Mason, L. 2019. On working and being: The legal metaphysics of labour and the constitutional errors of Social Europe. in: Toracca, T and Condello, A (ed.) Law, Labour and the Humanities: Contemporary European Perspectives London Routledge.
| Chapter title | On working and being: The legal metaphysics of labour and the constitutional errors of Social Europe |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mason, L. |
| Editors | Toracca, T and Condello, A |
| Abstract | This Chapter outlines the legal contradictions in the European ‘project’ with regard to work. In particular, it points to grave tensions between, on the one hand, the ‘existential’ social aspirations of the European Union, which place work at their centre, and, on the other hand, the ‘metaphysical’ realities of a legal framework which has singularly failed to constitute the very working relationships upon which the much vaunted ‘Social Europe’ is predicated. By constructing this ontological account of the role of law in constituting all social and economic identity and exchange, this Chapter argues that the legal and constitutional theory which formed the basis of the ‘economic’ phase of European integration has not been followed during the ‘social’ phase of integration which has followed. In this manner, the ‘social’ within Europe has been relegated to an inferior status, precisely due to the failure to construct the working relationships which this social vision is based upon. While the idea that the ‘social’ gives way to the ‘economic’ is one which emerges from much writing on the European Union and international economic integration more generally, this Chapter breaks with that vast, cacophonous body of literature to argue that it is precisely the efforts to rectify this ‘social deficit’ which cement this failure. The emergent ‘social’ acquis of European Union law at constitutional level has often come to adopt the ‘existential’ trappings of constitutional language, by expressing the identity of its polity through its values and social aims. However, in so doing, it has failed to capture the ontological essence of constitutionalism, whereby social or economic actors are literally constituted by the law. It is this ontological role of the law which allows us to talk of the European Union as a genuinely constitutional project, at least in the economic sphere. As the social values of the Union largely rest on an economic framework premised on stable working relationships, the failure of the constitutional settlement to ensure such relationships has the effect of negating the ontological status of the work in the European social model. |
| Keywords | EU Social Policy; Social Constitution; Employment relationships; Social Pillar |
| Book title | Law, Labour and the Humanities: Contemporary European Perspectives |
| Year | 2019 |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 30 Oct 2019 |
| Place of publication | London |
| ISBN | 0367077175 |
| 9780367077174 |