Legal Perspectives on Balancing Life and Work in the 21st Century

Working life is undergoing its most profound transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Globalization, demographic shifts, and digitalization have already reshaped the world of work—and continue to challenge traditional models. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this shift, pushing work further into digital and flexible formats. This convergence of trends presents a critical challenge for Norway and other European welfare states: How to ensure safe, healthy, and inclusive work environments that support work–life balance across all life stages? Labour law and social security law may play a key role in this.

Even before the pandemic, work–life balance was a priority for policymakers, reflected in the EU’s European Pillar of Social Rights and the 2019 Work-life Balance Directive. Yet, legal frameworks lag behind the rapid shift of work into the private sphere. National laws must evolve to meet the demands of a more flexible, digital, and ageing workforce. Remote work, for instance, remains largely unregulated.

Two key tools in promoting work–life balance and addressing inequality are: (a) flexible working arrangements and (b) access to paid leave. Equally important is ensuring protection against discrimination for those who use these tools. It has become crucial to shed light on what role tripartism and corporate social responsibility hold in achieving work–life balance. 
For this thematic issue, we encourage interested authors to submit proposals on relevant issues surrounding flexible work arrangements—particularly employees’ autonomy over working time (e.g. right to disconnect) and location (e.g., home office, remote work, workation), and how flexible work arrangements are regulated under labour law. On this front, both country-specific analyses and cross-border perspectives are welcome. Within the EU context, special attention should be given to the implementation of the Work–Life Balance Directive and the Working Time Directive.

Another important thematic area concerns leave entitlements, such as maternity, paternity, and parental leave, as well as carers’ leave and annual leave. Here, the interaction between labour law and social security law is of particular interest.

Finally, a perspective grounded in anti-discrimination law is also relevant—specifically, whether employees are adequately protected against discrimination when exercising rights to flexible work, paternity leave, or carers’ leave.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

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