Precarious Work in the Nordics: Introduction to The Theme of The Special Issue

In recent years, we have seen a growing body of literature with a strong focus on labour market inequalities. In the Anglo-Saxon literature, concepts such as the working poor and bad jobs have been applied to jobs in, for example, the US to describe jobs with low pay and inferior working conditions (Kalleberg 2011; Klein & Rones 1989). In the UK and other parts of Europe, the concept of the precariat is often used to capture the employment situations characterized by fragmented and insecure employment and low income (Standing 2011). Also in Germany, the discussion on labour market inequalities has been revitalised. The emergence of mini jobs and various forms of bogus self-employment (Scheinselbständige), etc. have gained momentum in the political and academic debates as part of a larger trend of labour market dualization in line with some of the early works on labour market segmentation (Brady & Biegert 2017) (...

Herregårdenes herligheder

Stud.mag. Stine Lucia Rasmussen afdækker i denne artikel HC Andersens besøg på og forhold til forskellige danske herregårde i midten af 1800-tallet

Nonstandard Employment in the Nordics – Toward Precarious Work?

This article examines nonstandard employment and precariousness in four Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway). Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey from 1995 to 2015, the article investigates and compares recent developments of nonstandard employment in the countries and analyzes whether fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, marginal part-time work and solo self-employment have precarious elements (measured as income or job insecurity). We conclude that nonstandard employment has remained rather stable in all four countries over time. However, although nonstandard employment seems to be largely integrated in the Nordic labor markets, it still entails precarious elements in certain countries in particular. Norway and Denmark stand out as having less insecure labor markets, while Finland and Sweden have more precariousness associated with nonstandard employment. We argue that these differences are explained by differences in the institutional contexts in the countries