Questioning The Employment System: The European Flexicurity Approach

Abstract

This paper entails an analysis of the transformations of the so called modern employment system in relation to the concept of flexicurity, according to an European hegemonic institutional version. Specifically, it focuses in the changes operated in the relationship between employment and social protection in terms of regulatory principles and ideological basis within two presumed different cognitive-normative frameworks, which correspond to two different historical contexts in the Western world: the fordian and post-fordian era. This is strongly connected to the development and the subsequent crisis/reform of the Welfare State, linked to the keynesian-fordian Pact. The first section of the study offers a theoretical travel along the arising and institutionalisation of the modern employment system. The second explores the factors and the features of the decline of this model. Finally, the third section is dedicated to the analysis of European discourses about flexicurity. Flexicurity, as an “ideal” political strategy to face and adapt to new (economic/social) challenges posed by globalization, contents a new notion of security in the area of employment. In the conclusions, the transcendence of this new notion of security is manifested in the apparition of a new representation of the citizen and of the employee that emerges from the transformation of the relationships: worker-employer, State-market and State –individual.

Keywords

• Flexicurity, activation, transitional labour markets, Welfare State, modern system of employment, security

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