Precarious employment and mental health in the Belgian service voucher system: the role of working conditions and perceived financial strain.

Introduction: Jobs in domestic cleaning are often conceived as 'precarious employment' (PE)-i.e. a multidimensional concept referring to accumulated adverse characteristics of employment due to workers' weak bargaining position.

Resisting austerity measures to social policies: multiple explanatory case studies.

Since Margaret Thatcher reached power in the United Kingdom, European governments have increasingly turned to neoliberal forms of policy-making, focusing, especially after the 2008 Great Recession on 'austerity policies' rather than investing in social protection policies. We applied a multiple explanatory case studies methodology to examine how and why challenges and resistance to these austerity measures are successful or not in four settings for three different social policy issues: using a gender lens in state budgeting in Andalusia (Spain), maintaining unemployment benefits in Italy and cuts to fuel poverty reduction programs in Northern Ireland and England. In particular, we intended to learn about whether resistance strategies are shared across disparate cases or whether there are unique activities that lead to successful resistance to austerity policies.

The mental health of unemployed Brussels youth: the role of social and material resources.

Background: In the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession, youth unemployment rates in the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) increased. The aim of this study is firstly to investigate the evolution of the mental health gap between employed and unemployed youth and secondly to examine the association of material and social resources with mental health of youth entering the labour market in the BCR.

Methods: Two data sources are used to answer the research questions: the Belgian Health Interview Survey (HIS) data (1997 to 2013; 18- to 29-year-olds;  = 5,562), and the authors' own primary data collection among Brussels youth in the transition from education to employment (2015; 18- to 29-year-olds;  = 1,151; BCR-sample).

The Quality of Work in the Belgian Service Voucher System.

Several European countries implemented initiatives to boost the growth of the domestic cleaning sector. Few studies investigated the quality of work in these initiatives, although effects on workers' health and on social health inequalities can be expected. This study contributes to the scant research on this subject, by investigating the quality of work in the Belgian service voucher system - a subsidized system for domestic work.