The Welfare Politics of the Individualization of Employment Relationships

• In Event: Poster Session: Foundations of Political Theory & Technological Change and Societal Conflict
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Technological Change and Societal Conflict

Abstract

Over the past two decades, several European governments across both the left and right sides of the political spectrum have implemented social policies improving the social protection of the self-employed. While conventional wisdom explains this phenomenon through the development of digital platform work, this paper suggests otherwise.

Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and case study methods, I demonstrate that these policies stem from an excess of high-skilled workers in European labour markets that fosters the formation of a cross-class coalition supporting these policies. Based on an in-depth study of reforms adopted by Zapatero and Vanhanen's governments in Spain in 2007 and Finland in 2009, the findings reveal that the policies enhancing the social protection of the self-employed are paradoxically driven by employers to incentivize high-skilled workers to enter this work arrangement.

This phenomenon mirrors a broader historical process of individualization of employment relationships, shifting the negotiations of working conditions from collective to individual bargaining. In this context, social policies expanding social protection for individualizing work arrangements act as a decollectivization trap, incentivizing workers to shift to these precarious forms of employment.

Author

• Maxime Borg