Self-employed professionals in the European labour market. A comparison between Italy, Germany and the UK

Paolo Borghi, Anna Mori and Renata Semenza
Additional contact information
Paolo Borghi: Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Anna Mori: Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Renata Semenza: Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 2018, vol. 24, issue 4, 405-419

Abstract: The transition to an on-demand service economy, supported by unprecedented technological developments and the digital revolution, has modified traditional self-employed professions and generated new ones, fostering the growth of a body of highly qualified and hyper-specialised self-employed professionals in the European economies. An analysis of this phenomenon highlights three critical questions, connected to their position in the labour market: 1) the contested definition of their legal status and the (ad hoc) regulation adopted; 2) their position within each national social protection system; 3) the complexity of collective representation in a context of major labour market fragmentation. The article explores these issues from a socio-economic perspective, comparing three European countries − Italy, Germany and the UK − with different welfare state regimes and diverse models for regulating professions. First findings show partly divergent responses to such common challenges, yet display some positive signs of change for self-employed professionals.

Keywords: Self-employed professionals; social protection; collective representation; Italy; Germany; United Kingdom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1024258918761564 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:treure:v:24:y:2018:i:4:p:405-419

DOI: 10.1177/1024258918761564

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().