Suchergebnisse

The international literature on active labour market programmes has generated inconsistent and confusing, but generally pessimistic, conclusions regarding their impact on the employment prospects of participants. This paper argues that much of this confusion is due to a general lack of attention to qualitative differences between programmes. The paper develops a typology of active labour market programmes, differentiating between training and employment measures on the basis of their orientation to the labour market and argues that programmes with a strong orientation to the market are more likely to improve the job prospects of participants than those characterised by weak market linkages. That hypothesis is tested using the results of a survey of young participants in labour market programmes in Ireland. The analysis shows that programmes with strong linkages to the labour market both enhance the employment prospects of their participants and increase their earnings, even when we take account of relevant individual characteristics such as education and previous labour market experience. ; Die internationale Literatur hat bisher inkonsistente und verwirrende, aber in der Regel pessimistische Schlußfolgerungen hinsichtlich der Beschäftigungswirkung für Teilnehmer in arbeitsmarktpolitischen Maßnahmen gezogen. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, daß ein Großteil dieser Konfusion darauf zurückzuführen ist, daß den qualitativen Differenzen von Maßnahmen zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wurde. Es wird daher eine Typologie aktiver Arbeitsmarktpolitik entwickelt, bei der die Weiterbildungs- und Beschäftigungsmaßnahmen nach ihren Marktbezügen unterschieden werden. Maßnahmen, die sich an den Bedürfnissen des Marktes orientieren, verbessern die Beschäftigungsperspektiven der Teilnehmer deutlich mehr als Maßnahmen mit schwacher Marktorientierung. Diese These wird - unter Verwendung von Kontrollgruppen - durch eine ökonometrische Analyse von jungen Teilnehmern in Arbeitsmarktmaßnahmen in Irland getestet und bestätigt: Maßnahmen mit starker Marktorientierung erhöhen sowohl die Beschäftigungschancen als auch die Löhne der Teilnehmer, selbst wenn man die relevanten individuellen Merkmale wie Bildung und Arbeitsmarkterfahrung in Betracht zieht.

In the extensive literature on the employment impact of public-sponsored training programmes for the unemployed, insufficient attention has been paid to the differential impact of different types of programmes and training duration. This paper uses a unique dataset, which tracks the labour market position of a cohort of unemployment benefit claimants for almost two years, to evaluate the impact of a range of government-sponsored training courses in Ireland. Overall, we found that those who participated in training were less likely to be unemployed at the end of the two-year study period. However, the average effect of training varied by the type and duration of training received. In general, we found strong positive effects for job-search skills training and medium-to high-level skills courses, a more modest positive effect for general vocational skills programmes (which are not strongly linked to demand in the labour market) and less consistent effects with respect to low-level skills training. We also found that training episodes with lower duration had a more positive impact, with the exception of high-level skills training programmes where longer training durations appear more effective. The results suggest that, in the Irish context, there are potentially substantial benefits to re-orientating unemployment training provision away from standard classroom vocational training towards the medium to highlevel skill end of the market and demonstrate that, in most cases, training durations can be reduced without lowering the effectiveness of the interventions.

This paper uses a high quality longitudinal dataset to assess the impact of an active labour market intervention consisting of referral for interview plus Job Search Assistance (JSA) with the public employment service in Ireland during a period when both job search monitoring and sanctions were virtually non-existent. The results indicate that, relative to a control group with no intervention, unemployed individuals that were exposed to the interview letter and participated in JSA were 16 per cent less likely to have exited to employment prior to 12 months. The negative effects of the intervention approximately doubled when those that received a referral letter but did not attend a JSA interview were removed from the data. The results held when tested against the underlying assumptions of the model, and the influences of both sample selection and unobserved heterogeneity bias. The negative treatment impact is attributed to individuals lowering their job search intensity on learning, through the JSA activation interview, of the lax nature of the activation process. The research, which is unusual in the international literature in allowing the assessment of the impact of job search assistance in the virtual absence of monitoring and sanctions, highlights the need for effective monitoring and sanctions as integral components of labour market activation programmes.

This paper produced a rigorous analysis of the human resource interventions which formed an important part of the EU Community Support Framework implemented in Ireland in the period 1994 to 1999. The study investigates the impact of both initial education and of continuing education, training and temporary employment programmes. The study utilises an approach based on comparison groups garnered from existing ESRI databases to estimate the net impact of the interventions rather than relying simply on cruder measures such as gross placement rates. Estimates are given of the returns to fourteen schemes included in the Support Framework in terms of income and employment prospects. The results suggest that programmes with strong market linkages are much more effective than those with a more general remit. On this basis, recommendations are made for a strategic re-orientation of labour market policies for the unemployed.

This book presents a systematic analysis of the Great Recession, austerity, and subsequent recovery in Ireland. It discusses the extent to which the Irish response to the recession led to significant changes in economic policy and in business, work, consumption, the labour market, and society.

This Handbook is intended as a reference tool for people working in the area of immigration and asylum in Ireland. The recent dramatic shift towards increased immigration in Ireland has resulted in the emergence of much new information in diverse fields, including statistics, policy and law. The Handbook aims to draw together such information up to the end of 2007 (with 2008 updates where appropriate). An overview of available statistics on flows and stocks of immigrants is provided. This is followed by a discussion of the large number of new domestic policies, which have emerged as policymakers have responded to the unprecedented scale and pace of migration into Ireland. Information is provided on the domestic and European legislation introduced in response to the inflows. Summaries of important decisions of the High Court and Supreme Court, summaries of significant case law from the European Court of Justice and summaries of decisions of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal in relation to refugee status determination are included. The details of organisations and researchers working in the field are listed along with a list of selected recent and current research publications, a Glossary of relevant terms and an Index of Case Law.

Comment et pourqui la dynamique des classes varie‐t‐elle d'un pays capitaliste démocratique à l'autre, alors que I'on s'attendrait à découvrir un scénario commun? On ne trouve que peu d'évaluations d'ensemble de cette question qui soient d'inspiration marxiste. Ce manque a pour effet d'invalider diverses conceptions marxistes de l'organisation de classe et de la lutte de classe, en leur donnant souvent une allure exagérément mécaniste. Les approches utilisées jusqu'à maintenant pour étudier la variabilité nationale de ces processus souffrent de graves handicaps, dont le caractère a‐historique de modèles trans‐nationaux quantitatifs et l'incapacitéà généraliser qui accompagne les analyses historiques comparatives traditionnelles d'un petit nombre d'Etat‐nations. A partir d'un point‐de‐vue marxiste 'genéral' sur l'établissement des taux de croissance de la syndicalisation et des salaires, nous estimons un ensemble de séries chronologiques pour 18 démocracies capitalistes avancées et stables; ces modèles reflètent bien l'histoire entre 1959 et 1980 de certains de ces pays, mais pas celle de certains autres. Nous suggérons alors que ces relations historiques infra‐nationales sont elles‐mêmes fonction d'autres differences trans‐nationales, temporellement invariantes, qui différencient les pays capitalistes les uns des autres. D'une démocracie capitaliste à l'autre, les degrés différents de contrôle du gouvernement qu'ont eu les sociaux‐démocrates semblent partiellement responsables de la variabilité des relations historiques entre prolétarianisation, syndicalisation, niveau de grèves et croissance des salaires. Les mouvements syndicaux de nations dont la représentation social‐démocrate a été soutenue ou cumulative, semblent connaître plus de succès dans la conversion de travailleurs/euses indépendants/es en syndicalistes que les mouvements d'autres pays; ils sont moins capables, par ailleurs, d'obtenir des hausses de salaire au moyen de la grève. Nous débattons quatre implications théoriques et méthodologiques de cette recherche, dont les effets contradictoires de la social‐démocracie sur la dynamique des classes.Comprehensive assessments of how and why theoretically 'general' class dynamics differ across the capitalist democracies are infrequent in research inspired by the Marxist problematic. This has tended to vitiate the potential explanatory power of Marxist conceptualizations of class organization and class struggle, often giving them an overly mechanistic flavor. Existing research approaches to the study of national variability in these processes suffer from several severe limitations, including the ahistoricism of static quantitative cross‐national designs and the lack of generality accompanying traditional comparative/historical analyses of a small number of nation‐states. Using 'general' Marxist understandings of the determination of unionization and wage growth, we estimate a series of time‐series models for 18 advanced, stable capitalist democracies, finding that our expectations are consistent with the 1959‐80 histories of some of these nations and not of others. We then posit that these within‐nation historical relationships are themselves a function of other temporally invariant, cross‐national differences distinguishing one capitalist country from another. Differences in social democratic control of government across the capitalist democracies, in particular, appear partially responsible for some important country‐to‐country differences in the historical relationships among proletarianization, unionization, strike activity, and wage growth. Labor movements in nations with sustained or cumulative social democratic representation appear more successful in converting dependent workers into trade unionists than do other countries, but are less successful in using strikes to extract wage gains. We discuss four theoretical and methodological implications of this research, including the contradictory effects of social democracy on class dynamics.