Economic restructuring, flexible employment practices, and contingent workers: Socio-spatial configurations of labor market flexibility.

摘要

This study examines the growth of contingent (or flexible) labor in the context of ongoing socio-spatial restructuring and changing employment practices. It explores the distinct features of labor market flexibility in the United States by analyzing data from OECD countries, federal government labor statistics, and the February 1995 CPS Contingent Work Supplement File.;The primary concern is to evaluate the theoretical and empirical validity of the flexibilization thesis drawn from regulation theory, flexible specialization theory, and flexible accumulation theory. Theoretically, this study redresses reductionist tendencies in the arguments of labor market flexibility. Empirically, it embraces historical contingencies and national diversity in labor market transformation. This study also specifies trends and patterns of growth in contingent employment during the 1980--1995 period and tests empirically the industrial reserve army and the degradation of work theses.;This study accounts for labor supply and reproduction processes and demonstrates how economic transformations have had an uneven effect on individuals and social divisions in the labor force. It focuses on the industrial, occupational, and spatial shift of labor and prevailing labor market segmentation. Furthermore, this study explores spatial disparities in patterns of contingent employment which are closely interconnected with patterns of spatial organization (i.e., deconcentration) and local-regional labor market conditions.;Finally, using logistic regression techniques, this study highlights a multilayered segmentation of contingent employment over the demographic, industrial, occupational, and spatial dimensions. Included in logistic regression models are determinants of labor supply segmentation (i.e., life cycle, dual role, human capital, skill mismatch), labor demand segmentation (i.e., dual economy, occupational labor market), and spatial segmentation (i.e., spatial mismatch, spatial entrapment).;Findings show that U.S. labor markets have become more flexible over the last two decades. Intensified international competition (globalization) and pro-market policies (deregulation) facilitate greater labor market flexibility. In search of greater flexibility, U.S. capitalism has expanded the use of a flexible and contingent labor. Flexible employment practices undermine traditional labor market institutions protecting low-skilled workers. Consequently, a hyper-divided working class is created even in the same workplace, which in the aggregate entails social polarization and spatial segregation among employed workers in the United States.