The concept of transitional labour markets: a theoretical and methodological inventory

"The aim of this article is to critically assess the concept of transitional labour markets (TLM) and its scientific importance. It seeks to provide a stock-taking of the methodological tools and discuss future theoretical and methodological perspectives. Since the TLM concept is by definition interdisciplinary and multi-methodological in nature, we need to ask about the extent to which this kind of openness is appropriate. The methodological review will go beyond the traditional schism of qualitative vs. quantitative research by including additional dimensions such as exploration, causal modelling, and questions regarding research design and data quality. The sources supporting this 'TLM inventory' are the essential publications (books, working papers, and journal articles) of the two major research projects explicitly based on the TLM approach: TRANSLAM and TLM.NET. The paper concludes with a number of suggestions how to enhance the TLM concept in theoretical and methodological terms." (author's abstract)"Das Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist eine kritische Würdigung des Konzeptes der Übergangsarbeitsmärkte und seiner wissenschaftlichen Bedeutung. Er bietet eine Bestandsaufnahme der angewandten Forschungsmethoden und diskutiert zukünftige theoretische und methodologische Perspektiven. Das Konzept der Übergangsarbeitsmärkte hat per Definition einen interdisziplinären und multi-methodischen Charakter, so dass sich die Frage nach dem optimalen Maß dieser Offenheit stellt. Die methodische Bestandsaufnahme geht dabei über das klassische Schisma von qualitativer vs. quantitativer Forschung hinaus und berücksichtigt auch Dimensionen wie z.B. Exploration und Kausalmodelle sowie Fragen des Forschungsdesigns und der Dateneigenschaften. Die Quellen, auf die sich diese 'TLM-Bestandsaufnahme' stützt, sind die wichtigsten Publikationen (Monographien, Arbeitspapiere und wissenschaftliche Artikel) der beiden Hauptforschungsprojekte - TRANSLAM und TLM.NET - die explizit auf dem TLM-Konzept beruhen. Das Papier schließt mit einer Reihe von Anregungen, wie dieses Konzept in theoretischer wie auch methodischer Hinsicht weiterentwickelt werden sollte." (Autorenreferat

Lost in transition: labour market entry sequences of school leavers in Europe

"Transitional labour markets (TLMs) aim at fostering individual employability over a person's life course under the conditions of flexible labour markets. For TLM policies it is therefore necessary to focus not on single transitions or points of time but on transitional periods. Such a period can contain more than one single transition and add up to an overall sequence type. In particular, the process of labour market entry is characterised by considerable insecurity and varies in duration across individual. From a European perspective, it seems inappropriate to focus on the national level. European policies for tackling youth unemployment should be complementary to certain types of transitional sequences rather than focus on a particular institutional setting. In the paper I examine sequences of school-to-work transitions in ten European countries by using explorative methods of optimal matching and cluster analysis. The process of labour market entry is observed for the five years following departure from school by examining monthly labour market statuses. The sequences are classified by similarity, and certain sequence types along with their distribution are described. The resulting picture shows strong variation across countries, which can only partly be captured by classic typologies of school-to-work transition regimes. Apart from that, the quality of the coordination process between the educational system and the labour market can be assessed by taking into account indicators derived from the TLM concept, namely, volatility, integrative capability and the degree of risk." (author's abstract)"Übergangsarbeitsmärkte beabsichtigen, die individuelle Beschäftigungsfähigkeit im Lebensverlauf unter Berücksichtigung flexibler Arbeitsmärkte zu fördern. Entsprechende Politiken können sich daher nicht nur auf einen einzelnen Übergang oder Zeitpunkt konzentrieren, sondern müssen die gesamte Übergangsperiode berücksichtigen. Solche Perioden können mehrere einzelne Übergänge enthalten, die bestimmte Sequenztypen bilden. Insbesondere der Prozess des Einstiegs in den Arbeitsmarkt ist von beträchtlicher Unsicherheit und unterschiedlicher Dauer gekennzeichnet. Aus der europäischen Perspektive erscheint es zudem angebracht, sich nicht auf die nationale Ebene zu beschränken. Europäische Politiken zur Bekämpfung von Jugendarbeitslosigkeit sollten sich eher an bestimmten Übergangssequenztypen orientieren als an institutionellen Konfigurationen. Das vorliegende Papier untersucht Übergangssequenzen von der Schule in den Beruf in zehn europäischen Ländern unter Verwendung explorativer Methoden wie optimal matching und Clusteranalyse. Der Prozess der Arbeitsmarktintegration wird anhand der monatlichen Arbeitsmarkzustände in den ersten fünf Jahren nach Verlassen der Schule beobachtet. Die Übergangssequenzen werden nach ihrer Ähnlichkeit gruppiert und hinsichtlich ihrer Verteilung beschrieben. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass diese Übergangssequenzen beachtlich zwischen den europäischen Ländern variieren, was nur teilweise durch klassische Typologien von Übergangsregimen erklärt werden kann. Zusätzlich wird die Qualität des Koordinierungsprozesses zwischen Bildungssystem und Arbeitsmarkt anhand von Indikatoren beurteilt, die aus dem Konzept der Übergangsarbeitsmärkte abgeleitet wurden. Hierbei handelt es sich um die Volatilität, die Integrationsfähigkeit und den Risikocharakter von Übergangssequenzen." (Autorenreferat

The interplay of educational and labour market institutions and links to relative youth unemployment

Many institutional theories assume that institutions function in conjunction with each other and, therefore, constitute regimes. Moreover, when analysing institutional effects most researchers maintain a purely variable-oriented approach and its ceteris-paribus logic of causal association. This article analyses associations between configurations of labour market and education institutions and relative youth unemployment by examining 30 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The analysis reveals that no single institution constitutes a sufficient or necessary condition for relative youth unemployment. Institutions unfold their effects only in combination with other institutions, that is, they are always conjunctural. Low relative youth unemployment cannot be explained adequately. Employment protection is only associated with high relative youth unemployment if vocational specificity, standardisation and stratification is low

School-to-Work Transitions in International Comparison

Väitöskirjan aiheena on koulutuksen jälkeiset työelämään siirtymisen ja integroitumisen mallit. Tutkimuksessa luodaan katsaus aikaisempaan tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, arvioidaan olemassa olevan tutkimuksen heikkouksia ja kehitellään metodologisia ratkaisuja siihen miten koulutuksesta työelämään siirtymien monimuotoista prosessia voitaisiin kuvata aikaisempaa paremmin. Viimeisten vuosikymmenten aikana koulutuksesta työelämään siirtyminen on tullut entistä monimuotoisemmaksi. Suurelta osin se heijastaa työmarkkinoiden joustavuuden lisääntymistä. Tämä suuntaus on havaittavissa monissa maissa, tosin eri mittasuhteissa. Syinä epäsuhteisiin ja erisuuntaiseen kehitykseen on usein pidetty eroja institutionaalisissa järjestelmissä. Erityisesti sosiaalitieteissä on tutkittu institutionaalisten tekijöiden vaikutuksia yksilötason lopputulemiin. Tällaisen tutkimusotteen heikkoudet liittyvät ensisijaisesti siihen, että ne jättävät huomioimatta ajalliset muutokset siirtymäprosesseissa ja toiseksi, ne jättävät huomioimatta institutionaalisten järjestelmien ja yksilötason lopputulosten kesken vallitsevan kausaalisten suhteiden kompleksisuuden. Koulutuksesta työelämään siirtyminen on usein määritelty myös siirtyminä statuksesta toiseen, opiskelijan statuksesta työlliseksi tai työttömästä työlliseksi. Tällainen tarkastelu ei ole kuitenkaan enää riittävä tapa tarkastella monimutkaista prosessia. Siksi tarvitaan uusia metodologisia menetelmiä, kuten sekvenssianalyysia, joka mahdollistaa siirtymäprosessien kompleksisuuden esiintuomisen sekä vahvistaa alan tutkimuksen tutkimusperustaa. Tämän lisäksi on havaittavissa, että institutionaalisten ehtojen vaikutuksen analyysi, esimerkiksi koulutuksesta työhön siirtymiin, jää usein pinnalliseksi koska tutkijat arvioivat vain yksittäisten instituutioiden vaikutuksia eikä sitä miten instituutiot ovat kombinoituneita keskenään. Tämän ongelman ratkaisemiseksi tässä tutkimuksessa sovellettiin konfiguratiivista metodia, kvalitatiivista vertailun analyysia (QCA). Tutkimuksen mukaan edellä mainittujen metodien soveltaminen voi olla yksi keino ratkaista nykyisten koulutuksesta työhön siirtymiä tarkastelevien tutkimusten heikkouksia.On the 28th October 2011, Christian Brzinsky-Fay will defend its dissertation International Comparison of School-to-Work Transitions in the Linna building at the University of Tampere. Based on a research overview, certain shortcomings of social science research in this field will be identified, and methodological solutions will be presented. The transition from school to work is becoming more and more complex in the last decades, reflecting increasing flexibilisation in labour markets. This trend can be observed in many countries, even though to a different extent. The reasons for these disparities can be found mainly on the level of institutional arrangements. Thus, social science is very much engaged in analysing institutional effects on individual outcomes. The major limitations of this research regarding school-to-work transitions are, first, the neglect of periodical character of transitions processes and, second, the complex causal relationships between institutional arrangements and individual outcomes. The transition from school to work is generally defined as the change from the status education to the status employment or from the status unemployment to employment . But, because of transition processes increasing complexity this is not longer appropriate. Therefore, a new methodological tool is presented, namely sequence analysis , which is able to explore and reduces this complexity by identifying ideal types of transitions, which provides a basis for further research. Additionally, the analysis of institutional conditions for transition outcomes remains on a very basic level, because researchers only examine net effects of single institutions and not effects of institutions in combination with each other. Here, the application of configurational methods, namely Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), helps to overcome this limitation of analysis. The application of both methods can help to overcome the limitations of contemporary school-to-work transition research

Anachronismus oder Erfolgsmodell? Die duale Berufsausbildung im 21. Jahrhundert

Das deutsche Modell der dualen Ausbildung gewährleistet nach wie vor für viele Absolvent*innen einen erfolgreichen Erwerbseinstieg. Der Erwerb von Qualifikationen bekommt mehr Bedeutung im Vergleich zur Bindung an den Ausbildungsbetrieb. Erwerbseinstiege sind heutzutage stärker durch Teilzeit und Diskontinuität gekennzeichnet

Über den Nutzen des Career Tracking für Forschungsinstitutionen: Die Verbleibstudie des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin für Sozialforschung

The majority of research fellows of universities and research institutions will pursue careers outside of academia. Knowledge about their professional advancement is particularly valuable for their former academic institutions as they typically qualify researchers for future positions with other (academic or non-academic) employers. The Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung is developing a career tracking instrument, which allows gaining insight into the professional development of the researchers who left the center in the last few years

Sequence analysis: its past, present, and future

This article marks the occasion of Social Science Research’s 50th anniversary by reflecting on the progress of sequence analysis (SA) since its introduction into the social sciences four decades ago, with focuses on the developments of SA thus far in the social sciences and on its potential future directions. The application of SA in the social sciences, especially in life course research, has mushroomed in the last decade and a half. Using a life course analogy, we examined the birth of SA in the social sciences and its childhood (the first wave), its adolescence and young adulthood (the second wave), and its future mature adulthood in the paper. The paper provides a summary of (1) the important SA research and the historical contexts in which SA was developed by Andrew Abbott, (2) a thorough review of the many methodological developments in visualization, complexity measures, dissimilarity measures, group analysis of dissimilarities, cluster analysis of dissimilarities, multidomain/multichannel SA, dyadic/polyadic SA, Markov chain SA, sequence life course analysis, sequence network analysis, SA in other social science research, and software for SA, and (3) reflections on some future directions of SA including how SA can benefit and inform theory-making in the social sciences, the methods currently being developed, and some remaining challenges facing SA for which we do not yet have any solutions. It is our hope that the reader will take up the challenges and help us improve and grow SA into maturity

Sequence analysis: Its past, present, and future

This article marks the occasion of Social Science Research's 50th anniversary by reflecting on the progress of sequence analysis (SA) since its introduction into the social sciences four decades ago, with focuses on the developments of SA thus far in the social sciences and on its potential future directions. The application of SA in the social sciences, especially in life course research, has mushroomed in the last decade and a half. Using a life course analogy, we examined the birth of SA in the social sciences and its childhood (the first wave), its adolescence and young adulthood (the second wave), and its future mature adulthood in the paper. The paper provides a summary of (1) the important SA research and the historical contexts in which SA was developed by Andrew Abbott, (2) a thorough review of the many methodological developments in visualization, complexity measures, dissimilarity measures, group analysis of dissimilarities, cluster analysis of dissimilarities, multidomain/multichannel SA, dyadic/polyadic SA, Markov chain SA, sequence life course analysis, sequence network analysis, SA in other social science research, and software for SA, and (3) reflections on some future directions of SA including how SA can benefit and inform theory-making in the social sciences, the methods currently being developed, and some remaining challenges facing SA for which we do not yet have any solutions. It is our hope that the reader will take up the challenges and help us improve and grow SA into maturity.</p

NEET in Germany: Labour Market Entry Patterns and Gender Differences

This chapter aims at assessing the Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) youth in Germany, where one finds a strong institutionalized apprenticeship system, a relatively high stratification of the educational system and a gendered vocational education and training system. The dependent variable is the occupational status at the age of 30 measured by the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status. The independent variables are the socio-economic background information and the NEET patterns or respectively the cumulative NEET length. Germany constitutes an interesting case when looking at the longitudinal patterns of youths who experience NEET periods, for several reasons. In international comparison, the connection between education system and the labour market in Germany is quite structured