ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to discover how far occupational qualifications can be regarded as transnational or as confined to their national borders, referring to the examples of bricklaying and lorry driving. This is no easy task; each country – England, France, Germany and the Netherlands – deploys different terms for ‘occupation’ and defines these in different ways, as evident in the German case of Beruf or the French métier. In the English language bricklaying is usually referred to as a ‘trade’, whilst ‘occupation’ is a much more general and all-encompassing term for employment ‘in which one is engaged’ (Oxford Dictionary 1980). Here we will seek to develop a transnational understanding and definition of an ‘occupation’ associated with qualifications and distinguished from a ‘trade’ and a ‘job’, also applied as abstractions or simplifications from particular wage and employment relations. A ‘trade’ involves an act of exchange and is thus defined and measured by its output, being historically acquired through work-based apprenticeship rather than via a process of vocational education and training (VET). In contrast, an occupation is recognized through VET qualifications – albeit acquired in part through a process of work-based learning – and represents a definite division of labour in society. Both ‘occupations’ and ‘trades’ in this sense are distinguished from ‘jobs’, which are bound to a single workplace.
