Not just black and white, but different shades of grey: Legal segmentation and its effect on labour market segmentation in Europe

Abstract

This article studies the impact of employment law on de facto labour market segmentation for 22 European countries from 1991 to 2014. Applying the concept of legal segmentation, the authors distinguish between the standard‐setting (protective), privileging and equalizing functions of employment law and use descriptive and multivariate statistics to indicate their effects on overall employment, and male and female standard and non‐standard employment. High privileging, in combination with high standard‐setting, is found to favour male standard employment and female non‐standard employment, while the equalizing function, aimed at improving the protection of women and other marginalized groups, actually increases male non‐standard employment.