Abstract
The book focuses on frontline activation work as the very moment where activation policies encounter their target groups and real-world solutions need to be found. It contributes to the debate on constraints and possibilities of activation work in a field where challenges are often neglected both by social policy and social work research, although it has become a central arena for welfare state intervention and, eventually, for the realisation of social citizenship. Particular attention is paid to the questions as to whether and to what extent professionalising activation work could counteract the precarious and highly individualised role of frontline workers in this rather ambiguous public domain.