INSPIRES · Innovative Social and Employment Policies for Inclusive and Resilient Labour Markets in Europe

The INSPIRES project aims to contribute to resilient and inclusive labour markets in Europe. It comparatively assesses the resilience and inclusiveness of labour markets in European countries, it identifies innovative policies that have contributed to resilience and inclusiveness and it analyzes strategies of policy learning that facilitate the development and transfer of these innovations within and across European nation states. In order to do so, it analyzes in-depth the evolution of labour markets policies, employment policies and social policies. Moreover, it qualitatively and quantitatively assesses the labour market position of vulnerable groups from 2000 onwards. INSPIRES covers eleven countries from all European welfare traditions: Mediterranean, Eastern-European, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and the continental regimes. The consortium consists of a multidisciplinary team of leading European scholars that focus on the labour market, employment issues and social policies.The INSPIRES project aims to accumulate practice-oriented knowledge on the factors that positively and negatively affect resilience and inclusiveness. It seeks to explain differences within and between countries, and within and between the labour market positions of different vulnerable groups on the labour market. INSPIRES intends to isolate the impact of national policies from the structural demographic, social and economic characteristics on labour market resilience. Building upon this analysis, it tries to identify processes of policy learning and innovation that occur in the interactions between policy makers, politicians, non-profit organizations, trade unions, business associations and other stakeholders at the European, national and regional level. The outcomes of INSPIRES contribute to facilitating policy learning and innovation processes across territorial and sectoral boundaries and to the creation of inclusive and resilient labour markets in European countries.