Active labour market policies in Malta

Abstract

Activating the unemployed has been at the centre of employment policy since the late twentieth century. The economic recession of the 1970s was followed by a steep rise in unemployment (and benefit expenditure) across most of Europe, and fears rose over the sustainability of the welfare state (Mishra, 1984). These developments saw a turn to activation, driven by two broad concerns: to maintain the wellbeing of the unemployed, but also to maintain, and where necessary restore, their work ethic. The ‘passive’ receipt of unemployment benefits was believed to have created a ‘dependency culture’ (Murray, 1984). At the same time, research amply illustrated how unemployment causes distress and has a negative impact on wellbeing (Wanberg, 2012; Paul & Moser, 2009). Wellbeing is negatively affected not only through the loss of income, but also because it is much harder to structure one’s day and to socialise, and because one’s sense of agency and control is gradually eroded (Sage, 2018). These twin concerns – of work ethic and wellbeing – coincided in the concept of activation (Carter and Whitworth, 2017), even though they usually derive from different political traditions.