Nas encruzilhadas do (des)emprego

: os impactos das políticas ativas de emprego na sociedade de risco

Abstract

The changes verified in the last decades posed challenges that demanded the adaptation of States and citizens to a new reality - the Risk Society, visible in the transformations occurred in the labour market (economic), in the family structure (social) and the organization of the State (policies). The emergence of new social risks, as advocated by Beck (2015), had an effect on the lives of citizens and society, with the main emphasis on employment and social structures with a consequent increase in the population in a situation of social vulnerability. In this context, it was intended to analyse the extent to which active policies can (or cannot) produce significant changes in the lives of individuals, enabling them to face the challenges of this “risk society”. Understanding whether activation policies can lead to worsening social inequalities due to the socio-economic exclusion contexts that they directly or indirectly tend to generate was one of the central objectives of this study. From the range of active employment policy measures, we chose the Employment-Insertion Contract measures (CEI and CEI+) as the object of analysis. These are paradigmatic of the philosophy inherent in the current State and their wide use by public and private entities and organizations reveals their relevance in the socio-professional integration of the citizens who used them. It is a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews with the citizensusers of the CEI and CEI+ measures, the managers and technicians of the IEFP and technicians from the host institutions of these measures. The treatment of the data followed a logic of categorical analysis having concluded that despite its excellent design in the theoretical-regulatory protocol, its systematic use by public and private entities, as well as its high duration in time and space, sends them to a palliative dimension that does not allow either the real activation of citizens, or their true integration in the regular labour market. In order to increase their potential for integration into the regular labour market, greater specialized technical monitoring should be carried out on the way in which they are implemented and use techniques of greater proximity to their users, mitigating the effect of the stress and vulnerability contexts that surround them.

Date of Award	22 Feb 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Clara Cruz Santos (Supervisor)