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The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in employment status trajectories of young Europeans during their initial labour market experience, and the way in which they are affected by some labour market institutions.

The empirical analysis is based on EU-SILC longitudinal data (waves 2006–2012), and focusses on young people aged 16–34. Monthly information on self-declared employment statuses for 36 months is used to define “employment status trajectories”. Young people are observed in two different phases: the first three years after leaving education (first phase) and a three-year window, starting around four years after the end of education (2nd phase). Multinomial logit models are used to estimate the probability of following different trajectory types as a function of individual characteristics, macroeconomic conditions and institutional indicators.

Results show that, in the first phase, women and men face on average the same difficulties in entering the labour market. When controlling for the presence of children, non-mothers have higher chances than men to enter rapidly and successfully into the labour market, whereas young mothers have the same chances. In contrast, in the second phase women experience more fragmented pathways than men, even if they do not have children. A less stringent regulation on dismissals of employees with regular contracts could enhance women’s employment opportunities in the school-to-work transition, but it would have detrimental effects for both men and women in the subsequent years. On the contrary, a more stringent regulation on the use of temporary contracts would have beneficial effects for women, with no adverse effects for men.

The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it takes a broader perspective on youth labour market integration by considering two phases of individuals’ initial working life. Second, it combines an explicit attention to the first “significant” employment experience with a focus on individual trajectories, by adopting a new method to group trajectories. Third, it shows how the effects of labour market institutions vary by gender, highlighting the importance of considering gender-specific consequences when discussing or adopting labour market reforms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether high responsibility for housework or childcare is related to weak labour market attachment.

Survey data on domestic responsibilities in 1998 and 2003 were linked to register data on respondents’ employment spells for 2004-2011. Effects of the responsibilities on labour market trajectories – identified with latent class growth analyses – were analysed with multinomial logistic regression analyses.

Four trajectories for labour market attachment were identified among both genders. When adjusted for prior labour market attachment and other control variables, a high responsibility for housework predicted weak labour market attachment, compared to the trajectory of strong attachment, only among men. Compared to the trajectory of strengthening attachment, a high responsibility for housework was related to weak attachment among both men and women.

Personal orientations may, to some extent, explain both the division on domestic responsibilities and attachment to the labour market. In the Finnish type of welfare state, domestic responsibilities have long-term effects, especially on men’s careers. More attention should be given to men’s roles in families and their possible consequences.

This is the first study analysing the division of domestic responsibilities on later labour market attachment among both genders. The strength of this study is the long follow-up time and methodology; it combines survey data at two time points and register data on employment spells over eight years, identifying patterns in employment with latent class growth analyses.

The three-sector framework (relating to agriculture, manufacturing and services) is one of the major concepts for studying the long-run change of the economic structure. This paper aims to discuss the system-theoretical classification of the structural change in the three-sector framework and, in particular, its predictability by the Poincaré–Bendixson theory.

This study compares the assumptions of the Poincaré–Bendixson theory to the typical axioms of structural change modeling, the empirical evidence on the geometrical properties of structural change trajectories and the methodological arguments referring to the laws of structural change.

The findings support the assumption that the structural change phenomenon is representable by a dynamical system that is predictable by the Poincaré–Bendixson theory. This result implies, among others, that in the long run, structural change is either transitory or cyclical and can be used in further geometrical/topological long-run structural change modeling and prediction.

Although widespread in mathematics, geometrical/topological modeling methods have not been used in modeling and prediction of long-run structural change, despite the fact that they seem to be predestined for this purpose owing to their global, system-theoretical nature, allowing for a reduction of ideology content of predictions and greater robustness of results.

This study aims to analyse the institutional changes in the Spanish labour market in the light of the measures introduced to support workers during the COVID-19 crisis. Applying the theoretical framework the authors’ hypothesis is that the labour policy response to the crisis provoked by COVID-19 in Spain has ranged from strategy of preservation of the social democratic coalition to the anti-bourgeois bloc coalition with a greater presence of social pacts and the support of the social partners.

Combining the institutional theory of liberalisation trajectories, the four ideal-typical reform strategies and the social pacts literature, the authors analyse the change in the labour market policy orientation during the COVID-19 economic crisis in Spain.

In comparison to the Great Recession labour policy response, short-time work schemes and new benefits have characterised the 2020 labour policy strategy. Then, the labour policy response has oscillated between, on the one hand, a strategy of preservation of the social democratic coalition, which is characterised by measures to protect workers on the margins of the labour market without affecting the discretionary power of employers. On the other hand, a strategy of the anti-bourgeois bloc coalition, reflected in the employment safeguard clause that attempts to limit both external numerical flexibility and the increase in unemployment. Finally, the authors have analysed whether the labour policies after the COVID-19 crisis constitute a new round of social pacts in Spain and how this took place. They conclude that the main measures approved in the area of employment protection have been supported by social pacts and the social partners (trade unions and employers), as reflected in the signing of the Social Agreement in Defence of Employment (ASDE).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a significant contribution as it is the first article to point out that the labour policy represents a change in the trajectory of liberalisation, limiting the discretionary power of employers and re-regulating the labour market. The main measure of (re)regulation has been to safeguard employment and to avoid objective or unfair dismissals, which is the traditional form of adjustment. In other words, internal numerical flexibility has been promoted over external flexibility, thus significantly modifying the orientation of labour policy. Finally, the authors have found that social pacts have allowed for greater institutional coherence between legal changes and the behaviour of employers and workers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the careers of skilled migrants from Indian Punjab. This study complicates the normalization of skilled migration as a “win‐win” situation by examining the career trajectories of skilled migrants from the Indian Punjab who are trying to establish themselves in Britain.

The paper examines 20 life history interviews undertaken with skilled migrants from the Indian Punjab to Britain, in IT, media, law and hospitality industries, health and welfare professionals, and student migrants.

Skilled migrants were able to migrate on their own auspices through migration economies in Punjab. Once in Britain, however, they were directed to universities and labour markets in which they were not able to use their skills. They experienced under‐employment, devaluation of their qualifications and downward mobility, which forced them into ethnic and gendered markets within their home networks and created ambivalence about migrant success and issues of return.

The study emphasizes the need to take a transnational lens when looking at skilled migration, address how migrants’ career trajectories are limited by racism, anti‐immigration sentiment and gender inequality, and consider temporality and uncertainty.

The paper raises questions concerning the ways in which rapidly changing “managed migration” policies in Britain have burdened individual migrants.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the wage gap between native and immigrant women in Spain, taking into account differences in their characteristics and the need to control for common support. If immigrant women are segregated in occupations with few native women, it is important to take this into account to analyse wage differentials between both collectives.

Microdata from the Continuous Sample of Working Histories (Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales) on wages and other personal characteristics such as gender, country of origin, and age were used to apply the matching procedure and the decomposition of the wage gap, along the lines of Ñopo, for the analysis of wage differentials between native and immigrant women. The advantage of this procedure is that one can simultaneously estimate the common support and the mean counterfactual wage for the women on the common support (i.e. comparing native and immigrant women with similar observable characteristics). In addition, differences not only at the mean but also along the entire wage distribution can be described.

The results obtained indicate that, on average, immigrant women earn less than native women in the Spanish labour market. This wage gap is bigger when immigrant women from developing countries are considered, but the authors’ main finding is that an important part of this wage gap is related to differences in common support (i.e. immigrant women are segregated in certain jobs with low wages different from those occupied by native women). If the need to control for common support is neglected, estimates of the wage gap will be biased.

Studying the case of Spain is particularly interesting because it is a country with abundant and recent immigration. Immigrant women account for more than half of the total immigrants in Spain, and unlike other host countries, they come from a highly varied range of countries, with origins as diverse as Latin America, the Maghreb and Eastern Europe. To the authors’ knowledge, no other study has explicitly focused on the analysis of the wage differential of immigrant women in the Spanish labour market by taking into account the need to control for common support. Moreover, published papers illustrating the potentiality of Ñopo's methodology are also very scarce.

Research on job precarity and job instability have largely neglected the labor market trajectories in which these employment and non-employment situations are experienced. This study addresses the mechanisms of volatility and precarity in observed work histories of labor market entrants using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Several ideal-typical post-education pathways are modeled for respondents entering the labor force between 1997 and 2010, with varying indicators and degrees of precarity. A series of predictive models indicate that women, racial-ethnic minorities, and lower social class labor market entrants are significantly more likely to be exposed to the most precarious early careers. Moreover, leaving the educational system with a completed associate’s, bachelor’s, or post-graduate degree is protective of experiencing the most unstable types of career pattern. While adjusting for these individual-level background and education variables, the findings also reveal a form of “scarring” as regional unemployment level is a significant macro-economic predictor of experiencing a more hostile and turbulent early career. These pathways lead to considerable earnings penalties 5 years after labor market entry.

To identify the trajectories of occupational mobility among non-EU immigrant workers in Europe and to test empirical data against neoclassical human capital theory that predicts upward occupational mobility and labor market segmentation theories proposing immigrant confinement to secondary segments.

Data from survey and semi-structured interviews (2,859 and 357, respectively) with immigrants from Brazil, Ukraine, and Morocco in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Norway. Multinomial regression analysis to test the likelihood of moving downward, upward, or stability and identify explanatory factors, complemented with qualitative evidence.

We found support for the thesis of segmented labor market theories of limited upward occupational mobility following migration. However, immigrants with longer residence in the destination country have higher chances of upward mobility compared to stability and downward mobility, giving also support for the neoclassical human capital theory. Frail legal status impacts negatively on upward mobility chances and men more often experience upward mobility after migration than women.

Findings reflect the specific situation of immigrants from three origin countries in four destination areas and cannot be taken as representative. In the multinomial regression we cannot distinguish between cohort effects and duration of stay.

Education obtained in the destination country is very important for migrants’ upward occupational mobility, bearing important policy implications with regards to migrants’ integration.

Its focus on trajectories of mobility through migration looking at two important transitions: (1) from last occupation in the origin country to first occupation at destination and (2) from first occupation to current occupation and offers a wide cross-country comparison both in terms of origin and destination countries in Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of changes in employment regulation in Spain on individual labour market trajectories. It is well known that the Spanish labour market has been strongly hit by the 2007 recession. Furthermore, after 2010 and in the benchmark of “austerity”, several reforms were implemented to further flexibilise employment regulation. At the same time, public sector budgets suffered severe cutbacks, that impacted working conditions and prospects of public sector workers. These reforms were implemented by different governments and substantially changed previous existing patterns of employment. This paper explains how these reforms have reinforced previous existing trends towards greater flexibility and weaker employment protection and how they lead to a shift in the position of work in society.

The emerging patterns that these changes provoked are illustrated thorough data from narrative biographies of workers affected by a job loss or a downgrading of working conditions. The workers of the sample had relatively stable positions and careers and were affected by changes that substantially modified their paths.

The paper shows how reforms have expanded work and employment insecurities and have broken career paths. It demonstrates how the reforms have weakened the position of work and organised labour in society and how, when institutional supports are jeopardised, the capacity to plan and act is harassed by the traditional social inequalities.

The paper enhances the knowledge about the impact of institutional changes by analysing their effects in individual working lives by means of narrative biographies.

Uber, the virtual service that connects drivers to passenger, presents a novel form of work-organization in which managerial functions are transposed into a virtual platform. This ethnographic study documents how Uber drivers in the city of Monterrey, Mexico navigate and come to make sense of the Uber model of work. Employing the conceptual device of the work-game, this study argues that engagement in the game of “earning coins” coupled the interest of drivers in generating the most-possible income with the interest of management in maintaining a readily available labor pool. Reinforcing this coupling was Uber’s deployment of an entrepreneurial ideology of “being your own boss,” which was especially important given the company’s lack of a physical management structure. However, as Uber takes advantage of the deindustrialization that has gripped Monterey, it attracts drivers exhibiting varied employment trajectories. This in turn creates different modes of playing the work-game and thus generates sharply divergent subjective understandings of the work, whose nature this chapter explores.