Susanne Strauß Volunteering and Social Inclusion VS RESEARCH Life Course Research Edited by Prof.Dr.Steffen Hillmert,University of Tübingen,Germany Susanne Strauß Volunteering and Social Inclusion Interrelations between Unemployment and Civic Engagement in Germany and Great Britain With a foreword by Steffen Hillmert VS RESEARCH Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at <http://dnb.d-nb.de>. Dissertation Universität Bremen,2007 1st Edition 2008 All rights reserved © VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH,Wiesbaden 2008 Editorial Office:Christina M.Brian / Dr.Tatjana Rollnik-Manke VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften is a company of Springer Science+Business Media. www.vs-verlag.de No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system or transmitted,mechanical,photocopying or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright holder. Registered and/or industrial names,trade names,trade descriptions etc.cited in this publication are part of the law for trade-mark protection and may not be used free in any form or by any means even if this is not specifically marked. Cover design:KünkelLopka Medienentwicklung,Heidelberg Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-8350-7021-9 Foreword Over the past few years, the area of volunteer work and civic engagement are topics that have received increasing attention from both the public as well as sociological research. In particular, there has been a controversy as to what de- gree voluntary work can be regarded as a collective solution for attenuating la- bour market problems and risks of social exclusion. Empirical evidence for the employment effects of voluntary work has made scholars more sceptical than many optimistic scenarios. So far, however, the links between paid work and voluntary work have mainly been discussed as either a phenomenon on the macro-level of society (like the question of substitu- tion effects) and/or on the basis of results from cross-sectional research. While there has been some evidence for an association between unemployment and reduced engagement in voluntary work – which may represent cumulative disad- vantage rather than means of compensation – we know relatively little about the dynamics and directions of causality on the individual level. In contrast to conventional research, the study by Susanne Strauß offers a careful and thorough analysis of mutual relationships between unemployment and voluntary work as they show up as activities in individual life courses. Her work is based on micro-level data and has special merits in applying a multi-level (longitudinal) approach. Most prominent in its description of the labour market effects of volunteering are institutional differences between wel- fare state regimes. The comparative study demonstrates the impact of the lower level of formal labour market regulation, certification and social security (i.e., unemployment benefits) in Britain: At least for men, this institutional environ- ment makes volunteering much more important for raising individual re- employment chances than in Germany. Moreover, German workers are more likely than the British to give up voluntary activities when becoming unem- ployed. But in neither of the two countries are workers particularly likely to take up voluntary activities once they have become unemployed. The empirical analyses also show, however, that an international compari- son needs to take into account further modifications to include structural and individual characteristics, in particular gender and level of qualification. More- over, differences in timing – i.e., effects for the short-term vs. the long-term 6 Foreword unemployed – need to be considered. Finally, the study acknowledges the con- siderable heterogeneity of the phenomenon with regard to different types and qualities of voluntary work. A number of the empirical findings presented may be preliminary and await analyses with more detailed data sources, but the ana- lytical framework proposed may well encourage further research. I read the differentiated results presented in this book as a warning against simple policy recommendations; rather, they show the limits and risks of propa- gating volunteering as a large scale solution for problems of underemployment, as well as its chances in specific situations. What we see (once more) is that there are interactions between traditional structures of the labour market and practices of recruiting and the potential impact alternative job search strategies can have. Moreover, moderate employment effects should not obscure the potentially great value of volunteering for social integration beyond immediate individual returns on the labour market. This book is the first volume of the new series Life Course Research (VS Research) published by VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. It is a pleasure for me to serve as the editor of this series. In this series we will publish empirical studies – in both English and German – which focus on transitions along the life course, and promoting comparative research is a matter of particular concern for us. Given its concept and content, this work by Susanne Strauß is a perfect point of departure for this endeavour. It is an important book for both social scientists and policy makers interested in the links between voluntary work and the labour market. I hope many readers will benefit from it. Steffen Hillmert Preface Many people and institutions have contributed to the finishing of this study. Firstly, I would like to thank the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) at the University of Bremen where I had the opportunity to write my PhD thesis. As a doctoral student I was generously provided with an office, a comfortable IT environment and – most important – a most invigorating intellectual environ- ment of fellow PhD candidates and other researchers with whom I was able to discuss the project at its different stages. I would especially like to thank my two supervisors, Prof. Dr. Johannes Huinink and Prof. Dr. Karin Gottschall with whom I had the pleasure to discuss the project many times. Moreover, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Sonja Drobnič and Prof. Dr. Michael Windzio for their very helpful and encouraging support especially in the later stage of the project. Moreover, I would like to thank my colleagues at the GSSS who played an important role as “unofficial” supervisors and great friends. Kathrin Leuze, who has accompanied the project most closely from its early stages to the final draft, deserves special mention. Furthermore, I would like to thank Andrea Schäfer, Bettina Kohlrausch, Daniela Kroos, Elisabeth Reichert, Regine Köller, Barbara Rinken and Sonja Wrobel for being great colleagues and friends. Secondly, I profited a lot from my scholarship granted by the Hans Böckler Foundation which relieved me from financial worries and allowed me to focus on my PhD project. Of great help was also my stay as a Marie Curie fellow at the Centre for Comparative Research in Social Welfare at the University of Stirling: Namely, the generous support of Dr. Paul Lambert, Dr. Vernon Gayle and Prof. Dr. Jochen Clasen has greatly contributed to my progress with the analysis of the BHPS and British labour market policies. In the past six months I was moreover generously provided with an office at the Institut für empirische und angewandte Soziologie (EMPAS) at the Univer- sity of Bremen, where I was warmly welcomed by all colleagues. This publica- tion was finally enabled by the generous financial help provided by the GSSS and the Volkswagen Foundation, which also made it possible to secure the ser- vices of Daniel Smith, who helped me cope with some of the trickier aspects of the English language. My current employer at the University of Tübingen, Prof. Dr. Steffen Hillmert, deserves special thanks for agreeing to edit my work as the 8 Preface first volume of a series on life course research and supporting me with the final revision of the book. Not least, I would like to thank all my friends, my family and especially my partner Michael Carle for being with me during all the ups and downs during the process of writing the dissertation and reminding me of the world beyond the PhD thesis. Of course, none of the above mentioned persons is in any way re- sponsible for factual errors or interpretations put forward in this study. Susanne Strauß List of contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 17 1.1 Volunteering – a labour market instrument? ........................................ 17 1.2 Comparative approach .......................................................................... 22 1.3 Case selection: Germany and Great Britain as examples ..................... 24 1.4 Time frame of analysis ......................................................................... 27 1.5 Outline of chapters ............................................................................... 28 2 A theoretical approach to the interrelation between unemployment and volunteering .................................................................................................. 31 2.1 Unemployment, volunteering and social exclusion .............................. 32 2.1.1 Social exclusion over the life course ........................................... 33 2.1.2 Individual coping strategies ........................................................ 38 2.2 Volunteering as a job search strategy ................................................... 42 2.2.1 Human capital via volunteering .................................................. 42 2.2.2 Social capital via volunteering .................................................... 46 2.3 Volunteering as an alternative activity ................................................. 50 2.4 The institutionalisation of life courses .................................................. 53 2.4.1 The influence of the welfare state ............................................... 56 2.4.2 The segmentation of the labour market ....................................... 62 2.4.3 Gender and the welfare state ....................................................... 64 2.5 Summary .............................................................................................. 68