Organisations of land managers in landscape management face the challenge of combining the need to foster bonding social capital within their member groups with the need to develop bridging social capital with other stakeholders and linking social capital with public authorities. This paper compares the concepts of self-governing groups, boundary organisations and quangos, to analyse how agri-environmental collectives in the Netherlands navigate their identity in interactions with public authorities and manage potential trade-offs between different forms of social capital. It shows the paradoxical situation that these self-governing collectives have to adopt characteristics of public agencies, in order to meet the demands of the Dutch government and EU legislation, required to gain the trust of the authorities for more room for self-governance. The resulting ‘professionalization’ and enlargement of agri-environmental collectives is likely to reduce bonding social capital, which in turn is an important asset for effective landscape management. In order to prevent this counterproductive incentive of expecting self-governing groups to behave like public agencies, we recommend to nourish and protect the in-between identity of agri-environmental collectives, to acknowledge their variety, and to allow them to be self-governing groups as well as boundary organisations.
MULTIFILE
This paper addresses one important mechanism through which the EU tries to improve the operation of its labour markets: the opening up of national borders for free worker movement within the EU. Free worker movement is a fundamental EU right; but EU enlargement begged the question of how and when to allow complete free movement to workers from those new Member States. The EU agreed upon a transitional period of up to 7 years after accession of eight new Middle and Eastern European States (EU-8) on May 1st, 2004. Duringthis transitional period Member States may apply certain restrictions on the free movement of workers from, to and between these new Member States. By 2012, all such restrictions will have been abolished. A similar procedure applies regarding the accession of two additional new Member States on January 1st, 2007. Only three of the fifteen incumbent EU Member States at the time (EU-15) chose to immediately allow free movement from workers from the EU-8. The other twelve maintained their work permit systems, albeit with some modifications. Since, some (e.g. Germany) have already decided to keep such barriers in place until 2012. The Netherlands has kept a work permit system in place up to May 1st, 2007. At that time it abolished that system and effectively extended free worker movement to include workers from the EU-8. This makes the Dutch case, at this point in time, an interesting case for which to analyse the process and effects of increased free labour movement into a national labourmarket. This paper discusses the evolution of (temporary) work migration from EU-8 countries into the Netherlands. It first addresses the flexicurity nature of EU policies towards labour market integration and towards the inclusion of new EU countries in that process. It subsequentely reviews the three socio-legal regimes that can currently apply to work performed for Dutch firms Netherlands by workers from the EU-8 (which, now, is that same as that applies for workers from the EU-15): wage employment; employment through temporary employment agencies; and self-employment. It then discusses the development of the volume of work performed by citizens from the EU-8 in the Netherlands, and socio-economic effects for both the migrant workers and Dutch society and economy. It concludes with a discussion of challenges (or the lack thereof) that this increased free movement of foreign labour caused and causes for Dutch institutions.
