Políticas activas de empleo en Españadebate y retos políticos en el marco de las nuevas formas de organización social (2003-2013)

Resumen

The present investigation is an analysis of the Active Employment Policies in Spain, applying the tools and techniques offered by the sociological perspective. This analysis allows the analytical consideration of the environment in which they are developed, through the different dimensions that occur in the ways of social organization. Understood as these social structures that regulate the different social fields in an interconnected way and that print their character and behaviour. The period contemplated for the investigation is the decade 2003-2013. In 2003, the 56/2003 Employment establish a new stage in the regulation of these policies. The first years of prosperity in economy and employment and the subsequent crisis, it has forced this period to close in 2013. The main normative texts of the regulatory framework of Active Employment Policies, and the transcription of the debates that accompanies it for approval at the Cortes Generales (Congress of Deputies and Senate), constitute the raw materials that feeds this work. These official documents are the result of the institucional life of society. This material, object of analysis, has been applied a content analysis, developed through several descriptive, contextual, relational and conceptual strategies. The objective of the research is to identify what elements of social, economic, ideological or political nature have been considered in the debate and the regulation of Active Employment Policies, establishing themselves as elements that configure this policies and conditioning their development and results. Therefore, the latter aim is to conceptualize and characterize the process that has marked the evolution of the regulatory framework that set the Active Employment Policies in Spain, in a key decade in terms of economy and employment in the country, and that has led to a certain configuration at present policies. Among the conclusions, it should be highlighted that the Active Employment Policies in Spain, have been developed on a fragmentation of the problems on which it has to intervene. It is an intensive intervention, as opposed to a more structural one that could consider, for example, a greater integration of these policies with social policy, economic policy or demographic policies. The loss of power of action of public authorities in a global social, economic and labour justified context, for citizenship, a political action about visible requirements, further away from interventions in elements of a structural nature. Active Employment Policies become an almost constant revision of the definition of political challenges in political management. Indeed, during the 2003-2013 periods, the element that has been implicit in the debate and regulatory framework of the PAE has been not only a revision of them, but a formula for the definition of the political challenges that have been communicated through these policies. The result is a specific configuration of Active Employment Policies geared towards establishing a range of objectives and political challenges wich main features are their ability to communicate to citizens, their implementation and, therefore, to fulfill a purpose more oriented to political survival, understanding this as the necessary political response that public authorities have to offer to citizens, rather than intervention in a problem of a structural nature. The main consequence remain on the real extent that these policies have on the labour market. This degree of uncertainty about its impact would also explain, partly, the apparent weakness of the evaluation process of these policies.