https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:47:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/ethnographies-of-austerity-temporality-crisis-and-affect-in-southern-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:42 +0000 http://arc.local/items/ethnographies-of-austerity-temporality-crisis-and-affect-in-southern-europe/ https://toarcheio.org/items/antinomies-of-flexibilization-and-atypical-employment-in-mediterranean-europe-greek-italian-and-spanish-regions-during-the-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:41 +0000 http://arc.local/items/antinomies-of-flexibilization-and-atypical-employment-in-mediterranean-europe-greek-italian-and-spanish-regions-during-the-crisis/ Continued]]> Until recently, Mediterranean countries were called on by European Union officials to provide for a “less-rigid” regulatory framework, in order to enhance “flexicurity”. This paper critically examines post-2008 flexibilization trends by focusing on Spanish, Italian and Greek regions. Starting from a contextualization of atypical employment and security, it then moves in a twofold direction; firstly, it presents the Flexible Contractual Arrangements and Active Labour Market Policies composite indicators, calculated for the NUTS-II regions of 12 member states for 2008 and 2011. These indicators reveal the changing ranking, especially of the Greek regions, towards higher labour market flexibility and relatively low levels of employability security; secondly, it focuses on the changing forms of atypical labour in the six regions that host the capital and the most important port city of Greece, Italy and Spain, respectively, by offering data on the expansion of flexible arrangements therein. The uneven flexibilization trends found in the study regions are seen as an outcome of the interaction between the general devaluation trends, different backgrounds and regionally specific patterns of labour market adjustment, while employment is found to be neither “rigid” nor “flexicure”. The paper concludes with some remarks on the relation between post-2008 dismantling of local labour regimes, restructuring and flexicurity.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crisis-and-education-in-southern-europe-the-effects-of-austerity-and-ideology/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:39 +0000 http://arc.local/items/crisis-and-education-in-southern-europe-the-effects-of-austerity-and-ideology/ Continued]]> Since the mid-1970s, the countries of Southern Europe have been approaching European education patterns. This result can be observed in the positive dynamics and convergence with the rest of Europe. However, despite these visible results, the convergence was more evident up until the outbreak of the crisis, where the overall economic and political conditions also brought changes in policymaking in education to the Southern European countries, both in terms of policy priorities and educational outcomes. Therefore, while economic hardship and austere programs are a common trait in recent years, the changes cannot be directly or simply attributed to economic or financial constraints; these changes are mainly due to different political options endorsed by the governments of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. The main empirical sources are the Eurostat and the OECD. Other empirical material relates to national reports produced in the framework of an international project: ECSE International Report, Educational Challenges in Southern Europe. Equity and efficiency in a time of crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-distributional-impact-of-austerity-and-the-recession-in-southern-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:28 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-distributional-impact-of-austerity-and-the-recession-in-southern-europe/ Continued]]> Southern European welfare states are under stress. On the one hand, the recession has been causing unemployment to rise and incomes to fall. On the other hand, austerity has affected the capacity of welfare states to protect those affected. This paper assesses the distributional implications of the crisis in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal from 2009 to 2013. Using a microsimulation model, we disentangle the first-order effects of tax–benefit policies from the broader effects of the crisis, and estimate how its burden has been shared across income groups. We conclude by discussing the methodological pitfalls and policy implications of our research.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-crisis-and-its-discourses-quasi-orientalist-attacks-on-mediterranean-urban-spontaneity-informality-and-joie-de-vivre/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:27 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-crisis-and-its-discourses-quasi-orientalist-attacks-on-mediterranean-urban-spontaneity-informality-and-joie-de-vivre/ Continued]]> Mediterranean cities have always followed a path of urban development that diverges significantly from Anglo-American models. Spontaneity and informality have been deeply embedded in the cities’ roots since Gramsci’s time, but they have been transformed recently, together with urban development dynamics. A major rupture is observed in Southern Europe at the turn of the 21st century and especially the 2010s, when the region has been beaten by the force of the major global financial restructuring labelled the crisis, centralization/privatization and accumulation by dispossession. In anti-austerity social movements, popular spontaneity emerges as the par excellence force undermining neo-liberal hegemony and bringing to the surface niches of creativity of the urban grassroots, with the help of ICT (information and communications technology) dissemination. Focusing on Athens and two instances of massive mobilization in 2011 and 2013, we explore whether spontaneity and informality stamping urban development will manage to seep through structural readjustments, and how they will shape the future character of this and other Mediterranean cities during, but most importantly after, the crisis. Among alternative futures we discuss the darker one of quasi-Orientalist discourses by the European Union power elites, which undermine popular creativity and joie de vivre of the Southern grassroots and create urban dystopias; and the most optimistic one, which will be shaped by the emancipation of the currently vulnerable social movements and the emergent cooperative and solidarity economy, in a future eutopia.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/of-steel-and-strawberries-greek-workers-struggle-against-informal-and-flexible-working-arrangements-during-the-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:25 +0000 http://arc.local/items/of-steel-and-strawberries-greek-workers-struggle-against-informal-and-flexible-working-arrangements-during-the-crisis/ Continued]]> This paper studies workers’ resistance to the spread of informal and flexible employment patterns in Greece during the ongoing economic crisis. It focuses upon the spatial aspects of two strikes, the first by immigrant agricultural workers employed in the strawberry fields of Nea Manolada, in the Peloponnesus region, and the second by steelworkers employed at the Hellenic Steelworks SA in Aspropyrgos, in the Attica region. The paper analyses workers’ agency in both these cases, viewing it as a relational phenomenon strongly determined by the economic specificities of the sector to which workers’ employers belonged, by the workers’ ability (or not) to develop trans-local networks of solidarity and by the timing of the two struggles. We view the paper as a contribution to the growing body of Labour Geography research in two ways: (i) it speaks to how to theorise worker agency in a more nuanced manner; and (ii) it argues that, rather than viewing workers as simply social actors who are caught up in labour markets that are assumed to be structured by the actions of capital and the state (as per much economic theory), workers can actually play important roles in shaping how labour markets function and in resisting the tendency for precarious employment relations to spread across them.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/familistic-welfare-capitalism-in-crisis-social-reproduction-and-anti-social-policy-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:21 +0000 http://arc.local/items/familistic-welfare-capitalism-in-crisis-social-reproduction-and-anti-social-policy-in-greece/ Continued]]> Familistic welfare capitalism is a model of national political economy prevalent in many regions in the world (Southern Europe, Latin America, and Asia), where the family plays a double role as the key provider of welfare and a key agent in the model’s socio-economic and political reproduction. The article offers a new approach to the study this model by adopting an expanded concept of social reproduction to capture its historical evolution, using Greece as a case study. Our empirical analysis of austerity measures on employment and pensions demonstrates, how, in the Greek case, a crisis of social reproduction of the traditional form of familistic welfare capitalism was already underway prior to the well-known sovereign-debt crisis. And further we show how the adoption of austerity measures and pro-market reforms is deepening this crisis by severely undermining the key pillars of familial welfare security while rapidly transforming the model into a political economy of generalised insecurity.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/economic-crisis-and-migrants-employment-a-view-from-greece-in-comparative-perspective/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:20 +0000 http://arc.local/items/economic-crisis-and-migrants-employment-a-view-from-greece-in-comparative-perspective/ Continued]]> This paper explains and evaluates the effects of the developing crisis on the mobility of third-country nationals in Greece and other South European political economies. In doing so it explores the mobility of these migrants within the context of the informal economic activity in which many such migrants have been involved. The paper exposes the distance separating the law and the actual enforcement of fundamental employment- and mobility-related rights of irregular migrants in Greece and other southern European countries. It identifies the significance of the familistic welfare regime of the European South in framing migrants’ characteristics and their consequent mobility in the region. The article argues that the familistic welfare regime of the host country is inextricably linked to migrants’ employment trajectories and fundamentally affects the strategies that migrants have developed in order to protect themselves in lieu of effective rights regulation.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/electoral-epidemic-the-political-cost-of-economic-crisis-in-southern-europe-2010-11/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:12 +0000 http://arc.local/items/electoral-epidemic-the-political-cost-of-economic-crisis-in-southern-europe-2010-11/ Continued]]> This article introduces a collection of essays on the elections of 2010–11 in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot community. It examines the impact of the European sovereign debt crisis on electoral trends in the era of the Greek and Portuguese bailouts. After briefly examining the crisis economies, it investigates patterns of abstention, incumbent punishment and opposition success, including the rise of regional, anti-party, far-right and racist parties. The article concludes, following Krastev (Journal of Democracy, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 39–53), that the crisis is creating ‘democracy without choices’ in Southern Europe with potentially destabilising consequences throughout the region.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-return-of-the-greek-patient-greece-and-the-2008-global-financial-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:07 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-return-of-the-greek-patient-greece-and-the-2008-global-financial-crisis/ Continued]]> The 2008 financial crisis found the Greek economy in a position of fiscal vulnerability, given the large public debt, and structural weaknesses, demonstrated in a huge current account deficit. The banking system was relatively robust, but exposed to imported risks from the emerging Southeast European markets. The government adopted a ‘financial crisis reaction plan’. Its reaction affirmed long-lasting features of Greece’s ‘credit-based’, partly state-controlled financial system. Sectors most visibly affected by the crisis are housing construction, tourism, shipping and the small–medium enterprise sector. Paradoxically, some facets of relative underdevelopment of the Greek model of capitalism are serving to mitigate the intensity of the crisis.

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