Generating innovation: Listening, involving and co-producing with ‘unusual suspects’

Abstract

Anthropology: perhaps not the first profession you think of when considering how to address youth unemployment. However, as the experience of Copenhagen Jobcenter in Denmark demonstrates, looking to the ‘unusual suspects’ to help can bring about innovative shifts in the way in which services are delivered, with a positive impact on the support young people receive to enter the job market or move into other activities, such as education.

Denmark, long held up as a model for its “flexicurity” approach, which blends a highly flexible labour market with the security of welfare and activation policies to help people (back) into the labour market, has watched once-low youth unemployment rates increase quickly as a result of the crisis, more than doubling between 2007 and 2012. Denmark’s focus is on supporting young people during the economic crisis by looking to the future needs of its economy and a forecast decline in low-skill jobs, and seeking to ensure that young people are well educated and well skilled.