Civil Society Organizations, Unemployment, and Precarity in Europe

Between Service and Policy

Simone Baglioni, M. Giugni

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780230391420
• eBook ISBN: 9780230391437
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a Europe-wide comparative analysis of the role of civil society organizations active in the field of unemployment and precarity. It illustrates how crucial civil society organizations are for the inclusion of the young unemployed, mainly in two ways: by delivering services and by advocating policy.

Part I

Resources and Activities

1

The Political Role of Civil Society in the Policy Field of Youth Unemployment and Precarious Working Conditions

Simone Baglioni, Jasmine Lorenzini, and Lorenzo Mosca

Introduction

Civil society organizations (CSOs) operating in the field of youth unemployment and precarious working conditions promote a wide offer of political activities that range from providing information and expertise during the process of policy design and implementation to engaging in more confrontational actions such as calling for collective mobilization. The development and use of such a breadth of activities is dependent upon the specific political-institutional setting in which they operate. In particular, different unemployment regimes, namely those contexts within which unemployment and precarious work are tackled with diverse policy tools, provide different incentives to CSOs activity. For example, the use of activation policies, which aim at improving people’s employability through engaging them in training, formation, or other skills improvement, have fostered the development of CSOs specializing in service delivery in the field of education and training (Handler 2003; Defourny and Nyssens 2010). Similarly, a change in the configuration of leading actors in labor policy such as trade unions has facilitated the mobilization of CSOs to protest about unemployment (Baglioni et al. 2008). Thus, the action repertoire of societal actors is closely related to the characteristics of the institutional settings in which it develops. Social movements studies have highlighted the importance of political actors’ “prevailing strategies” in shaping collective action dynamics (Koopmans and Kriesi 1995). Where an “exclusive strategy” prevails, established authorities will tend to repress potential challenges coming from societal actors, by reaction however the latter will resort to conflict radicalization, while the prevalence of an “inclusive strategy” translates into cooptation of challengers and their demands. However, as della Porta and Diani noted: “while national strategies do have a certain influence on the repertoires of action adopted by social movements, they are not sufficient to explain the strategic choices they make. In the first place, they are not equally long-lived in every country. Second, they do not have the same effects on all movements. Third, they appear to affect some movement strategies and not others” (della Porta and Diani 2006: 210).

In this chapter, we address variations in the political action repertoires of CSOs working in the field of unemployment and precarious employment across six European cities, namely Cologne, Geneva, Karlstad, Kielce, Lyon, and Turin. We investigate the effect of unemployment regulations on the specific political action repertoires proposed by different types of CSOs: what we have described as “policy-oriented” organizations, promoting participation in the civic and political spheres and “service-oriented” organizations mostly providing services. By political action repertoire we refer to all those activities that aim at mobilizing members, raising individuals’ political awareness, influencing public opinion or elected bodies through lobbying, protest, or participation in regulation and/or implementation of public policies. We describe the prevalence of certain repertoires according to different unemployment and labor market regulations (Cinalli and Giugni 2013; but see also Cinalli and Giugni in this volume) that generate specific political opportunity structures in the six European cities being studied. To address variation across cities we applied the theoretical framework of prevalent strategies to the field of unemployment regulation: while some cities are more inclusive in offering protection from destitution to the unemployed, others are more exclusive as they leave unemployed people outside the institutional coverage of welfare services or they allow the unemployed only a very limited form of protection. We expect to find differences among organizations in the intensity of their use of politically oriented activities, as well as in their specific activities depending upon the configuration of unemployment regulation. Hence, our hypothesis is that the specific Political Opportunity Structure (POS) of unemployment regulation shapes the organizational field. According to evidence produced by the literature on social movements on the role of POS on action repertoire, we expect that more exclusive contexts foster a more radical type of organization, while more inclusive contexts encourage the development of organizations focused upon more cooperative activities such as lobbying or policy implementation.

We first discuss the role of the POS in shaping the field of CSOs, in particular its role with regard to the prevalence of policy-oriented or service-oriented organizations. Then, we discuss how the emphasis on policy and services shapes the political action repertoire of CSOs. We also present the classification of cities according to their specific political opportunity structures. Lastly, we analyze the specific political activities conducted by each type of organization and we discuss the differences between organizations that are mainly devoted to policy or advocacy and those that focus on services and their interaction with their respective specific political opportunity structures.

The political opportunity structure of unemployment regulation

Studies on both civil society and social movements demonstrate how influential the impact of political-institutional specific configurations are upon civil society structure and development. In civil society studies, the neo-institutionalist approach has argued that differences in the type of democracy (participatory versus representative) or forms of the state (federalist versus centralized) have generated diverse patterns of civil society (Baglioni 2007; Birnbaum 1993; Pateman 1970; Skocpol et al. 2002). Similarly, social movements studies have explained variations in the vibrancy of social movements across countries as a consequence of different configurations in these countries’ POS (della Porta and Rucht 1995; Eisinger 1973; Tarrow 1983). Political Opportunity Structures can be defined as the different formal and informal degrees of access to the political system and to its elite, the different degrees of cohesion of such elites, and the support elites offer to social movements (McAdam 1982; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi 1995; Tarrow 1994).

A more recent elaboration of the POS approach has suggested that when studying specific mobilizations such as those made in the name of the unemployed, as well as those made in the name of migrants, one must consider also more specific political opportunities (Berclaz and Giugni 2005; Hooghe 2005). In fact, Giugni (2008) has explained that the extent of the unemployed’s political mobilization could only be partially understood through the general POS of a specific country. Rather, it was a country specific POS derived from both unemployment and labor market regulations that explained the higher levels of mobilization of the unemployed found in France, Italy, and to some extent Sweden in comparison with other countries. In the field of political mobilization regarding unemployment, other researchers have found similar evidence. Baglioni et al. (2008) have pointed out that in the 1990s in France, Germany, and Italy changes in trade unions, as a component of the specific POS, contributed to explaining the successful mobilization of the unemployed while della Porta (2008) has found that protest is more wide-spread in Italy and France than in countries with neocorporatist industrial relations such as Sweden and Germany. Moreover, Royall (2009) has illustrated how, in Ireland, the State withdrew from the provision of certain services offered to the unemployed by supporting the engagement of CSOs in this field of activity.

Thus, different contexts lead to either political mobilization by the unemployed and by civil society organizations or to the provision of services to complement the welfare state. We therefore assess the differences across our cities in the way that the state regulates unemployment, and the specific POS variations, following Cinalli and Giugni (2013) who have constructed a typology of unemployment regimes on the basis of qualitative indicators to which scores have been assigned comparatively.

We follow this specific POS approach and we explain the “division of labor” within the CSOs as a result of the specific POS emanating from unemployment regulations. In addition, we propose to focus upon a larger repertoire of political activities, an approach exemplified by Cinalli and Füglister (2008) who studied the variations in types of political activities among the unemployed across three countries (Great Britain, Germany, and Switzerland) but did not develop hypotheses related to the specific POS.¹

Civil society organizations and unemployment regimes

The work of CSOs has for centuries maintained and fixed the thin fabric of social cohesion. Building upon the tradition of political liberalism and Christian charity, Europeans have generated across centuries a plethora of associations and movements aimed at supporting people in need (Edwards 2004; Evers and Zimmer 2010). Providing a welfare state well in advance of the organized recipient regimes of that undertaking, civil society organizations have helped individuals in a wide range of vulnerable situations. With time, associations, in this large field of solidarity and welfare, have also developed specific features leading to a differentiation in dimensions, functioning structures, skills, social “targets” and overall aims. In the specific field of associations working with the unemployed, we found two ways through which CSOs contribute to the inclusion of individuals, such as unemployed young people, who are at risk of marginalization.

On the one hand, there are organizations that foster citizens’ participation in the civic and political spheres and where membership enables the sharing of political ideas and values; these organizations provide a range of opportunities for the immediate local engagement of a young person. Following existing research on civil society (Lelieveldt et al. 2007), we describe these first types of organizations as policy-oriented. On the other hand, there are organizations whose activity is mainly focused upon service provision, in particular those services which increase young people’s skills and thus improve their employability. In this sense, such organizations activate people via training activities, education, internships, and so on. Furthermore they support unemployed young people in their “material” needs such as housing, financial support, and health. We therefore describe these second types of organizations as service-oriented.

The resulting division of organizations between policy-oriented and service-oriented corresponds to ideal types in a Weberian sense; in the real world such activities are not mutually exclusive. While policy-oriented groups are more prone to be involved in protest and lobbying activity, they are also likely to provide services to different populations (i.e. migrants or the unemployed). Similarly, although service-oriented organizations are more engaged with offering support and educational activities, they can also employ unconventional forms of political action. When we distinguish between these two types we are therefore considering their prevailing activities while keeping in mind that if we were to place our organizations on a continuum defined by “policy” and “service” at the extremes, some of them will fall in the middle.

Although research in this field has highlighted that the unemployed share a low overall level of political participation, explained by either their lack of resources or the stigmatized identity related to unemployment that discourages political participation (Demazière and Pignoni 1998; Giugni 2008; Maurer 2001), policy-oriented organizations will likely foster the political engagement of unemployed young people. These organizations propose political campaigns, rallies, protest events, and other direct actions requiring an active involvement of their constituencies among which there are unemployed and precarious workers. In fact, research analyzing the political mobilization of unemployed people in Europe during the late 1990s and early 2000s reveals the central role of organizations in supporting the collective mobilization of the unemployed (Chabanet 2008; Faniel 2004).

Service-oriented organizations, through their endeavors, will likely foster the socialization of unemployed young people in activities which are directly related to employment and career development. The first type of organizations therefore empower unemployed young people by making their claims heard in the public sphere by undertaking unconventional political action, while the second type of organizations empower them by improving their skills and appeal on the labor market as well as providing basic services.

Our theoretical framework is summarized in Figure 1.1: according to our hypotheses different unemployment regimes provide diverse opportunities for collective action, thus shaping the political action repertoires of CSOs.

We therefore expect to find differences in the political action repertoires of CSOs active in cities with different unemployment regimes. We also expect to find a more policy-oriented community of CSOs in the more “exclusive” contexts, in other words those which are less generous in the protection they offer from unemployment. In such contexts we expect CSOs to use a political action repertoire oriented towards protest and disruptive actions to make their claims visible and to increase their leverage capacity. Moreover, these more exclusive contexts are characterized by the scarcity of welfare state provisions for the unemployed and/or selective and strict general unemployment regulations resulting in a legal and political framework which excludes rather than includes those who are out of the labor market. In a context of absent (or poor) services and regulations which help protect the unemployed, CSOs will likely mobilize for such services and rights to be developed and correctly implemented. This is the “classical” paradigm of the development of advocacy-type CSOs (Baglioni 2001). In contrast, in those contexts where regulations protecting and promoting precarious workers and the unemployed do exist, and where by virtue of such regulations a range of services are usually provided for the unemployed to increase their employability or to support their income and needs, CSOs will primarily focus upon service delivery. In some cases, CSOs will develop professional skills and capacities to deliver specific services by direct request or by an indirect “incitation” by the state (Battaglini et al. 2001). Moreover, in these more inclusive contexts, with regard to their political action repertoire, we expect CSOs to be oriented towards more conventional forms of political participation tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes On Contributors
• Civil Society, Unemployment and Precarity in Europe: an Introduction
• Part I Resources and Activities
• Part II Networks
• Civil Society, Unemployment, and Precarity in Europe: a Conclusion
• Index