New welfare, new policies: towards preventive worker-directed active labour market policies?

Debates about the new welfare, and the new social policies that go (or should go) with
it, share an emphasis on risk-prevention strategies and pluralistic risk management. Focusing
specifically on the risk of unemployment, this article discusses the case for so-called preventive
worker-directed active labour market policies as part of the new welfare architecture. These
policies are aimed at preventing unemployment and promoting labour-market transitions
and employability. They involve responsibilities on the part of the state, social partners and
employers. First, the case for these policies is elaborated by analysing the social investment,
flexicurity and transitional labour-market literature. In this context, several issues related to the
feasibility of the pluralistic management of preventing unemployment, as well as the possible
impact of pluralistic risk management on dualisation, are discussed. Secondly, recent policy
initiatives in the Netherlands are presented as an illustration of the incremental emergence
of preventive worker-directed active labour-market policies. It is argued that although these
policy initiatives were initially introduced as responses to the crisis, they may eventually turn
out to reflect a more fundamental reorientation in managing and dealing with the risks of
unemployment. The conclusion critically reflects and argues that pluralistic risk management
may exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the insecurities of flexible and non-standard workers.