The social configuration of labour market divides: an across- and within- country analysis in Germany, Belgium and Italy

The article uncovers and analyses insecurity-based dividing lines and their social configurations in the German, Belgian and Italian labour markets in 2015 based on latent class analysis applied to European Union Labour Force Survey data. Conversely to the dual vision of ‘insider-outsider’ approaches, our findings illustrate the existence of five distinctive labour market groups or segments across countries with similar social configurations. We explain this by referring to the social embeddedness of the investigated countries’ national regulatory systems, which generate different degrees of inclusiveness for different groups of workers. This adds to ongoing debates on connecting micro- and macro-levels of analysis, as labour market segmentation as macro phenomenon is studied based on its micro-foundations (i.e. terms and conditions of employment relationships), and the interlinkages between national regulatory systems and social categories are used to explain the findings. ispartof: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS vol:26 issue:2 pages:1-17 status: Published online