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    • br Competing interests br Acknowledgements This work

    2018-11-05


    Competing interests
    Acknowledgements This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants, numbers 24320169, 26245060, and 15H02964. The data for this secondary analysis, “Japanese General Social Surveys, the JGSS Research Center at Osaka University of Commerce,” was provided by the Social Science Japan Data Archive, Center for Social Research and Data Archives, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo. The Japanese General Social Surveys (JGSS) are designed and carried out by the JGSS Research Center at Osaka University of Commerce (Joint Usage/Research Center for Japanese General Social Surveys accredited by Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), in collaboration with the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo.
    Introduction In contemporary debates over the future of work and welfare, it purchase s ibuprofen has become common practice to suggest that the governments of advanced capitalist economies face an increasingly difficult bind between two conflicting sets of demands (Wilthagen & Tros, 2004). On the one hand, due to real or perceived changes in the structure of the global economy, there is a growing demand among employers for more flexible labour market arrangements that allow them to hire and fire workers with fewer restrictions and costs. On the other hand, workers continue to advocate for the provision of generous and comprehensive levels of social protection in order to offset the insecurity that results from such arrangements. In recent years, the notion of flexicurity has been introduced by a diverse range of social and political actors as a seemingly effective means of resolving this difficult bind and bridging the divide between these conflicting sets of expectations (Auer, 2010; Burroni & Keune, 2011; Muffels & Wilthagen, 2013). Flexicurity describes a relatively novel approach to the regulation of the work-welfare nexus that aims to combine labour market flexibility through loose contractual regulations with adequate levels of social security. Although this policy configuration requires workers to make concessions around job security, the approach is said to offset the impact of labour market deregulation through the use of active labour market policies that promote employability and generous income replacement measures that compensate for short spells of unemployment. The flexicurity approach deviates from the traditional view that flexibility and security are incompatible (Vosko, 2006). It suggests, instead, that powerful complementarities can be forged between the two. By striking the right balance between flexibility and security, advocates of the flexicurity approach argue that flexicurity policies are capable of securing both the demands of capital for flexibility and the demands of labour for security (e.g.European Commission, 2010; Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2013). On this basis, they argue that labour market regulations can be relaxed without causing concomitant harms to the welfare of individual workers. Despite having far-reaching implications, the theoretical claims of the flexicurity approach have gone largely-untested (Afzal, Muntaner, Chung, 2013; Burchell, 2009). Thus, unicellular is as of yet unclear whether governments can pursue labour market flexibility without compromising—among other things—the health and well-being of workers. Drawing on a multilevel modeling strategy, our study aims to evaluate this theoretical claim, with a specific focus on inequalities in self-reported health and limiting long-standing illness between temporary workers and their permanently-employed counterparts. Ultimately, we are interested in examining whether and to what extent flexicurity policies attenuate the health-related consequences associated with temporary employment.
    The rise of flexible employment conditions In the years immediately following the Second World War, European employment and social policies were dramatically transformed (Huber & Stephens, 2001). Western European countries, in particular, developed expansive labour market regulations and comprehensive social security policies to protect workers from a diverse range of socio-economic risks (e.g. unemployment) that increasingly came to be viewed as structural features of the operation of markets under capitalism (Esping-Andersen, 1990). These institutional transformations were fuelled by favourable macro-economic conditions and relatively strong labour movements whose political demands for protection became increasingly difficult to ignore. It is within this broad historical context that the “standard employment relationship” emerged (Quinlan, Mayhew & Bohle, 2001). The standard model of employment describes permanent, full-time employment that provides generous benefits and relatively strong levels of job security.