| Abstract: | Countless evaluations of active labour market policy (ALMP) have been conducted in the last decade. The common denominator for most of these evaluations is a focus on employment (self‐sufficiency) as the dependent variable, where the success of ALMP is measured in terms of the number of unemployed finding ordinary employment after (or immediately before) participating in an activation programme. The main argument in this article is that this focus is inadequate. For many long‐term unemployed people, it would be an understatement to describe the road to employment as merely ‘bumpy’. Research must take this into consideration. This article therefore deals with the Danish activation policy from a new perspective by analyzing the impact on different aspects of social marginalization, focusing on long‐term social assistance recipients. Using data from a comprehensive, representative quantitative survey of Danish unemployed conducted in 2007, the first analysis convincingly reveals that we fail to find any systematic correlation between participation in ALMP and any of the social marginalization indicators. The second analysis presents a more mixed picture of the participant's own assessment of the impact of ALMP on their self‐esteem; some are quite positive, while others are more neutral or even rather negative. Taking the existing research into account, these results leave us with conceptual and methodological questions for further research. |
