European economic restructuring: demographic responses and feedbacks.

The relationship between economic restructuring in Europe and various aspects of demographic change, such as demographic aging and fertility decline, is examined. The focus is on changes in the labor market. "Changing employment conditions--the growth of the secondary labour market, the flexibilization of labour demand and increasingly also of supply, growing female labour force participation rates, generally high ethnic minority unemployment--reflect different aspects of the transition from the Fordist to the postFordist regime as well as changing demographic and life-style influences. Together they have deeply transformed the European landscape of employment and unemployment. The specific role of international migration is also analysed and it is seen to have fundamentally altered between the Fordist and postFordist eras. Less clear to interpret are changing internal migration patterns: has counterurbanization stopped in response to restructuring and integration and is a new postFordist population map unfolding? The paper concludes by evaluating the nature of the relationship between economic restructuring and population trends and identifying pointers for future research." excerpt