Flexicurity Policies in Europe: in the Age of Globalization By

Flexicurity –the labour market policy which combines flexibility and security concerns- has gained strategic significance as a policy instrument in the European Union since the mid-1990s, and is currently viewed as the most rational labour market policy for stimulating growth and employment under contemporary globalisation. It is the outcome of two important discourses that have informed the historical development of the European Union. The first is the level of social protection – including employment and job security – that had been instituted in the context of the ideology of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s. The second is the neo-liberal dominance in political and economic discourse in Europe since the 1990s, which has continuously promoted flexibility in the labour market as a means of increasing efficiency and productivity. The paper argues that the flexicurity discourse had been dominated by techno-bureaucratic discussions on different combinations of flexibility/securit