Activation via Intensive Intimacies in the Israeli Welfare-to-Work Program

• Author: Asa Maron
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399712451896
• Published date: 01 January 2014
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2014, Vol. 46(1) 87 – 111

© The Author(s) 2012

DOI: 10.1177/0095399712451896

aas.sagepub.com

451896AAS46110.1177/0095399712

451896MaronAdministration & Society

© 2012 SAGE Publications

1Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Asa Maron, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,

POB 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel.

Email: asamaron@gmail.com

Activation via Intensive

Intimacies in the Israeli

Welfare-to-Work

Program: Applying a

Constructivist Approach

to the Governance of

Institutions and Individuals

Asa Maron1

Abstract

This article uses a constructivist approach to scrutinize embedded actions of

situated agents of governance to explore the governing of activation services

in Israel. It probes beliefs, discourses, and practices of meso-level regulation

administrators and street-level workers to analyze the emergence of a new

stringent and disciplinary activation mode. Ultimately, this activation mode

reconfigured the “social contract” between the state and its unemployed

citizens via intensive intimacies: a conflicted microspace governed with little

discretion and imbued with a reformative vision of state–society relations.

The article demonstrates how situated agents’ meaning-making is essential to

examining shifting governance forms and their political ramifications.

Keywords

governance, activation services (welfare-to-work), state bureaucracy, welfare-

state change

Article

88 Administration & Society 46(1)

Individualization of social services is a significant trend in contemporary trans-

formations of the welfare state. Individualization implies that social services are

adjusted according to individual circumstances, needs, and wants, and permits

its users opportunities for participation in the design of said services, thus allow-

ing for the creation of effective custom-made treatments (Borghi & van Berkel,

2007; Needham, 2011; van Berkel & Valkenburg, 2007). The process of indi-

vidualization mirrors the attempt to modernize the welfare state in the midst of

growing ideological and financial constraints, creating flexible services in which

political recognition of late modern societies’ heterogeneity and differentiation

converge with the economic imperative of efficiency. Although relevant for

many services, individualization is particularly essential to activation services.

Activation policies challenge the “social contract” rooted in social rights of citi-

zenship by conditioning citizens’ entitlement to social security and income sup-

port schemes on their active participation in work-related duties. These policies

require unemployed citizens to take additional responsibility for their well-being

via labor market reintegration (e.g., Gilbert, 2002; Handler, 2004; Lødemel &

Trickey, 2000) as part of their participation in poverty reduction. Activation

policies are based on a new sociopolitical rationale that interprets unemploy-

ment as an individual impediment rather than as a structural phenomenon. Indi-

vidualization is thus an inherent characteristic of activation services, based on

individual diagnosis of personal barriers; resources are assigned to change

behavior and optimize support toward the labor market (Borghi & van Berkel,

2007; Pascual, 2007; van Berkel & Valkenburg, 2007).

Although individualization became a central concept in contemporary

policy discourse, its elasticity contributes to an ambiguous guideline for

policy practitioners and analysts (Cutler, Waine, & Brehony, 2007; Ferguson,

2007; Needham, 2011; van Berkel & Valkenburg, 2007). Borghi and van

Berkel (2007) suggest resolving this setback by scrutinizing the administra-

tive apparatus by which individualized activation is governed. Following

this, I argue that individualization is best understood by analyzing the actions

and interactions of those who govern it. To explain the production of inten-

sive intimacies, a particular form of individualization that emerged in the

Israeli activation program, this article probes the governance of activation

services and demonstrates how individualization is governed by private and

public actors entrenched in specific political and cultural contexts.

Governing Individualized Activation: The

Role of Situated Agents and Agencies

The inherent link between activation and an individualized mode of service

delivery led scholars to argue that to accurately study individualization of