From the mid-nineties on, European welfare states are facing formidable pressures. As a response to these pressures, a strong international reform agenda has found support around the ideas that benefit recipients have to be “activated” in order to find Jobs. Such approaches conceive the aim of welfare states to strengthen Social Policy as a productive factor and to provide the “right” incentives and compulsion (carrots and sticks) in order to control and design behaviour of persons (van Berkel, 2010; Handler, 2004). On an ideological level, these developments correspond to a shift from previously contested assumptions about human motivation, choice, agency and human responsibility of beneficaries of the welfare state. In Critical Social Policy research, a discussion has emerged around the models of human motivation and agency that have been influential in policy design (see e.g. Le Grand, 2003; Deacon, 2005; White, 2013). The article argues that conceptions of human agency have important political implications when it comes to debates about individual responsibility. This may lead to so called “autonomy gaps” (Anderson, 2009), or to situations in which welfare beneficaries perceive the instituionalized imperative to autonomy as an injunction. The article confronts the capability approach (C.A.) to different competing sociological conceptions of human agency. On the basis of an empirical study of the construction of welfare subjects through activation policies, the article points to some shortcomings of the C.A. especially for the analysis of the micro-workings of power in post-disciplinary societies, in which the exercise of power does not so much consist of imposing direct constraints upon citizens as of “governing trough freedom”. For this reason, the article argues that Sen’s realization-based approach needs to be supplemented by concepts which allow accounting for the social mediatedness of individual identities and for the social construction of subjectivity within different social contexts.

Work-life balance has been identified as a key challenge in expatriation, which impacts both private and professional spheres. Especially for women, work and private life issues have been found to be particularly exacerbated abroad. Up until today, research on work-life interface in the expatriation context has focused on expatriates relocating with a family. However, single expatriates represent a non-negligible proportion of the expatriate population and their work-life experiences remain largely unexplored. This is especially relevant for female expatriates, since reports and past research showed that they were more often single than their male counterparts and had less often children. In the domestic context, recent studies on work-life interface reveal significant issues that single and childless individuals face in balancing both life spheres. The aim of this qualitative exploratory study is to examine the specific work-life experiences of single and childless female expatriates that are working and living in the French speaking part of Switzerland.

Staying satisfied and healthy in the face of a complex and uncertain professional world is a priority for individuals. This article examines the contribution of personality traits, career adaptability, and prior well-being as predictors of well-being over 1 year in four different professional trajectory groups: those who remained employed, those who experienced a professional change, those who moved from unemployment to employment, and those who remained unemployed. Results show meaningful differences between these groups in terms of well-being over 1 year. Employed individuals have higher life satisfaction and self-rated health than unemployed individuals. Regaining employment contributes to improved well-being. Different professional situations correspond to varying levels of career adaptability, suggesting it may be a precursor for career changes. Personality traits and career adaptability predict well-being over time, but the strongest predictor of future well-being is prior well-being. Results are discussed in light of career development, personality, and well-being theory.

During the Global Crisis, youth unemployment in Switzerland did not increase as much as in other countries. This chapter argues that one reason for this is the fact that the country was hit by the Crisis almost exclusively through its exporting sector. Three other explanations have to do with important peculiarities of the Swiss labour market: the large number of workers who reside in a neighbouring country and who therefore do not show up in the official unemployment statistics; the large incidence of part-time employment that allowed some of the adjustment to take place on the intensive margin; and the tertiary tier of the dual educational system that provided a training alternative to many of those who lost their jobs.

The objective of this paper is to better understand the factors that affect the chances of re-engaging early school leavers in education, with a particular focus on the importance of time out from school (duration dependence) and school-related factors. Using data from three cohorts of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and duration models that control for unobserved heterogeneity, our results suggest that programmes that encourage an early return to study and those that develop post-school career plans may be more effective than programmes that concentrate on improving numeracy and literacy scores.