The political logic of labour market reforms and popular images of target groups

Even though the shift from ‘passive' to ‘active' labour market policy exhibit large cross-national variations, they all seem to share two common characteristics; 1) the first group exposed to the new policies and the group exposed to the harshest policies was young people on social assistance and 2) as the target group gradually came to include ‘ordinary' unemployed, most countries made exceptions for the oldest unemployed. The article argues that this striking policy convergence has to do with the public perception of the target groups. The article substantiates this argument 1) by giving a theoretical explanation for the different popular images of target groups and 2) by showing - using a national Australian sample - that these general popular images influence the way the public wants ‘active' labour market policy to be conducted.