Description
Book SynopsisIn recent decades, due to unprecedented technological advancements, Europe has seen a move towards on-demand service economies. This has allowed the growth of self-employed professionals who are able to satisfy an increasing demand for flexible and high-skilled work. This book explores the need for reform of regulations in Europe, studying the variance in legal status, working conditions, social protection and collective representation of self-employed professionals. It provides insights into ways that policy could address these important challenges.
Presenting the results of a wide-reaching European survey, this book highlights key issues being faced across Europe: the implementation of universal social protection schemes; active labour market policies to support sustainable self-employment and the renewal of social dialogue through bottom-up organisations to extend the collective representation of self-employed professionals. With its theoretically-informed, empirical and interdisciplinary comparative analysis, this book identifies and explains key strategies to resolve these challenges.
This book will be of great benefit to both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of labour and economic sociology, political science, industrial relations, human resource management and social law. It will also appeal to scholars, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the labour market and self-employment in the European context.
Trade Review'This book has no rival in its field. It is by a long shot the most comprehensive, informative, and in-depth treatment of how different European nations adapt to, provide social support for, and legally regulate the burgeoning class of highly qualified self-employed professionals. This volume highlights one of the many challenges facing the new post-industrial order, and it does so with aplomb.' --Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain and Bocconi University, Italy
Table of ContentsContents: Foreword David Marsden 1. Introduction: self-employed professionals in a comparative perspective François Pichault and Renata Semenza 2. New self-employment as a theoretical matter Renata Semenza and Anna Mori 3. Working conditions and needs: results of a European survey Anna Soru, Elena Sinibaldi and Cristina Zanni 4. The place of self-employment in the European context. Evidence from nine country case studies: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom Laura Beuker, Paolo Borghi, Marie-Christine Bureau, Antonella Corsani, Bernard Gazier, Alejandro Godino, Bas Koene, Antonio Martín-Artiles, Oscar Molina, Anna Mori, Frédéric Naedenoen, Maria Norbäck, Klemen Širok, Maylin Stanic and Lars Walter 5. Comparing the national contexts Laura Beuker, François Pichault and Frédéric Naedenoen 6. Continuity and discontinuity in collective representation Anna Mori and Bas Koene 7. Conclusions: perspectives on self-employment in Europe Manuela Samek Lodovici, François Pichault and Renata Semenza Afterword: conditions for a new social dialogue in Europe Bernard Gazier Index
