Abstract
In the 2000s, the concept of ‘flexicurity’ expanded from its Danish and Dutch roots and became enshrined in the EU agenda as a policy approach in labour market and welfare regulation (see Chapter 3 by O’Connor). By drawing upon social partnership and maintaining a ‘golden triangle’ of labour market flexibility, social security and active labour market policies, the flexicurity approach was seen as the ‘high road’ to competitiveness (European Commission, 2007; Viebrock and Clasen, 2009; Wilthagen and Tros, 2004), without featuring the pitfalls of increased wage inequalities of liberal countries (DiPrete, Goux, Maurin and Quesnel-Vallee, 2006) and labour market segmentation through partial deregulation. Flexicurity became widespread in continental and Mediterranean regimes during the 1980s and 1990s as these struggled with high unemployment and ‘Eurosclerosis’ (Barbieri, 2009; Esping-Andersen and Regini, 2000). There is, however, little evidence that flexibilization has had much impact on employment rates (Kahn, 2010; Boeri and Garibaldi, 2007) in these countries. In contrast, increasing numbers of workers became trapped in low-quality jobs with little employment security (Barbieri and Scherer, 2009; Blanchard and Landier, 2002), decreasing training opportunities (Cutuli and Guetto, 2012), greater health risks (Virtanen et al., 2005), and higher in-work poverty (Chapter 11 by Van Lancker).
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© 2013 Teo Matković
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Matković, T. (2013). ‘Flexicurity’ through Normalization? Changes in Scope, Composition and Conditions of Temporary Employment in Croatia. In: Koch, M., Fritz, M. (eds) Non-Standard Employment in Europe. Work and Welfare in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137267160_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137267160_6
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