This paper reports on two research projects, one of them completed some time ago, theother ongoing. The first project was funded by the New York based Russell SageFoundation and involved a comparative study of low pay in the five European countries – theUK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. This was subsequently extended in acomparative study of these countries and the US. Books on the individual Europeancountries were published in 2008 (Bosch & Weinkopf, Caroli & Gautie, Lloyd et al., Salverdaet al. and Westergaard-Nielsen, all 2008) and the comparison with the US (Gautie & Schmitt,2009) in 2009. The second project is one on labour market segmentation currently beingconducted within SKOPE.