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Book Review: Unmasking Age: The Significance of Age for Social Research

Denmark and the Netherlands, and are relevant to the USA, suggests Kalleberg. However, implementation there faces several obstacles, including the entrenched belief in individualism, a feeble labour movement, and a distrust of government interference in the market. Kalleberg focuses on the win–win potential of flexicurity but I am less sanguine since in order to adopt and enforce any kind of flexicurity strategy the state and the unions need to be on board, improbable though not impossible in USA. Moreover, flexicurity policies fail to address the ‘fundamental differences between capital and labour’ which makes implementing any type of flexicurity agreement very difficult (Burroni and Kaune, 2011: 84). In view of the current global strength of capital and weakness of labour, there is undoubtedly an urgent need to create an equivalent of the Fordist compromise of the kind advanced by Kalleberg on the basis of his discussion of the European flexicurity debate. Hence Kalleberg’s efforts in this direction should be applauded. In conclusion, both books advocate more government action to reverse the growth of low quality jobs, though the analysis by Kalleberg is far more impressive in terms of its breadth and depth. For an up-to-date theoretically informed, empirically grounded and policy relevant account of the growth of polarized and precarious employment in the USA, Kalleberg’s book cannot be recommended too highly.