Towards standardisation of practitioners' knowledge: the case of private intermediaries of the labour market

This contribution analyses the stakes of activation policies in the French-speaking part of Belgium. It focuses on the private intermediaries of the labour market in "public-private partnership" with Belgian public employment services. It examines intermediaries‘work in devising and implementing employment policies and more precisely a particular activation measure called the job seeker’s support. This measure intends to improve job seekers’ socio-professional reinsertion by reducing exclusion and encouraging the return to employment.
The sociological analysis of this activation measure relies on in-depth analyses of four categories of private intermediaries mandated by Belgian public employment services to support job seekers towards employment. The analyses are based on a qualitative and empirical research combining direct observations (N=254), semi-structured interviews and documentary analyses (N=29). Theoretically, they rely on the sociology of public action.
This contribution demonstrates that, despite organisational contingencies and the discretionary power of the involved actors in implementing employment policies, the work of the private intermediaries of the labour market participates in increasing the standardisation of public action. This standardisation represents the transformation of knowledge that is enacted through interaction between job seekers’ and practitioners, private intermediaries of the labour market. This one inscribes and standardises knowledge into norms, figures and instruments (such as reporting, dashboards). This process, from enacted to inscribed knowledge, embodies institutional pressures in supporting job seekers and relies on new modes of delivery and implementation employment policies.