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This chapter investigates non-traditional work and retirement patterns among older individuals in the Health and Retirement Study. It first reviews the evidence on retirements that initially involve bridge jobs or some form of partial retirement. It then looks at analysis on retirement reversals in which individuals resume or increase work activity following a period of retirement. Almost one third of the individuals in the sample who are ever partially or fully retired make at least one transition from more to less retired during the period of observation. The chapter also explores the characteristics of individuals making such transitions.

The chapter analyses the underlying principles of social interactions. The chapter develops a model in which individual employment probabilities are determined by the employment status of an individual's neighbors. Such a dependence arises naturally when information about jobs diffuses locally. It demonstrates that this framework can capture important aspects of observed spatial interdependences across Chicago neighborhoods.

This chapter explores the tensions between the principles of equality before the law and equal impact in the context of financial penalties and employment status. While it is acknowledged that the criminal justice system, and sentencing in particular, can do little to address social inequalities, it is argued that by failing to adopt a day or unit fine system, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other common law countries have lost an opportunity of doing justice to difference. However, in the case of employment status, it is argued that to allow employment to count in an offender's favour is contrary to the principle of equality and discriminatory; it is to do injustice to difference.

To be empowered means to have the ability and resources to take key decisions. Yet there is an immediate and important slippage of language. This chapter reviews debates on power and turns to employee participation, shows why participation matters, and considers evidence as to the extent and meaning of participation. Organizations are structures of power. People at the top rarely give up power voluntarily, making collaboration between different groups a difficult proposition. Collaboration readily breaks down with a reversion to (command-and-control-based) type, and the idea of managerial prerogative is deeply embedded in law and concrete practice; participation exists at best on the edges of a system structured in very different ways. Empowerment relates in some way to the rights of employees and their recognition by their employer. The alternative approach is one of ‘hire and fire’ in which the employment contract is reduced as far as possible to a market exchange.

This chapter examines what Amartya Sen has written and argued about gender injustice in three seemingly distinct, but related contexts in South Asia: famine, widowhood, and paid work. The chapter is divided into four parts: one part for each issue and a conclusion linking all three. In parts 1-3, the chapter summarizes what Sen has written about each issue and then, based on research, highlighting certain factors that serve to illuminate or complicate the issue. In the conclusion, the chapter reflects on Sen's entitlement and capability theories and the normative concepts that they offer to those who seek gender justice in South Asia.

This chapter describes the employment status of Crown servants in Great Britain. It identifies three main classes of Crown servants, which are the civil servants, military servants, and third class of servants that includes the police, members of the judiciary, and Ministers of the Crown. It suggests that civil servants are in the same legal position as private employees and their relationship with the Crown is defined by legislation and the common law of employment. It argues that the Crown is no more than a cypher for the supreme political executive within the British State.

This chapter draws on the analysis in the previous chapters to illustrate how the courts’ conception of the relationship between law and social practices influences approaches to employment status and, relatedly, the effectiveness of labour law when it comes to securing or coordinating the provision of a ‘social wage’. It does this through the lens of the concept of ‘mutuality of obligation’. The first section explores the concept of ‘mutuality of obligation’ as it is conceived today. The second section then traces the development of this concept over time. The third section concludes with some observations about how the conception of law’s ontology we find implicit in the case law relates to the so-called ‘crisis’ we see today in labour law’s personal scope.

This chapter examines the role played by the contract of employment in wage distribution and income inequality, distinguishing between the ordinary entitlement to ‘labour income’ and the finance-derived entitlement to ‘capital income’ linked to share value. The chapter aims to expose the interplay between contract and status in the quantification of income, a differentiation that may be seen as a reinvention of the old divides associated with the master-servant regime. Senior corporate managers, as quasi-partners in the firm, are able to access the residual profit of the firm through bonuses and stock options while most employees are entitled only to a fixed-rate wage. The chapter draws upon insights from corporate law to theorize not only the inequalities between different kinds of employment status but also the way in which those inequalities have been masked by a habit of regarding the contract of employment as a basically homogenous contract-type.

This chapter aims at analyzing the characteristics of female employment and unemployment in Tunisia and at identifying the main incentives and constraints to female labor participation and choice of employment status. After the 2000s, female participation stagnated at around 25 percent in Tunisia—higher than the average in the MENA countries but half the world rate. Several socio-cultural factors with economic implications shape the participation of women in the labor market. Marital status is considered a constraint for labor force participation for woman. Women’s educational attainment also influences both their participation decision and the type of employment they choose. The services sectors provide the majority of female jobs, especially in the public sector, which is considered “family friendly.” Women are poorly represented in positions of responsibility and leadership, and the rate of self-employment among Tunisian women is low. The female unemployment rate is above that of men.

This chapter demonstrates how asking the question “What is the good life?” leads to different knowledge than asking questions like “How can we generate employment?” or “How can we achieve economic growth?” The chapter offers a deeper look into the lives of four individuals who said they were currently living the good life: an engineer in a high-status job, an artist forging new relationships through his church and community, a low-wage worker in an unusual shoe factory, and a recently unemployed woman starting a small business. The stories offer evidence that the good life does not necessarily depend on employment status. Instead, the good life comes about through complex interactions of social and individual factors, as well as the ways by which people learn to make meaning out of their circumstances. The four individuals shaped concepts of the good life that made sense of their experiences within an antiblack and segregated society. They found themselves in socially embedded economic structures, and spaces where black cultural capital was validated. The fact that they often attributed these circumstances to good fortune should not prevent us from imagining and implementing ways to replicate such structures.

What are the consequences of the rise of the platform economy for the welfare state? The current chapter seeks to answer this question for Bismarckian welfare institutions. Platform economies have a significant impact on the labor market, especially in terms of the distinction between the employed and self-employed. One of the main challenges for traditional social insurance systems is that an individual’s employment status has to be clarified in order to correctly categorize them in the system of social contributions. How social insurance systems might respond to the challenges of the digital age and how structurally adaptable they are will be examined based on the examples of Germany and Austria as two very different institutional variants of Bismarckian systems. Beyond parametric adjustments, however, Bismarckian systems have significant institu-tional possibilities for adaptation, even to major changes in the labor market like those brought about by digitalization.

The purpose of this concluding chapter is twofold. It is, first, to situate the book in the wider literature and demonstrate the book’s contribution to the field, both its contribution to the critical study of labour law, and to the study of social ontology and legal form more generally; and second, to revisit the questions posed in Chapter 1, with a view to exploring the wider theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the analysis. In this respect, it draws on previous chapters to demonstrate how the analysis in the book might be used to inform debates about labour law reform.

This introductory chapter explains the motivation behind the book. It argues that it is unhelpful to talk about what labour law should be doing, and how, without a deeper understanding both of what law is, its ontology, and the nature of the society to which it is specific. The chapter introduces key themes and ideas, and outlines, briefly, the chapters to follow. It introduces the reader to social ontology, and the particular approach to social ontology inspiring the book. It contrasts two competing conceptions of the law–market and law–society relationship, and explains how these conceptions influence assumptions about the nature, and function, of labour law, and of the concept of the wage.

Liaison psychiatry is a subspecialty of psychiatry which involves the diag–nosis, treatment, and management of psychiatric illness in patients who have physical illnesses or present with physical symptoms. There is considerable overlap between psychiatric and medical condi–tions which requires close working relationships with medical colleagues. Liaison psychiatry is a fascinating area where the range of psychiatric presentations is wide, every case is different, and there is opportunity to keep up to date with medicine as it evolves. Within the UK there are different models practiced in different areas, ranging from assessment and signposting services to services with provi–sion for long-term outpatient follow-up. There is increasing interest in the provision of liaison services in primary care because of the challenges faced by GPs in treating patients with medically unexplained symptoms. Another driver is the hugely increased morbidity and mortality rates seen in patients with co-morbid physical and mental illnesses who receive the majority of their treatment in secondary care.