The work of activation

Focusing on the deployment of dematerialization at Pôle emploi (the French national employment agency), this article examines the ways in which a reform stemming from new public management is diverted from its initial objective, to ‘put the unemployed to work’ in a context of strengthening of activation policies. The ethnographic study, carried out in two distinct areas – one urban, the other rural – involved job counsellors and unemployed individuals. From both sides of the counter, the aim was to analyse the negotiation processes in the division of tasks between these actors, insofar as dematerialization generates a new division of labour between those providing support and those seeking it. We show that job counsellors either ‘make’ the unemployed, or ‘make them do’, or ‘let them do’, according to their social value and workload, so that the unemployed adhere to the norms of activation policies designed to make them active. They however demonstrate their autonomy in the face of this injunction to work.