The grey zone and labour market dynamics in Germany

Abstract

In this article, we define the ‘grey zone’ as the proliferation of categories of employment and the growing dissonance between those categories and the realities of the labour market. Against the background of the weakening of the standard employment relationship, and going beyond the dualism of the labour market, there are three processes by which the employment norm is differentiated: the institutionalisation of new employment categories by public authorities, the influence of collective norms on the framing of employment categories by organised groups such as unions and employers’ associations, and the uses of those norms by social actors such as companies. In this article, we first describe the evolution of the German labour market over the past 20 years. We then shed light on the dynamics of the grey zones of employment in Germany by drawing on two strands – self-employment and traineeships – and by distinguishing the three differentiation mechanisms.