‘Flexicurity’ through Normalization? Changes in Scope, Composition and Conditions of Temporary Employment in Croatia

Abstract

In the 2000s, the concept of ‘flexicurity’ expanded from its Danish and Dutch roots and became enshrined in the EU agenda as a policy approach in labour market and welfare regulation (see Chapter 3 by O’Connor). By drawing upon social partnership and maintaining a ‘golden triangle’ of labour market flexibility, social security and active labour market policies, the flexicurity approach was seen as the ‘high road’ to competitiveness (European Commission, 2007; Viebrock and Clasen, 2009; Wilthagen and Tros, 2004), without featuring the pitfalls of increased wage inequalities of liberal countries (DiPrete, Goux, Maurin and Quesnel-Vallee, 2006) and labour market segmentation through partial deregulation. Flexicurity became widespread in continental and Mediterranean regimes during the 1980s and 1990s as these struggled with high unemployment and ‘Eurosclerosis’ (Barbieri, 2009; Esping-Andersen and Regini, 2000). There is, however, little evidence that flexibilization has had much impact on employment rates (Kahn, 2010; Boeri and Garibaldi, 2007) in these countries. In contrast, increasing numbers of workers became trapped in low-quality jobs with little employment security (Barbieri and Scherer, 2009; Blanchard and Landier, 2002), decreasing training opportunities (Cutuli and Guetto, 2012), greater health risks (Virtanen et al., 2005), and higher in-work poverty (Chapter 11 by Van Lancker).