1.1 Atypical Employment and Labour Market Disadvantages in Europe
In the past few decades, European labour markets have undergone profound transformations as a result of globalisation, deindustrialisation and technological change (Häusermann and Palier 2008; Kalleberg 2009). Among these, one of the most prominent has been the spread of atypical employment, which differs from the full-time permanent employment relationship which came to be seen as âstandardâ during the industrial age (Castel 2002; Fudge and Strauss 2014). These new forms of employment have been introduced in order to make labour markets more flexible, in an attempt to adapt them to the needs of post-industrial economies (Esping-Andersen and Regini 2001). Nevertheless, it has been widely argued that these new forms of employment are of lower quality compared to their standard counterparts, producing, among others, more employment insecurity, worse working conditions and scant collective representation (Rodgers and Rodgers 1989; Barbier 2004). Furthermore, these atypical forms of employment have been claimed to give access to more limited income protection, given that European welfare states were designed after the Second World War for industrial societies characterised by standard employment relationships, and are ill-equipped to deal with the risks associated with these new forms of employment in post-industrial societies (Bonoli 2005). Altogether, the emergence of these forms of employment has been said to foster new inequalities in post-industrial labour markets between those in full-time, permanent employment and non-standard workers (Kenworthy 2008). Some scholars have even postulated the existence of an insider-outsider divide where insiders are generally identified as those in full-time, permanent jobs, whereas outsiders are those in atypical employment and the unemployed (Lindbeck and Snower 2001; Rubery 2006).
The disadvantages experienced by atypical workers are argued to be different in every country, as is the divide between standard and atypical workers. Different institutional frameworks are argued to influence the disadvantages experienced by atypical workers and in turn in leading to a divide with standard workers, either by reducing it, fostering it or even creating it from scratch (Barbier 2011; Palier and Thelen 2012). Scholars variously emphasised the role played by labour market reforms, employment regulations, social protection schemes and industrial relations systems in shaping the disadvantages atypical workers face in various countries, as well as the gulf between atypical and standard workers (Davidsson and Naczyk 2009).
Overall, a distinction has been drawn between Liberal regimes, with deregulated labour markets and mostly flat-rate social protection, and Continental countries, which have deregulated their labour markets only at the margins, and rely predominantly on contribution-based systems of social protection (Esping-Andersen and Regini 2001; Eichhorst and Marx 2010). While the latter have been claimed to have greatly increased employment and social protection divides, the former have been argued to have contained inequalities in both employment and social protection between people with different employment statuses, allowing flexibility to manifest mostly through wage inequalities (DiPrete et al. 2006; Barbieri 2009). Within the Continental group, Southern European countries have been argued to occupy an extreme position, with an even wider gap in both employment and social protection between those in standard and those in atypical employment (Polavieja 2005; Berton et al. 2015).
This book explores the disadvantages experienced by one specific category of atypical workers, namely temporary agency (TA) workers. In order to investigate the role employment-related institutions play in shaping those disadvantages, two countries with very different employment and welfare frameworks, namely Italy and the UK, are compared. The study demonstrates that TA workers in Italy and the UK experience somewhat different disadvantages compared to their standard counterparts and that the different institutional configurations of labour markets, industrial relations and welfare systems do indeed play an important role in explaining those country differences. Nevertheless, there is necessarily no close correspondence between the divides shaped by the institutional framework and experienced disadvantages. Other non-institutional factors are shown to be important in shaping individual disadvantages, as well as the interaction between those and institutional factors.
1.2 Investigating Disadvantages Among Temporary Agency Workers
Disadvantages derived from atypical employment arrangements have been conceptualised in a variety of ways in the academic literature. With some degree of oversimplification, we can say that scholars from two main fields have studied employment-related disadvantages. Within comparative political economy, the literature on âdualismâ has focused on labour market institutions and welfare institutions and how they directly or indirectly engender a differentiated set of rights and entitlements for people with different employment status (Davidsson and Naczyk 2009; Emmenegger et al. 2012a). Scholars in this tradition hypothesise a dualistic structure, where a stark divide exists between those in standard (âinsidersâ) and those in other employment arrangements (âoutsidersâ). Within this framework, the disadvantages experienced by atypical workers are argued to be different in every country, as is the divide between standard and atypical workers. Within this stream of literature, different labour market and social protection frameworks are argued to influence the disadvantages experienced by atypical workers and in turn in leading to a divide with standard workers, either by reducing it, fostering it or even creating it from scratch (Barbier 2011; Palier and Thelen 2012).
Within the discipline of sociology, analysts of precariousness have focused on the insecurity and vulnerability derived from employment status and how this is shaped by the interaction between socio-demographic characteristics and labour market institutions, and, more broadly, by the socio-economic system (Barbier 2011; Kalleberg 2013). Scholars in the precariousness literature take a bottom-up approach in the analysis of employment-related disadvantages. Rather than using institutions as units of analysis, they focus on individuals and, from the analysis of disadvantages they experience, they relate back to the institutional and other contextual factors which caused them. According to these scholars, precariousness is a multidimensional concept, which includes several interconnected dimensions, both related and unrelated to the labour market, in which an individual faces a vulnerability (Rodgers and Rodgers 1989; Barbier 2004). Therefore, it is the interaction between individual situations and characteristics, employment regulations, income protection and industrial relations system which might engender a situation of precariousness (Laparra et al. 2004; Kalleberg 2013).
Considering the disadvantages from an institutional perspective, the literature on dualism has hitherto largely ignored individual-level issues, assuming that institutional divides in terms of rights, entitlements and resources will automatically translate into individual disadvantages. By contrast, sociological analyses of atypical forms of employment have adopted a more individual perspective, investigating how disadvantages are shaped by the interaction between individual and contextual characteristics and they have been careful to assume that an individual who is not granted a right, an entitlement or a resource will automatically experience a disadvantage. However, they have not necessarily focused on the divides engendered by the institutional settings, not providing a systematic comparative analysis on whether and how different institutional frameworks shape the individualsâ experience of precariousness in different ways.
This book tries to partially bridge these two streams of literature, exploring the disadvantages of a category of atypical workersâ experience compared to standard employees in two very different political economies, and whether and how the differences can be attributed to contrasting ...
