Renewed Significance of Space in Social Research: Implications for Labor Market Studies

Abstract

This chapter explores the renewed concern with space, particularly in critical social research, and its implications for labor market studies. It describes the concept of geographic space and its significance. The chapter reviews briefly the historical treatment of space in social theory and explains how early considerations of geographic context were overlooked by later theorists, which resulted in a mainly aspatial focus in many of the social science disciplines. It examines the reasons for the renewed interest in spatial issues, particularly in critical social science research. The chapter outlines directions for future labor market research, relating these to new conceptual perspectives and methodologies for examining economic change and inequality. It focuses on the local labor market, a geographic area “within which transactions between buyers and sellers of labor are situated and occur on a regular basis”. Studies on the local labor market have made a number of insights on economic development and its impacts.

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