Regulating Transitions from School to Work : An Institutional Ethnography of Activation Work in Action How are activation programs for the young unemployed implemented How do grassroot level bureaucrats deal with competing rationalities and demands for action Transition policies increasingly aim at promoting self regulation and constructing employable subjects. Stephan Dahmen explores the practical regulation of biographical transitions in activation programs for the young unemployed by focusing on the interactive accomplishment of activation work. The study reveals how the critical tensions of activation policies are continually re interpreted and adapted to local contingencies and describes the various organisational technologies used for creating employable subjects Frontmatter Contents 1. Introduction 2. Youth Education and the Welfare State 2.1 How Institutions Structure the Youth Phase 2.2. Situating the Swiss Transition Regime 2.3. The Politics of VET in Switzerland and the Emergence of Transition Measures 2.4. Excursus: Collectivist Skill Formation Systems and the Right to Education 2.5. From the Emergence of a Problem Towards the Construction of a Policy 3. Life Course Biography and Social Policy Einleitung 3.1. The Life Course as an Institutional Program and a Subjective Construction 3.2. The Organizational Regulation of Biographies 4. Analyzing Activation in Action 4.1. Street level Bureaucrats Institutionalized Organizations and People Processing Organizations 5. Methodology Research Design and Data Collection 5.1. A Focus on Activation Practices 6. Results 6.1. A Short Introduction to Motivational Semesters 6.2. Conflicts Between Orders of Worth and situated Compromises in Human Service Work: The Case of Sanctions 6.3. Gate keeping and the Negotiation of Employability: The Intermediary Function of Motivational Semesters 6.4. Constructing the Client that Can Create Himself: Technologies of Agency and the Production of a Will 6.5. Making Up Viable Future Selves Through Evaluation Working with the Portfolio Tool 6.6. Guided Self Exploration as a Narrative Machinery that Produces Intelligible Subjects 7. General Conclusion and Discussion of Main Results 7.1. Organizations as the Missing Link for the Mediation Between Systemic Requirements and Subjectivity 7.2. The institutional Production of Subjectivity: Biographisation Valuation Optimisation Autonomisation 8. Bibliography 9. Annex