Financialisation and Work in Europe: Inequality, Debt and Labour Market Segmentation

Abstract

This article examines the link between financialisation and work in five European countries representative of different types of financial system and welfare regime: Sweden, Germany, the UK, Portugal and Poland. This is done by way of a cross-country comparative exercise that analyses micro-level data on household income, debt, and working conditions. Notwithstanding country differences, living conditions have worsened after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) for a significant number of households, as reflected in respondents’ reports of declining household income, recourse to debt to cover living expenses and deteriorated employment relations. As the finance-work nexus has been more detrimental to the low-income and non-standard workers in the least financialised Germany and Poland, the article concludes that the impacts of financialisation on well-being cannot be simply read off from the sizes of national financial systems or the extent of household engagements with finance. It needs to take also into account the more intermediate effects of finance on well-being through labour market segmentation.