EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKETS UNDER PRESSURE – NEW KNOWLEDGE ON PATHWAYS TO INCLUDE PERSONS IN VULNERABLE SITUATIONS

PATHS2INCLUDE will provide new, gender-sensitive, comparative knowledge-base on effective employment policies targeted at developing inclusive labour markets for persons in vulnerable situations in Europe. The study will examine the importance of intersectionality related to how context creates vulnerability, by focusing on three central labour-market processes: recruitment; career trajectories; and work exit. Through the involvement of national and European stakeholders, PATHS2INCLUDE aims to develop proposals for effective policies and to inform relevant policymakers with a view to maximising the project’s impact from a societal as well as scientific perspective. The project will combine diverse methods, data and disciplines (economics, political science and sociology) in innovative ways: (1) harmonised factorial survey experiment combined with qualitative interview studies with employers in four European countries (DE, NO, PL and RO); (2) causal analyses of comparative microdata; (3) microsimulation analysis exploiting the EUROMOD infrastructure. Linking the analyses of these data and the three central labour-market processes, will give original insights on how institutional and contextual factors shape barriers or mitigate risk of labour-market attachment among persons in vulnerable situations. These insights could include cross-national differences in employment-protection legislations and facilitation of care, regional differences in demand for labour, differences at company level related to the size of the firm, flexibilities in job tasks, and conditions that were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, covering unemployment rates and infection-control measures across different segments of the labour market. The project will be implemented by an interdisciplinary consortium of seven research institutions and one European civil society organisation. The consortium has a balanced composition in terms of gender, stage of the career and area of expertise.