Overview
Aims and objectives
This project was funded by the European Commission under its Fifth Framework Programme and involved collaboration between the CBR and two French research centres, IDHE, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange Guépin, University of Nantes. The aim was to undertake an exploratory theoretical and methodological analysis of the issue of the quality of employment in the EU. Since the Lisbon and Nice summits, the promotion of employment quality has been one of the most important items in the process of European construction in the social and employment fields. The project explored the relevance to this issue of Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The capability concept has numerous applications to the issue of the quality of employment: these include mobility of workers within and between enterprises; efforts to reconcile work and family life; access to social protection of various types; and measures to promote employability and access to the labour market. The project provided short-term funding between May and September 2002 for the development by the network of a literature review of the use of the capability concept in the field of European construction, and the initial development of statistical indicators for relating the quality of employment to capabilities. This work was carried out in preparation for a more extensive three-year programme of research, also funded by the European Commission, which began in the autumn of 2002.
Results and dissemination
The principal finding of the work is that the capability concept has numerous applications in the context of issues relating to the quality of employment: these include mobility of workers within and between enterprises; efforts to reconcile work and family life; access to social protection of various types; and measures to promote employability and access to the labour market. The notion of capability also provides a useful starting point for moving beyond the current ’employability’ debate and uniting the goal of competitiveness with the recognition and protection of fundamental human rights of the kind contained in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Project leader
- Simon Deakin
Research fellow
- Jude Browne
Research associate
- Frank Wilkinson
Project status
Completed