Prof. Dr. Juergen Feldhoff                                                           27.5.16   Review of the MA thesis of Udalova Tatyana Sergeevna “Atypical Employment in France and Germany” The paper of Ms Udalova is a theoretically oriented and statistically well based investigation of atypical work in two different employment systems in Europe.  The English presentation is brilliant. This systematic approach of a real national comparison of two cases is the successful product of the own research of the author. The author’s explanations of the main atypical forms of employment are presented in a systematic and detailed version. She bases her overview on literature concerning the labor market in both countries, which is always of actual dates and of high scientific quality (e.g. EWCO). In the introduction and in the following argumentation Ms. Udalova characterizes rightly the functions of atypical employment as a two edged phenomenon. In chapter 2.1 she stresses a cleavage scenario of the different functional attributions of the subject in question, thus arguing for different theoretical approaches for explanation. This could have easily be transformed into a problem-oriented scientific research question and exemplifies the high quality of the whole Master thesis.  Besides enumerating and typifying the broad spectrum of atypical employment  the author also refers in a convincing way to structural components of the occupational fields and segmented labor markets. She rightly refers to the framework of two variants of welfare state, both of the same corporate type, and also to rather different employment systems. Even the child caring systems and the regulation of mini-jobs in both countries are regarded as factors of explanation. Concerning the special case of youth unemployment, she convincingly underlines the importance of the dual organization of apprenticeship as an explanation for the better access of German youth to regular jobs and for less unemployment compared with France.  The summary comes back to the task of comparison. Again the problem-oriented questioning leads to well developed answers. I evaluate the Master thesis as excellent (5). Juergen Feldhoff