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Working and ageing
50 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

The causes of transitions vary, however. They may be caused by
unemployment, illness, (partial) disability, (semi-)retirement, care leave or
(re)training. In transitional situations II (transitions between unemployment
and employment), IV (transitions between private households and
employment) and V (transitions between employment and retirement), a return
to the core labour market is only possible in most cases with training or
retraining (R). Retraining the unemployed, women wishing to work, and even
in some cases activation of older people or people temporarily unable to work
is an important part of active labour-market policy in European countries.
Transitional situation III (transitions between employment and education) also
describes continuing vocational training of employees as well as training in
connection with, for example, educational leave, parental leave or job-
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rotation ( ).
Positional changes are not just flows between situations; they are also
determined by permanent societal structures and institutions. The combination
of flows and societal situations, moreover, defines the transitional labour
market concept not only as an analytical research concept, but also as a
starting point for passive and active labour-market policies. Thus, this
ʻheuristicʼ scheme of transitional labour markets additionally implies the
institutional prerequisites to implementing policies, which aim to further smooth
and steady transitions. It also shows the institutional settings and
arrangements for possible interventions: for example, training interventions
by the State, collective agreements regulations, ageing policy, etc.
The concept also describes different stages in the lifetime of individuals in
a society. It further implies the individualʼs choice on how to cope with the
different stages, as well as societal regulation/arrangements (by law, social
policy measures, etc.) of these institutions. One central question raised is the
form of political strategies to be used in different transitional stages to support
these transitions. This is the institutional setting of ʻtransitional bridgesʼ
between work and non-work (Schmid, 2006; Schmid et al., 1996).
One core assumption of the concept is that the labour market works better
if individuals are able to cope with transitions in and out of work, which occur

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( ) There are two forms of job-rotation:
(a) internal form of work organisation in which individual employees exchange jobs with one another
at regular intervals to improve their versatility or relieve monotony of the work;
(b) a scheme for temporary replacement of existing employees during sabbatical, parental and
training leave by unemployed persons. This form is especially well-known in Denmark and
meant in this context.