Empowerment, Learning and Social Action during Unemployment

Abstract

A good job helps to give life purpose and meaning. It provides the day, week, year and lifetime with structure and content. The worker gains identity and self-respect and is able to give, and receive, social support in social networks. In addition, a job provides material advantages and a reasonable living. A person excluded from the labour market risks losing or perhaps never accessing, all of these benefits and also runs an increased risk of physical and mental ill health. To prevent this, the European Council's Summit on Employment advocated developing entrepreneurship, improving employability, encouraging the adaptability of business and their employees, and strengthening the policies for equal opportunities as a co-ordinated EU strategy. This approach is based on a necessary but probably insufficient top-down strategy. A necessary complement to this is a bottom-up approach, an attempt to empower, train, and mobilise the 16 millions of European unemployed for mutual help and self-help (social economy), and to remove obstacles to their initiatives to do so. Both approaches need to be applied across societal sectors and academic disciplines, and at all societal levels, in a systems approach.