Young People Experiencing Work Precariousness: Risks and Opportunities

Abstract

In recent decades most European countries have promoted labor market deregulation, under the assumption that rigid protection was the main reason for the persistence of unemployment and long-term unemployment. In some countries these reforms have simply been juxtaposed with existing regulation, de facto increasing the fracture between the core workforce (namely adult male workers, relatively permanently hired) and a growing share of workers exposed to unstable labor market participation, young people, women, and workers with a minority background in particular. One of the most relevant consequences of such transformation is a reduction of boundaries between employment and unemployment, and the rise of discontinuity, thus reconfiguring the ‘old’ risk of being totally excluded from the labor market into the ‘new’ risk of being temporarily, unstably, and therefore loosely, integrated, associated with the post industrial societies (Ranci 2010).