In what terms and at what cost resilient? ‘Unregulated flexibilization’ in regional ‘troubled waters’

ABSTRACT

This paper sheds light on the debate on regional resilience to crisis in Greece, a country long suffering from insufficient planning mechanisms and recently hit by a severe economic crisis. In the paper, we discuss the spatialities of employment flexibilization vis-à-vis the devaluation of regional productive structures between 2005 and 2016. The paper critically builds on previous accounts of regional resilience, but also seeks to develop the concept through engaging in: (i) how different employment patterns, namely part-time work, present a powerful adaptive mechanism that is related to path-dependent regional production profiles; and (ii) why regions with less favourable pre-crisis production structures and anaemic growth seem to have been less affected by recession and may witness a faster recovery in its aftermath. The paper adopts a multi-layered methodology, using a variety of measures, offering an empirically grounded theorization of contemporary labour market changes within the Southern EU. The results indicate some key reasons for radically reformulating established regulatory and planning practices in order to promote a pattern of resilience that is more friendly to good and well-paid jobs. A prerequisite for the latter is the promotion of territorially cohesive strategies that reduce regional disparities and harness ‘unregulated flexibilization’.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• regional labour markets
• shift-share analysis
• part-time work
• Greece
• Southern EU
• unregulated flexibilization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 It should be noted that the three periods under study are identified in this paper as periods of expansion, resistance and recoverability of regional employment figures, but not of regional GDP figures. For example, between 2013 and 2016 Greece witnessed a ‘weak recovery’ as total national employment increased by an encouraging +4.4% for the first time since 2008. Yet, GDP change for that same period is almost 0%. Considering that annual GDP falls recorded before 2013 were devastating, and taking into account that the persistent structural problems of the Greek economy and the long run pledge to high primary surplus hamper any strong recovery, the positive change of employment recorded between 2013 and 2016 signifies a sufficient indication of the end of recession. That being said, we choose to name 2013–2016 a ‘weak recovery’ period despite of the not promising GDP trends (OECD, 2019).

2 Sector 1 is agricultural production (two-digit NACE codes: 01–03); sectors 2–3 represent Industry except construction (05–39) and construction (41–43), respectively; sectors 4–6 represent commerce, transportation and communication (45–53, 58–63), hotel, food, catering and financial (55–56) and, professional and ‘knowledge economy’ (64–82) activities, respectively; and finally sectors 7 and 8 include public services, health and education (84–88) and leisure, arts and all other activities (94–99, 00) (see Table 5).

3 Island regions successfully adjusted to the new labour market environment by increasing part-time employment in ‘Hotel, food and catering’, at a higher degree than total economy did. For example, the increase in part-time employment in that sector was 122.0% for South Aegean, 67.0% for North Aegean and 602.3% in the Ionian Islands. This also the case with other relevant sectors such as ‘Commerce, transportation and communications’ in which almost all island regions exhibit higher than the national increments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by EEA and Norway Grants.