https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Continued]]> The article offers a fresh, empirically grounded look at the spatialities of crisis triggered employment forms––a largely overlooked issue in contemporary critical geography literature. Specifically, it discusses the interconnection between investment flows from manufacturing to the built environment (capital switching) and underemployment in urban metropolitan regions to substantiate its impact on emerging spatial fixities. The article, which is based on an empirical analysis informed by a radical political economy, investigates changing fixed capital formations in Greece over an extended period prior to and during the recession, from 1995 to 2012. It traces the evolution of part-time waged work in the capital metropolitan region of Attica (Athens) vis-à-vis the rest of the country’s regional labour markets, focusing on the polarized 2005–2012 period and the demise of the construction industry. The article highlights that ‘disrupted’ capital switching that occurred in Greece, closely associated with recalibrated sectoral priorities and institutional interventions, resulted in the uneven sprawling of underemployment. Our findings offer insight into how the dismantling of spatial fixes within core metropolitan regions of the southern European Union (and beyond) are connected to labour surplus and successive slumps in manufacturing and construction. The article closes by calling for new theorizations of contemporary urban regional unevenness and its spatiotemporal fixities, which account for the role of changes in labour turnover time.

]]> 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/the-diverse-regional-patterns-of-atypical-employment-in-greece-production-restructuring-re-deregulation-and-flexicurity-under-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:33 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-diverse-regional-patterns-of-atypical-employment-in-greece-production-restructuring-re-deregulation-and-flexicurity-under-crisis/ Continued]]> Because the 2008/2009 crisis brought changes to global accumulation patterns and prompted further work flexibilization, European labor markets are accordingly being re/deregulated as a result of ‘flexicurity’ and are thus moving toward greater employment liberalization. Historically, atypical employment has been extensive in the Greek labor market, which has been characterized by fragmented labor security provisions and weak social welfare. However, since the country’s crisis-ensuing economic downfall, IMF/EU-induced measures have intensified reforms for ‘less rigidity and more employability’. This paper addresses the diverse pre- and post-crisis regional patterns of atypical employment in Greece, with a focus on temporary waged employment. Diversity is traced in regional industrial specialization and restructuring under recession. The industry- and region-specific impact on labor flexibilization trajectories is estimated by a new shift-share analysis method applied to permanent and temporary regional employment data between 2005 and 2011. The identified ongoing devaluation of employment is also addressed from an institutional aspect, centered on flexicurity-responding labor relations reforms. The geography of employment in Greece is becoming more uneven at the regional level as a result of ‘low-road’ flexibilization, considerable labor-market insecurity and different patterns of atypical labor use among different groups of regions. The emerging situation puts in question the validity of labor market liberalization and flexicurity policy.

]]> 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.

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