Our first objective in this project is to examine whether differences in the institutional context within which part-time work developed led to significant differences in the quality of part-time work. We intend to focus on countries that provide relatively strong institutional contrasts – such as the Scandinavian countries on the one hand, which have been characterized as having inclusive employment systems, and Britain, on the other, which is often taken as the exemplar of a liberal or deregulated employment system.
Our second objective is to assess the nature of change in the quality of part-time work between the early 1990s and the mid 2000s. While at the beginning of the period, the characteristics of part-time work were determined primarily by national institutional systems, by the end of the period they are likely to have been increasingly affected by European regulations. Other factors that might have acted as a driving force to changes in the quality of part-time work over time could for example be increased levels of education and a potential rise in employers’ demand for flexible labour.