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Labour Market Flexibility and Pension Reforms: What Prospects for Security in Old Age?

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Labour Market Flexibility and Pension Reforms

Part of the book series: Work and Welfare in Europe ((RECOWE))

Abstract

Rarely has the incorporation of two words into an analytical as well as a political concept been as successful as the term flexicurity. The word developed as the catchword for an array of policies to increase labour market flexibility by imposing more risks on workers for the sake of expanded opportunities, while providing (social) security through a variety of instruments: robust income protection for the jobless; early activation of the unemployed; active labour market policies; and further measures that restore or maintain employability and prevent people from being trapped in poverty, low-wage jobs or other undesirable situations.1 This is why flexicurity generally has a positive connotation in the public debate, in contrast to the negative associations of stagflation, another neologism which emerged during the 1970s.

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© 2012 Karl Hinrichs and Matteo Jessoula

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Hinrichs, K., Jessoula, M. (2012). Labour Market Flexibility and Pension Reforms: What Prospects for Security in Old Age?. In: Hinrichs, K., Jessoula, M. (eds) Labour Market Flexibility and Pension Reforms. Work and Welfare in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307605_1

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