Righting the Wrongs, A Life Course Dynamics Approach for Non-Standard Employment (ERC Consolidator Grant project)

Aim: To break new ground in the field of Non-Standard Employment (NSE), I develop a novel method for the study of employment trajectories and an integral life course framework that explains why NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes.
Background: NSE has become a common feature of modern labour markets. Research provides contradictory results on whether NSE leads to prosperous or precarious careers. This research suffers from three shortcomings: 1) the description of how NSE affects the career is only based on single events, 2) the explanation of why and when NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes is based only on static factors, 3) the positive outcomes of NSE are overestimated as information on NSE is contaminated by measurement error.
Innovation: I present the Life Course Dynamics Approach for Non-Standard Employment (DYNANSE) that assesses how dynamic micro (individual career-choices), meso (organisational dynamics) and macro (institutional change) factors determine why NSE leads to prosperous or precarious careers. This is done with a novel method that corrects for measurement error and treats trajectories, rather than single events, as the unit of analysis.
Plan: This project consists of four interconnected subprojects: 1) I develop the DYNANSE method, which then is applied in the study of NSE-outcomes in two life stages 2) young workers and 3) older workers, and of 4) how institutional change shapes the role of NSE using linked survey-register data from the Netherlands, Norway and Italy.
Impact: DYNANSE will lead to a long-sought understanding of the dynamic factors determining whether NSE leads to positive or negative career outcomes. In this way, I will resolve a theoretical debate on whether NSE is a factor of dynamism or a source of labour market inequality, while adding knowledge on the role of micro, meso and macro dynamics. The novel method that is developed in this project will also benefit the analysis of other social phenomena.