In nearly all OECD countries, the labour market has been in flux in recent decades. This book examines the labour markets and the institutional frameworks that condition their functioning in four different countries: Canada, the United States, Denmark and Sweden. Through a comparative study of these cases, the book discusses the nation-specific patterns that exist in a world that seems to become increasingly subject to common social and economic development.
Examining the occupational variation within non-standard employment, this book combines case studies and comparative writing to illustrate how and why alternative occupational employment patterns are formed. Through expert contributions, a framework is
As a product of its time, the call centre utilises new developments in telecommunications and information technology to offer cost-efficient delivery systems for customer care. Efficiency, productivity and flexibility are all embodiments of neoliberal market capitalism and are all personified in the call centre operation, as well as the structure of the labour market in general. Thus the individual and the workplace are embedded in a variety of global processes. In order to frame the context in which call centre operations exist today and their employees (mainly young men and women) negotiate the increasingly risky and individualised task of developing an identity or sense of belonging in the world, Labour Markets and Identity on the Post-Industrial Assembly Line sets out the economic, social and political changes over the last three decades that have restructured the labour market, altered the balance between labour, management and the state, and unleashed global market capitalism upon previously sheltered areas of the economy and social life in both Britain and elsewhere. This ground-breaking book offers one of the first real qualitative sociological investigations of a relatively new form of employment, to see what life is like on the 'post-industrial assembly line', whilst also taking a close look at the nature of class, identity and subjectivity in relation to young people coming of age in a world dramatically altered over the last three decades.
Globalisation, regionalisation, new technology, demography, voters’ expectations and re-structuring of societies are expected to influence welfare state development for years to come. This handbook analyses how different welfare state models and regimes will be able to cope with contemporary and future challenges, providing a variety of evidence based tools that make it essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers alike.
Post-Industrial Socialism provides critical analysis of recent developments in leftist political thought. Adrian Little charts new directions in the economy and the effects they have had on traditional models of social welfare and orthodox approaches to social policy. In demonstrating the limitations of the welfare state and the associated concept of citizenship, this book suggests that we need to renew socialist welfare theory through the evaluation of universal welfare provision and a policy of breaking the link between work and income.
This book is about the state of the German model of capitalism today. It is the first book to offer an integrated analysis of the political economy of unified Germany rather than dealing with east and west as separate entities. It challenges the standard view that Germany is lagging behind other capitalist states in the transition to a postindustrial economy, and looks in detail at the expansion of the service sector, the transformation of the industrial sector and the development of the knowledge economy in unified Germany. The book finds that Germany is indeed becoming postindustrial, but that it is not developing in any single direction. Rather, the research outlined in this book suggests that some regions perform well in services or the production of knowledge while others have successfully transformed industrial production. This variation, it is argued, is the consequence of unification as well as older economic traditions which pre-date the industrial revolution.
In this important new introductory textbook, José Magone provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to contemporary European politics. The unification of the European continent since the Fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has changed the nature of European politics. This book seeks to address the new European politics that emerged out of this coming together of West and East. Utilizing a pan-European comparative approach the book: covers key topics, with chapters on the history, theory, institutions, parties and party systems, interest groups, systems of interest intermediation and civil society, the impact of European public policy and the emergence of a European common and foreign policy provides detailed comparisons of the national political systems across Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans contextualises national politics in the growing importance of European integration examines the European Union multi-level governance system approach, highlighting relationships and interactions between the global, supranational, national, regional and local levels analyses the change from modern politics, in which the nation-state was still in command of domestic politics and its own borders, to postmodern politics in which de-territorialisation , de-nationalisation and internationalisation processes have transformed the national politics of European states facilitates learning through a wide range of pedagogical features, including chapter summaries, guides to further reading, questions for revision and extensive use of maps, figures, case studies and tables. Richly illustrated throughout, this work is an indispensable resource for all students and academics of European politics.
Regulating the Risk of Unemployment offers a systematic comparative analysis of the recent adaptation of European unemployment protection systems to increasingly post-industrial labour markets. These systems were mainly designed and institutionalized in predominantly industrial economies, characterized by relatively standardized employment relationships and stable career patterns, as well as plentiful employment opportunities even for those with low skills. Over the past two to three decades they have faced the challenge of an accelerating shift to a primarily service-based economy, accompanied by demands for greater flexibility in wages and terms and conditions in low-skill segments of the labour market as well as pressures to maximise labour force participation given the more limited potential for productivity-led growth. The book develops an original framework for analysing adaptive reform in unemployment protection along three discrete dimensions of institutional change, which are termed benefit homogenization, risk re-categorization, and activation. This framework is then used to structure analysis of twenty years of unemployment protection reform in twelve European countries. In addition to mapping reforms along these dimensions, the country studies analyse the political and institutional factors that have shaped national patterns of adaptation. Complementary comparative analyses explore the effects of benefit reforms on the operation of the labour market, assess evolving patterns of working-age benefit dependency, and examine the changing role of active labour market policies in the regulation of the risk of unemployment.
A thesis that examines two major social changes experienced by European cities: post-industrial economic restructuring and new immigration flows. It also discusses the link between both these social changes with a variety of theoretical approaches and in many descriptive contributions.
This book analyzes how recent welfare state transformations across advanced democracies have shaped social and economic disparities. The authors observe a trend from a compensatory paradigm towards supply oriented social policy, and investigate how this phenomenon is linked to distributional outcomes. How – and how much – have changes in core social policy fields alleviated or strengthened different dimensions of inequality? The authors argue that while the market has been the major cause of increasing net inequalities, the trend towards supply orientation in most social policy fields has further contributed to social inequality. The authors work from sociological and political science perspectives, examining all of the main branches of the welfare state, from health, education and tax policy, to labour market, pension and migration policy. /div
