When legal infrastructures disconnect: The European Union and precarious employment

As precarious employment (such as bogus self-employment, informal work, and casual work) in the European Union (EU) rapidly grows, its regulation slogs. This contribution examines the disconnect through the prism of legal infrastructures, broadly defined as recurrent but dispersed behaviours, actors, objects, and spaces. The analysis zooms in on two key actors and processes, the European legislator, and the European Court of Justice; the rule design and the rule application. First, we map the existing legal instruments, tracing the decision-making process in which the relevant rules are designed. Second, we examine the judicial application of the existing legal instruments, asking why some rules become the object of litigation and judicial interpretation. The contribution is the first part of a larger study unpacking the law-politics interplay in the conceptualization and regulation of precarious employment, including its implications for the selected local communities in Denmark, Slovenia, and Spain.