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IJSSP
29,11/12
Activation of the unemployed in
Poland: from policy design to
policy implementation
624 Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska
Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, and
CERI, Sciences Po de Paris, France
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how recent changes in labour market policy in
Poland, such as the activation shift, formal incentives for policies integration and inclusion of private
and civil society actors in the policy-making process, are actually put into practice on the local level.
By applying Amartya Sen’s capability approach, decisive factors in the process of implementation,
the role of normative assumptions in the assessment of unemployed people and the impact of
performance indicators on local civil officers’ actions are analyzed.
Design/methodology/approach – The text is based on the results of research conducted with a
variety of methods: in-depth and semi-structured interviews, analysis of official reports, surveys
among enterprises and among the employed, unemployed and inactive.
Findings – The paper shows the limitations of the activation model in Poland. The normative
assumptions underlying ALMP lead to reproduction of social inequalities and stigmatisation of
unemployed people, whereas the disciplinary approach discourages employers from cooperating with
employment services. The increase of resources for the active labour market policy is not translated
into an improvement in the quality of services.
Originality/value – Previous researches on labour market policies in Poland are mainly based on
quantitative data and analysis of legal regulations. Not enough attention is paid to the actual uses of
law and the role of normative assumptions in the process of implementation. The paper attempts to
reintroduce the perspective of policy practitioners and beneficiaries that is completely absent from
research on labour market policy in Poland.
Keywords Poland, Unemployment, Labour market, Empowerment, Social policy, Social inclusion
Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Sociology
and Social Policy
Vol. 29 Nos. 11/12, 2009
pp. 624-636
# Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0144-333X
DOI 10.1108/01443330910999069
Introduction
The year 2004, when Poland entered the European Union (EU) is believed to have
started a favourable period for the development of active labour market policy (ALMP)
(Szylko-Skoczny, 2004; Giermanowska, 2004). Several factors seem to have played a
role in this process: improvement in the labour market due to the economic upturn
between 2005 and 2008, the European integration process creating opportunities for
emigration (Rashid et al., 2005), new financial resources for activation measures from
European structural funds (ESF) (Rashid et al., 2005; Giermanowska, 2004), positive
incentives for the integration of employment policies and the inclusion of non-state
actors in the policy-making process.
Similar to other EU countries, activation became a key concept in the framework of
social and labour market policy (LMP) in Poland. In Polish official documents,
activation is identified with individualisation of services and conditionality of access to
social protection upon the ‘‘job readiness’’ of its recipients. The new logic of social and
LMP is founded on the belief that a process of social integration cannot be successful
without the insertion of the beneficiaries into the labour market, and that the
achievement of this aim demands further development of the cooperation between
different public and non-public organisations, active in the fields of social and LMP.
 Various cross-country studies inspired by Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA) Activation of the
show tensions accompanying implementation of the new principles of social and LMP unemployed in
and their ambivalent impact on its beneficiaries, by revealing, for instance, so-called
‘‘creaming practices’’ (focusing on people who will easily find employment) and a Poland
culture of self-blame among people with multiple problems (Dean, 2003; Dean et al.,
2005; Bonvin and Farvaque, 2007, for more general discussion of the CA see the
Introductory article in this special issue). In this paper I examine how official 625
declarations on a new LMP design in Poland are put into practice, or more precisely,
how the activation of unemployed people is operated at the local level. Using Sen’s
notion of the ‘‘informational basis of judgment in justice’’ I analyse how beneficiaries of
LMP are evaluated by public agents and the impact of performance indicators on the
process of assessment: ‘‘Which ‘informational basis of judgment in justice’ is chosen
(. . .), i.e. which kind of information (needs, lack of income, merit, motivation, past
behaviour, etc.) is explicitly or implicitly considered as relevant when assessing job
seekers and designing active labour market programmes for them’’ (Bonvin and
Farvaque, 2007, pp. 48-9). The analysis informed by the CA proposes an alternative
way of evaluating LMP. Instead of focusing exclusively on the employment rate or
LMP expenditure, it examines whether the LMP contributes to the development of
‘‘capabilities’’, ‘‘i.e. the real freedom to achieve the life one has reason to value (in terms
of both beings and doings)’’ (Bonvin and Farvaque, 2005, p. 270). The following issues
are analysed in this paper: whether public employment services increase unemployed
individuals’ ‘‘capability for work’’, by which I mean their ability to find and perform a
job they value; whether beneficiaries are free to co-define the activation programme to
which they are subjected (‘‘capability for voice’’); whether civil servants take into
account beneficiaries’ preferences, life-projects and information on issues not
necessarily related to their labour market status (a ‘‘life-first approach’’), or on the
contrary, whether they tend to reduce people’s beings and doings to a single ‘‘work first
approach’’ (Bonvin and Farvaque, 2005, 2006, 2007; Dean et al., 2005).
The argument draws on the results of several research projects conducted between
2006 and 2008[1]. A variety of methods were used, including analysis of official reports;
surveys among enterprises, employed, unemployed and inactive people in selected
territorial units; over 100 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with key actors in
the field of social and LMP at the local and regional level; and seven biographical
interviews with unemployed people. All projects share a common interest in the study
of policy in action instead of analysis limited to formal institutions, and they attempt to
reintroduce the perspective of field actors and beneficiaries that is completely absent
from LMP research in Poland.
The text is organised as follows. The first section presents the evolution of LMP in
Poland, which can be characterised as a shift from the generous passive policies
created in the 1990s towards a liberal model of activation (Barbier, 2001). It briefly
discusses research findings concerning the territorialisation of LMP and recent
attempts to include private and civil society actors and integrate policies at the local
level. In the second part, the implementation of activation by local employment
services is analysed. Qualitative evidence is provided on the process of assessment of
beneficiaries and its effects. This section also considers the impact of normative
assumptions and performance indicators on LMP. By advocating the relevance of the
CA, the paper explores the consequences of the new LMP design on people’s
capabilities.
IJSSP The activation shift in Poland
Passive and active spending on LMP
29,11/12 In Poland, the need for LMPs appeared in the 1990s with the emergence of mass
unemployment accompanying the first years of the transformation from central
planning to a market economy (see Figure 1).
At the beginning of the 1990s, the aim of social policy was to soften the negative
effects of unemployment through passive policies, primarily in the form of a safety net
626 (e.g. unemployment benefit, disability pension, massive development of early
retirement programmes) (Szylko-Skoczny, 2004). Generous benefits were designed to
guarantee social support for market reforms in a context of growing job insecurity and
decreasing living standards.
Soon after the start of economic transformation in Poland, budgetary constraints
and massive unemployment made it difficult to implement activation programmes on a
large scale (Spieser, 2008). For a long time, the Polish ‘‘activation turn’’ degenerated into
a series of successive restrictions of eligibility criteria, as well as the amount and
duration of benefits:
Conditions for entitlement to unemployment benefits (since 2004)
An unemployed individual has to register at a local labour office and meet several criteria in
order to be eligible for unemployment benefits: a) having worked on the basis of a work
contract or any other contract for at least 365 days during the last 18 months, earning at least
a minimum salary (which excludes part-time workers in low paid sectors; b) during this work
period, the unemployed person and his/her employer need to have paid all mandatory
contributions due from at least a minimum salary.
Duration of payment
Unemployment benefits are granted for 6, 12 or 18 months, dependent on the level of
unemployment in a local unit, the age of the unemployed person, the length of his/her work
experience and family situation.
For these reasons, and because of numerous cases of exhaustion of unemployment
benefits resulting from long-term joblessness, the coverage rate dropped considerably.

Figure 1.
Registered unemployment
rate and number of
unemployed (at the end of
the year)
In 1996, more than 50 per cent of the registered unemployed were entitled to Activation of the
unemployment benefits. Two years later, this ratio was cut by half. In 2007 it dropped unemployed in
further, but increased again in 2008, reaching the level of 18.4 per cent (see Table I).
Furthermore, the relative value of unemployment benefits in terms of replacement of Poland
minimum and average wages was gradually decreasing. At the end of 2008, the standard
flat-rate benefit (132e) was 49 per cent of the minimum wage or 19 per cent of the average
salary, while one decade earlier it amounted to 76 per cent of the minimum wage or 31 per
cent of the average salary. The scarcity of financial support for the job-seekers not entitled
627
to unemployment benefits is even more striking. It can be argued that access to free
healthcare is probably the most important entitlement granted to unemployed individuals,
apart from job placement services and activation opportunities (if any are available).
The ratio of active to passive polices has increased since 2005. Both types of measures
for counteracting unemployment are mainly financed from the Labour Fund, which is a
special central fund managed by the Minister of Labour (for details, see Grabowski et al.,
2008). Spending on obligatory passive benefits decreased with the economic upturn and
massive emigration, combined with the exclusion of pre-retirement allowances from the
Labour Fund’s expenditures. Moreover, within the scope of the Labour Fund, ALMP was
also financed by the ESF in the amount of approximately 245 million euros in 2005 and
2006 (Ministerstwo Pracy i Polityki Społecznej, 2007, p. 57) (see Table II).
In 2006, expenditures on ALMP reached 40 per cent of the Labour Fund, while the
share of outlays on benefits and allowances was the lowest since 1990. This trend has
been reinforced ever since. The number of participants in activation measures has been
steadily increasing. The Ministry of Labour and Social Policy estimates that 594,300
unemployed people took part in activation programmes in 2006, 672,800 in 2007 and
690,600 in 2008 (Ministerstwo Pracy i Polityki Społecznej, 2008).

Territorialisation of LMP and policy integration

The shift in expenditure from passive to active policies was only one aspect of the
modification of patterns of public intervention in the domain of LMP in Poland.

Table I.
Year 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Percentage of the
registered unemployed
Percentage 51.9 30.5 22.9 23.6 20.3 20.0 16.7 15.1 14.2 13.5 13.5 14.3 18.4 entitled to
unemployment benefits
Source: Ministerstwo Pracy i Polityki Społecznej (2009) (1996-2008)

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Expenditure
on passive
LMP (%) 83.9 83.8 84.8 85.2 77.6 58.7 69.2 82.8 84.8 89 83.1 79.1 54 51 42.3 33.2
Expenditure
on ALMP
(%) 11.1 12.8 11.9 10.7 17.2 23.8 19.2 11.1 7 5.4 13.4 16.0 37 40.3 50.5 58.4

Source: Szylko-Skoczny (2004, p. 117), Ministerstwo Pracy i Polityki Społecznej (2007) and Table II.
Ministerstwo Pracy i Polityki Społecznej (2008) Labour fund expenditure
IJSSP Territorialisation of LMP and legal incentives for inclusion of non-public actors in
policy-making are other intrinsic elements of the activation shift.
29,11/12 At the end of the 1990s, the central government transferred most of the competences
as regards LMP to the local public administration, namely local labour offices (LLOs)
(Szylko-Skoczny, 2004). The reform was performed in the name of the adaptation of
social and LMP to local needs. As a consequence, LLOs became responsible for
planning and implementation of LMP at the local level. These functions were
628 extremely difficult to perform, especially at the beginning, since LLOs lacked basic
financial resources to cover administration costs and civil officers’ salaries (managed
by the local authorities), and were not provided with sufficient funds for ALMP
implementation. Staff shortages are still a major problem.
At the same time, it was demanded that central and regional authorities coordinate
activities and define quality standards, instead of performing planning and control
functions: We are responsible for this coordination, but there is no official
subordination. We can recommend something (. . .) Labour offices can make use of it
but they are not obliged to. This is the difference. Maybe it is a change for the better,
because they can receive our suggestions, but every local unit knows best what their
local labour market is like (Regional Labour Office 2, 2008).
Results of a quantitative survey show that local and regional civil servants tend to
positively evaluate mutual cooperation (Piotrowski et al., 2008). However, qualitative
investigation reveals that their cooperation is usually very superficial and limited to
obligatory actions (Sztandar-Sztanderska and Ziele nska, 2007). When it comes to the
flow of information and common initiatives, the cooperation is rarely institutionalised
and therefore vulnerable to personal conflicts.
Similar problems are observed in relationships between social assistance centres
(SACs) and public employment services. Sometimes these actors are additionally
antagonised by conflicting normative orientations: LLOs often focus on ‘‘moving
individuals rapidly into jobs’’ whereas SACs are more interested in so-called ‘‘social
activation’’ or ‘‘social reintegration’’, and take into consideration the social environment
of the beneficiaries (Sztandar-Sztanderska, 2008). This conflict of orientations can be
described by Sen’s term, ‘‘informational basis of judgment in justice’’, which refers to
the impact of normative assumptions on the selection of information that is relevant
for the implementation of public policy (Bonvin and Farvaque, 2005). Generally
speaking, while employees of LLOs tend to limit their perspective to the question of
labour market insertion (‘‘work-first approach’’), their colleagues from the SACs find it
necessary to treat persons holistically and are interested by well-being understood as
‘‘the totality of an individual’s social relations’’ (‘‘life-first approach’’) (Hoggett, 2000, p.
145 quoted after: Dean et al., 2005, p. 17). The process of assessment of beneficiaries
demands information concerning not only education and professional experience, but
also health condition, family situation and social environment. This holistic approach,
however, can have a negative consequence: if the assessment aim is discipline rather
than empowerment, a person’s dignity and right to privacy is questioned. Since 2003,
there have been many institutional changes that created opportunities for the
involvement of non-public actors in LMP. First of all, in 2003 relationships between
public administration and civil society actors were finally regulated (Herbst, 2008).
Legal requirements that oblige local and regional authorities to write strategies for
employment and social policy, and yearly programmes of cooperation with non-
governmental organisations (NGOs), were also considered as an opportunity to
overcome policy fragmentation and as an incentive for developing cooperation
between public and non-public actors. However, results of the first empirical inquiries Activation of the
lead to the conclusion that these incentives for policy integration, partially inspired by
EU recommendations, have not had a profound impact on cooperation practices. Some
unemployed in
requirements were treated superficially and often remained ‘‘dead letters’’ (Falkner and Poland
Treib, 2008). Many documents were prepared in a hurry without a diagnosis of local
problems or actual participation of other actors (Lipke and Hryniewicka, 2008; Herbst,
2008). This trend may change in the future since interviewees admit that it was their
first experience with strategic planning and that they simply needed more time for
629
learning how to prepare and make use of these kinds of documents.
Another formal change in favour of so-called ‘‘partnership for employment’’ was the
legal recognition of social partners, NGOs, private employment agencies and training
institutions, as potential partners or contractors of public administration (2004).
Various studies point out the growing importance of private and civil society actors as
providers of job placement, professional counselling, training and a whole range of
activation services (Rogaczewska and Tyrowicz, 2006). The NGOs’ offers are
particularly important in the case of vulnerable groups facing different barriers to
labour market integration, such as ex-prisoners, the disabled or the homeless, but their
services are far less accessible in rural areas than in big cities (Herbst, 2008).
Despite the improvement in relationships between public, private and civil society
actors, the scope of cooperation is still very limited. Public administration has
maintained the dominant position in the field of LMP, where actions are rarely
coordinated and only basic information is exchanged. Initiatives that might actually be
called a partnership are still of marginal importance, but they have started to be
developed under the framework of the Equal Initiative financed by the European
Commission and projects aiming at creation of social cooperatives. More than half of
NGOs do not organise projects together with LLOs nor do they engage in common
initiatives (Herbst, 2006). By ‘‘cooperation’’ labour offices often mean ‘‘contracting of
services’’, mainly training. Negative opinions on mutual relationships are even
presented by NGO leaders known for their long and fruitful cooperation with public
actors: ‘‘(. . .) here [in Poland] public institutions do not want to cooperate. First of all,
there is no such tradition. Secondly, everybody acts as a Miss-do-it-myself. Finally, they
treat themselves as rivals, not as partners’’ (NGO 1, 2006). These negative conclusions
are confirmed by many studies revealing the importance of mutual stereotypes,
opposed normative assumptions, different management styles, orientation on self-
sufficiency and the fear that NGOs have a weak, unstable institutional infrastructure
and lack financial resources (e.g. Rogaczewska and Tyrowicz, 2006; Sztandar-
Sztanderska and Ziele nska, 2007). There are also other factors hindering the
institutionalisation of cooperation: instability of the legal framework, contradictions
between acts regulating different policy fields, dispersion of information, lack of
mechanisms of coordination and adaptation of services to citizens’ needs.

ALMP instruments and target groups

Soon after the decentralisation reform, central and regional authorities attempted to use
the European integration process in order to regain a part of their regulative power. The
new control is based on a financial mechanism (the management of the Labour Fund and
ESF) and a detailed redefinition of the policy framework (through legislation, standards
or national and regional action plans for employment). In 2004 the ‘‘Act on employment
promotion and labour market institutions’’ and its further amendments provided a wide
range of ALMP instruments financed by the Labour Fund (including internships for
IJSSP young people, group and individual training, on-the-job-training, different forms of
subsidised employment, business start-up subsidies, socially useful works, refunds of
29,11/12 care and co-financing education). They also defined who among the unemployed are
‘‘people in a special situation in the labour market’’ (unemployed people under 25 and
over 50 years old; long-term unemployed; unemployed people without professional
qualifications; single-parents; disabled people; unemployed women who have not
returned to work after the birth of a child, ex-prisoners and people that accomplished a
630 social contract signed with a SAC). The use of some of these instruments is restricted to
these vulnerable groups. Two groups were also subjected to special government
programmes: the young unemployed and jobseekers over 50 years old.
The Act also differs from previous regulations in that it provides a broader range of
individual instruments, the most important of which is financing individual training.
The last amendment of this Act (December 2008) reinforced this trend by introducing
an individual action plan that must be signed with jobseekers registered as
continuously unemployed for more than 180 days.

Activation in action
Improvement in the labour market and the financial position of the Labour Fund
translated into better availability of job offers and activation programmes. Official
reports are full of quantitative data on the number of participants, levels of expenditure
and the so-called ‘‘efficiency indicator’’, providing information on the percentage of
participants that have a job three months after the activation programme. However, it
is impossible to ascertain what the everyday implementation of ALMP looks like and
what the practical meaning of the term activation is, without qualitative research and a
critical analysis of these official data.
In this section, by applying the concept of ‘‘informational basis of judgment in
justice’’, I will analyse the main characteristics of the process of assessment of the
unemployed as performed by employees of the LLOs. The following issues are
analysed: which factors turn out to be decisive in the process; what are the normative
assumptions underlying the various conceptions of activation that are applied; how the
legal framework and centrally defined indicators influence the assessment; and in
which cases might the activation process lead to the empowerment of beneficiaries in
terms of ‘‘capability for work’’, and give them ‘‘voice’’ thereby making them subjects
rather than objects of the process (‘‘capability for voice’’).

Revealing hidden factors

First selection without assessment. The first conclusion is that the assessment,
understood as something more than formal registration and an interrogation that takes
at most a few minutes, does not apply to all unemployed people. In order to be actually
‘‘assessed’’ the unemployed person has to either wait for the obligatory meeting (it
usually takes from one month to three months after registration), or to initiate a
meeting herself and persuade the employees of her LLO that she is a person who is
worth devoting more time to than usual. In spite of the increasing availability of
activation programmes, the proportion of local civil officers to unemployed people
remains small. On average there are 85 unemployed people per one employee of public
employment services (including all workers, not necessarily in direct contact with
beneficiaries) (Grotkowska, 2008). In one of the offices that was studied, the proportion
of registered unemployed to employees responsible for activation programmes was 526
to 1 (Sztandar-Sztanderska, 2008). For practical reasons alone, local civil officers have
to decide on their time allocation and select cases that will actually be given attention Activation of the
(this mechanism is described by Lipsky, 1980). unemployed in
Therefore, selection is conducted before any official recruitment process to an
activation programme takes place. This selection is based on the principle that people Poland
are left alone and are supposed to make use of the opportunities provided by the LLO
themselves. The problem is that the unemployed are rarely informed about all available
services or if they are, the information is formulated in a legalistic jargon demanding
certain competences to decipher its meaning. Poor management of information is not a
631
random selection, it acts in favour of people who are more qualified, have social skills
and the confidence to obtain additional information. It can therefore be interpreted as a
first manifestation of creaming practices.
First assessment: categorisation ‘‘active’’ vs ‘‘passive’’. Many local civil officers
believe that finding relevant information and making use of an LLO’s offer actually
depends on the unemployed person’s ‘‘motivation’’, ‘‘activity’’, ‘‘eagerness to work’’ or
‘‘good will’’. To the question ‘‘Who finds his/her way to the room where information on
job offers might be found?’’, they respond: it depends on his or her eagerness to find work.
It varies between people. When a person is really interested in work she does not have a
problem (LLO 3, 2006). In consequence local officers often take the lack of competences as
‘‘passivity’’. They divide people into two groups: a small group of ‘‘the active’’, who come
regularly, express their needs and difficulties and a crowd of ‘‘others’’, who come only to
the obligatory appointments, whom they suspect of lack of motivation or illegal work.
Local civil servants adapt their subsequent behaviour according to this assessment.
They create a special register of ‘‘active jobseekers’’ and invest time to find out more
about the unemployed person’s competences, experience, preferences or family situation
in order to find an appropriate job offer, even if nothing is available immediately. They
contact such people if any interesting job offers appear. They give advice on how to make
use of individual active labour market programmes, such as individual training,
internships, or on-the-job-training. Because of regular contact and mutual trust, they
might more easily diagnose the problems of such people and suggest solutions, such as
training programmes or psychological support. If there are more candidates than places,
those who are perceived as ‘‘active’’ will be given priority during selection for the
activation programme. Finally, local civil servants are reluctant to impose sanctions on
such people for refusal of job offers that meet the legal criteria of ‘‘suitable employment’’,
preferring to give them the choice of which job offer is of interest to them.
Definition of ‘‘suitable employment’’ is:
Suitable employment is defined according to the following criteria:
. employment or remunerated work, subject to payment of social contributions;
. unemployed person possesses sufficient qualifications and professional experience to
perform the job, or will be able to perform it after training;
. her health condition makes it possible to perform the job;
. journey to work and back home does not exceed 3 h and can be made by means of public
transport; and
. the gross income should equal at least the national minimum wage, if it is a full-time job
(or should be calculated proportionally to the time of work).
However, if somebody is not categorised as ‘‘active’’, her ‘‘job readiness’’ will be tested
during an obligatory meeting or she will be summoned to the office if there is a vacancy
IJSSP that has not attracted the attention of other jobseekers. In this case the treatment is more
procedural. It is more probable that refusal of any job offer that meets the criteria of
29,11/12 ‘‘suitable employment’’ will lead to sanctioning, or formal medical justification will be
required. Employees who do not automatically apply sanctions in cases of refusal of
‘‘suitable employment’’, will monitor such people and immediately check their reaction to
other jobs or activation programme proposals. If these are also rejected, they will be
deprived of their unemployed status for up to 270 days. When they are not interested in a
632 job offer, their strategy to avoid sanctioning is that at the meeting with the employer they
present themselves in such a way that makes them unattractive. The disciplinary logics
implemented in the LLOs has, therefore, a negative effect on the cooperation with
employers, because it makes the recruitment process longer and more difficult for the
latter and many of them, in particular those who propose better work conditions, decide
not to provide information about vacancies to LLOs. As a consequence, the opportunities
for the registered unemployed dwindle. Being perceived as passive means having fewer
chances to be contacted personally if interesting job offers appear or a popular activation
programme starts. Such people will also be forced under threat of being deprived of their
unemployed status to participate in a programme they do not wish to join.
Usually, there are three groups of unemployed people who are the object of closer
examination by local civil servants: people less than 25 years old, people over 50 years
old and those entitled to unemployment benefits. Their special treatment is due to legal
regulations that in the case of the first two groups oblige the LLO to give them a job
offer or a form of activation in the first six months following registration, and in the
case of the third one, oblige the LLO to check that there is no available suitable
employment or activation programme before awarding a benefit. This formal
procedure makes the process of categorisation quicker, and it is easier for these three
groups either to benefit from special treatment, provided that they are perceived as
‘‘active’’, or to bear its negative consequences, such as coercion or punishment.
To summarise this, being categorised as ‘‘active’’ and ‘‘eager to work’’ has an important
impact on the treatment which an unemployed person receives. This is the major reason to
give the unemployed a right to voice (enhancement of her ‘‘capability for voice’’), and to
attempt to take into consideration her situation and values during a job placement and
activation process (enhancement of her ‘‘capability for work’’). Categorising somebody as
‘‘passive’’ legitimises disciplinary actions without any obligation on the side of the office to
learn about the person’s preferences or life projects. This is the case when a person is
defined as an object of treatment instead of being its subject, and she is then not
guaranteed the right to refuse a job for any reason other than health conditions (the
criterion of income was added by the last Amendment of the Act on employment
promotion). According to the normative assumptions underlying this informational basis
of judgment in justice, only a person who proves her ‘‘initiative’’ and ‘‘eagerness to work’’ is
worthy of ‘‘being assisted’’ and deserves to have basic ‘‘rights’’, such as the right to choose
or reject a job offer. In the case of somebody perceived as ‘‘passive’’, the logic of ‘‘initiative
employability’’ is applied (Gazier, 1999; Bonvin and Farvaque, 2007). The concept of
‘‘employability’’ acknowledges the superiority of every remunerated activity over
inactivity and unemployment (in our case study, ‘‘activity’’ and ‘‘eagerness’’ exclusively
refer to practices aimed at labour market insertion), whereas the adjective ‘‘initiative’’
implies that the person ‘‘holds full responsibility for her trajectory in the labour market’’
(Bonvin and Farvaque, 2007, p. 59). In our case, one should add that she also holds full
responsibility for her trajectory in an LLO. According to this informational basis of
judgment in justice, being unemployed is identified with a personal failure, and the same
applies to the inability to use opportunities provided by an LLO. Some mechanisms, such Activation of the
as ‘‘blame-allocating’’, ‘‘backward-looking’’ and a belief in ‘‘individual responsibility’’, unemployed in
described by Bonvin and Farvaque as the characteristics of ‘‘employability’’ as an ideal-
type of public action, also apply here (Bonvin and Farvaque, 2007, p. 59). The choice of Poland
this informational basis of judgment in justice leads to hidden creaming practices (a lack
of competences is often confused with passivity) and stigmatisation.
Second assessment: recruitment to activation programmes. Participation in ALMP
depends on the selection process operated at the local level, which is usually dependent 633
on the interplay between many different forms of ‘‘informational bases of judgment in
justice’’. Beside the above-mentioned judgment on ‘‘activity’’, local civil servants are
obliged to take into consideration formal regulations about access restrictions to some
instruments, and must also adapt their actions in order to obtain good results in terms
of the ‘‘efficiency indicator’’.
There are two types of nationally defined access restrictions. First of all, some
instruments, such as internships, on-the-job-training and various forms of subsidised
employment, are restricted to the above-mentioned category of ‘‘people in a special
situation in the labour market’’, although this centralised way of targeting is being
questioned by local civil servants. They argue that formal criteria make them unable to
adapt actions to active individuals in difficult circumstances or to groups that are
vulnerable at the local level, but not included in the central catalogue of people ‘‘in a
special situation’’. They find the targeting criteria unjust, as opposed to central
authorities which tend to act in favour of standardisation of services and deny LLOs
the power to define access criteria autonomously. In this conflict LLOs refer to an
informational bass of justice close to a redistributive approach, striving to reduce
social inequalities, while central authorities invoke a criterion of efficiency and accuse
the LLOs of lack of professionalism.
Secondly, there is an access restriction related to the instrument of individual
training that demands the limitation of its use to situations where participation ‘‘makes
employment more probable’’. In consequence, the access to this measure is often limited
to people who manage to persuade potential employers to sign a declaration for the
LLO stating that the enterprise will hire them after the training. It might therefore be
argued that benefits from the individualisation of services are not equally distributed,
since once again people ‘‘closer to the labour market’’ are favoured over more
disadvantaged recipients.
This unequal treatment also applies when local officers adapt their actions in order
to produce good results in terms of the efficiency indicator, measuring the percentage
of participants that found a job within three months after the end of the activation
programme. Polish economists criticise such creaming practices as economically
inefficient, since job insertion is the result of other variables – such as previous
education, skills, age – and the financial investment in LMP is not easily translated into
an increase of ‘‘employability’’ (Liwi nski and Sztanderska, 2006). Another potential
pitfall of this indicator, observed from the perspective of the CA, is that it does not
consider whether the action of taking up a job is the outcome of a free choice or, on the
contrary, the result of pressures and constraints.
Increasing quantity, forgetting quality. The focus on quantitative indicators, such as
the number of participants, has a negative effect on the quality of programmes. Short-
term and cheap activation programmes prevail (Liwin ski and Sztanderska, 2006, p. 67)
and various forms of activation are used in an uncoordinated manner in order to cover
the largest possible number of people. This ‘‘assembly-line’’ syndrome, to use one local
IJSSP civil servant’s expression, is also a consequence of the pressure to absorb all financial
29,11/12 resources allocated in the framework of the ESF. Such pressure results in mostly
standardised, short-term and isolated programmes that are simply unsuitable for a
growing number of unemployed people with multiple problems.

Conclusion
634 The Polish activation model shares several characteristics with the liberal approach to
activation constructed by Barbier (2001). It relates to the same ideological references –
also similar to the conception of ‘‘initiative employability’’ described by Gazier (1999) –
such as the self-reliance of individuals in the labour market. This normative conception
legitimised subsequent restrictions on passive policies, limiting assistance to the most
‘‘needy’’, as well as justifying development of a punitive approach including the
enforcement of active job searches. First of all, the study of the implementation of ALMP
reveals that similar to other EU countries, the normative assumptions underlying this
dominant informational basis of justice, reinforced by the application of performance
indicators, lead to reproduction of social inequalities and further stigmatisation of
unemployed people (Dean, 2003). Secondly, the current tendency to perform activation by
disciplinary means does not seem to be an efficient way of empowering the unemployed;
on the one hand, it discourages employers from cooperating with LLOs, and on the other
discourages the unemployed from registering at the LLOs and exercising their rights.
Finally, the increase of resources for ALMP will not have significant effects without the
empowerment of the LLOs and the setting up of effective local networks. The former
demands a major increase in personnel, more autonomy to diagnose locally vulnerable
groups and individuals, a right to negotiate the allocation of funds and freedom to invest
in good quality programmes instead of focusing on (large) numbers of participants. Local
networks should aim at developing coordination between public and non-public actors,
especially through the exchange of information and experience and the creation of
mechanisms that seek to make services complementary.

Note
1. Empirical investigation was carried out as part of the following research projects:
. CAPRIGHT: Resources, rights and capabilities: in search of social foundations for
Europe.
. Public labour administration in a present organisational and legal context.
. Rescaling social welfare policies: A comparative study on the path towards multi-level
governance in Europe.
. Analysis of selected local labour markets and creation of methodology for research of
local labour markets in Poland.
. Everyday life of Europeanisation: the case of local labour offices (this project is
financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education from the resources
for science for years 2008-2010).
Results from some of these projects can be found in Sztandar-Sztanderska (2008),
Grabowski et al. (2008) and Liwi
nski and Sztanderska (2006).

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Corresponding author
Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska can be contacted at: sztandarka@yahoo.fr; sztanderskak@
is.uw.edu.pl

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