Righting the Wrongs. A Life Course Dynamics Approach for Non-Standard Employment

ongoing

Aim: To break new ground in the field of Non-Standard Employment (NSE), I develop a novel method for the study of employment trajectories and with this an integral life course framework that explains why and when NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes. Background: NSE has become a common feature of modern labour markets. Research provides contradictory results on whether NSE leads to prosperous or precarious careers. This research suffers by three shortcomings: 1) the description of how NSE affects the career is only based on single events, 2) the explanation of why NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes is based only on static factors, 3) the positive outcomes of NSE are overestimated, as information on NSE is contaminated by measurement error. Innovation:I present the Life Course Dynamics Approach for Non-Standard Employment (DYNANSE) that assesses how micro (individual career-choices), meso (organisational dynamics) and macro (institutional change) dynamic factors determine why NSE leads to prosperous or precarious careers. This is done with an innovative method that corrects for measurement error and treats trajectories as the unit of analysis instead of studying single events. Methodology:This project consists of four interconnected subprojects: 1) first we develop the method. Then, we use this method to study how micro and meso dynamic factors determine the career outcomes of NSE for 2) young workers and 3) older workers, and 4) how institutional change shapes the role of NSE using data from the Netherlands, Norway and Italy. Impact: Results will lead to a long-sought understanding of the dynamic factors determining whether NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes. In this way, we will resolve a theoretical debate on whether NSE is a factor of dynamism or a source of increasing inequality in the labour market. The novel method that is used in this project will also become a useful tool for the analysis of other social phenomena.