EmployALL - The employment crisis and the Welfare State in Portugal: deterring drivers of social vulnerability and inequality

EmployALL aimed to study the relationship of mutual dependence between employment and social protection. In the context of the Great Recession and the ensuing 'adjustment program' in Portugal, this interdependence manifested itself as an articulation of a crisis of employment with a crisis of social protection. The employment crisis involved an unprecedented rise of unemployment, wage decline and precarious work, which increased the burden on social protection. The outcome, aggravated by cuts directly affecting social protection, was a shortfall in the responsiveness of the system to new social vulnerabilities - a crisis of social protection. The two concomitant crises widened inequalities in diverse territorial contexts.

EmployALL addresses the following research questions:

1) Which mechanisms connect employment (unemployment, precarious work and wage decline) to social protection (its capacity to respond to increasing demands), and to what extent the increased pressure on, and the social protection system shortfalls have contributed to augment risks in employment and unemployment?

2) To what extent is the articulation of the employment and social protection crises converging in the production and cumulative reproduction of inequalities, and how is this process to be reversed through public policies?

The project will draw on an interdisciplinary methodological framework and will use quantitative and qualitative methodologies at different territorial scales.

A structure of 6 work packages (WP) will be adopted:

WP1 will be devoted to the theoretical mapping of the relations of mutual dependence between employment and social protection
WP2 will characterize the employment and social protection crises in Portugal, in the context of the EU, at various national territorial scales
WP3 aims to characterize the reciprocal impacts between the employment and social protection crises in the frame of the evolving financialized accumulation regime, with particular focus on how the private finance sector tends to occupy areas of eroded public provision
WP4 will be devoted to identifying the drivers of inequality stemming from the employment and social protection crises
WP5 envisions the elaboration of public policy instruments that, by acting upon critical drivers, may prevent or reverse the level of social inequalities
WP6 involves the dissemination of the findings and policy recommendations of the project.

EmployALL will overcome an existing gap in knowledge: the mechanisms operating in Portugal intertwining the employment and the social protection crises. It thus offers novel insights for the international state of the art and contributes to the design of public policies that may significantly decrease inequalities in Portugal.

Impact and Dissemination

As a result of the study and data collection for the project, a webpage was created, allowing all interested parties to access the data gathered and processed throughout the project, which was titled Territorial Vulnerabilities.

A hierarchical analysis was conducted following Ward's method, using squared Euclidean distance as a measure. Through this procedure, municipalities were progressively grouped based on the degree of similarity they exhibit with one another, according to the results obtained for each of the considered indicators.

The decision on the number of clusters to retain was guided by dendrogram visualisation. Membership of each cluster was subsequently compared and confirmed using automatic clustering (K-Means). A simple variance analysis (ANOVA) suggests statistically significant differences among all six clusters across all included variables.

Publications

Roque, I., Carmo, R. M., Caleiras, J. & Assis, R. V. (2024). Trajectories of precariousness of tuk-tuk drivers in Portugal: A case study. Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation. 18 (2), 176-195

Ferrão, J., Pinto, H., Caldas, J. M. & Carmo, R. M. (2023). Vulnerabilidades territoriais, pandemia e emprego: Uma análise exploratória de perfis socioeconómicos municipais e impactos da COVID-19 em Portugal. Revista Portuguesa de Estudos Regionais. 63, 161-182 (https://www.review-rper.com/index.php/rper/article/view/72/462) (Territorial Vulnerabilities, pandemic and employment)

Roque, I., Carmo, R. M., de Assis, R. V. & Caleiras, J. (2022). Precarious work and intermittent life trajectories in a Portuguese gig economy. Journal of Labor and Society. N/A, 1-26

Caleiras, J., Carmo, R. M., Roque, I. & Assis, R. V. (2022). Pandemia, serviços públicos e trabalhadores vulneráveis em Portugal: uma relação ambivalente?. Revista Brasileira de Economia Social e do Trabalho. (Pandemic, public services and employment)

Caleiras, J., Carmo, R. M., Roque, I. & Assis, R. V. (2022). Nas margens do emprego, no centro da pandemia: Experiências de desproteção e vulnerabilidade social no Grande Confinamento. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais. 128, 159-182. (Pandemic and employment)

Carmo, R. M. & d'Avelar, Maria Madalena (2021). The weight of time and the unemployment experience: Daily life and future prospects. Current Sociology. 69 (5), 742-760

Carmo, R. M. (2021). Social inequalities: theories, concepts and problematics. SN Social Sciences.

Research Team

Renato Miguel do Carmo CIES

Prof. Dr. Nazaré da Costa Cabral

Isabel Roque CES

Frederico Cantante CIES

Jorge Caleiras Colabor

José Maria Castro Caldas CES

Manuel Carvalho da Silva Colabor

Paulo Pedroso CIES

Pedro Adão e Silva CIES

Sílvia Ferreira CES