The discourse of the European Union on employment policies and social exclusion. A social analysis of the European Employment Strategy

Abstract

From middle of the nineties, in Europe we can see the consolidation of what seems to be a new philosophy and its consistent practice, in relation to facing the problematics of the social question of our time. The high unemployment rates of the beginning of the eighties which later maintained high, weren’t analyzed anymore as a conjuntural problem, but being seen as of a structural character. For this reason, politician administrative officer have led to the point to solve the questions of unemployment and social exclusion. The European Strategy of the Employment, well-established and spread by the European Commission between the member states, seems to be the central instrument of this new approach. Sustaining the force of its philosophy and of its forms of intervention in the application of active policies of employment, that were created in the context of the Swedish labour economy to solve problems of frictional unemployment, the active policies are now at the center of the contemporary social action. They suppose a change in the forms of intervention of the Keynesian Welfare State, and focus on the construction of new representations of the perspectives ofunemployment and social exclusion.