The cash benefit reform of January 1st 2014 is one the most recent attempts to increase labour market participation among vulnerable groups in society. Since then educational demands have been imposed, in one way or the other, to cash benefit receivers between 18 and 30 years of age with no vocational or higher education: either you are ready to enter the education system or you are ready to begin activities that eventually will make you ready for entering the education system. By using the means of active labour market policies, the intention is to aid this group of young adults onto a life course that eventually will enable them to become self-supporting active citizens. Since the reform is still young, no systematic study of its consequences on the individual trajectory has been conducted, nor do we know which individual and contextual factors contribute to the possibilities of achieving the political ambition.   The group of young adults without formal qualifications is often referred to as a high-risk-group, representing a risk to themselves and society in not being able to support their own, and maybe also eventually their children’s, living expenses. The group is equally described as vulnerable since competing difficulties regarding family situation, health, low qualifications etc. are often characteristic of their biography.   In the light of the cash benefit reform from 2014 the overall purpose of the Ph.D. is to study the shape and shaping of the life course of this particular group of young adults. This will be done using a mixed methods approach including longitudinal and biographical methodologies. The approach enables the study to characterize the life course in different life spheres (family, education, work, health), how they intertwine and allow some individuals to adapt better to policy interventions such as the cash benefit reform of 2014. The mixed methods approach also enables a better understanding of phenomenons such as risk and vulnerability and the means of overcoming it, through studying the consequences of the welfare reform such as they are experienced and lived out from a "client"/individual-centred perspective.

Defended on 19 November 2019.