Project Description
The project aims to study flexibility strategies on the labor market and the impact of these strategies on social inequality structures for eleven industrial countries. In the first phase of the project (March 2005 to February 2007), we concentrated on the labor market entry and early careers and asked how the opportunities of labor market entrants have changed over the last decades. In the second phase (October 2007 to October 2009), we focus on the labor market exit and the late career and study if and how increased labor market flexibilization has influenced old age income. The countries under study are: Germany, Great Britain, USA, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, and Estonia. The flexCAREER project is located both at the University of Bamberg and the University of Goettingen.

Process of Flexibilization and Labor market risks
First, the project focuses on the question whether flexibility processes differ between the countries under study and second, whether certain socioeconomic groups are struck by flexibilization to a larger extent than others. Since countries have different welfare, production, and educational regimes, we expect that the market flexibilization varies in type and magnitude for the various countries. With regard to the second question, we believe that in all countries examined, the groups deprived of economical and political influence are exposed to market risks to a considerably larger extent than other groups.

Longitudinal Analyses
Both, the labor market entry and the labor market exit will be analyzed using longitudinal data and mainly by applying methods of event history analysis. The analyses cover different birth and labor market entry/exit cohorts and will thus enable us to understand the consequences of flexibility processes for groups entering/exiting the labor market in different temporal contexts.

Time Frame
The project is scheduled for four years. In the first phase of the project (March 2005 – February 2007), we concentrated on the labor market entry and early careers, in the second phase (October 2007 – October 2009), we focus on the labor market exit and the late career. In both research phases, we apply the following strategy: In the first step, pilot studies for three countries (Germany, Great Britain, and Denmark) are conducted. In the next step, the pilot studies are replicated for Italy, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, USA, Hungary and Estonia by the members of an international research network.

Funding
The research project is funded by the German Research Foundation from March 2005 until October 2009.