Changing Labour Market Regimes and Citizenship Dynamics Central and Southern Europe

The European sovereign debt crisis has forced several European countries to implement structural changes such as labour market reforms in order to improve their competitiveness. Such reforms include revising the minimum wage, introducing salary adjustments, and giving primacy to individual employment contracts over collective agreements. As a result of these changes, unemployment and poor quality employment has been on the rise, while concerns have been expressed concerning the conformity of current reforms with international treaties to which the countries are party. Contrary to policy analysts who are solely interested in capturing the material aspects of labour market reforms, this paper seeks to explore the consequences of current policy change on social citizenship in two countries characterised by different labour market and citizenship regimes namely, Greece and Poland. The findings show that recent reforms have triggered a normative turn in citizenship dynamics to the detriment of its social aspect.