Documents Serrano Pascual, Amparo 40 results

"In recent years, the concept of flexicurity has come to occupy a central place in political and academic debates regarding employment and social policy. It fosters a view in which the need for continuously increasing flexibility is the basic assumption, and the understanding of security increasingly moves from social protection to self-insurance or individual adaptability. Moreover, it rejects the traditional contradictions between flexibility and security, blending the two into a single notion and thus depoliticizing the relationships between capital and labour. This volume provides a critical discussion of the flexicurity concept, the theories upon which it is built and the ideas that it transmits about work, unemployment and social justice. It shows that flexicurity fosters the further individualization of social protection, an increase in precariousness and the further weakening of labour in relation to capital. The authors present a series of alternative theoretical, normative and policy approaches that provide due attention to the collective and political dimension of vulnerability and allow for the development of new societal projects based on alternative values and assumptions."

"La flexicurité est une notion mixte qui incite à interpréter la sécurité essentiellement comme une “auto-assurance”, comme la capacité d'agir en accord avec sa propre volonté et comme la manifestation des compétences nécessaires pour promouvoir cette auto-assurance. Ce numéro de la revue Les Politiques Sociales poursuit deux objectifs : d'abord, discuter et procéder à la méta-analyse de la notion de flexicurité, identifiant ses paradoxes ainsi que ses faiblesses et potentialités ; ensuite, traiter des applications de la notion dans des pays européens différents afin d'identifier les dimensions politiques, institutionnelles, et sociales qui favorisent des effets émancipateurs ou vulnérabilisants des politiques de flexicurité."

"One of the fastest growing European catchwords at the present time - the ‘European Social Model' (ESM) - is used to describe the European experience of simultaneously promoting sustainable economic growth and social cohesion. The use of the concept of ESM in academic and political debate is characterized by two main and interconnected features: on the one hand, the usually taken-for-granted assumption of the reality of the concept (the reality called ‘Europe' becomes a naturally occurring phenomenon); on the other hand, the highly ambiguous and polysemic nature of this concept. A clear definition of what constitutes its essence seems to be lacking in most documents on the subject, while a review of some of the most important of these documents reveals that, insofar as definitions are to be found, they do not necessarily converge. This article aims to discuss the concept of the ESM. It analyses and deconstructs the concept in order to identify the main understandings and the various dimensions of the model. It classifies and discusses the ways in which the ESM is most frequently construed and proposes a new approach to understanding this polysemy. We argue that the different dimensions of the concept can be seen as rhetorical resources intended to legitimize the politically constructed and identity-building project of the EU institutions."

" Young people's experience of work in today's world is characterised by insecurity and vulnerability. At the same time, an ideological discourse has gained currency which personalises social problems and attributes them to psychological factors. A study of the discourse of young Spaniards from different social backgrounds revealed the presence of individualistic attitudes, together with a strong feeling of powerlessness that makes it difficult for them to see a way out of their situation. Their experience serves to illustrate the psycho-social consequences of the trend for modern methods of production to be accompanied by the spread of deregulation, a tendency for inequality to be taken for granted and the attribution of social problems to personal factors. The social cohesion of modern industrialised societies, which is based on security and the predictability of future events, is being replaced in so-called post-industrial societies by an emphasis on individual risk management which places the worker in an extremely vulnerable position."