Precarious Work in the Nordics

Introduction to The Theme of The Special Issue

Abstract

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) (...)