapter illustrates the relevance of a multilevel approach to social policies, both in analytical and action-oriented terms. It sheds light on the potential gaps and discrepancies between the various levels involved in social policies and on their implications on the ability of social interventions to reduce beneficiaries’ vulnerability. It underlines the key position of meso-level actors in this respect and the importance of providing them with adequate working conditions. Furthermore, it suggests how social policy analysis can provide insights towards a deeper achievement of social policy goals and the role of a life course perspective in this respect. By providing a convincing account of why social policies are often unable to reach their twofold objective of reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience, the approach developed in this chapter shows how a multilevel and life course analytical perspective on social policies can contribute significantly both to the social policy literature—by closing the gaps between most of the existing research works that tend to focus on a single level—and to the design and implementation of social policies that are more genuinely oriented towards the human development of their beneficiaries. Although many issues require further research, our work within LIVES paves the way towards opening a new agenda for a life course-oriented social policy.