Carefully capacitating? Agentic capacity and coercion in the activation of lone mothers in Ireland

Abstract This article assesses whether recent Irish activation reforms for lone parents’ function as capacitating elements of a social investment (SI) strategy. Although activation is presented as evidence of Ireland’s shift towards SI, our analysis questions this claim using the concept of agentic capacity – the structured conditions enabling individuals to balance care, employment, and education. Drawing on two small-scale studies, we centre lived experiences of activation requirements and income supports and find that while access to education and training can strengthen autonomy and future planning, these benefits are constrained by conditionality, administrative burdens, childcare shortages, and age-based thresholds. The reforms thus represent a model in which coercive activation logics persist within SI rhetoric. By advancing agentic capacity as an evaluative criterion, the article contributes to debates on activation and SI, highlighting how institutional design, childcare provision, temporal alignment, and conditionality shape meaningful choice for lone parents.