https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 15:09:06 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 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-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/athens-in-the-mediterranean-movement-of-the-piazzas-spontaneity-in-material-and-virtual-public-spaces/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:14 +0000 http://arc.local/items/athens-in-the-mediterranean-movement-of-the-piazzas-spontaneity-in-material-and-virtual-public-spaces/ Continued]]> Mediterranean cities are carrying Gramsci’s concept of spontaneity into the 21st century through massive social movements after the ‘Arab Spring’. This paper explores the ways in which the material and virtual cityscape interact with socio-political transformation during the ‘movement of the piazzas’ in Athens, Greece. After a discussion of the importance of urban informality, porosity and land-use mixtures for social cohesion, of creeping ghettoization in some enclaves and of the perils of urbicide, we proceed to an analysis of grassroots action in Athens in comparison with different cities of the Mediterranean and beyond. Social movements are placed in their respective local and global context—their recurrent material landscapes and their cosmopolitan virtual spaces of digital interaction. This analysis leads to reflections on the possible role of popular spontaneity in democratization and in European integration at the grassroots level, against the onslaught of neoliberalism and accumulation by dispossession.

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