Justifications of private actors in the provision of welfare services to vulnerable populations

Abstract: The support and matching program is a unique case of marketization of job-brokerage by the Swedish Public Employment Service since 2007. This program impacts especially the foreign-born population facing disproportionate unemployment rates in Sweden. The program has been extensively studied in Sweden through macro evaluations, due to political interest in research-based evaluation. This thesis proposes a new approach with a micro qualitative study of the justifications of support and matching companies. Through the framework of sociology of justifications and especially Boltanski and Thévenot's six orders of worth, this thesis analyses the justifications developed by three different companies where job-brokerage is sub-contracted through marketing materials and interviews of employees. These companies are now facing a critical moment as blames, criticism and grievances are exchanged. In order for this criticism to be evaluated, actors need to agree on orders of worth. The support and matching companies are pushing for a mix of justifications that is excluding the civic order of worth, central in the Swedish Welfare State. This shift of worth is feeding an internal discrepancy between the neoliberal logic behind marketization and the universalistic nature of the Swedish Welfare State. Private companies are then pushing a public program towards new orders of worth, raising the political question of marketization of job-brokerage as designed at the expense of the vulnerable immigrant population, which is its main target group.