Title: Geographies of Labour Market Inequality
Description: In recent years, the local dimensions of the labour market have attracted increasing attention from academic analysts and public policy-makers alike. There is growing realization that there is no such thing as the national labour market, instead a mosaic of local and regional markets that differ in nature, performance and regulation. Geographies of Labour Market Inequality is concerned with these multiple geographies of employment, unemployment, work and incomes, and their implications for public policy.The Introduction sets out the case for thinking about the labour market in geographical terms, and discusses some of the challenges confronting labour markets in the contemporary period. In Part Two, the focus is on the processes that produce and reproduce inequalitites in employment, unemployment and wages within and between local labour markets: how the varying demand for labour modifies the way the unemployed search for work in different regions; how local concentrations of unemployment arise and interact with the operation of local housing markets to exacerbate social polarisation; how employers reconstruct traditional low wage labour pools to meet new employment needs; how the deregulation of the labour market can increase regional and socio-economic disparities; and how the relationship between households, gender and employment is being reconfigured by the increased flexibility and fluidity of work and work processes.Part Three then explores some of the strategies by which organized labour (unions) and the state are seeking to respond to and ameliorate the uncertainties and inequalities generated by the growing flexibility and fluidity of labour markets: in the case of unions through attempts to protect workers threatened with job loss by promoting employee ownership schemes and the socially useful investment of employee's pension funds; and in the case of the state through a shift to active labour market policies (notably welfare-to-work) and the use of national minimum wages to counter low pay.The contributions testify to the key role that place and locality play in the operation of the labour market at a time when local context is becoming an integral part of the design and implementation of labour market policies.
Subjects: Architecture, Art, Nonfiction, Labor market, Congresses, Regional disparities, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS, Human Resources & Personnel Management