“Having Demands and Expectations is Love”: Problematisations and the Constructions of Subjects in a Labour Market Program in Sweden

Abstract: This thesis explores how subjects are constructed within the labour market program called Trelleborgsmodellen, or the Trelleborg Model. It focuses on the Labour Market Department within Trelleborg Municipality and how economic welfare applicants and street level bureaucrats are constructed in the policy. The analysis is based on policy document and interviews with labour market secretaries at the department and uses Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to explore underlying problematisations and presuppositions within the policy and subject constructions. Situating the Trelleborg model within the historical conditions of neo liberalism and New Public Management the analysis uses Foucault’s concept of governmentality to understand what subjects that are the object and outcome of this form of conduct. The subjects desired within the Trelleborg Model practice an “active” citizenship with a desire of self realisation through waged labour. The methods used are to a large extent coercive but are aiming to reach their full potential as individuals. Hence, the practices and ideology of the Labour Market Department can mediate both freedom and coercion at the same time.