Risk: A New Paradigm to Face Market Challenges

Abstract

Over the last two decades the prevailing idea has been that labour market regulation and enterprises' basic need for flexibility can be combined with workers' need for security. The non-conflicting relationship between labour law and market operation implied in the flexicurity agenda has revealed its failure, especially during the economic crisis. We would like to start with some critical theoretical reflections on the flexicurity agenda to suggest a new perspective, offered by the notion of risk, for reconsidering labour law and the EU social agenda. This is based on the observation that many comparative analyses on labour law reforms in Member States following the economic crisis have shown that different categories of workers have been exposed in different ways to the negative effects of the crisis itself, and that the risks produced by the functioning of labour markets, and, indirectly, by the financial market, are borne by some workers and not by others.