Duncan Gallie: Annual Report 2002-2003

Duncan Gallie (Official Fellow) completed his project on the social consequences of poverty, unemployment and precarious work in the countries of the European Union. Together with Serge Paugam, he drew up and analysed a comparative survey across the EU countries, funded by DG Employment and Social Affairs, which allows for comparisons over time with previous EU-wide surveys. This gives a clearer picture of trends in subjective poverty (and its perceived determinants) between 1976 and 2001 and in experiences of the quality of work over the period 1996 to 2001.

He continued to co-ordinate for the EU (DG Research) a cluster of research projects on unemployment, welfare and work with a view to assessing the mutual implications of their results, drawing the practical lessons about the organization of comparative research involving different European research teams and considering the policy implications of the research results. The website (UWWCLUS), designed by Anton Verstraete, http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/projects/UWWCLUS/, provides information about the different projects and facilitates access to working papers. The work of the cluster concluded with a workshop in Brussels in October 2002, bringing together researchers and EU policy makers.

He carried out further analysis, with Francis Green and Alan Felstead, of the most recent survey examining trends in skills in Britain (the 2001 Skills Survey), funded by the then Department for Education and Skills, focusing on the decline in job control during the 1990s and the experiences of those on non-standard employment contracts.

He served as a member of the Advisory Committee of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MISOC) and of the Advisory Committee of the ESRC's Future of Work Initiative. He has been a member of the EU's Advisory Group on 'Social Sciences and Humanities in the European Research Area'.

Publications

'The Quality of Working Life: Is Scandinavia Different?' European Sociological Review, 19, 1, 61-79.

(with Serge Paugam and Sheila Jacobs) 'Unemployment, Poverty and Social Isolation. Is there a vicious circle of social exclusion?' European Societies, 5, 1, 1-32, 2003.

'Employment and the Labour Market' in J Hollowell (ed.), Britain Since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

(with Serge Paugam) Social Precarity and Social Integration. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2003.

(with G Esping-Andersen, A Hemerijck and J Myles) Why do we need a New Welfare State? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.