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Working-age households where no-one is in work have become an increasing focus of policy concern even before the economic crisis, and the European Union (EU) has included household joblessness in its new poverty reduction target for 2020. This paper focuses on the variation across EU countries in the prevalence of household joblessness and its impact on income poverty and deprivation, and on the implications for the new EU poverty reduction target. It highlights first that there are some divergences across key data sources in the extent of joblessness. The prevalence of household joblessness varies substantially across EU countries, but there is little evidence of a consistent pattern among groupings of countries often categorized together in terms of welfare regime or geographically. In aggregate there is little association between the overall extent of household joblessness in a country and the percentage in relative income poverty or above a material deprivation threshold. At a micro level, being in a jobless household has a substantial impact on the likelihood of being in relative income poverty or deprived, but the scale of these impacts is shown to be very much greater in some countries than in others, and to vary between single-adult and multiple-adult households. In most EU countries little more than half the working-age adults in jobless households are either income-poor or deprived, so including joblessness in the poverty reduction target does make a difference, without a clearly articulated rationale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the constructions and dynamics of subaltern migrant subjectivities in three arrival cities, Athens, Istanbul and Nicosia. The paper draws on empirical research in three cities geopolitically located in the most south-eastern part of the Mediterranean basin and the boundary triangle connecting Europe, Asia and Africa. This is essentially a process where the will, agency and praxis of subaltern migrants in the context of social struggles are interwoven with precarious spaces. Precarity is at the core of their daily existence: precarious labour, precarious stay and precarious lives. The generation, maintenance, evolution, even erosion of mobile commons are consequential of social processes and struggles driven by subaltern and precarious subjects, migrants and non-migrants alike. The article explores how the generation of claims to rights is restructuring Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, as new forms of commons through mobility, resistance and digital materialities are contesting the sovereign governance and surveillance technologies in Europe and beyond. The paper contends that such perspectives from the borders of Europe, that is, in and out of Europe, are not only crucial to the understanding of what is happening in Europe, but are an advanced glimpse into potentialities of the world ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reflects on how ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective) principles can be applied in territories with weak population patterns in quantitative terms. The ESDP defines a functional urban area (FUA) as the influence area of a city and sets a minimum threshold of 15,000 inhabitants for the city and 40,000 for the entire FUA. These thresholds are taken as guidelines to explore the concept of functional regions, adding more information from several sources. Hence the paper starts under the normative background given by EU spatial policy and proposes a methodology of analysis combining several techniques, including an application for the Castilla–La Mancha autonomous region (ES42 in NUTS 2). The approaches used in the method proposed include data from mobility, commuting, accessibility and qualitative analyses of services. The outcome shows how ESDP principles could be applied in practice in places with low-density settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper brings theoretical and empirical contributions to the scholarship on dimensions of politics in Europe. On the theoretical side it emphasizes the differences between Western and Eastern countries; we argue that while in Western Europe the main dimension of political conflict is the economic left-right, in Eastern Europe the main dimension is more likely to encompass cultural issues associated primarily with what in the Western literature is known as the secondary, social left-right. We trace the origin of the difference to the 1990s when parties in Eastern Europe chose to emphasize cultural issues to appeal to an electorate unfamiliar with capitalist economics and dissatisfied with the economic left associated with Communism and the economic right associated with painful reforms. To test this assertion we apply the Optimal Classification vote scaling method to an original dataset of over 24,000 votes from 22 European parliaments; the statistical tests support the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the economic and social thought that has evolved around the Lisbon strategy, which aimed to turn the European Union into the world’s most competitive knowledge economy by 2010. It argues that a new regime of rationality has emerged in which economic and social objectives, which were previously thought to be at odds with one another, have become increasingly aligned. The supposed antinomy between economic efficiency and social security has been gradually replaced by a Rawlsian-inspired understanding of social justice in which the individual right to self-development and employment is seen to go hand-in-hand with economic innovation and competitiveness. This alignment, which is expressed through the worshipping of the Nordic welfare model in general and the notion of flexicurity in particular, seems to have a strong depoliticizing effect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Do citizens who strongly exhibit populist attitudes support direct democracy? Existing studies tend to claim that populists support direct democracy because of their stealth-democratic orientation or argue that stealth democrats want direct democracy due to the populist nature of stealth-democratic attitudes. Yet, albeit both populists and stealth democrats reject elite rule, they prefer direct democracy for different reasons. Populists support direct democracy as a means to implement the volonté générale, whereas stealth democrats view it as holding politicians accountable for ineffective policy solutions. Our analysis of representative survey data in four European democracies (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) reveals that individuals with stronger populist attitudes indeed support direct democracy more than citizens with no strong populist attitudes. This effect is observed when controlling for stealth-democratic orientations and when using a measure separating the feature populism shares with stealth democracy – anti-elitism – from the one unique to populism, people-centrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under external pressure, the Greek system of industrial relations has undergone radical regulatory changes since 2010. These have led to a significant contraction of higher level bargaining and a process of disorganized decentralization, bringing the collective bargaining system to a brink of collapse. Emerging demands on the part of both employers and unions to preserve multi-level bargaining, together with greater support on the part of the state, could halt or even reverse some of these trends. But the scope for success of such efforts depends on how far 'regulated austerity' continues to dominate European policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite extensive research on the effect of family policies on the labour supply of mothers, little is known about how these policies affect fathers’ labour market outcomes. Using European panel data (EU-SILC) from 2003 to 2009 and multi-level models, this study analyses the effect of family policies on fathers’ working hours. The results indicate that fathers work less than childless men if they live in countries that offer well paid, non-transferable parental leave for fathers, short parental leave for mothers and generous family allowances. The effects, however, are strongly contingent on fathers’ educational levels. Whereas short maternal leaves are associated with shorter working hours among highly educated fathers, generous family allowances and father friendly parental leave schemes reduce the working hours of less educated fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sorting of migrants and travellers based on data stored in information systems is at the centre of border controls and mobility management in Europe. Recent literature finds that the inclusion-exclusion distinction is insufficiently equipped to do justice to the variety of classifications that is being applied. Instead, a proliferation of refined categorizations determines the outcome of visa and permit applications. This article explores the ‘administrative ecology’ in between the two extremes of inclusion and exclusion. It claims information technologies encourage the emergence of an intermediary category of ‘non-publics’ situated between the level of groups and the level of individuals. The ontological and normative status of these ‘non-publics’ will be analysed by using some key notions of Actor-Network Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over recent decades, population diversity in the Western world has strongly increased. Cities in particular have over time become more diverse and multicultural. They face the complex challenge of maintaining and strengthening social cohesion among their diverse population, with its plural identities, lifestyles and behaviour. However, in Europe, the current (national) debates on integration, with their monocultural visions and strong emphasis on the risks stemming from ethnic and religious diversity, hamper fostering social cohesion at the level of the city and impede identity-building strategies of groups and individuals. Focusing on the Netherlands as a case study and using the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam as examples, this article shows that social cohesion policy would benefit from framing the integration debate differently. Research, performed in these cities, serves as a basis for alternative and more fruitful interpretations of diversity, identity and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In cold war times, the 'West' espoused liberal democracy and freedom from surveillance and control. It is thus ironic that with the cold war a distant memory — though it only ended less than twenty years ago — the EU and its member states are set on a path which will, in just a few years time, turn it into the most surveilled, monitored region in the world. The wider context for all this is increased state racism (both at the national and EU levels), combined with the emergence of the 'policing state', engendered by a political and governmental authoritarianism that legitimises itself through the trappings of representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to politics and social conditions in Europe in 2008. In June, 2008, the European Union (EU) agreed on an employment policy. The European Commission passed a resolution for immigration laws and political assylum for immigrants. The EU's Lisbon Treaty was accepted by all member nations except Ireland.

This article explores the role of field of study in channelling tertiary graduates into genderappropriate occupations and the extent to which this process varies across countries. Previous research has demonstrated that such cross-country differences can be attributed to the nature of the welfare regime. However, less attention has been devoted to the potential impact of educational institutions and labour market systems. Using the European Union Labour Force Survey 2004 for 17 EU Member States, results of the multilevel analysis reveal that cross-national variation in occupational gender segregation must be seen in the context of institutional variation in education and labour market systems. The representation of women in higher education and the labour force, the gender pay gap and the provision of childcare explain a significant proportion of cross-national variation in occupational segregation by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is a crucial determinant of people's life chances, and it particularly affects the integration of youth into labour markets. The article shows how different kinds and levels of education shape the access of young people to jobs of varying advantage and the smoothness of the transition from school to work. It elaborates the common patterns in the relationship between education and early career labour market outcomes and investigates - especially for EU member countries - how varying institutional arrangements in the educational systems and in the regulation of labour markets lead to varying integration outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the future of copyright management in Europe. Principles of intellectual property rights in Europe; Intellectual property policy directives that have been adopted by European Union member countries; Discussion on copyright management in a digital environment.

Much literature on European Works Councils (EWCs) is pessimistic, stressing their limited formal powers and the risks of isolation from broader mechanisms of worker solidarity and of 'capture' by management. This article questions such dismissive conclusions. EWCs must be studied as an element in a more general and complex process of regulatory innovation within the EU. Three specific developments create 'windows of opportunity' for a more optimistic scenario: the internal inconsistencies of managerial control, the new strategic importance of information flows, and the evolution of new bases for supranational trade union cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT •This article discusses the role of European Works Councils (EWCs) in industrial restructuring in the European car industry. It reviews a series of recent company agreements on local employment and investment guarantees, and concludes that the industrial relations system in the industry is increasingly marked by competition between establishments over wages and secondary working conditions. In order to explain why EWCs have been unable to counter this development, the article draws on a survey which indicates that, in the new competitive regime in the industry, EWCs are used by local trade unionists primarily as a means to further local interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT • What is the role of multinational companies in the internationalization of markets and production? Debate has polarized around contrasting ‘global’ and ‘national business system’ perspectives. The article moves beyond this dichotomy, conceptualizing the international company as a distinctive form of organization on a sub-global basis. Focusing on Europe, it explores the relevance of the idea of a ‘Eurocompany’ for industrial relations analysis by examining the case of European Works Councils. These represent a specifically European development, deriving from regulatory initiative by the EU, but also from developments within MNCs themselves. Drawing on evidence from a study of the provisions of 386 voluntary agreements establishing EWCs, the article questions the argument that these ‘European’ structures are essentially extensions of national systems of workplace representation. It shows the additional influence on the structure and functioning of EWCs of factors, such as sector, which transcend national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT • This article draws on one detailed case study of a European Works Council (EWC) to highlight the experiences of employees involved in these new institutions. The UK employee representatives at the case study firm have become increasingly frustrated, complaining about inadequate consultation, the poor organization and coordination of the employee representatives and the weakness and isolation of the EWC. The implications of these employee concerns are explored in the context of the changing political economic landscape of Europe. The article speculates whether EWCs can ever become useful tools for workers facing the challenges of Europeanization and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the agreement between McDonalds Corp. and the European Works Council under the European Union (EU) Directive. Designation confusion on the position of employee representative; Attempts of companies of marginalizing the trade union representation; Failure of the EU Directive to address the franchise issue.