A journey into the new employment service landscape of responsibilisation: Towards de-personalisation of the caseworker–jobseeker relationship

Abstract

The article analyses a new culture of responsibilisation implicated in a recent management reform in the Swedish Public Employment Service. Based on an interview study and organisational documents, it is shown that the reform entails a new form of responsibilisation of jobseekers as well as caseworkers. As jobseekers are expected to ‘carry their own case’ through the administrative job-search process, they are obliged to manage tasks that used to be in the caseworker's area of responsibility. Furthermore, caseworkers are expected to regulate themselves in new ways and change their mind-set according to new organisational values and behavioural norms, requiring a restraining of their availability to clients. It is argued that the employment agency is increasingly turned into the agency of the active and responsible jobseeker, which entails one further shift towards individual responsibility in Swedish labour market policy and one further step towards the breakup of a personal caseworker–jobseeker relationship.