Rik van Berkel is an associate professor at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His research interests are situated on the interface of social policy, public administration and public organization studies, and include welfare state transformations, implementing new models for the provision of social services, and processes of change in public organizations. Dorte Caswell is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. She is the head of SAB, a research group focusing on social work at the frontline of active labour market and social policy. Her research focuses on social work under the canopy of active labour market and social policy. Peter Kupka is a senior researcher at the Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany. His research interests include processes of counselling and job placement, the situation of – and case work for – unemployed persons with mental health problems. Flemming Larsen is a professor at the Centre for Labour Market Research (CARMA), Aalborg University, Denmark. His research focuses on labour market and social policy. One major research topic has been labour market models. Another important field of research is analyses of labour market and social policy reforms, studying changes (and trends) in policies.
'Welfare-to-work is one of the major shifts in welfare over the last decades. Combining national case studies and thought-provoking theoretical chapters, this book provides the reader with concrete information on the actual ‘activation’ practices and proposes an innovative framework to understand what is at stake at the frontline of the new welfare state. A must-read to grasp what ‘activation policy’ really is, and to figure out its impact on people subjected to it.' - Vincent Dubois, University of Strasbourg, France 'These studies demonstrate the importance of examining signature welfare state policies through the reactions and behavior of front-line workers. Bringing these studies of welfare-to-work policies in the United States and eight European countries together in a single volume is an impressive achievement.' - Michael Lipsky, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, author of Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services