Abstract
The aim of this concluding article is to bring together the ideas and arguments of the articles that make up this issue so as to present some conclusions and recommendations. The article emphasizes important lessons from this special issue, underlining how Europe has lost its way over recent years by imposing the market as the primary mechanism for social and economic organization. It presents some recommendations and priorities for future debates on the employment and social policy agenda.
L’objectif de cet article de conclusion est de rassembler les idées et les arguments des articles qui constituent ce numéro spécial et de présenter ainsi quelques conclusions et recommandations. L’article met en lumière les leçons importantes que l’on peut tirer de ce numéro spécial, en soulignant comment l’Europe a fait fausse route au cours des dernières années en imposant le marché comme mécanisme essentiel d’organisation sociale et économique. Il présente également certaines pistes d’action et priorités pour des débats à venir sur l’agenda de l’emploi et de la politique sociale.
Dieser abschließende Beitrag fasst die Ideen und Argumente der vorhergehenden Artikel zusammen und präsentiert einige Schlussfolgerungen und Empfehlungen. Der Beitrag unterstreicht wichtige Befunde dieser Themenausgabe und betont, dass Europa in den vergangenen Jahren vom richtigen Weg abgekommen ist, indem es den Markt als grundlegenden Mechanismus für die Sozial-und Wirtschaftsordnung durchgesetzt hat. Er unterbreitet ebenfalls Empfehlungen und Schwerpunkte für künftige Debatten im Bereich Beschäftigung und Sozialpolitik.
Introduction
Since summer 2008, we have been immersed in a financial crisis characterized by almost unprecedented developments. In its current stage, the indebted countries in the eurozone are under siege by the financial markets they rely upon for loans and the banks are exposed to the risk of Greece defaulting. European dialogue is still in its infancy. As Supiot emphasizes (2010: 165), ‘the implosion of the financial markets is merely the symptom of a more profound crisis that is attributable to the neoliberal utopia of the “market” consisting in the “scientific” depoliticization of the economy, deregulation and complete commodification of labour, the earth and currency’. This approach has subordinated people to economic efficiency, thus reducing European citizens to mere ‘human resources’. Is it possible to break away from these ‘approaches, mostly macroeconomic and financial, that argue for structural reforms oriented toward pure market flexibility for Europe’ (Salais and Villeneuve, 2004: 2)? Can the ‘capability approach’ constitute an alternative normative yardstick? Does it meet the need for a global and integrated approach to social issues? Does it provide a framework for the design, implementation and assessment of public policy? If so, in what way? These are the questions that the articles in this issue address, by applying the normative standpoint of the capability approach to the analysis of European citizens’ working lives. Here, capabilities are understood as the central and structuring element at the heart of any society that aspires to be free. The articles in this issue show how this perspective might help to reform the European social model by putting at the top of the agenda capabilities as both means and ends of human development.
The concept of ‘capability’ is the core element of Sen’s capability approach. Capabilities can be thought of as the set of options from which one person can make a real choice. This concept cannot be separated from the three dimensions that make it up, ‘one based on freedom, the other linked to human development and the third related to the realization of rights’ (de Munck, 2008: 23), as far as the underlying idea is that people should have the real possibility to live according to their idea of a good life. Under this alternative tool of evaluation, social arrangements as well as individual situations should be assessed primarily according to the real freedom that individuals and groups have reason to value. This notion of capability has to be distinguished from what Sen calls ‘functionings’ (or outcomes of choice). Functionings are the actual achievements of a person: what he or she is or does. Capabilities represent the potential functionings of a person: what he or she could be or do. According to Sen (1993: 31), ‘[t]he capability of a person reflects the alternative combinations of functionings the person can achieve, and from which he or she can choose one collection’. People do not have the same ability or possibilities to convert a set of specific resources or entitlements into real options. Thus, the extent to which a person can generate capabilities from resources and entitlements depends on ‘conversion factors’, both individual and social.
Nevertheless, Sen himself acknowledges that assessing the scope of opportunities is not enough to deal with the different dimensions of freedom: ‘First, more freedom gives us more opportunity to achieve those things that we value, and have reason to value. This aspect of freedom is concerned primarily with our ability to achieve, rather than with the process through which that achievement comes about. Second, the process through which things happen may also be of fundamental importance in assessing freedom.’ (Sen, 2002: 585)
In the introductory article to this issue, Bonvin sets out how the capability approach can be used to evaluate collective action and labour market policies, considering both the opportunity and the process aspects of the approach. What are the implications of this for contemporary workers and their lives? As is clear from the above, the capability approach is located at the crossroads of economy, philosophy, sociology and political science. Amartya Sen is an atypical economist. Compared with the neoclassical standard, his work regards context as indispensable when dealing with any human activity. This means primarily that labour (the ability to work) is not merely a factor of production, exchangeable with any other factor, but a specific activity developed by workers who, in turn, live in particular personal, social and institutional contexts. Thus, the notion of opportunity freedom related to paid work is inseparable from the notion of conversion factors and their influence on workers’ resources and entitlements. This embeddedness of the activities performed in the labour market, highlighted by the capability approach implies that working lives cannot be considered merely as features developing in the market. In terms of what linguistics calls ‘indexicality’ (the idea that certain behaviours or utterances point to or ‘disclose’ the setting in which they take place), we can speak of the indexicality of paid work: in other words, it must be located longitudinally within the framework of individual biographies and transversally in connection to the non-marketized spheres of everyday life.
The notion of process freedom also has significant resonance with regard to mainstream sociological and political debates: for example, the concepts of empowerment and ‘informed’ decision-making. This understanding of ‘free’ human action differs from the (economic) liberal notion of freedom (understood as non-interference or the absence of obstacles), and is closer to the notion of freedom espoused by the republican tradition, understood as the absence of domination. As underlined by Berlin (1969), this second kind of freedom – what he calls ‘positive freedom’ – is the possibility of acting in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes. This way of understanding freedom, translated to the sphere of working lives, has important political implications, both for collective action inside and outside the company and for employment and labour market policies. Current reforms tend to prefer ‘economic’ objectives that ignore or even limit the voice and opinions of workers. Process freedom requires conditions of equality and justice, not understood as abstract ‘statutory rights’, but rather as ‘situated freedom’, a freedom that means having real power in the particular circumstances in which the individual is placed.
In this framework, the role of public action and policies that affect employment and people’s working lives is crucial. Drèze and Sen (1991: 44) recall the importance of ‘public policies aimed at maintaining capability’ and offer various examples to show how public policies can be used to correct situations in which the same resources are converted differently (by different individuals) into capabilities. If we translate this into the sphere of working lives, we can agree with Salais and Villeneuve (2004: 6), that ‘[t]he central theme of a capability approach is the construction of a framework of active security to cope with work transformation and economic uncertainty’. In this way, the capability approach leads to a specific understanding of the notion of security that is not strictly linked to the job, but to the circumstances in which jobs are held and paid work is developed. This well illustrates the collective and comprehensive dimension of capabilities. The objective does not have to be the production of fresh rights and policies. Opportunity freedom and process freedom in the sphere of working lives can be achieved by improving existing institutions and developing the exercise of existing rights. Perhaps ‘a general societal commitment to work for appropriate functioning of social, political and economic arrangements to facilitate widely recognized rights’ would suffice (Sen, 2000: 123).
Items for debate on the European employment and social policy agenda
The conclusions of the Nice European Council in December 2000 included the issue of employment quality in the European Social Agenda, thus rendering it an objective of the European Employment Strategy (EES). 1 Following this trend, employment quality was set as an official goal of the new EES adopted in 2003, aimed at promoting ‘full employment’, ‘employment quality and productivity’ and ‘social inclusion and social cohesion’. These three objectives have been repeatedly confirmed. But contrary to what might have been expected, assessed in terms of the normative standpoint of the capability approach, the ‘modernization’ of the European social model and the policies based on this ideal have not produced valuable outcomes.
Reversing the subjection of workers to labour markets
Let us recall that a central objective of public policy, within this evaluative framework, is to increase opportunity freedom and process freedom. With regard to opportunity freedom, some of the findings of the articles in this issue prove that the effect of some policies has, on the contrary, been to reduce opportunities for workers. As shown in the article by Lehweß-Litzmann, the policies of labour market flexibilization developed to different degrees throughout Europe put workers at significant risk of falling into monetary poverty. This risk is higher when the status of flexible worker is combined with having children (especially younger children), particularly for single parents. This attests to the importance of taking into account conversion factors when considering the outcomes of any public action. Alternatively, this situation can be understood as the need for public policy to affect conversion factors, not only resources. In order to reduce the poverty risk of certain groups, employment policies have to be combined with policies aimed at alleviating the burden of child care.
Activation policies do not seem to increase capabilities, either. The activation-oriented unemployment measures in Germany, as outlined in Bartelheimer et al., have not increased the possibilities of returning to decent employment. Moreover, the inability of the German system to take into consideration, in its ‘activating’ measures, the gender distribution of care and domestic work in the household (a clear conversion factor) leaves women out of the main initiatives developed by public employment services. Another conversion factor that limits the success of unemployment policies concerns labour market regulations and companies’ hiring policies. Neither in Germany nor in Spain is the employment discontinuity imposed by markets alleviated. Thus the standard individualistic approach (without taking into account any other circumstance) to ending unemployment runs up against the limitations imposed by family responsibilities and the characteristics of labour markets (company policies, sectoral and segmental divisions, contractual flexibility and so on).
These two examples of labour market policy are useful to illustrate that laying down capability enhancement as the ultimate goal of public action entails reversing the current order of priorities. The main policy concern should no longer be merely to equip people to adapt themselves to labour market needs, but rather to modify the market to support individually valued projects.
Implementing labour market policies that take gender inequalities into account
Gender issues cannot be ignored when assessing public policy using the capability yardstick, as the above examples have already shown. Employment quality cannot be analysed adequately without considering gender as a key dimension affecting capabilities and a number of questions arise. To what extent does being a woman or a man impact on real freedom of choice? Can we talk of a gender-neutral capability for work? The ways in which societies shape women’s and men’s lives, defining the principal dimensions of their identities and social expectations, have a strong impact on individuals’ capabilities.
Lehweß-Litzmann’s article underlines gender differences: the income poverty risk reaches 44.7 percent for flexible female workers; the risk of part-timers – who traditionally are women – is higher than that of full-time workers (10 percent), although the nature of the household is crucial. Working mothers have always been forced to be flexible, in terms of both time distribution between family and work duties, and identity, as simultaneously a mother, a wife and a worker (Trifiletti, 2003). In the past there were at least some certainties, such as foreseeable working times and strong protection (maternity laws). Nowadays, we are facing a paradoxical situation, as the labour market demands enormous flexibility from women while time available for care still remains very rigid: the division of labour within the family is far from being equal, notwithstanding recent changes, and most welfare systems tend to delegate care to the family (Esping-Andersen, 1999) rather than providing services. In any case, service timetables are still rigid.
In the Italian case, as described by Pandolfini, the just mentioned generalized characteristics of female paid work, combined with the modest policies on work-life balance and the national model of social care (Bettio and Plantenga, 2004) seem to produce a downward spiral. Entitlements and resources provided by public policy are inadequate to relieve women of the care tasks they assume. The unequal division of labour within the household forces working mothers to delegate family care. But delegation needs predictability which is at odds with the time flexibility demanded for many new employment contracts. This negative situation is reinforced when companies do not even minimally adhere to labour legislation. Concerning working mothers’ rights, maternity protection seems, nowadays, to be a privilege of a few, and when it is provided it is weak or not easy to obtain. This situation clearly demands policies with a comprehensive and holistic approach to work-life balance, addressing both provision of the necessary resources and removal of the abovementioned conversion factors.
Rethinking collective action and channelling it towards increasing capabilities
On the side of process freedom, the articles in this issue by Bonvin and Zimmermann connect capability for voice to capability for work, as indispensable elements of employment quality. Both articles suggest different mechanisms for improving workers’ ability to express themselves and be heard, thus improving their employment quality. The procedures to be applied inside companies and in relation to their union representatives could be considered general reflexive and dialogic collective decision-making processes. Thus, basic features of Sen’s conception of (global) citizenship – such as solidarity, participation and commitment (Sen, 2000) – are translated into ‘company citizenship’. But capability for voice is not exclusively an intra-company issue or linked to the relations between workers and their representatives, although these elements are very important, as these first two articles demonstrate. How does flexibility impact on capability for voice? Do temporary workers have the same opportunity to be heard as non-temporary ones? As shown in the article by Pandolfini, precariousness and ‘atypical’ job situations also reduce workers’ process freedom with regard to their aspirations to work-life balance, as their capability for voice is suppressed by their fear of losing their job. Process freedom entails looking at individuals as they are situated: if opportunities are not available to them, their procedural freedom remains purely formal. Process freedom cannot be disconnected from collective considerations or from individuals considered as members of particular collectives.
Framing a set of capability-based indicators as a better benchmark for evaluating public policy design
Another question concerning employment policy design and implementation is the way in which public policy is assessed. Sen (1992, 1999) is well aware of the non-neutrality of data and of its importance for judging and assessing policies. This is the issue addressed in the article by Vero et al. At European level, the benchmarking of national employment policy by means of a set of indicators has played a major role. However, the progress observed in the evolution of employment security indicators is, in significant part, an artefact of the game being played between the Member States and the European Commission. The second problem stems from the normative thread of this indicator, which gives flexibility precedence over the real freedom of workers, and employability precedence over capability for work and for voice. These drawbacks require that we pull back from the current drift toward New Public Management tools that may impede real improvements of people’s working lives and cast doubt on the relevance of institutionalized benchmarking. The objective of accounting for European working lives in terms of the development of capabilities could, via a genuinely deliberative process, produce a new set of indicators capable of accounting for labour market policies and the performance of public institutions. However, these indicators should pull together more than simple labour market information, as the capability approach stresses the need for context in policy evaluation of any kind.
This can be expanded into a more general reflection on what policy design and implementation should primarily consider with regard to working lives. People cannot be regarded as mere aggregations of components that can be dis- and re-assembled on demand in response to the needs of a specific policy or institution. Both institutions and policies should contemplate the lives of workers as a whole, providing them with resources and opportunities to achieve the kind of life they would have reason to value, and taking into account the different spheres in which workers develop their lives, past experiences and expectations and hopes for the future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to Kevin O’Kelly for his help and comments in preparing this thematic issue. We also wish to thank all the colleagues of the CAPRIGHT project for their valuable comments on the various articles that are published in this issue.
Notes
The results presented in this article are the product of research carried out within the framework of the CAPRIGHT project. This project was financed by the European Union’s Sixth European Framework Programme [contract CIT4-CT-2006-028549].