ESCUELAS TEÓRICAS DE LAS RR
2.3 EL SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISMO EN LAS RRII Y SU RELACIÓN CON LAS TRES VARIABLES CLAVES DE LA TESIS: IDENTIDADES,
The progressive expansion and differentiation of higher education, the hierarchy that opposes prestigious universities with good reputations against the second-‐‑tier universities that occupy the lowest tier of ranking are reflected in the labour market, which is describing a progressive economic dual segmentation. It is possible to describe it as a social stratification that has the characteristic of being a ‘bifurcation’, well represented by the syncretism between status-‐‑oriented and client-‐‑oriented university, key university and second-‐‑tier college (see Chapter 1).
The word dualism, which I use in this chapter, was developed in sociology and economics in the late 1960s in America (PIORE, 1979a; 1979b; PIORE,
BERGER, 1980; PIORE, SABEL, 1984). The ‘dual labor market’ theory has been
empirical and descriptive in nature, and ‘has been directed primarily towards the specific policy problem of poverty and underemployment’ (KALLEBERG, SORENSEN, 1979).
If studies on social segmentation ‘historically placed great emphasis on race and sex as factors generating labour market segmentation’ (REICH, GORDON,
EDWARDS, 1973), my attempt is to use this analytical and theoretical analysis
to study the effects of education and its differential effect on the skilled workforce. In particular I am using the term dualism from the studies on segmentation of the labour market by MICHAEL PIORE and SUZANNE BERGER
According to these authors the ‘minimalist notion’ of dualism in the labour market hypothesis recognises a distinction between two sectors:
a primary sector, containing the more attractive and better paying job opportunities, and a secondary sector, whose jobs are generally regarded as inferior and less attractive. The disadvantaged and underprivileged groups – originally black workers, but in later versions ethnic and racial minorities, women and youth – are confined to the secondary sector. (PIORE, BERGER,
1980)
There are two characteristics of this model that I would like to use from Piore. First of all, using the word dualism they stress the autonomy of each sector and the radical discontinuities of the social organisation:
The significance of dualism is not that a society is divided in two autonomous and discontinuous segments, but that a society is divided segmentally and not continuously. (PIORE, BERGER, 1980)
The forms of social differentiation that emerge, recalling some aspects of the Marxist apparatus, are radically distinct from each other and in conflict rather than related by a progressive integration into a seamless social system. The second key feature is the lack of mobility between the two sectors or segments that provide such different employment opportunities. The dual labour market theory states that ‘there is an inability of secondary workers to obtain jobs in the primary labor market over the life course’ (DOERINGER,
PIORE, 1971).
Analysing the market of education I have repeatedly emphasised that the expansion of higher education is characterised by a hierarchy that divides
top and second-‐‑tier institutions, and in particular this distinction is pronounced by ranking. Thus the result is a system that brings out and multiplies, rather than mitigates, the differences between institutions that release a degree. Rather than a progressive integration of the differences in the educational system, this process involves an increasing polarisation between students from top universities, considered providers of education of quality, and second tier universities.
Therefore, considering these observed elements together with what I have analysed in the Chinese labour market, it is possible to describe this latter in turn as a stratified market. Composing its strata in terms of a uni-‐‑ dimensional index of jobs related to earnings, there emerges a labour market that is divided in two main sectors.
The primary sector of the labour market is characterised by an effective, both economic and social, return to education, and this payoff is guaranteed by the high positional level of the university in the hierarchy. It is about the most prestigious universities, the key university or top university with a good reputation.
In the secondary sector there are students and neo-‐‑graduates from the second-‐‑tier university, and in this case there is no return to education, neither economic nor social, that is assured for those who have studied. As the analysis on the ant tribe has shown, neo-‐‑graduates from the second-‐‑tier universities are experiencing increasing unemployment, overqualification, and casualisation. In addition this secondary sector is divided into an upper and lower tier. The upper tier consists of students from college and university, while students with diplomas from vocational schools compose the lower tier.
The members of the first tier of the secondary sector are increasingly moved away from the first sector, and they are pushed toward the second tier of their sector. It is possible to deduce this trend from the finding of Hai Zhong’s analysis (ZHONG, 2011) that I described in paragraph 2.3 of this
Chapter: in fact this author has shown us how the difference in wages between undergraduates of second-‐‑tier universities and vocational schools is narrowing. Moreover, this process is accentuated by the vocational education and training programs (VET) which, by extending to the neo-‐‑ graduates of the low-‐‑tier and college the educational policies of the vocational school, redefine the relationship between skills and the labour market.
This suggests a segmentation of the labour market characterised by little or no mobility between the two sectors and a growing polarisation between them, caused by the tendential moving of the first tier toward the second tier of the same secondary sector.72
If Piore has insisted that mobility between these two segments of the market is severely restricted, this hypothesis is not only assumed by the description that I am showing, rather, in this model of segmentation this characteristic is further accentuated by the progressive bifurcation between the first and second sector.
In a certain sense, this segmentation and polarisation of the labour market reflects a differential distribution of social risk. The duality of the labour market allows us to point out two different logics of ‘risk management’ in the labour market. In fact the university ranking that divides and segments the top and second-‐‑tier university, refers not only to the quality of education and degree,
72 An interesting study on the inter-‐‑sectors and intra-‐‑sectors of labour market overlapping is
but is linked to different kinds of risk management which can be institutional, that is collective, or individual.
While in the primary sector of the labour market, the risks associated with the labour market (i.e. losing one’s job or being unemployed, the risk of being underpaid, small or a total lack of guarantees for the future and one’s career) is entirely managed by the prestigious university institutions, in the secondary sector associated with the second-‐‑tier university, the risk is entirely levied onto the individual.