Transitional labour markets: A new European employment strategy

Although it has become fashionable to reject full employment as a realistic objective for economic and social policy, there is one important reason to stick to this goal. Full employment always reflected the idea that all persons should have the right to earn a decent living through their own work. It is this connotation of social integration by full participation in the working life that makes full employment still powerful as a regulatory idea. However, the content of this goal deserves reconsideration. The model of continuous and dependent fulltime employment is no longer up to date, although it still implicitly underlies many institutional arrangements. This male breadwinner norm denies full employment participation to women on the one hand, and relieves men from full responsibility in the family life on the other hand. This paper suggests replacing this norm by the regulatory idea of transitional labour markets.