Fausto Miguélez

Bio: Fausto Miguélez is an academic researcher from Autonomous University of Barcelona. The author has contributed to research in topics: Industrial relations & Welfare. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 21 publications receiving 293 citations.

The Transformation of the Employment System in Spain: Towards a Mediterranean Neoliberalism?

Abstract: Since the first democratic elections after the Francoist dictatorship (20 June 1977), important changes have taken place in Spain. These have affected the economic and social structure, culture, labour relations, gender relations and everyday life. The changes have been influenced by both external factors (globalization, European integration) and internal factors (political democratization, territorial restructuring, social demands and cultural changes). This context of deep and rapid transformation in the socioeconomic model must be taken into account in order to understand the puzzle that is the current employment system. The drivers of these changes are diverse, as we will see. Our hypothesis is that there have been significant breaks with the past, but these are not of a radical nature and are instead combined with significant degrees of continuity.

Trasformaciones del empleo, flexibilidad y relaciones laborales en Europa

Abstract: Entre 1950 y 1980, el modelo predominante en los paises europeos centrales era el de pleno empleo estable, asalariado, a tiempo completo y con garantias sociales. Entre 1980 y 1995 se produce en la Union Europea el fin de la hegemonia de ese modelo de empleo para dar paso a otro de caracteristicas y rasgos netamente distintos. Es un fenomeno que tiene que ver, ante todo, con un cambio paulatino, pero profundo, en la configuracion de las relaciones sociales y politicas en los paises de la propia Union Europea. Se empiezan a dibujar otros modelos que mantienen tasas altas de paro, grados importantes de inseguridad y un deterioro progresivo de las garantias sociales minimas. Esta tendencia se presenta con grandes diferencias entre los paises de la Union. Esas diferencias tienen que ver con un doble orden de factores: en primer lugar con la fortaleza o debilidad del sistema de relaciones laborales de cada pais; y en segundo lugar con la incorporacion al empleo de nuevos sujetos laborales distintos del varon adulto nacional, en particular jovenes, mujeres e inmigrantes, grupos en general muy alejados de la influencia sindical y que, por sus peculiares caracteristicas, han podido contribuir a que formas flexibilizadas de empleo se acaben consolidando como habituales.

From negotiation to imposition: Social dialogue in austerity times in Spain

Abstract: This paper is part of a series of studies funded by the European Commission in the framework of a project of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on "Promoting a balanced and inclusive recovery from the crisis in Europe through sound industrial relations and social dialogue". It shows that social dialogue is facing challenges and tensions in the context of austerity policies and institutional reforms. During the two decades preceding the crisis, social dialogue in Spain played a fundamental role and was a distinctive trait of industrial relations. As a result of the financial and debt crisis, Spain has witnessed an unprecedented period of reforms and economic adjustment. In this context, social dialogue as a tool for socio-economic governance has been questioned for both its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Effects of prison work programmes on the employability of ex-prisoners:

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a study that links information from the prison system with information from the Spanish Social Security System in order to study the employability of former inmat...

La División social y sexual del trabajo en transformación

Abstract: La tesis analiza las transformaciones en la division social y sexual del trabajo en Espana, poniendo el foco en el hogar como unidad de analisis, y subrayando la dimension de clase de dichos cambios. El punto de entrada en la problematica se halla en los cambios acontecidos en la esfera productiva y, en concreto, nace del interes por estudiar el auge de las parejas de doble ingreso. De este modo, se estudian los cambios en los patrones de empleo a nivel de hogar, fijandose tanto en los desarrollos acontecidos durante el periodo de expansion economica, como en el impacto de la crisis iniciada en 2008. En particular, la investigacion se centra en las parejas de doble ingreso entre la clase trabajadora, como colectivo principal protagonista de las transformas recientes, y sin embargo frecuentemente olvidado por la investigacion en este ambito. Con tal de aproximarse a los distintos niveles de la realidad estudiada, la tesis plantea un diseno multiestrategico de investigacion. La combinacion de la comparacion internacional con un diseno de metodos mixtos nos ha permitido abordar el objeto de estudio en sus niveles macro y micro, en sus dimensiones material y simbolica, asi como complementar una mirada estatica con una perspectiva de curso de vida. Dicho diseno de investigacion incluye la explotacion de datos de European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) para 26 paises, con el objetivo de generar una tipologia de paises a nivel europeo con base en los patrones de empleo de las parejas. A ello se anade una explotacion en profundidad de los datos del caso espanol, para poner de relieve el papel de la clase como factor de diferenciacion de las formas de articulacion de vida laboral y vida familiar. Finalmente, se realizan entrevistas biograficas semiestructuradas con parejas de doble ingreso de clase trabajadora. La estrategia de articulacion de estos tres componentes se basa en la secuencialidad y en la anidacion.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

Working Wives, Working Husbands

Abstract: Wives' Employment and the Division of Family Work Basic Patterns of Family Work and Paid Work Paid Work, Sex, and Sex Role Ideology as Determinants of Family Work Wives' Desire for Greater Husband Participation in Family Work The Consequences of Role Overload Husbands' Psychological Involvement in Work and Family Husbands' and Wives' Roles The Issues Today

Care regimes and national employment models

Abstract: Rapid population ageing has dramatically increased the social and economic cost of elderly care. Demand for care labour is increasing rapidly, and all countries are experiencing problems in recruiting enough workers to meet demand. In some countries, the shortage of care workers has been met by a large inflow of immigrant, mostly female, workers. The paper’s aim is twofold. To argue that the way in which care is provided and financed may entail large differences in the creation of a formal care market. Provision in kind and ‘tied’ monetary transfers - that is, cash benefits that are somehow regulated – may prevent the formation of a large informal care market. National employment models in turn shape the features of the care labour market: in fact, they affect the quantity and the quality of the care labour supply, the size of the care labour shortage, and the degree of dependence on migrant carers. We show how these two factors combine to shape the characteristics of care regimes and their long term sustainability.

Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment

Abstract: Gender inequality remains both a pressing social issue and a fruitful area of social science research. This edited volume seeks to examine gender inequality and the production of well-being in Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective that is perhaps more feminist economics than sociology. The chapters draw on historical and contemporary European examples and offer a somewhat different take (both theoretically and methodologically) on what is usually found in American sociology journals. This book takes a broader view on gender inequalities and the production of wellbeing, with the ‘‘capability approach’’ serving as the theoretical connection between the chapters. The chapters reemphasize that social reproduction is more complex than the production of goods. The various authors also call for and (in the empirical chapters) take into account the socio-political and economic context. An entire chapter is dedicated to the introduction of the capability approach (Chapter Two). But the description of the theory remains lacking amidst numerous references that point the reader towards clarification elsewhere. The authors posit that well-being is an important outcome, and that the production of well-being itself needs to be included in the study of gender inequality (Chapter One), while also demanding that women are not just another vulnerable group (Chapter Four). Chapter Three further challenges conventional notions about the evolution of the ‘‘modern family’’ in the wake of the industrialization process, and argues that the fragility of families is not a novel concept. These theoretical chapters call for a more multidimensional assessment of gender inequality, and remind readers of the importance of the concept and production of well-being. The topics covered in the two empirical parts of the book are very diverse in terms of subject, methodology, and historical time period. The first empirical section ‘‘Gender Care and Work’’ is held together by the challenge to the idea of women as passive victims and in need of assistance. Chapter Five demonstrates widows’ relative economic independence in urban Sweden and Finland from 1890 to 1910, and Chapter Six shows the centrality of female relatives in caring for extended family members in times of crisis. Chapter Seven reaffirms the idea that intergenerational support is not one-sided, and those often thought of as needing care due to older age are also givers of care and other forms of support. The findings from the chapters emphasize the importance of non-monetary transfers outside the market system. The theme of caregiving is readdressed in later chapters which illustrate how home caregiving in Belgium is situated between the public/market divide (Chapter Nine) and the problems of combining market work with caregiving, especially for those in the ‘‘sandwich generation’’ (Chapter Ten). In a seeming departure from studies in the capability approach tradition, Chapter Eight is a more typical time-use study that examines the gender asymmetry in unpaid labor in Italy. The results are not novel as women are found to do more unpaid work, especially in couples with children. The second empirical part of the book focuses on the intra-household allocation of resources. Three of the five chapters in this section center primarily on the nineteenth century, examining consumption patterns in Spain (Chapter 11), gender differences in children’s schooling in Switzerland (Chapter 12), and the differences in the treatment of and opportunities for celibate men and women in the Pyrenees (Chapter 13). These chapters illustrate gender differences, but not in

Women and austerity: the economic crisis and the future for gender equality

Abstract: Shortly after the financial crisis hit the USA and Europe in 2008, commentators started to debate the gendering of this recession. Initial response from North America suggested that a ‘man-cession’...