Unequal Opportunity Structure and Labour Market Segmentation

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Abstract
Sociology of social stratification and labour market economics have developed in isolation from one another. The present paper attempts to bring these two traditions closer together. The starting point is a critique of the very notion of social `stratification'. A return to Max Weber's idea of `class situation as market situation' and to his concept of `social closure' is advocated. On this basis, a conception of structured social inequality in advanced capitalist societies is developed which is open for conceptual innovations to be taken from labour market economics. A number of approaches to labour market analysis are discussed, and the special significance of several recent contributions related to the so-called `dual labour market theory' is emphasized. This leads up to the construction of a typological model supposed to supersede the traditional notion of social inequality as a system of hierarchically superposed strata. This model comprises eight levels of labour market structuration characterizing structured social inequality in advanced capitalist societies.

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