ABSTRACT This paper deals with the recruitment strategies of employers in the low-skilled segment of the labour market. We focus on low-skilled workers because they are overrepresented among jobless people and constitute the bulk of the clientele included in various activation and labour market programmes. A better understanding of the constraints and opportunities of interventions in this labour market segment may help improve their quality and effectiveness. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 41 employers in six European countries, we find that the traditional signals known to be used as statistical discrimination devices (old age, immigrant status and unemployment) play a somewhat reduced role, since these profiles are overrepresented among applicants for low skill positions. However, we find that other signals, mostly considered to be indicators of motivation, have a bigger impact in the selection process. These tend to concern the channel through which the contact with a prospective candidate is made. Unsolicited applications and recommendations from already employed workers emit a positive signal, whereas the fact of being referred by the public employment office is associated with the likelihood of lower motivation.

ABSTRACT This article investigates socio-structural cleavages in relation to social policies in Switzerland. It examines the extent to which vertical stratification, age and gender explain variation in individual social policy preferences. We use survey data on reported voting behaviour in 22 direct democratic referendums on distributional issues between 1981 and 2004. Our two main findings are the following: (1) age seems to be the most relevant line of conflict in most distributional issues and (2) vertical stratification (income and education) and gender are less important in explaining individual voting decisions. Our data also suggest that material interests based on socio-structural characteristics account for only part of the variation in social policy preferences, and that value cleavages are also important.

Studies of public attitudes to the welfare state have generally failed to uncover consistent and clear country variations in relation to patterns of support for different social programmes. This finding contrasts with the important degree of cross-national variation that exists with regard to the institutional structure of welfare states. This article argues that in order to capture the extent of cross-national variation in public attitudes to social protection, the focus needs to be expanded to forms of protection other than income transfer programmes, to encompass labour law and collective bargaining. The article presents survey data that show cross-national variation in relation to these alternative forms of social protection to be significant, and suggests that such variation can be explained with reference to the political economy traditions that are typical of the different countries covered.