European Urban and Regional Studies

Southern European countries such as Spain, Greece and Italy have recently been the primary final destination of immigrants trying to reach Europe. For this reason these countries are becoming interesting cases for a comparison of the processes of settlement, integration and conflict experienced by immigrants. Even though a comprehensive comparative analysis among European states is not entirely feasible, we can already notice certain characteristics of immigrant settlements as well as the trajectories of their social and geographic mobility. This article is mostly centred on the Italian context and discusses three themes: recent immigration in some industrial districts, female immigrants as care workers in urban centres, and finally emerging/changing social conflicts as a direct consequence of immigration fluxes. The Italian cases illustrated in this article suggest the emergence of forms of territorial settlement which are not very segregated, but may in any event be potentially conflictual. In this respect I will discuss the growing economic competition among different types of immigrant entrepreneurs, the segregation and discrimination of immigrant children in schools, and finally the ethno-spatial conflicts which recently came to the fore in Milan.

This article evaluates the contribution of Immigrants Working in Agriculture (IWA) and their socio-economic mobility over time. Up to the present, European and Greek literature has focused on immigrants' impact on metropolitan areas, in part due to the relatively insignificant role of agriculture in the European economies. Moreover, concerning the socio-economic mobility of IWA only snapshot views are available in the literature. Through field-work carried out in the northern Greek countryside, reinforced by analysis of the FADN database, we argue that the influx of immigrants in the early 1990s constituted a driving force in the development of the Greek countryside in a period during which long-term structural problems in the rural sector had condemned it to relative immobility. Immigrants' contribution is articulated at three levels. First, they enabled farmers who had abandoned agriculture to re-enter the sector and, at the same time, keep their non-agricultural jobs, thus increasing their sources of income. Additionally, IWA helped active farmers to expand their holdings, and to enrich and diversify their cultivations. Second, IWA have not displaced familial agricultural employment, as this was in decline prior to their arrival. Last, their employment allowed for a more flexible combination and specialization of capital and labour in the production process. Moreover, contrary to many developed countries, immigrants in the Greek countryside have displayed upward economic mobility over time.This is due mainly to occupational mobility in the agricultural sector and a movement to non-agricultural jobs, as well as spatial mobility between rural regions, which has increased the number of days of employment and income.

This article is located in the maelstrom of debate about immigration and employment in the contemporary economy. The article presents original analysis of data from the Labour Force Survey and a workplace case-study in the cleaning sector to highlight growing employer dependence on a very diverse pool of foreign-born labour. The article explains such dependency by drawing on interview material collected from employers, employers' associations, community organizations and policymakers. In sum, we argue that London's Migrant Division of Labour (MDL) is a product of the semi-autonomous actions taken by employers, workers and government in the particular context of London. Understanding the MDL thus needs to encompass employer demand, migrants' `dual frame of reference' and limited access to benefits, as well as employers' preference for foreign-born workers over `native' labour supply.The state is also argued to play a critical role in this employment, determining the nature and terms of immigration, the accessibility and levels of benefits, and employment regulation. London's MDL is shown to intersect with, and in some cases overturn, existing patterns of labour market segmentation on the basis of human capital (class), ethnicity and gender.

Identifying a missing local and regional scale in most analyses of UK migration, this article maps the geography of post-accession migrants from Central Europe (A8 migrants) and highlights the need to analyse the phenomenon of migration to localities and regions with little history of immigration and with underperforming labour markets. It draws on the particular example of the North East of England to ask how migrant workers are grounded in local labour markets, and uses this case-study to examine the interrelations between migration and labour markets. The article explores the role of different institutions — public and private — at different scales in mediating and regulating the labour market participation of migrant workers, and reviews the processes of A8 labour migration in the context of debates over regional labour markets and skills. In short, the article reflects in both conceptual and policy terms on the place of migrant workers in peripheral regions, and connects the analysis to debates over the potential contribution of migration to regional labour markets and economies, as policymakers increasingly look to migration for rejuvenation of skills and employment.

International business travel has always been an important labour process in the accumulation of capital for the firm. It is surprising, therefore, that relatively little time has been devoted to the study of business travel, both as a facet of contemporary mobility and as an economic practice. In this article we review how existing literatures provide insights that can be used to understand the role of business travel as international labour mobility in the contemporary professional service economy. In doing so, we reach the conclusion that there seem to be at least two significant voids preventing a more sophisticated understanding from emerging. First, we suggest that international business travel needs to be studied not in isolation but instead as one component in a wider ecology of mobility which `produces' the global firm. Second, we argue that it is important to know more about the time-space dynamics of international business travel in terms of how spatial relations are produced and reproduced by different forms and geographies of travel. We make these arguments and explore their implications using data collected through interviews in advertising, architecture and legal professional service firms.We conclude by identifying a research agenda designed to allow a better understanding of business travel to emerge in corporate and mobility discourses.

This article explores four aspects of the underdeveloped conceptualization of the role of international migration in uneven regional development and polarization in cities. First, it emphasizes the way in which human mobility transfers not only human capital but also knowledge and material capital, and that these are interrelated. Second, it considers how changes in the nature of mobility have implications for uneven regional development. Third, it develops the concept of enfolded mobilities, as a way of understanding how individual migrations are directly enfolded with those of other individuals, either through associated or contingent movements, or through consequential migration at later stages in the life course. Finally, it discusses how governance impinges on and mediates the key relationships between mobility and uneven regional development.