From Non-standard employment in Russia to Ideal Number of Children in UAE and Japan
This is a short essay prepared for the IER Newsletter within my research stay at Hitotsubashi University in May- July 2018. I tried to prepare an interesting piece to read for all readers combining personal experience, key socio-economic research questions I study and my reflection on the IER community and research environment.
I am lucky to become sociologist and appeared to be a university professor as I really like my job a lot. But the long way to the first female professor from Russia at the Sociology Department in the UAE University was not that easy. I started my academic career as a student intern at the Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) at HSE with Vladimir Gimpelson and Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, the top labour economists in Russia, as directors and my supervisors in 2002 and after three successful months received a job offer to stay as a junior research fellow. From that time my focus of research became non-standard employment, informal work, temporary contracts and their outcomes for the labour market and demography.
In 2002 Russian labour market was only at the beginning of real wage growth and flexibilization in terms of employment types. There were few amendments done into the very rigid Russian Labour Code allowing longer list of situations when employers could use temporary workers but the protection of the core employees remained very strong. That reduced the number of vacancies created by employers due to high labour costs (see more in Gimpelson et al. 2010, Kapeliushnikov 2001). Growing proportions of Russian labour force was experiencing second jobs, informal work arrangements or temporary contracts. By 2012 up to 10% were employed on temporary basis and about 17% were engaged in informal jobs (the estimations vary according to the data and methodology, see more Karabchuk 2012a, Karabchuk 2012b).
Being a young specialist at CLMS and studding on a PhD program, I was also forced in 2004 to have several jobs to earn more money for my newly established family. Additionally, I worked as a teacher of English Language at a secondary school in Moscow and also as a private English teacher giving private lessons. Thus, non-standard working arrangements as poverty survival strategies became of particular interest for me from personal life experiences. In 2004-2005 I received a small research grant from the World Bank (Moscow office) to study casual work and poverty in Russia.
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