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The main purpose of the chapter is to explain the impact of labour market security on migration-related decisions, especially in terms of push-pull factors theory. There are different ways to understand work-related security; the chapter discusses the importance of job security, employment security and income security from labour migration perspective. The article presents the existing body of literature on theoretical concepts as well as on some methodological facets of the measurements of the level of particular aspects of work-related security. Special attention is paid to labour migrants in terms of their working conditions in both sending and receiving countries. An overview of previous migration studies proves that the issue of migrants’ labour market security was not the subject of any in-depth analyses. There are, however, many examples of research showing that, under certain conditions, migration decisions are influenced by, among others, the generosity of a welfare state, stability of job and the desire to achieve the so-called normal life. In the case of migrants from third countries (e.g. from Ukraine), income security is of particular importance alongside remuneration.

The aim of the chapter is a comparative analysis of the level of labour market security in four countries representing different social models: the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and Ukraine. For this purpose, Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), European Social Survey (ESS) and European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) data were used. They allowed to show significant differences which occurred in 2004–2017 in the situation of the employees in the analysed countries. The analysis showed that employees in both the United Kingdom and Germany are characterised by a relatively high level of labour market security, but such security is provided in two different ways – in the former country employment security is more important, while job security prevails in the latter. Despite a significant improvement in employment conditions in Poland and Ukraine, the objective and subjective situation of employees there remains much worse than is the case in Germany and the United Kingdom. All the differences between the studied countries confirm the thesis regarding the flows of migrant workers seeking a satisfactory level of labour market security.

Public employment in India is often viewed as a source of job security. Hence, public employment seems to propel human security in India away from poverty and social exclusion. In the recent work, a significant attention has been accorded to understand how globalisation has impacted on job security and thereby human security in many developing countries. The literature revolves around two opposing effects of globalisation on the human security in a country: firstly, the efficiency hypothesis posits that globalisation tends to reduce the size of the government of a country to enable the country to attain comparative advantage for gainfully trading in the global economy. A reduction in the capacity of the government is argued to lead to a decline in public employment and, hence, a decline in human security with rising globalisation. Secondly, the compensation hypothesis argues that the size of government, and hence public employment, will increase with globalisation mainly to suitably manage a domestic economy in a complex global setting with an increased role of government for creating social stability and social security. Depending on the relative strengths of the mutually opposing forces of globalisation on public employment, the impact of globalisation on the human security of a country is ambiguous. A gap in the existing literature is a lack of documentation of the Indian experience. In this work, the authors seek to empirically test if globalisation has increased, or decreased, job security in India.

The main aim of this chapter is to analyse the impact of labour market security on contemporary Polish labour migrants’ choices and perceptions of their destination countries. Qualitative and quantitative empirical data were used to explain the differences between two main states enjoying popularity as destination countries for the migrants from Poland: the United Kingdom and Germany. The concepts of Varieties of Capitalism and of social models were used to explain differences between the analysed countries. Presented data confirm that some of the migrants choose countries where they can accomplish labour market security through job security (i.e. Germany), while others find their way better in countries where the model based on employment security is favoured (i.e. the United Kingdom). Special attention was also paid to Ukrainian workers in Poland, who prefer some elements of employment security alongside income security.

Young adults are living and working in uncertain economic climates and increasingly exposed to precarious work. Are preferences for job security and actual job stability a result of proximal conditions, or do experiences in adolescence also play a role? The adolescent’s environment and experiences may help explain differences in preferences with regards to stable work, as well as work outcomes in early adulthood.

In this chapter, I use data from the Youth Development Study (YDS) to test three facets of the adolescent experience between ages 14 and 18 – parental work and educational characteristics, adolescents’ academic achievement, and youth employment – as factors shaping (1) respondents’ preferences for stable employment, (2) respondents’ perceived job insecurity, and (3) respondents’ likelihood of being in nonstandard work in early adulthood, age 31–32, approximately 15 years later.

Adolescent experiences and environments are related to young adults’ preferences for stable employment, likelihood of being in nonstandard work, and likelihood of reporting job insecurity in early adulthood, suggesting the significance of early life experiences as well as the importance of intergenerational transmission processes for the early adult years.

This study points to the important role of adolescent experiences in initiating a trajectory of work preferences and attainment.

The growing incidence of precarious employment across many sectors is a serious challenge for a developing country like India. Neo-liberal arguments justify precarity as essential for the development of the free market economy and advocate realigning human resource practices with an ever-changing business environment and labor cost conditions. This chapter seeks to identify the determinants and dynamics surrounding precarity of workers engaged in temporary employment in India. It uses the unique Employment and Unemployment Survey data set published by the National Sample Survey Organisation of Government of India for two time periods 2009–2010 (66th Round) and 2011–2012 (68th Round) to bring out the dimensions of precarity and identify the determinants (both micro- and macro-levels) of participation in temporary employment. We find that precarious employment is most likely to affect the young, women, non-union members, those belonging to minority and socially deprived communities with low land holding and low educational status. Precarious employment is also most pronounced in states where labor-intensive industries are exposed to global import competition and where labor laws are rigid. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the economic and social policies that Indian governments have adopted in recent years.

The introduction contains the main hypotheses and research questions as well as an answer to the question why the topic raised in the monograph allows for a better understanding of the process governing migration-related decision-making, and in this way assists in projecting migration policies. The principal hypotheses and research questions are based on the search for an answer to the following question: to what extent labour market security, which can be provided in various ways, influences both the decision to emigrate and the choice of a particular destination country. All the publication’s chapters are summarised in the introduction.

This chapter summarises the results of empirical research with regard to the shaping up of migration policies in given countries. At the same time recommendations are developed for the migration policies of particular states in the context of labour market security. Regulations introduced in the migration policy and labour law may influence the profiles of immigrants who will arrive in a particular labour market. In Chapter 2, perspectives are presented: that of the immigrants and that of the state. In the former case, the issue of labour market security is presented as the factor behind individual migration-related decisions and the choice of a particular destination country. In the latter case, i.e., the perspective of the state, the issue of labour market security is an element of migration policy based on selection of immigrants depending on the demand from the economy and on the model of immigration preferred by a given country.

The analysis presented in this chapter defines three different synthetic measurements of disincentives for formal work: two standard measurements, namely, the tax wedge and the marginal effective tax rate (METR); and a new, innovative measurement called formalization tax rate (FTR). The novelty of the latter is that it measures disincentives stemming not only from labor taxation but also from benefit withdrawal due to formalization. A descriptive analysis across a large number of OECD and Eastern European countries reveals that the disincentives for formal work – when measured through the FTR – are especially high for low-wage earners. This suggests that formal work might not pay in this segment of the labor market, in particular for the so-called mini-jobs and midi-jobs (low-paying part-time work).

Another novelty of the chapter is its empirical approach. Using EU-SILC 2008 data and OECD Tax and Benefit data for six Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Slovakia), we match disincentives for formal work to individual observations in a large data set. Applying a probit regression, the analysis finds a significant positive correlation between FTR or METR and the incidence of being informal. In other words, controlling for individual and job characteristics, the higher the FTR or the METR that individuals are facing is, the more likely they are to work informally. The tax wedge, on the other hand, yields a negative correlation. This indicates that the tax wedge is not sufficiently capturing disincentives for formal work. We also conclude that in cross-country analysis, it might be more useful to use the tax wedge that applies to low-wage earners as opposed to average wage earners.