Welfare to work programs aim to assist the long-term unemployed in finding work; increasing labor market flexibility, eliminating dependency, and tackling social exclusion. They have been implemented in many Western countries. This book focuses on an important and novel feature of these programs: they replace the rights-based entitlements that have characterized the welfare state for decades with conditional rights dependent on the fulfillment of obligations: conditions are attached to the benefits received.
This new type of social contract between the claimant and the State carries with...