Transforming Children and Adolescents in Human Capital. Changes of Youth Policies in Post-Crisis Austria

Abstract

The paper by Atzmüller, Decieux, and Knecht analyzes the expansion of educational and social policy activities for preschool children and adolescents and the orientation of these activities on future employability and human capital formation as a moment of the polarization of welfare systems. It does so by focusing on recent changes in (early) childcare and the transition phase from education to vocational education and training (VET) and employment in Austria. The paper argues that these changes are linked to wider trends of capitalist social formations that are experiencing a period of crisis-ridden transformations since the 1970s which culminated in the financial crisis of 2008/2009 and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis. Drawing on Claus Offe’s conceptualization of welfare states and social policies as a form of crisis management through which societies cope with the dysfunctional and destructive effects of accumulation- and market-driven change, the question is raised whether the expansion and contextual reorientation of educational activities and social policies amount to a new form of crisis management. According to the paper, this alleged new form of crisis management is defined by strategies to adapt the subjective qualities of individuals to the crisis-ridden transformation of the economy. Thus, the subjectivation of crisis management that is central to the polarization of welfare systems focuses on activities to uphold a work ethic compatible with capitalist accumulation for those that are to be integrated in flexible and precarious segments of the labor market and human capital formation for the high skilled.