Do we know where we are going? Active policies and individualisation in the Italian context

The processes of socio-economic and demographic transformation affecting European countries since the 1970s brought about the need of active welfare-states and increasingly individualised social policies. Although this need seems to be the same in all European countries, embedded in a common social discourse supported by national and trans-national institutions and organisations, it leads to different concrete transformations and restructuring of the former welfare systems. Looking at the Italian context, one may – even though it is difficult to identify really individual-tailored measures and schemes (see below) – observe some easily recognisable (institutional) consequences of the pressures towards the activation and individualisation of policies. The emergence of new forms of governance, indeed, can be linked to the necessity of providing new services and reforming the already existing ones. First, the increasing complexity of emerging social needs implies the integration of different competences and professional skills in order to address these adequately with – usually – less and less standardised measures. Secondly, the increasing tendency to externalise, privatise and outsource public services to third sector bodies implies a pluralisation of actors and imposes the need to coordinate public and private agencies through new forms of governance arrangements. As a consequence, the problem of coordination (horizontally, among the different actors involved in the implementation of the policies; vertically, among the different levels at which the policies are designed and ruled) emerged as the central one. In order to understand the specific Italian translation of the pressures towards active and individualised policies, we will try to summarise some important features of the country’s welfare regime, focussing then on two particular fields of policy and reform - social assistance; labour market services - in which it is possible to see some efforts (and the respective problems) heading in that direction.

This chapter summarises several important features of the welfare regime of a country, in order to understand the pressures made towards active and individualised policies. The chapter focuses on two fields of policy reform, which are labour market services and social assistance. It begins with a section on the context of welfare policies in the Italian case, before looking at the transformations that occurred in social assistance and labour market services. Finally, it looks at perspectives and challenges found within the Italian context of social policies.