Administering employability: Employment service delivery in the era of active labour market policy

This dissertation analyzes employment service delivery in Canada, focusing specifically on reforms adopted between 1965 and 2000. Its central argument is that, while 'activation' is the overarching framework of federal labour market policy, implementation of activating measures in employment service delivery is characterized by a high degree of instability and administrative failure. Drawing on concepts of governmentality, the study traces the difficulties employment service administrators have encountered in devising ways of governing unemployment as a problem of individual activation. It documents the conscription of often discordant discourses and techniques into service delivery in an ongoing pursuit of coherent methods for knowing and governing individual employability. In doing so, the dissertation brings to light dilemmas of the activation framework that are overlooked in Canadian social policy scholarship.