Internships: A policy and regulatory challenge

Abstract

The purpose of this book is to bring together experts from around the world in labour law, employment relations and labour economics to explain what we know about the use and value of internships (or traineeships as they are sometimes called), and to discuss how they are or should be regulated. This introduction offers some preliminary explanations for the growth of internships, and highlights some of the ways in which both scholars and policy makers have sought to analyse and respond to that development. It explains how the rest of the book is structured and briefly summarises the contributions in it. The introduction concludes by saying something about the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had so far on internships and what it might mean for their use in the future.