When considering European societies in comparative perspective, it is interesting to speculate as to what are the most salient social institutions, values and structures for explaining particular social formations. Whilst the role of the welfare state in different European countries has been fairly well documented, sociologists might ask: how does the welfare state relate to the organisation of family and intimate relationships, to social stratification or to patterns of employment? How are these things related to the general cohesion and social sustainability of the society?
In this issue we have a particular focus on Finland with three articles that address social and economic changes in Finland. Finland can be seen as a particularly good example of the European social model, with high rates of female employment and extensive state support for people at different stages of the life course. Along with other Nordic countries, there has been a tradition of family formation in which young people enjoy considerable independence, with high rates of non-marital forms of intimate relationship (cohabitation, etc.), but also high rates of fertility compared with other European countries. Finland has been hit hard by unemployment and other effects of contact with the global economy, however, during the last decades and one response was early exit from the labour market. Helka Hytti argues that the Finnish social model has survived these problems, whilst Eriikka Oinonen argues that it is not family or welfare institutions that are important so much as the economic security of young people in determining family formation and fertility. Carmen Klement and Brigitte Rudolph find that the shift towards a modernised version of the ‘adult worker model’ that we find in Finland has enabled women to become independent of intimate relationships, which is not the case in Germany. Hence we can consider Finland as a case study, comparing it along various dimensions with other European societies and looking at the relative impact of the factors that we have outlined above. The case study of Finland, provided quite independently by different authors, enables to address some of the questions raised above.
The two remaining papers in this volume compare Britain and Germany using Household Panel and life course data. These two countries provide contrasting approaches to welfare, education, training and labour market regulation and have different traditions of stratification by gender and class. Johannes Giesecke and Martin Groß compare the impact of temporary work on social inequality, whilst Frances McGinnity looks at the effect of unemployment in early working life upon class inequality. Once again it is the interaction of policies, patterns of work and labour market institutions that have an effect on the overall social patterns and outcomes.