Widening double dualisation? Labour market inequalities and national social policy responses in Western Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Europe is witnessing a 'double dualisation' process, whereby inequalities have increased both between labour market insiders and outsiders, and between core and peripheral countries. We test the double dualisation hypothesis in the context of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Did the COVID crisis exacerbate income inequalities between insiders and outsiders? Did cross-country territorial divides also increase? Did national governments' emergency measures contribute to containing or widening double dualisation? We deploy a multi-method research design that combines original survey data on seven old EU member states with three case studies on Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Results show that, in the short term, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst of double dualisation: outsiders bore the greatest burden, especially in southern European countries. National emergency measures largely depended on the fiscal leeway available to governments and followed pre-existing welfare trajectories, thus worsening cross-country inequalities, with potentially severe consequences for the European integration process.

Closer in hard times? The drivers of European solidarity in ‘normal' and ‘crisis' times

This article examines the trends and differences in predictors of public support for European Union (EU) fiscal solidarity using two individual surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020, before and during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, in six Western European countries. We focus on individual self-interest and European/national identification as the two major determinants of public preference formation. Empirical analyses show that, while the average level of public support for European fiscal solidarity did not change from 2019 to 2020, the negative associations between exclusive national identification and economic vulnerability, on the one hand, and EU fiscal solidarity on the other were weakened. Among both, the identitarian source retained substantive (although reduced) relevance in 2020, while utility did not. Country-level analyses reveal a more complex picture, but the overall pattern holds across the member states included in our sample. We argue that the reduced explanatory power of these typical heuristics that individuals use to shape their attitudes towards European solidarity is connected to the nature of the pandemic as an exogenous ‘common crisis', affecting all member states in a supposedly symmetric manner, at least in the first phase, and inducing interdependencies among them. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41295-023-00332-w.

Widening double dualisation? Labour market inequalities and national social policy responses in Western Europe during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Europe is witnessing a ‘double dualisation’ process, whereby inequalities have increased both between labour market insiders and outsiders, and between core and peripheral countries. We test the double dualisation hypothesis in the context of the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Did the COVID crisis exacerbate income inequalities between insiders and outsiders? Did cross‐country territorial divides also increase? Did national governments' emergency measures contribute to containing or widening double dualisation? We deploy a multi‐method research design that combines original survey data on seven old EU member states with three case studies on Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Results show that, in the short term, the COVID‐19 pandemic has been a catalyst of double dualisation: outsiders bore the greatest burden, especially in southern European countries. National emergency measures largely depended on the fiscal leeway available to governments and followed pre‐existing welfare trajectories, thus worsening cross‐country inequalities, with potentially severe consequences for the European integration process.