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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on February 20, 2008
European Sociological Review 2008 24(3):299-313; doi:10.1093/esr/jcn003
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
The online version of this article has been published under an open access model. Users are entitled to use, reproduce, disseminate, or display the open access version of this article for non-commercial purposes provided that: the original authorship is properly and fully attributed; the Journal and Oxford University Press are attributed as the original place of publication with the correct citation details given; if an article is subsequently reproduced or disseminated not in its entirety but only in part or as a derivative work this must be clearly indicated. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Is There a New Service Proletariat? Post-industrial Employment Growth and Social Inequality in Spain

Fabrizio Bernardi

Fabrizio Bernardi (to whom correspondence should be addressed), CEACS, Juan March Institute and Department of Sociology II, UNED, Calle Obispo Trejo s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain.

Luis Garrido

Luis Garrido, Department of Sociology II, UNED, Calle Obispo Trejo s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Email: lgarrido{at}poli.uned.es

Correspondence: Email: fbernardi{at}poli.uned.es

In Spain the absolute number of employed persons has increased from about 12,300,000 persons in 1994 to 19,300,000 at the end of 2005. In the same period, the number of immigrants has increased from about 500,000 to more than 4 million. The aim of this paper is to analyse the implications of these changes for social inequality. In particular, we investigate whether a new type of unskilled service class is likely to emerge as a distinct social class. We address this issue by means of three more specific research questions. The first one refers to the pattern of changes in the employment structure by occupational class: has the mentioned employment growth implied an expansion of the swelling service proletariat? The other two questions refer to the issue of demographic class formation: which is the composition of the class structure by gender and country of origin? And, are unskilled service occupations stop-gaps springboards towards better positions, or are they long-term traps? We answer these questions by means of a dynamic analysis of the panel data of the Spanish Labour Force Surveys (SLFS). We study trends over time in the class structure and, then, analyse upward mobility chances and the risk of falling into unemployment from unskilled occupations from year t to year t + 1.

Manuscript received: July 1, 2006.


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