Expert interviews and survey data from five European countries are being used to investigate the structure of self-employment, its dynamic and the labour market policies used to promote it, as well as the question of social protection for the self-employed. The notion of the ‘new self-employment’ is constructed on the basis of each country’s specific understanding of the term.

Project management: > Dr. Karin Schulze Buschoff, > Prof. Dr. Günther Schmid
Duration: May 2004 to April 2006
Funding:  ¬Hans-Böckler-Stiftung

1. Context / research problematic

Most European countries have seen an increase self-employment (excluding agriculture) since the 1980s. In Germany, this has been associated with a growing number of ‘new self-employed’, many of whom come directly from training/education or unemployment and set up small businesses in the service sector with only a small amount of capital. This development has gone hand in hand with a stronger labour market dynamic, so that more frequent moves in and out of self-employment are becoming part of the career biographies of an increasing share of the population. This has given rise to new challenges for labour market and social policy. It is essential to stem the rise of ‘precarious’ self-employment. Social security arrangements must adapt to flexible career biographies, which increasingly include phases of self-employment.

2. Questions to be addressed

The analyses focus on national differences in the situation of the self-employed:

What is the extent, structure and dynamic of self-employment in the individual countries and how is it evolving?
To what extent is the renaissance of self-employment associated with an increase in the ‘new self-employment’?
Does a comparison of European countries provide indications as to how social protection and other important elements of the regulatory environment might successfully be organised for the groups of workers concerned?

The aim is further to develop transitional labour market theory by incorporating information on the dynamic of change in self-employment. The project also seeks to contribute to the further development of the notion of ‘flexicurity’ in this segment of the labour market from a European comparative perspective.

3. Research methods

Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy are the countries selected for a comparison of the welfare state contexts in which self-employment is evolving. The countries chosen cover a wide range within the diversity of the EU as a whole. The reviews of the structures and dynamics of self-employment and of social security arrangements for the self-employed will be undertaken on the basis of analyses of international comparative and national representative surveys and statistics. Besides the quantitative and statistical analyses, a qualitative approach based on expert interviews is also planned. These interviews are intended to shed light particularly on national institutional arrangements, which cannot be adequately captured in the representative surveys.