New Risks and the Reframing of Local Welfare as Social Investment: The Case of the FORJAD Program in Switzerland

FORJAD (Formation Professionelle pour le Jeunes Adults en Difficulté) was a program of social policy implemented in Switzerland since 2006. Its specific aim is to sustain the professional training of young unemployed adults (18 - 25) in order to allow them to become autonomous from the social assistance and to (re)entry into the labour market. This paper deals with specific dimensions of this program, with particular reference to its complex and plural governance and to the cultural framework of the Social Investment Welfare State (SIWS). This paradigm tries to connect the logics of activation and training with the necessity to realize a better quality of welfare services and to invest in personal capabilities of welfare recipients. In this framework, FORJAD seems to represent a social innovation realized to contrast at a local level the young unemployment as an example of emergent new social risks.