Shaping and Re-shaping the Boundaries of Working Life

This edited book offers a series of short essay-type chapters covering a broad variety of topics related to how labour markets, work and working life are continuously changing. The book has a strong cross-national approach and stresses the importance of studying both microlevel changes within macrolevel contexts as well as the microlevel mechanisms of changes at the macrolevel.

The chapters are grouped in four parts. Part I deals with how life courses have changed, with special focus on the entry of women to the labour market and the determinants of their economic contribution. Part II discusses two circuits of labour migration: that of mostly high-skilled and regulated work and that of mostly low-skilled and unregulated work. However, it also shows that the boundaries between those two are not always clear. Part III focuses on how work itself is changing, using the examples of women attorneys’ pro-bono work in Finland and Poland and the use of lean management in the Nordic public sector. Finally, in Part IV the authors explore the power of institutions and ideas in reshaping the way we work while labour markets are under pressure.

Available in print from online bookstores e.g. Booky.fi and Adlibris.

CONTENTS

• Preface / Pertti Koistinen

• Shaping and reshaping boundaries of work: A framework for analysing complex and multifaceted change / Aart-Jan Riekhoff

PART I : THE LIFE COURSE AND GENDER IN THE LABOUR MARKET

• Welfare state entry and exit over the life course: Employment and the sustainability of the welfare state in different worlds of welfare / Olli Kangas, Joakim Palme & Markus Kainu
• Cross-national analysis of women’s economic contribution / Saki Kudo

PART II: VARIETIES OF MIGRATION AND WORK

• Crossing the boundary to Europe: Finns on transnational careers in the European Union / Saara Koikkalainen
• Examining the role of institutions in shaping migrant reproductive labour / Merita Jokela
• Polish posted workers in the transnational space of subcontracting: Making ethnographic sense of new employment relations / Anna Matyska

PART III: NEW WAYS OF WORKING

• “It is also about helping people”: Women attorneys’ commitment to public service and incentives for pro bono work in Finland and Poland / Marta Choroszewicz
• The rise of lean organisations in Nordic countries: How recent changes in public sector management are shaping working life / Armi Mustosmäki, Tomi Oinas & Timo Anttila

PART IV: THE POLITICS AND POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGING WORK

• Labour market reforms in times of globalisation / Aart-Jan Riekhoff
• Decentralisation in the context of the competitiveness discourse: The Finnish labour market relations system since 2008 / Paul Jonker-Hoffrén
• Alternative for work, low-income supplement or investment? Exploring the idea of basic income in the Finnish public debate / Johanna Perkiö