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Employment policy and the Social Economy: promise and misconceptions

Proponents of the social economy are somewhat divided about its scope: is it primarily about the capacity of non-profit organisations to create jobs, increase employability and generate income? Or is it equally, or even more centrally, about other forms of wealth such as mutual aid, reduced costs, improved environment and more efficiency of services through dialogue with communities? Environmentalist, human rights and feminist critiques see the wobbles of the global economy as evidence not only of mismanagement but of a definition of the economy which ignores major factors. If we are not sure what the scope of "the" economy is, how can we know what claims to make for the social economy? Perhaps partly because of this lack of a clear map, apologists of the social economy tend to gravitate towards the "safe" area of employment creation. Whatever else may or may not be both economic and social, job creation certainly counts. The tendency is of course strongly driven by the dominance of employment policy in regeneration funding. This is particularly true of European funding, and since the growing profile of the social economy has been stimulated by EU sponsorship, the weight attached by funders to the employment element has been difficult to resist. When the EU, setting up its belated twenty third Directorate in the late eighties, defined the social economy as "mutuals, associations and foundations" the territory sounded solid enough,