Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

7-2025

Abstract

In this comparative and situational analysis, we examine how nation-states use skilling as a technique of preparedness during crisis moments. By analysing two strategically selected country cases, Singapore and Sweden, during a critical phase of a global pandemic, we identify three techniques: stockpiling, forecasting, and protecting skills, and how these were enacted as a means to perform preparedness. Stockpiling skills was observed to take place as a rapid response; forecasting skills was a technique enacted with a view on the longer-term horizon and protecting skills was mobilised as a short-term future technique, where boundaries were assembled around skilling. While there are links between these techniques identified, locating them along a temporal horizon compels us to consider the differences between the diagnosis and prognosis of skills needs, and how upskilling and reskilling discourses have been applied differently to different segments of the population. Our findings contribute to the sociological literature on skills by illuminating the pluralisation of skilling techniques, as well as how varying conceptualisations of skill in unstable situations can lead to different forms of justifications and recognition of actors’ worth when valuation processes are contested and negotiated.

Keywords

Crisis, Justification, Preparedness, Singapore, Skilling regimes, Sweden

Discipline

Demography, Population, and Ecology | Sociology

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Current Sociology

ISSN

0011-3921

Identifier

10.1177/00113921251347644

Publisher

SAGE Publications

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