Bamberg University > Department of Sociology > Chair of Sociology I > Globalife

Summary

The Globalife project is a multidisciplinary and international comparative research program funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation from 1999-2005. It is centered in the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bamberg.

The project‘s goal is to study the influence of globalization on life courses in OECD-type societies. Globalization refers to:

1) the internationalization of markets,

2) intensified competition,

3) accelerated spread of networks and knowledge via new technologies; and,

4) the rising importance of markets and their dependence on random shocks.

Globalization is certainly not a coherent process and cannot be described as a single phenomenon. In socioeconomic terms, it entails rather a series of significant macro processes that are common to all modern societies:

(1) the increasing significance of knowledge and information;

(2) the extraordinary rise in productivity;

(3) the growing need for flexibility;

(4) the rising uncertainty of future developments; and,

(5) the intensified competition among individuals, firms, and nation states.

These macro processes are closely linked with the rapid diffusion of new information and communication technologies, which reduce the importance of spatial distances for all kinds of interactions and make changes in economic and social life faster and less predictable everywhere.

Individuals, however, have to make long-term binding commitments at various phases of their life courses. For example, they have to opt for educational tracks, specific jobs, career paths, particular partners, or having a child or not – decisions which, once taken, are hard to revise. In other words, in modern societies there is an increasing tension between growing uncertainty of future life course situations and individuals' natural needs to make self-binding decisions. The central question for the project is, therefore, how actors deal with this new kind of life course situation in various societies. A major hypothesis at the micro level is that greater uncertainty forces actors to simplify action situations to less complex patterns. It is assumed that actors generally tend to frame their courses of action in cultural terms and use national norms, regional traditions, or locally based social rules of thumb to make their (rational) decisions. Since these decision 'heuristics' vary by country, the expectation is that there are different reaction patterns towards globalization in diverse societies. In other words, the major question of the project is, to which extent do modern life courses develop in nation-specific, path-dependent ways in the process of globalization? Conversely, to which extent do specific life course patterns actually diffuse among modern societies, and, if they do, which ones are particularly successful models?

Macro processes are neither fully deterministic nor completely stochastic. Rather, we expect that they do have a path-dependent structure in each country. This means that they are molded by country-specific institutions (in the educational, job market, welfare and family system) and shaped by social class and status groups with vast differences in terms of power and benefits received from society. Thus, we suppose that rising uncertainty and economic and social risks are shifted towards the more disadvantaged and less powerful groups, which in turn increases social inequalities - with higher levels and different forms of group conflict.

The project is organized into four phases:
(1) the transition from youth to adulthood (leaving the educational system, entering the job market, starting own household/family, having children, etc., and the interdependence of these events);

(2) mid-career men’s changes in career mobility, forms of employment and unemployment over the life course;

(3) mid-career women’s changes in career mobility, forms of employment and unemployment over the life course; and,

(4) the transition from employment to retirement.

The project as a whole develops close collaboration with additional national experts who know their countries best. These external experts are invited to participate in various topic-specific collaborations and workshops over the years and to contribute country-specific chapters to books published as part of the project.

The project uses a life course and longitudinal approach to study these processes in different countries (12-15) over longer spans of historical time, mainly the post-war period. The entire research enterprise is innovative in terms of theory (combining micro and macro approaches), methodology (using longitudinal data like panels and retrospective life histories), and in terms of a more systematic international comparison without neglecting important differences among the countries.

The Globalife project is therefore also expected to contribute to the application and further development of new quantitative longitudinal methodology of cross-national comparative life course research.

Current Project Phase (4): Career Exits

The preceding phases of the GLOBALIFE project have concentrated on the effects of globalization on entry into the labor market and mobility within the labor market mid-career, differentiating male and female life course career patterns. The last phase of the project will concentrates on the labor market mobility at the end of the career, i.e. retirement processes.

Traditionally, literature on retirement has mainly concentrated on the demographic and the social security aspects of the topic. The forthcoming GLOBALIFE research develops a new conceptual perspective, which focuses on labor market processes and more explicitly addresses globalization as a major force shaping the process of retirement in different countries over time.

We assume that globalization has a strong and significant influence on individuals leaving the labor force through the mechanism of structural change, defined as "a shifting of the industrial and occupational structure of a society" (DiPrete et al. 1997: 326). Globalization, as we define it, clearly favors structural change: On the one hand, the tertiarization of the economy has led to a change from 'blue collar' industrial professions to 'white collar-oriented' service industries, leading to the creation of a 'new service class' (Goldthorpe 1995). Second, technological innovations and the gradual move from an industrial to a knowledge society (Castells 2000, Willke 1997) has led to the emergence of new occupations and the increased need for new qualifications. Third, the emergence of an increasingly global market, rising international competition and the increasing volatility of markets due to random economic shocks sets companies under pressure to develop the ability to frequently adjust to changes in the economic sphere, a process frequently referred to as 'flexibilization' (Bieber et al 1991, Castells 2000, Döhl 1995, Kilper 1996).

With this background, the main research question of the GLOBALIFE final phase will be to investigate how societies and national labor market actors adapt to the above-mentioned processes, especially regarding older employees. At the extremes, one could assume two possible strategies in between which actual socio-political constellations can be expected to cluster (see Blossfeld and Stockmann 1999). In one approach, societies can adapt to the changing qualification demands and rising flexibility needs demanded by globalization processes through re-educating/re-qualifying the existing labor force, while at the same time making it easier to change jobs/professions through flexible labor markets and weaker qualificational boundaries. This approach relies on the existing labor force to become more flexible and adaptable.

The opposite approach relies on replacing the existing labor force by creating smooth exit pathways in case of productive deficiencies. Change in the labor market is made through replacement, not retraining, which allows the market to reduce costs by eliminating expensive and redundant employees and to bring in new qualificational profiles through young labor market entrants. The mechanism of this 'generational replacement' has frequently been early retirement, i.e. the opportunity for workers to withdraw from work before reaching the official retirement age with no or only a minor, actuarially disproportionate, decrease in pension payments, financed by the employer and/or the state. While recent figures on retirement (OECD 1995,1997) show that these programs have been popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, current economic problems point to a gradual reversal of this trend, due to financing problems of either the state or the industry.

We assume that the decision of a country for an appropriate combination of the above mentioned alternatives will strongly depend on its institutional structure. As DiPrete and others have pointed out (DiPrete et al. 1997), special attention needs to be given to the respective national level of employment security, active employment-sustaining labor market policies, employment exit policies and occupational boundaries. For example, we can assume that in countries with low employment security, few explicit labor market policies and only weak occupational boundaries such as the United States will rather opt for a flexible re-training approach. Similar results can be expected for countries with moderate occupational boundaries but actively employment-sustaining policies, like the social-democratic 'full-employment regimes'. However, in other countries, this alternative might be limited by strong occupational boundaries, which do not allow for cross-occupational mobility. Countries will then rather favor the option of generational replacement, institutionally fostered by extensive employment exit (i.e. early retirement) policies. A good example for this case might be the Netherlands or, to a lesser degree, Germany.

In research phase 4, GLOBALIFE will concentrate on the question which mixture of the differing strategies is chosen in different institutional contexts. As in the preceding project phases, research will be undertaken by local GLOBALIFE researchers and external experts on the topic whom will be invited to participate in our research. Countries will again include case studies from liberal (United States, Canada, United Kingdom), conservative (Germany, Netherlands, France), social-democratic (Norway, Denmark, Sweden), Southern European/Latin rim (Italy, Spain, Mexico) and post-communist (Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia) welfare regimes. A research workshop will be organized in Bamberg in Spring 2004 to bring together national country studies and discuss them against the background of the theoretical framework. Again, it is planned to publish an edited volume, comprising all country studies and a cross-national overview summarizing the main findings of the project phase.