OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training Learning for Jobs


Book Description

An OECD study of vocational education and training designed to help countries make their systems more responsive to labour market needs. It expands the evidence base, identifies a set of policy options and develops tools to appraise VET policy initiatives.




Social Policy in the European Union, Third Edition


Book Description

Taking account of the debates about adapting the Union's institutional structures to accommodate different welfare arrangements and the need for more open forms of European governance, the third edition of this well received book offers a compact, clear and authoritative account of 50 years of social policy formation and implementation across the EU.




OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship Italy: Key Issues and Policies


Book Description

This review underlines some important points of strength with respect to Italian SMEs and entrepreneurship, notably for medium-sized firms that very often excel in their market niches, have a strong propensity to business collaboration, as well as favourable access to finance.




Employment, Vocational Education and Training and Social Policies in Italy


Book Description

This document presents recent developments in the social, employment and VET situation and policies in Italy. The report provides an assessment of the recent evolution of key economic, social, and labour market trends in Italy, and an overview of current employment, VET and social policies. The document was prepared at the request of the European Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL).




Social Policy and EU Polity-building Through Crises and Beyond


Book Description

This volume sets out to explain the conditions that have favoured the expansion of the European social dimension during the turbulent decade of 2010–20, when Europe was confronting strong countervailing pressures, including the euro crisis, the refugee crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The study begins by diagnosing a widespread, although slow-burning, crisis across the European Union (EU) resulting from the cumulation of social problems and the systemic tension between EU market integration on the one hand and nationally bounded welfare states and the other. Eight in-depth case studies analyse the political dynamics behind a variety of EU social initiatives aimed at addressing the consequences of free movement of workers, youth unemployment, poverty, eroding wages, environment and climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. To identify the specific drivers of EU social policymaking empirically, the authors have reconstructed the struggles over concrete policy proposals as they unfolded in the European multilevel setting. The volume introduces a novel analytical framework for interpreting the transformation of the EU social dimension in times of crisis, when some degree of social co-ordination becomes crucial to bond deeply different (welfare) states together. This in-depth study offers an invaluable analysis for researchers, academics and professionals interested in the functioning of the European polity.




The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective


Book Description

There is a need to understand the Italian welfare state, but as yet it has received little academic research attention. The Italian Welfare State in a European Perspective is the first book to explore the evolution of Italy's welfare state in the decades since the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (1945–75). It offers a rare overview and analysis of the Italian situation based on an in-depth study of the main social policy fields (including education, higher education and taxation policies), a detailed analysis of the connection between policies and their outputs/outcomes and a comparative perspective framing the Italian case within the European context. This is the first English-language book to take a comparative look at the Italian welfare state as a whole since the 2008 economic crisis, It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers, as well as students.




Local Policies and the European Social Fund


Book Description

This book reviews how local social and employment policy fields react to the European Social Fund (ESF) to determine the role of the ESF in local activation policies. Drawing on both sociology and political science literature on welfare state reforms, the author examines what shapes local policy reactions to ESF and what effects these reactions have on change in local policy fields. Comparing data from 18 local case studies across 6 European countries, and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the book presents comparative evidence on everyday challenges in the context of the ESF and discusses how these findings are applicable to other funding schemes.




Getting Skills Right: Italy


Book Description

This report identifies effective strategies to tackle skills imbalances in Italy.




Discourse in the Digital Age


Book Description

This collection makes the case for existing critical discourse analysis theory and methods to meaningfully engage with the communicative parameters, power dynamics, and technological affordances of contemporary digital spaces. This book lends a critical focus on discursive practices operating through the paradigm of social media communication, addressing the crucial interface of discourse and the participatory web with disciplinary rigour and a well-balanced focus. This volume features chapters highlighting a diverse range of methods, including multi-sited ethnography, multimodality, argumentation studies, and topic modelling, as applied to a global range of case studies to present a holistic portrait of the latest methodological and theoretical debates in this space. The collection demonstrates the many and pervasive impacts of digital mediation on established discursive practices that are (re-)shaping existing social values, practices, and demands. In so doing, the collection advocates for a new tradition in critical discourse research, one which is rigorous in accounting for both solid discursive frameworks and the evolving complexity of digital platforms, and which triangulates methodologies in order to fully make sense of contemporary discursive practices and power relations on the online–offline continuum. This collection will be of interest to students and scholars in critical discourse studies, digital communication, media studies, and anthropology.




Labour-Market Flexibility and Individual Careers


Book Description

With labour markets across the world and even in social democratic Europe in a state of unprecedented flux, this exhaustive study addresses the problem of how to balance job market demands, personal career interests and private life becomes a central issue for millions of employees. So how do modern work and employment arrangements restructure individual careers and what is required of individuals in order to manage career transitions successfully over time? This is one of very few in-depth empirical studies to analyze how labour market trends, organisational change and the subjective work orientations of individuals interact. The author’s detailed assessment is based on a comparison of the structural contexts, work orientations and employment histories of nurses and ICT technicians in Germany and the UK. These two core service occupations, as well as the national contexts of the two European nations, have quite different working environments and vocational traditions. Nursing is an institutionalized semi-profession with clear criteria of qualification and career continuity, while information and communication technology (ICT) is a new, evolving field with varied skill backgrounds and high job mobility. To arrive at an understanding of how individual career trajectories are changing, this book closely examines the interplay of labour market demands, employees’ work and career orientations and the development of their skills. It records the ways in which employees adapt to increased labour market flexibility, which, on the one hand, induces discontinuities of careers, employment and work, and on the other, generates new skill requirements and learning expectations, as well as unforeseen opportunities.