Employment and citizenship in Britain and France

Book abstract:

One of the most significant features to emerge in the world of work during the past decade has been the change from long-term employment, often with one employer, to a pattern of short-term, flexible working arrangements involving short-term contracts, frequent spells of unemployment, rapid movement into and out of employment and greater labour mobility. However the social and economic consequences of employment flexibility have remained virtually unresearched until now.

This book derives from the second Anglo-French Conference on the transferability of social policy held in Aix-en-Provence in 1998, which focused on the problems created by employment flexibility and the appropriate policy responses and presents some of the first commentaries on the consequences of flexibility in Britain and France. It brings together British and French perspectives on such policy questions as the impact on families and their ability to plan in an atmosphere of economic insecurity, the manner in which French and British welfare systems are adapting, the impact on citizens' rights, the need, in both countries, to make pension arrangements more adaptable, and the potential for a 'European citizenship' approach to the problem.

The chapters in the book have been grouped into three sections. The first section covers topics under the rubric State, society and employment and contains five chapters covering flexibility, part-time employment and labour market deregulation. The four chapters making up the second section, Employment uncertainty and economic security, focus more narrowly on the question of economic security and how it can be maintained or created in circumstances of employment uncertainty that is the product of flexible labour markets. The third group of four chapters, Citizenship rights and employment security, examines a different set of questions relating to flexibility. These concern the impact of flexibility on the moral standing of workers and their dependants in terms of their citizenship status, their rights and their self-respect.