Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Europe and the politics of capabilities
- Part I Products, territories and economic activity in Europe
- 2 Europe tested through its products: the Renault–Vilvoorde affair and its implication for industry and employment policies
- 3 Competences-oriented logics and the politics of unemployability
- 4 Regional capabilities and the European Employment Strategy
- 5 The territorial pacts in Italy: the competitive corporatism assumption in question
- 6 Mobilising local capabilities for a European economic project: the case of Marseilles
- 7 Employment and social dialogue at the European level: a different approach to governance of territories
- Part 2 Assessing EU procedures and European initiatives
- Part 3 What politics of capabilities?
- Appendix 1 EU bibliography
- Appendix 2 Information on EU official documents
- Index
- References
3 - Competences-oriented logics and the politics of unemployability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Europe and the politics of capabilities
- Part I Products, territories and economic activity in Europe
- 2 Europe tested through its products: the Renault–Vilvoorde affair and its implication for industry and employment policies
- 3 Competences-oriented logics and the politics of unemployability
- 4 Regional capabilities and the European Employment Strategy
- 5 The territorial pacts in Italy: the competitive corporatism assumption in question
- 6 Mobilising local capabilities for a European economic project: the case of Marseilles
- 7 Employment and social dialogue at the European level: a different approach to governance of territories
- Part 2 Assessing EU procedures and European initiatives
- Part 3 What politics of capabilities?
- Appendix 1 EU bibliography
- Appendix 2 Information on EU official documents
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Since the early 1990s, the concept of ‘competences’ has experienced new developments within the world of labour. This has produced – in France particularly, but also in other European countries such as Germany – a set of new management practices, which are now the object of attempts to systematise them into a ‘competence-oriented logic’. The scope of these attempts is all the more important as the concept of competence often goes along with that of ‘employability’. In particular, the logics of evaluation and classification of persons which result from them are placed at the core of a ‘politics of employability’. The notion of employability has been promoted by European employment policy as one of the ‘four pillars’ for reforming the labour market (EC 2000c). It is therefore interesting to look into the modes of implementation of one of its possible practical expressions. One of the aims of this chapter is to explore the implications, but also the limits, of a politics of employability too exclusively centred on the logic of competence. Indeed, the concept of competence tends on the one hand to locate employability on the side of the individual – the individual is responsible for updating and developing her competences – and to construct employability primarily upon an internal competence market within the company on the other. A politics of employability developed thus is first oriented towards the needs of companies and only in second place towards the needs of employees as regards career development.
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- Information
- Europe and the Politics of Capabilities , pp. 38 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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