European market integration and enlargement: implications for labour migration, wage setting and labour market governance

The central purpose of my visit at CES 2007-8 is to finalize a bundle of interrelated Fafo-projects funded by the RCN by doing further analyses and writing articles and publications for international purposes. The projects are: - Labour migration and en terprise mobility after EU-enlargement: Changes in modes of regulation and company manpower strategies, Strategic institute project 2005-7, funded by the RCN. - Variable Pay, Industrial Relations and Collective Bargaining, which is a comparative project supported by the European Science Foundation while Fafo's part is funded by the RCN. - The revival and transformation of the Nordic models of labour market governance, which is the common theme of several Fafo-projects in which I have recently been inv olved, ranging from issues related to social policy and collective bargaining to corporate governance. In various ways, a central issue in these projects is how the ongoing changes and enlargement of product and labour markets in Europe affect national employment systems and prompt adjustments in the governance and manpower policies of companies, mobility, employment relations, and wage setting. In all the projects the comparative dimension is essential; while the first and the latter focus on the North ern European states and the growing integration across the Baltic Sea respectively, the second compare develop-ments in Austria, UK, Spain and Norway. In varying ways and degrees, the studies do also address the impact of, and actor responses to, European policy developments in the field, relating hence to the broader scientific discourse on the so-called European social model.