Introduction
In this article, we examine how expectations of reciprocity intersect with young people’s capacities and future aspirations in the context of an activation programme.
Given that social investment is expressed through the design and implementation of policy measures (Andersson, Reference Andersson2018), such programmes provide a particularly pertinent setting for examining the practical enactment of social investment. Within this perspective, welfare is conceived as a resource aimed at strengthening individuals’ capacities for future participation and contribution (Hemerijck, Reference Hemerijck2013). Policies targeting young unemployed people, including activation measures, are therefore central instruments for preventing long-term exclusion and facilitating transitions between education, unemployment, and employment (Andersson and Minas, Reference Andersson and Minas2021; Minas et al., Reference Minas, Korpi and Andersson2025). These policies also promote “capacitating support” oriented towards agency and future participation, while being embedded in institutionalised expectations of reciprocity (Gjersøe, Reference Gjersøe2022).
Activation programmes are ways of pursuing responsibility-based reciprocity, encouraging the target group to “give something back” (Molander and Torsvik, Reference Molander and Torsvik2015). Existing research on activation has often highlighted tensions between enabling and constraining dimensions, as well as between support and discipline (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019; Nielsen and Monrad, Reference Nielsen and Monrad2023; Schön et al., Reference Schön, Tranquist and Astvik2024). Research drawing on recipients’ own accounts suggests that welfare encounters are deeply infused with normative expectations related to normalisation, deservingness, and recognition (Rugkåsa, Reference Rugkåsa2011), and moral evaluations of recipients’ needs (Fraser, Reference Fraser1989). Studies of interactions in activation settings further show how such expectations are enacted in practice, for instance through requirements that clients articulate motivation, future orientation, and willingness to engage in activation processes (Hansen et al., Reference Hansen, Dall and Caswell2025), often in ways that shape their sense of recognition and social value (Hansen, Reference Hansen2018).
As a result, activation may involve ongoing efforts to appear responsible, employable, and deserving, not only to secure benefits but also to maintain dignity and social recognition, despite uneven capacities and resources, reflecting the diverse barriers and differing starting points characterising young people in activation programmes (Mawn et al., Reference Mawn, Oliver, Akhter, Bambra, Torgerson, Bridle and Stain2017).
Importantly, expectations of future-oriented capacity and reciprocity may pull in different directions, as efforts to foster agency and future participation coexist with demands for effort, compliance, and willingness to reciprocate support.
To examine how these tensions unfold, we approach activation as a moral and relational practice in which expectations of reciprocity, support, and self-development are negotiated. In this context, mandatory activation for young people receiving social assistance in Norway provides an instructive case for examining the inherent ambiguities of social investment. This article contributes to research on social investment and activation by showing how expectations of reciprocity and future-oriented capacities intersect in practice, producing differentiated and often ambivalent experiences among young people subject to mandatory activation.
We address the following research question:
How do forms of reciprocity intersect with experienced capacities and future aspirations among those subject to mandatory activation?
From a critical anthropological perspective, social investment can be understood as a normative order and a sociocultural regime shaping both subjectivities and possible life trajectories (McKowen, Reference McKowen2025b). Mandatory activation thus appears as a future-oriented moral practice in which young people are expected to demonstrate progress as a form of reciprocal contribution. We argue that these expectations generate differentiated experiences of agency and vulnerability, depending on individuals’ capacities to “show becoming.”
Despite growing research on activation and social investment, less attention has been paid to how these expectations are experienced and negotiated by young people themselves, particularly at the intersection of reciprocity and future-oriented capacities in practice. Drawing on Appadurai (Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013), we approach these capacities as socially embedded and unevenly distributed and conceptualise the capacity to aspire as a navigational capacity shaped by social conditions and institutional contexts.
Drawing on qualitative interviews with young people engaged in mandatory activation between 2018 and 2019, conducted in the immediate aftermath of reforms strengthening conditionality, we examine how forms of reciprocity intersect with experienced capacities and future aspirations. By foregrounding reciprocity as a lived and relational dynamic, this article shows how activation shapes not only trajectories into work but also experiences of participation, obligation, and belonging.
Institutional context of mandatory activation in Norway
Activation policies in Norway are deeply embedded in a work-centred model of social citizenship (arbeidslinja), which frames paid employment as both a right and a civic obligation (Svallfors et al., Reference Svallfors, Halvorsen and Andersen2001; Vike et al., Reference Vike, Fagertun and Haukelien2022). Within this model, access to welfare support is justified through institutionalised expectations of reciprocity, the duty to “give something back” (Molander and Torsvik, Reference Molander and Torsvik2015, p. 385), linking benefits to participation, effort, and future-oriented conduct.
The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, known as Nav, consists of the public employment service, the national insurance administration, and municipal social services organised in one-stop shops. For young people outside employment and education, Nav therefore constitutes the primary point of contact for both financial assistance and activation measures.
Young unemployed people in a Norwegian context is a group that constitutes a major policy concern across OECD countries (OECD, 2016, 2018, 2019). While Norway has one of the lowest NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) rates among OECD countries, the category captures a heterogeneous group that includes young people facing challenges related to incomplete education, mental health difficulties, and limited social networks (OECD, 2018; Øydgard et al., Reference Øydgard, Tørrisplass and Breimo2024).
In 2017, the Social Services Act was amended through the introduction of § 20a, which mandated activity requirements for social assistance recipients under the age of 30. Under this provision, Nav is required to set conditions for the receipt of benefits, typically in the form of participation in structured activities such as work training, educational programmes, or attendance at municipal activity centres. The regulation specifies that such conditions must not be disproportionately burdensome and must respect the individual’s freedom of choice.
In practice, mandatory activation is implemented in ways that vary across municipalities; however, activity centres serve as a primary site where the activity obligation is carried out (Lidén and Trætteberg, Reference Lidén and Trætteberg2019). These centres, typically staffed by social workers employed in Nav, are generally low-threshold centres and are not primarily designed for formal skill acquisition, but rather for maintaining engagement, preventing social isolation, and supporting the transitions into adulthood.
Although Norwegian activation policies share key features with social investment approaches, such as an emphasis on future participation and capacity building, the ideas underpinning these policies are often articulated through normative justifications centred on reciprocity, responsibility, and care rather than through an explicit social investment framework (Eriksen and Molander, Reference Eriksen and Molander2019; Frøyland et al., Reference Frøyland, Alecu, Ballo, Leseth, Sadeghi, Abdelzadeh, Anvik, Einarsdóttir, Gaini, Görlich, Julkunen and CVL2022). Rather, similar principles are articulated through concepts such as inclusion, coordination, and follow-up, which frame welfare interventions in terms of support, engagement, and transition rather than as an explicit social investment agenda (Frøyland et al., Reference Frøyland, Alecu, Ballo, Leseth, Sadeghi, Abdelzadeh, Anvik, Einarsdóttir, Gaini, Görlich, Julkunen and CVL2022). Social investment logics are thus often embedded in concrete measures and service arrangements rather than expressed as a distinct policy framework. This makes Norway a particularly instructive case for examining how social investment ideals operate in contexts where they are embedded in practice rather than explicitly advocated in policy language. Policies targeting young people exemplify this pattern, as social investment principles are enacted through coordinated, low-threshold, and future-oriented forms of support without necessarily being framed as such.
In this embedded but loosely articulated social investment context, activation schemes aim to maintain engagement and provide everyday structures and routines for young people outside work or education. This provides the analytical backdrop for examining how expectations of reciprocity and future-oriented capacity are experienced and negotiated.
Analytical framework
In this study, we analyse mandatory activation as a site of reciprocal relations, as experienced through young people’s engagement with activity centres. These settings function as institutionalised spaces in which participants navigate expectations of belonging, obligation, and future-oriented change.
We understand reciprocity as “giving with the expectation of receiving in the future” (Mauss, Reference Mauss1995, p. 30). Mauss conceptualised the gift as structured by three obligations: to give, to receive, and to repay (Mauss, Reference Mauss1995, p. 11). As such, gifts are simultaneously free and constraining, generous and strategic, and shaped by both altruism and expectation (Yan, Reference Yan and Carrier2012).
To further specify how reciprocity is enacted in practice, we draw on Sahlins’ (Reference Sahlins2004) typology of reciprocal exchange. Sahlins outlines a continuum ranging from generalised to negative reciprocity, with balanced reciprocity as the midpoint (Sahlins, Reference Sahlins2004, p. 165). Balanced reciprocity involves direct and equivalent exchange with an expectation of return in the near term, such as monetary transactions. Generalised reciprocity refers to more open-ended and altruistic exchanges, where return is not immediate or precisely specified. Negative reciprocity, in contrast, involves attempts to maximise gain, for instance through bargaining, barter, or appropriation (Sahlins, Reference Sahlins2004, p. 195).
Reciprocity is not only a matter of material exchange but is embedded in moral orders (Mauss, Reference Mauss1995). In its positive form, it reflects shared norms and mutual obligations, while in its negative form it may signal tensions or transformations of these norms (Narotzky and Moreno, Reference Narotzky and Moreno2002). As a reciprocity-based policy, mandatory activation is grounded in the expectation that employment participation constitutes the legitimate return for welfare support. In this perspective, reciprocity involves both material resources, such as benefits, and immaterial dimensions, including recognition, status, and belonging.
Building on Parry & Bloch (Reference Parry and Bloch1996), we understand welfare arrangements as requiring the transformation of monetary support into morally legitimate forms of participation. Within activation contexts, this transformation is enacted through engagement in work-related activities, where receiving benefits is legitimised through visible effort and participation.
Reciprocal becoming and capacity to aspire
To analyse how expectations of future returns are experienced and negotiated, we draw on the concepts of reciprocal becoming and the capacity to aspire. Aspiration can be understood as a driver of life trajectories and well-being (Gardiner and Goedhuys, Reference Gardiner and Goedhuys2020). However, rather than treating aspirations as purely individual orientations, McKowen (Reference McKowen2025a) conceptualises future returns in terms of reciprocal becoming: a process shaped by normative expectations that individuals repay state support through wage labour, taxation, and restrained reliance on benefits. In this perspective, employment is not only a material necessity but also a moral imperative within the Norwegian welfare model, structuring particular notions of belonging and future-oriented change (McKowen, Reference McKowen2025a, Reference McKowen2025b).
More broadly, McKowen (Reference McKowen2025b) analyses social investment as a sociocultural and moral regime that promotes the formation of specific subjectivities and life trajectories. Within such a regime, legitimate belonging is associated with adherence to a productivist ethic, in which individuals are expected to demonstrate progress towards becoming employable citizens (McKowen, Reference McKowen2025a).
This perspective highlights how expectations of reciprocity extend beyond immediate exchange and are oriented towards future participation, positioning young people within broader trajectories of social membership and contribution.
To further develop this analysis, we draw on Appadurai’s (Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013) concept of the capacity to aspire. Appadurai argues that aspirations are socially shaped and unevenly distributed, with those facing structural disadvantage often having more limited opportunities to imagine and pursue alternative futures. Aspirations are frequently framed in narrow, instrumental terms, particularly in policy contexts, where they are defined in relation to measurable outcomes.
In contrast, Appadurai conceptualises aspirations as a cultural and navigational capacity – the ability to imagine futures and to relate them to present circumstances (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013, p. 188). From this perspective, the capacity to aspire involves combining desires, preferences, and practical reasoning within socially structured conditions. It also represents a way of “practicing hope, engagement and potential change” (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013, p. 194), particularly for disadvantaged groups.
Importantly, acts of imagining and articulating alternative futures may themselves constitute forms of agency that can, over time, enable change. This perspective allows us to analyse how young people engage with, reinterpret, and sometimes resist institutional expectations embedded in activation policies.
Taken together, this framework enables an analysis of how expectations of reciprocity intersect with capacities and future aspirations in young people’s experiences of mandatory activation. It highlights tensions between social reproduction and belonging, on the one hand, and possibilities of transformation and hope, on the other.
Data and methods
Data and recruitment
This article is based on a qualitative study of young people in Norway outside work and education. The study focuses on young people who are subject to activity obligations through the social assistance service right after the introduction of mandatory activation in 2017. The study is based on a small, non-probability sample recruited through activity centres in Norway during a specific time period. The data offer in-depth insights into participants’ experiences. Interview data provide access to interpretive worlds rather than objective practices (Briggs, Reference Briggs1986). Through young people’s first-hand accounts, we aim to explore how they interpret, negotiate, and respond to expectations of reciprocity and future-oriented participation, taking their aspirations, experiences, and opinions seriously and acknowledging their agency.
We conducted 16 in-depth interviews between May 2018 and September 2019, recruiting informants through already established contacts with local managers in four municipal Nav offices in Norway, where we previously had interviewed staff (Gjersøe et al., Reference Gjersøe, Leseth and Vilhena2020). To gain further insight into participants’ reflections on mandatory activation as an employment support policy, we re-interviewed eight of the informants approximately seven months after the first interviews.
Informants were recruited through local leaders in four municipal Nav offices in Norway. Due to anonymity requirements, we do not describe the local environment. We did not receive contact information for potential participants. Instead, local leaders provided time schedules with interview appointments labelled as person A, B, and C. Hence, frontline managers acted as gatekeepers (e.g. Gřundělová et al., Reference Gřundělová, Broskevičová and Kowolová2025). Their selection of potential informants was based on assessments of who would “fit” the role of informant in the project, and the sample may therefore be biased towards young people with relatively stable relations to local welfare offices or those assessed as suitable for participation in an interview.
In one office, candidates who agreed to participate were also informed by their Nav supervisor that the interview would “count” as an activity and that no sanctions would be imposed for not attending the activation centre during the interview.
For the recruitment of follow-up interviews approximately six months later, we contacted informants directly outside the Nav context. These interviews took place in cafés, hotels, workplaces, or private homes, as chosen by the informants. Most of those who declined a second interview reported being occupied with work or childcare. One informant did not attend the second interview but later commented that it made little difference, as he “did as little as possible” during that period.
The sample
The sample is gender-balanced, including eight women and eight men. The informants ranged in age from 19 to 29 years at the time of the interviews, with most in their mid-20s.
The informants had varied experiences with education, employment, and social life. Most had completed upper secondary education, while some had dropped out, often due to difficulties obtaining required internships to complete a degree. Others had spent time in prison. Some lived at home with one parent (often divorced), a sibling, or a friend; three had lived independently from the age of 16–17 due to family problems, while others lived with a partner. Two interviewees had small children and received additional benefits.
The interviews
The interviews were conducted by three researchers, two of whom are co-authors of this article. We combined active informant interviewing (Andersen, Reference Andersen2006) with descriptive questioning (Spradley, Reference Spradley1979), allowing access to both participants’ reflections and their descriptions of everyday practices. Interviews lasted between one and two hours. They were guided by a semi-structured interview guide that ensured coverage of three key themes: interactions with Nav, experiences with mandatory activities, and perceptions of the activation requirement, including any experiences with sanctions or threats of sanctions.
In addition, we posed more open questions concerning the informants’ backgrounds, everyday lives, and dreams for the future. Follow-up interviews were less structured and primarily encouraging the informants to reflect on mandatory activation as they had experienced it previously.
The interviews were conducted in Norwegian, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Before or after the interviews, we often were given a tour of the premises by one of the staff. Based on field notes from these observations, we made short written descriptions of the activity centres that we use to introduce our findings.
Ethical considerations
The research was conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines issued by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities in Norway. All qualitative data were handled in compliance with the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (SIKT) and the Norwegian Data Protection Act.
When meeting potential informants, we provided information about the project and asked for informed consent. Participants were assured that their responses would not affect their Nav cases and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Pseudonyms are used to protect both internal and external confidentiality, and non-disclosure agreements were signed with all informants.
In this study, we emphasise, in line with Appadurai (Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013), the importance of recognising the voices of vulnerable people, including their experiences, disagreements, and thoughts about the future, as well as how they are represented, categorised, and interpreted, in research.
Analytical strategy
The analysis focused on how participants interpret and respond to expectations of reciprocity and how their capacity to aspire conditions these responses. It was informed by Geertz’s (Reference Geertz1973) interpretive–hermeneutic approach and unfolded in three phases. First, we read the interview transcripts to identify informants’ points of view and to develop actor-oriented interpretations using experience-near concepts (Geertz, Reference Geertz1973, p. 14). We constructed data-driven categories of informants’ experiences with mandatory activation, such as “having a place to go to,” “you have to do something,” and “to be done with Nav.”
The informants expressed a spectrum of experiences with mandatory activation, often articulated as tensions between attending the activity centre and becoming independent of this form of support. We approached these tensions as analytically significant, as they reveal how participants negotiate expectations of reciprocity and future-oriented becoming, and thereby make visible variations in agency and capacity within activation contexts.
In the second stage of the analysis, we introduced a set of experience-distant concepts (Geertz, Reference Geertz1973, p. 26) to interpret these tensions. These included the concepts of belonging, moralising, and aspiring, which were developed iteratively through engagement with the empirical material and informed by anthropological perspectives on reciprocity and aspirations.
In particular, we used the concepts of reciprocal becoming (McKowen, Reference McKowen2025a) and the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013) to analyse how participants interpret and negotiate expectations of reciprocity (as obligations of participation and progress), and how their capacities and aspirations enable, constrain, or reshape these expectations within the context of mandatory activation.
The analytical process can be described as abductive, involving an iterative dialogue between data and theory, in which initial interpretations of tensions in the data guided the selection of analytical concepts, and these concepts in turn enabled a more focused interpretation of participants’ experiences (Järvinen and Mik-Meyer, Reference Järvinen and Mik-Meyer2017). This process involved moving back and forth between empirical material and theoretical perspectives, allowing the framework to both guide and be reshaped by the analysis. More specifically, initial inductive coding identified recurring tensions between obligation, belonging, and future orientation in the material. These empirically grounded categories were subsequently interpreted through concepts from economic anthropology and social investment research, which refined and reoriented the analytical focus towards reciprocity, moral exchange, and future-oriented capacities.
The findings are not statistically but analytically representative. By linking individual experiences of reciprocity, obligation, and aspiration to broader institutional conditions, this study speaks to dynamics that extend beyond the Norwegian context.
Findings and analysis
The findings are organised around three interrelated dimensions of participants’ experiences of mandatory activation: experiences of belonging and social support, experiences of obligation and moral evaluation, and orientations towards future aspirations and exit from welfare services. Taken together, these dimensions show how forms of reciprocity and future-oriented capacities are negotiated in practice. Before turning to the identified analytical themes, we first describe the activity centre as the primary site in which mandatory activation is experienced and enacted in practice.
The activity centre as a critical site for enactment of social investment ideals
Most of our informants talked about their experiences with mandatory activation in relation to the activity centre.Footnote 1 Three of the municipal offices in our study had such centres, while the fourth office relied on alternative arrangements to meet the activation requirement, such as participation in municipal projects or work training.
The activity centres were typically located in municipal buildings within a walking distance of the local Nav office. Participation was limited; in two of the municipalities, centres had a maximum capacity of ten participants, and waiting lists were common.
The physical layout usually included a kitchen and dining area, a living-room-like space for informal conversation and games, and a designated area for “office work” with computer stations. The atmosphere was intentionally homelike and welcoming. Staff invested considerable effort in creating a cosy environment, lighting candles, serving food, and engaging in informal activities such as playing cards or chess with the young adults.
Activities at the centres ranged from work-preparatory tasks, such as job applications, interview training, and CV writing, to more reflective exercises like drawing lifelines and imagining the future, as well as informal social engagements such as shared meals, conversation, and games. Such reflective practices indicate how individual becoming and future orientation are central concerns within social investment (cf. McKowen, Reference McKowen2025a).
These activities were not merely instrumental; they also provided opportunities for social interaction, emotional support, and the establishment of everyday routines. With the introduction of § 20a in 2017, attendance at the activation centre became a formal condition for receiving benefits rather than a voluntary offer. However, the centres themselves had existed prior to the legislative change. Their physical separation from the Nav office enabled the creation of a social space for young unemployed people, rather than a setting defined solely by monetary exchange. In the following analysis, we examine how informants experience mandatory activation as shaped by tensions between belonging and aspiration.
Negotiating senses of belonging
Many informants described the activation centres as socially supportive spaces that counteracted isolation at home; as relational infrastructures, offering more than job search assistance by providing social contact, emotional safety, and a sense of belonging.
Both Per (22) and Brita (24) described the activity centres as socially supportive spaces that counteracted isolation at home. As Per put it, “There’s a really good atmosphere down there.” Brita similarly emphasised the social dimension:
I think the social part is really nice, that you meet others. Eat breakfast together – some people don’t even have that.
Brita, who had been in activation for four months, lived in the countryside with her father, who worked offshore, and valued the social life at the centre. Even after obtaining full-time employment, she occasionally returned for a coffee.
Per had been on mandatory activation for one month. Illness during an internship had prevented him from completing his final exams in upper secondary education. While receiving social assistance, he held a part-time job. He explained:
(..) I think the activity here at the centre is good, because you get out of the house and getting the routines in place. If you stay at home, suddenly you have slept until noon and the day is over.
For many, the centre offered a preferable alternative to staying at home. Attendance was framed not only as an obligation, but as a way of structuring the day. Ove (22) described the value of minimal engagement: It was good to get out, at least. Having lived alone since the age of 16 due to family problems and substance abuse, Ove emphasised how even limited routines could interrupt isolation.
While routines and belonging were appreciated by many, others contested or expressed discomfort with what they perceived as behavioural steering within the programme. Sara (23), one of two informants with small children, remarked: “I actually thought it was kind of a waste, considering they just sat around drinking coffee.” Kjell (29), who had prior work experience, described organised gym sessions as infantilising: “It’s just like a little kindergarten going off together to the gym.”
These accounts challenge the idea of activation centres as sites of “legitimate belonging” (McKowen, Reference McKowen2025b), questioning whether such institutional settings constitute meaningful preparation for participants’ futures.
Although Sara and Kjell did not present alternatives to attending the centre, they pointed to meaningful forms of belonging and routine, located outside the activation setting itself.
The morality of showing up: reasonable or coercive requirement
Most centres operated from 9 a.m. to early afternoon, and participants were expected to arrive on time. Being more than five minutes late could result in a reduction of benefits, reinforcing the seriousness of the obligation.
For many participants, engagement with Nav was motivated primarily by financial necessity. Participation was often characterised by ambivalence. Across the interviews, participants repeatedly returned to the idea that “making an effort” was both a moral and practical expectation.
Many described the requirement as reasonable and motivating, while others experienced it as coercive or anxiety-inducing. Several expressed both positions simultaneously, accepting the principle of conditionality while struggling with its emotional effects and the risk of sanctions.
Stian (28) expressed a principled acceptance:
If not you just become a sloth – you’ve got to try, put in an effort. If I don’t get a job, maybe I should go collect trash along the highway… you have to do something.
At the same time, his account revealed the emotional burden of these expectations and the potential for self-judgement.
Per similarly framed sanctions as legitimate:
If you’re late, your support gets reduced… Yes, half a day, a day, whatever corresponds to the time you missed… I think that’s completely fair. I believe it promotes the right attitude. And you can’t carry those kinds of attitudes with you into working life.
The social contract underpinning activation – that the state provides support in exchange for participation – was widely recognised among informants. However, participation was often experienced as effectively non-negotiable: a form of soft compulsion where opting out was formally possible but materially difficult.
Sanctions played a central role in reinforcing this obligation but also generated stress and uncertainty. Some attended even when ill to avoid losing income, while others described how sanctions could undermine motivation over time.
Marte (25) framed sanctions as necessary: “There are so many people who are just plain lazy. So, I think consequences are a good thing.”
At the same time, other informants described how such consequences could have the opposite effect:
Sometimes it can almost be demotivating… then you just stop caring after a while.
Even informal activities, such as shared meals, were experienced as obligatory. As Per noted, “I don’t get paid for eating, but I need to attend the meal to get money.” These accounts illustrate how benefits are transformed into morally legitimate participation (Parry and Bloch, Reference Parry and Bloch1996), extending beyond work-related tasks to include everyday social practices.
At the same time, participants’ narratives reveal that reciprocity is not confined to institutional settings. Informants described reciprocal relations in everyday life, such as exchanging care and support with family and friends.
Overall, experiences of activation varied according to life circumstances, social networks, and relationships with Nav staff. While supportive relations fostered confidence and a sense of progress, more distant interactions intensified feelings of dependency and resentment.
Imagining futures and future return
From a policy perspective, the anticipated future return of mandatory activation and social investment policies is labour-market inclusion. Informants’ own future orientations, however, extended beyond employment to broader aspirations of independence and, for many, being “done with Nav.” Several expressed a desire to obtain work without continued involvement from welfare services, even while maintaining informal ties to the activation centre. When asked where they saw themselves in ten years, responses ranged from uncertainty to more conventional and culturally recognisable aspirations.
Kai articulated a future centred on education, work, and family life:
In one year, I really hope I have an apprenticeship. I’ll probably still be living at home, because it’s expensive to move out. Ten years from now… that’s a long time. I think I’ll be educated as a health care worker or nurse. I’ll have a wife, a nice home, a good car, children, and the dream job.
Brita described similar expectations of being established in adult life:
In ten years I have the usual things: house, a job, a man, dog and a car.
Both Kai and Brita articulated their futures through what might be described as normative models of adulthood, combining ideas of who they wanted to be, what they wanted to have, and how they wanted to live.
Other informants framed their future aspirations less in terms of accumulation and stability, and more as a desire for distance from their present circumstances. Sandra (19), who had previously described a life shaped by unstable work and caring responsibilities for younger siblings, explained how these obligations had constrained her engagement with education and job-seeking. Looking ahead, her hopes centred on change and relocation:
I am looking forward to finishing the exams I am lacking and to move to another place. I do not want to continue to live here in this city. My younger sisters and brothers can visit me, but they need to take care of themselves. I need to think about my own life and my own future.
Such accounts illustrate how aspirations are not only about attaining stable futures but also about creating distance from present constraints and obligations. Others shared similar narratives of wanting to create a different future by leaving behind places, networks, or life situations they experienced as constraining.
Lasse (27), however, was markedly less optimistic. With a long history of institutional care, unstable schooling, and periods of imprisonment, he expressed a more limited orientation to the future:
In ten years….well I think I have said this since I was aged 15, that if I will turn 40 and 50 years, I will be dammed satisfied. So, I do not know whether I have an aim for the future at all…I take one day after another.
At the time of the follow-up interview, Lasse emphasised that little had changed in his situation, continuing to move between short-term jobs and periods of receiving benefits under activation requirements.
By contrast, most of the informants re-interviewed after six months had obtained some form of employment. Several described work as transformative, both materially and emotionally, marking a shift from dependency to greater autonomy.
Siri (27), who had experienced financial hardship as a young mother, described the impact of obtaining permanent employment:
It’s just fantastic… to go to work, get a bit tired, and feel useful. I’ve always had routines with my daughter, but now I can actually provide for her. She noticed right away, I could afford to let her start her hobby again.
Although employment could represent a significant turning point, it was also experienced within a labour market characterised by instability. As argued elsewhere (Gjersøe & Leseth, Reference Gjersøe and Leseth2021), transitions into work were rarely linear. Several informants described employment as a continual movement between gaining, maintaining, and losing jobs, rather than as a final endpoint. In this sense, the anticipated reciprocal return of activation as stable labour market inclusion is not a straightforward outcome.
While many informants expressed aspirations and demonstrated what can be understood as a capacity to navigate future possibilities, these were unevenly distributed and shaped by prior experiences, available opportunities, and structural constraints. Rather than a single trajectory towards stability, the material suggests differentiated forms of future orientation. Some are aligned with normative expectations of adulthood and social membership, others are oriented towards creating distance from constraining circumstances, while some are marked by uncertainty and limited expectations of the future.
Taken together, these findings show how reciprocal expectations and future-oriented capacities intersect unevenly in practice: while generalised reciprocity structures experiences of belonging and social support, balanced reciprocity governs access to benefits through conditional participation, highlighting the coexistence of multiple and sometimes conflicting logics within activation processes.
Discussion and conclusion
In this study, we investigate how forms of reciprocity intersect with experienced capacities and future aspirations among young unemployed people subject to mandatory activation. Across these dimensions, the analysis shows that activation is not only a policy instrument but a lived moral economy, in which expectations of reciprocity and future-oriented capacities are unevenly recognised, negotiated, and made visible through everyday practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews, we conceptualise social investment as a contested and lived process, shaped through ongoing negotiations of reciprocity, obligation, and future-oriented expectations. This perspective shifts attention from policy design to the lived dynamics through which social investment is enacted and negotiated in practice.
Reciprocity and the moral economy of activation
The findings identify three interrelated dimensions of mandatory activation: (1) activation centres as sites of belonging and social support, (2) activation as a moral economy of exchange structured by expectations of visible effort, and (3) activation as a future-oriented practice shaped by aspirations and capacities.
The activity centre is experienced as a form of community structured around generalised reciprocity, where participants share routines, social support, and future orientations. At the same time, these forms of belonging remain fragile and contested, as some participants question whether such institutional arrangements represent meaningful or relevant forms of inclusion.
Mandatory activation operates as a moral economy of exchange, where access to benefits is tied to expectations of visible effort. Following Parry & Bloch (Reference Parry and Bloch1996), this can be understood as a transformative process in which monetary support is converted into morally legitimate participation. However, as the findings show, these processes are not unambiguous; they are experienced as both reasonable and coercive, producing ambivalence, stress, and moral tension.
In this light, activation centres can be understood as sites where overlapping transactional orders intersect. On the one hand, they foster generalised reciprocity through relational support and shared routines; on the other, they enforce balanced reciprocity through conditional participation and the threat of sanctions. These parallel logics generate both opportunities for belonging and pressures to conform, highlighting the ambiguity of activation as both support and control. This supports a broader body of research on activation and ALMPs that has documented tensions between enabling and disciplining dimensions of welfare interventions, participation and conditionality, and the balancing of investment-oriented and care-oriented goals in welfare services (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019; Nielsen and Monrad, Reference Nielsen and Monrad2023; Nielsen, Reference Nielsen2025). Our findings extend this literature by showing how these tensions are not only organisational or institutional but are experienced and negotiated through expectations of reciprocity, obligation, and future-oriented becoming.
Following Narotzky & Moreno (Reference Narotzky and Moreno2002), we argue that reciprocity should be understood as an inherently ambivalent social process, structured by the presence of both positive and negative forms. While some participants benefit from the relational and structured aspects of activation, others experience these same arrangements as infantilising or misaligned with their needs. Activation may thus foster agency for some, while reinforcing vulnerability for others, depending on how expectations of reciprocity and future participation are recognised and negotiated in practice. This ambiguity is particularly evident in relation to wellbeing and agency. This also reflects broader findings on the individualisation of responsibility in activation policies, where structural constraints are often recast as matters of individual agency and effort (Kallinen and Häikiö, Reference Kallinen and Häikiö2021).
In this light, the moral economy of activation cannot be reduced to a simple exchange between rights and duties. Rather, it involves ongoing tensions between support and control, recognition and suspicion, and inclusion and coercion. This perspective is crucial for understanding why participants in activity centres simultaneously endorse and contest the expectations embedded in mandatory activation.
Future aspirations and the capacity to aspire
Activation is oriented towards future returns, expressed in this article through young people’s aspirations and efforts. The relationship between current situations and future aspirations can be understood in terms of an aspiration gap, referring to the distance between individuals’ present circumstances and their imagined futures (Abdullah et al., Reference Abdullah, Abraham and Jain2024). The findings suggest that this gap varies among participants. For some, aspirations appear relatively aligned with their current situation, supporting motivation and engagement. For others, the gap is either too wide, producing uncertainty and a “day-by-day” orientation, or tied to structural constraints that limit their capacity to act on their aspirations. In this perspective, it is not aspirations as such that matter, but how attainable and meaningful they appear in relation to lived conditions. Similar tensions have been observed in studies of aspiration management, where institutional pressures can constrain or reshape individuals’ future orientations (Otmani et al., Reference Otmani, Kekki and Bonoli2026).
While research on activation and ALMPs has frequently focused on employability, labour-market participation, and motivation (Senghaas et al., Reference Senghaas, Freier and Kupka2019), our findings suggest that future-oriented dimensions of activation are also experienced in broader terms, including aspirations for autonomy, recognition, and distance from difficult life circumstances. This resonates with research showing that young people often experience employment support in relation to broader concerns about recognition, adaptation, and meaningful futures (Schön et al., Reference Schön, Tranquist and Astvik2024), as well as with work highlighting aspirations and citizenship beyond institutional expectations (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013; Kallio, Reference Kallio2026). In this respect, aspirations are not merely individual motivations but socially situated capacities that shape how activation is interpreted and negotiated in practice.
This also points to the importance of recognising aspirations as a capability and a form of practising hope. In our informants’ experiences, there is a tension between fostering hope and structuring futures. As suggested by Appadurai (Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013), aspiration is a cultural capacity that involves navigating uncertainty as a way of practicing hope. Seen in this light, policies that aim to stabilise future trajectories may, paradoxically, limit the openness that is central to hopeful orientations. To acknowledge particularly the aspirations and hopes of vulnerable groups is therefore of crucial importance for potential change.
Implications for social investment and activation policies
Taken together, the findings point to a tension between what may be understood as a politics of belonging and a politics of hope. Similar tensions have been identified in research emphasising young people’s struggles for recognition, inclusion, and meaningful participation within and beyond welfare institutions (Kallio, Reference Kallio2026). At the same time, Appadurai (Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013) conceptualises aspirations as socially embedded capacities through which alternative futures are imagined and pursued, highlighting hope as a practical and cultural resource rather than merely an individual disposition. While activation is organised around reciprocal expectations that emphasise participation and contribution as conditions for social membership, young people’s aspirations often point beyond these institutional settings. In this sense, activation simultaneously seeks to include individuals within existing structures, while their own orientations towards the future may involve detachment, movement, or alternative trajectories. This resonates with research showing how young people seek recognition and belonging beyond narrowly defined institutional expectations of participation and productivity (Kallio, Reference Kallio2026), and with arguments that aspirations frequently exceed policy-defined goals and institutional trajectories because they are oriented towards broader social and moral futures (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2013).
Importantly, although this study is situated in the Norwegian context, we argue that its analytical approach has relevance beyond this specific setting. Across Europe, activation measures and social investment policies are promoted as key responses to the complex and heterogeneous challenges associated with NEET populations, often emphasising the need for coordinated and multi-dimensional interventions (Minas et al., Reference Minas, Korpi and Andersson2025).
This study shows how conditional support can simultaneously foster engagement and generate new vulnerabilities. Existing social investment research has largely been concerned with how welfare interventions can build capacities and support future participation (Hemerijck, Reference Hemerijck2013; Bagadirov et al., Reference Bagadirov, Hemerijck and Puertas Roig2025). Our contribution is not to question these ambitions, but to show how they are lived and negotiated in practice, where expectations of reciprocity, recognition, and future participation are experienced as both enabling and constraining.
By examining how reciprocity is enacted and experienced in practice, we demonstrate that welfare arrangements are shaped by ongoing negotiations between capacitation and conditionality, as well as between recognition and control. This contributes to a broader understanding of how European welfare states navigate questions of justice, fairness, and legitimate claims to support among unemployed young people (cf. Molander and Torsvik, Reference Molander and Torsvik2015).
As Wagner et al. (Reference Wagner, Pöyliö and Hemerijck2025) argue, experiences of agency and recognition can generate broader socio-political feedback effects, including trust in institutions and civic participation. By focusing on reciprocity and aspirations as lived and relational dynamics, this study shows how activation policies shape not only labour-market trajectories but also moral subjectivities and social belonging. The findings suggest that activation is not only contingent on individuals’ willingness to reciprocate but also on their unequal capacities to imagine, articulate, and perform future-oriented becoming. By conceptualising activation as a lived moral economy of reciprocity and aspiration, the article extends social investment research by demonstrating how policy ideals are enacted and negotiated in everyday practices that simultaneously enable and constrain young people’s capacities for participation and belonging.
Methodologically, this study contributes by attending to young people’s aspirations as an analytical entry point, thereby recognising their capacity to imagine and articulate futures regardless of their position in relation to welfare services.
Acknowledgements
The authors used an AI-based language tool to support manuscript revision, including language editing, clarity, and restructuring of existing text. The tool was not used to generate empirical material, analyse data, or produce substantive scholarly content. All interpretations, arguments, and references are the authors’ own, and the authors take full responsibility for the final manuscript.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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