ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book starts with the notion that the frontline delivery of public policies cannot simply be interpreted as a technical process of implementing laws, rules and regulations issued by governments. It focuses on welfare-to-work aimed at unemployed people dependent on unemployment benefit or social assistance schemes. In trying to understand and interpret frontline practices in welfare-to-work, the book also focuses particular attention to four contexts considered relevant: activation policy context: governance context; organizational context; and occupational context. Finally, the book focuses on the issue that despite an increasingly similar treatment in formal activation policies of unemployed people remote and very remote from the labour market, frontline work is characterized by a rather different treatment of both groups: heterogeneous group and professional group.
