Outsourcing and the provision of welfare-related services to unemployed youth in New Zealand
Abstract
Concentrating on New Zealand's welfare-to-work policy, this paper draws on interview data to explore the impact of ‘outsourcing’ on tutors who work with young, unemployed people. Contracting independent organisations to provide services, or outsourcing, as it is euphemistically known, has become standard practice in business and is assuming a central role in social policy in many Western nations. It is argued that outsourcing is used to control the practices of those who work with unemployed people in New Zealand. The data show that outsourcing achieves this control by creating uncertainty over the tutors' own employment situation. In this respect, outsourcing helps create a regulatory framework in which the tutors seek to secure their own employment by improving their tutees' employability.