Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This chapter evaluates one of the oldest big data and algorithmic control technologies used by public employment services (PES) – profiling algorithms. By developing a sociological review of 14 deployments, we illustrate the gap between the stated ambition of these algorithms, and how they operate in practice at the front line of PES. Our exploration shows how digitalisation goes wrong, accelerating and weaponising the bias of the labour market in the very system that is supposed to be a counterbalance to such biases – a new form of ‘double activation’. In a similar vein, we demonstrate how and why the accuracy of these profiling algorithms is highly problematic.
Policy makers, researchers and research funding bodies increasingly aspire to use co-design methods to ‘involve’ stakeholders – users, intermediaries and the public. The aspiration is to bring together varieties of experiences, learn and negotiate with each other to improve the quality, efficiency and trust of public policy and services. Co-design has been particularly promoted as a method to meaningfully engage with hard-to-reach groups. This chapter relays the experience and reflection of bringing unemployed people, caseworkers and senior policy makers and actors into the process using a vignette scenario methodology in the development of a disruptive technology for use in public employment services (PES). The exercise surfaces the complex views and trade-offs that emerge when key stakeholders and users engage with concrete dilemmas around trust in data, job quality and discrimination in the use of digital technologies in PES. These expert panels, some 15 in total, were carried out in Ireland, Denmark, Slovenia and France, and the reported findings are a collaborative effort between those involved with such data collection. We make two forms of findings. This experience of co-design allows us to reflect on the affordance and limitations of expert panels in co- designing, assistive to anyone seeking to use expert panels to co-design.
This chapter reflects on the complexities of digitalising public employment services (PES), reflecting the entire book, which, across 14 chapters, surfaces the issues around the digital transition of PES, revealing a fragmented and contested process influenced by policy, technology and politics. Despite digital advancements, services remain piecemeal, often driven by crisis responses rather than cohesive strategies. The chapter highlights how digitalisation alters traditional welfare dynamics, sometimes reinforcing inequalities and raising ethical concerns. It emphasises the need for inclusive, personalised and user-friendly digital PES that involve stakeholders – job seekers, caseworkers and policy makers – in development. The discussion calls for a balanced approach, acknowledging both the potential benefits and the risks of digitalisation, and suggests a collaborative pathway to create more responsive and equitable digital public services.
This chapter seeks to explore the integration of digital public employment services (PES) technologies into an assemblage of caring. The purpose of this exploration is to surface the imagined and material role of technology as a competent caregiver inserted into a traditionally human-to-human relational care assemblage. The chapter draws on investigations into previous and existing PES technology, along with focus groups made up of caseworkers and unemployed people to consider the potential for adoption of such digital technologies as part of a cyborg merging of human and non-human for delivering care. The data indicates support for the potential of digital PES technologies as part of a hybrid service but is limited by the discretionary powers of PES advisers.
Profiling of jobseekers is traditionally carried out by advisers in public employment services. More recently, digital tools have been introduced to profile users and offer tailored services. The relationships between these two methods are studied based on a fieldwork in local public employment services (PES) agencies in France: Do the two methods coexist, or does the new replace the old? Are they experienced as complementary? And do they cause tensions in advisers’ work? We show that statistical profiling is firmly established, and without any major collective protest. But advisers do not fully embrace the tool, nor they use it in the same way. They combine the two methods very differently depending on their conceptions of their profession, which largely result from their backgrounds and modes of entry to the PES. Analysing the day-to-day work of advisers, we establish that profiling tools – and more broadly the digitalisation of the work of advisers – have a paradoxical, even counterintuitive, effect. Indeed, while they are supposed to limit the discretionary power of advisers, they introduce a new source of unpredictability in the workplace: one that is indexed to the different uses of tools and the conception of the work and the profession.
Digital PES-in-Action offers a comprehensive exploration of the ongoing digital transformation of public employment services (PES) – the most radical remaking of the welfare state in a generation.
As PES shifts from analogue to fully digitised services, this volume bridges the gap between technology, policy and frontline service provision. It provides a well-rounded analysis of the practical opportunities and challenges posed by digital welfare, reconnecting and reconciling technical possibilities and political ambitions with what is socially necessary as welfare systems undergo radical change.
This chapter investigates the Irish experience of service delivery to the long-term unemployed in the context of evolving social protection policies and digitisation. It explores how the shift to a ‘digital by default’ model has marginalised both the long-term unemployed, who often face literacy, numeracy and digital barriers, and the street-level case officers who aim to assist them. Using qualitative data from interviews and focus groups, the chapter reveals how digital solutions have replaced face-to-face interactions, leading to a ‘double exclusion’ where both vulnerable individuals and case officers are hindered by an impersonal, digitised framework. This research suggests that this approach undermines its goal of supporting vulnerable populations, exacerbating inequalities.
This chapter seeks to explore the potential for omni-channel public employment service (PES) provision, particularly established PES practice with future-forward, digital aspirations. It will first explore the remit of PES digitalisation, analysing the emergence of omni-channel as an institutional strategy. Utilising Ireland as a case example, it will explore the expectations for PES digitalisation across channels and touchpoints, while further expanding on the gap between actual service offerings as experienced by the unemployed in Ireland. Obstacles compounding omni-channel PES are examined in this light, with key recommendations made for the future of such strategic offering.
The digitalisation of public services, including public employment services (PES), is a key European policy goal with targets to have all government services online by 2030. This transformation, which alters human-to-human interactions, needs sociological understanding. PES is crucial, supporting 50 per cent of European Union (EU) citizens at some stage in their lives, and accounting for 1.4 per cent of EU gross domestic product. This chapter examines the digital agenda’s social impact, focusing on the Probability of Exit (PEX) algorithm used by the Irish PES.
Based on a three-year assemblage-oriented ethnographic study, the research traces the PEX algorithm’s first decade, from its creation during the global financial crisis to its continued use amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on 96 documents and ten interviews with various stakeholders. Findings reveal that PEX, initially a solution for welfare resource allocation during Ireland’s bailout agreement, persists despite changing unemployment rates. The algorithm maintains traditional power dynamics and discriminates against vulnerable groups, remaining controversial despite rebranding efforts.
The chapter critiques the techno-utopian view of digitisation in PES, using Foucault’s concept of the dispositif to understand how PEX shapes work practices and client interactions. The study surfaces the complex social life of the algorithm, highlighting its curious influences.
This chapter frames the book Digital Public Employment Services in Action, starting with the overarching ambitions and purpose of public employment services (PES), which is once again at stake in the generational shift to digital-first, software-defined welfare. Animating and guiding existing digital transformations is the technological aspirations of policy makers; and so the volume sets out to bring research from practice, and the longue durée of research on PES to explore the functional challenges. Before introducing the book structure, this chapter makes the case for focusing on the lived experiences of front-line workers and the unemployed who use and rely on PES, so that we can bridge the gap between policy theory and the realities of digital transformation.
