Implementation of Social Goals in Labour Market Policy: The Case of Black Youth, Equal Opportunities and the Youth Training Scheme

Abstract

The research reported briefly in this article attempted to explore further the relationship between the implementation of social goals in employment policy, the operation of segmentation in the labour market, and the fate of members of so-called ‘ethnic minorities’ in the labour market. Previous research had suggested that social goals in labour market policy were very difficult to defend against the power of economic efficiency criteria, which seemed to penetrate the implementation apparatus at all stages. These efficiency criteria appeared to express themselves in a set of values about people in the labour market, shared by employers, labour market agencies, and even workers themselves. The values, which could change as the structure of the labour market changed, justified workers’ relative position and chances in the labour market, and worked through a series of changing stereotypes, related to achievement, to gender, to age, to race and so on. This process appeared to underpin the structure which have been identified in labour market literature as ‘segments', which are constantly changing as restructuring continues, but which can be crudely represented as dividing labour forces up into those who achieve relatively high rewards, and those who achieve relatively low rewards.