Turning solutions into ‘structural’ problems: unemployment insurance, Denmark, 1992–93

Abstract

Chapter 5 analyses the reform process ending with ‘The active labour market policy act’ (1992-93) of the Danish unemployment insurance system. The chapter explains how a number of instruments that were initially qualified to keep the existing normative principles alive became requalified and reshaped to activation. The reform introduced an individual contract in combination with it with a number of different instruments: leave schemes to ease access to the labour market, job training for the unemployed and job offers that the unemployed, after a period of time, would have to accept in order to continue to receive compensation.