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Industrial and geographical mobility of workers during industry decline : The Swedish and German shipbuilding industries 1970–2000

På svenska

Author

  • Rikard H. Eriksson
  • Martin Henning
  • Anne Otto

Summary, in English

This article follows the industry employment histories of all individuals who at some point have been affiliated with the declining German or the dismantling Swedish shipbuilding industry during 1970–2000. We analyse the situation of the individual workers leaving shipbuilding, investigating the extent to which they were employed at all, tended to move to related sectors within or outside the region, and whether such moves were beneficial for the individuals. Combining insights from labour geography and redundancy studies with evolutionary economic geography, we find remarkably similar results for the West German and Swedish cases. Our findings indicate a notable impact of the regional industry structure on the labour market outcomes for workers leaving shipbuilding. This suggests that more attention should be devoted to the specific structures of the absorptive capacity of regional labour markets. The findings are discussed within the context of a mature industry.

Publishing year

2016-10-01

Language

English

Pages

87-98

Publication/Series

Geoforum

Volume

75

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Economic History
  • Economic Geography

Keywords

  • Evolutionary economic geography
  • Labour geography
  • Labour mobility
  • Redundancies
  • Shipbuilding

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0016-7185