Selective Flexibilization and Deregulation of the Labor Market. The Answer of Continental and Southern Europe

In this article, we reconstruct the institutional responses of differentEuropean welfare states and their implications for individual life course and employmenttrajectories and the related nation-specific patterns of social inequality. In doingso, our article brings together the combined evidence from various internationalcomparative research projects carried out over the past 15 years. Our assumption isthat there exist typical regime-specific strategic patterns in institutional reactions toglobalization that imply specific life course consequences. By means of cross-nationalcomparison, we aim to elaborate whether there is a specific institutional strategy, commonto Continental and Southern European countries, to deal with rising flexibilitydemands which gives rise to specific patterns of flexible work forms and structures ofsocial inequality. Furthermore, we argue that the repercussions of rising flexibilizationhave not remained limited to the employment sphere but also strongly impacted onfertility and family formation in these traditionally rather family-oriented welfare states.Our international comparative research results show, in fact, that fertility decline andpostponement of family formation can be considered as results of the selective labormarket deregulation in Southern and Continental Europe.