Labor market or "employment structuring institutions"? Theoretical considerations towards a sociology of employment

Labor market research as a subdiscipline in social sciences developed in critical marking off from pure economic explanations of the processes of qualification, recruitment, gratification as well as horizontal and vertical mobility in employment. By tradition it focusses on salary or dependent work and on standard employment relation. This approach shows now growing limitations for the highly developed countries and it never was adequate for newly industrializing countries. Based on empirical field work on employment trajectories and work concepts of wage laborers and self-employed workers in Mexico, an analytical framework is outlined where the individual employment trajectories are conceptualized as structured by the social institutions of the market, the Firm, the profession and the clan.