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- Byström, Joakim
(författare)
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Tourism Development in Resource Peripheries : conflicting and Unifying Spaces in Northern Sweden
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The northern Swedish inland is a sparsely populated area with a historical dependence upon natural-resource extraction. Therefore, this region has traditionally been defined as a resource periphery for extractive purposes. However, the rise of tourism challenges this narrative by producing a pleasure periphery for touristic purposes. A pleasure periphery in this context is linked to nature-based tourism that sells dreams of pristine nature and/or vast wilderness. This touristic “story” therefore becomes an antithesis to the region's industrial past. The overlapping touristic and extractive spaces, and their seemingly conflicting development narratives, constitute the theoretical approach to tourism development in the scope of this thesis. Further, this thesis adds to theorizing tourism development in northern peripheries, by contesting established development theories against each other in a northern Swedish setting. Multiple methods using both quantitative and qualitative data are used to answer the questions in this thesis.Three conclusions can be derived based on the empirical findings. Firstly, established tourism development theories are at risk of being invalid in more peripheral settings. As an example, protected areas constitute a poor development strategy, and are not producing tourism employment as shown in studies from more densely populated regions. Other destination-development theories presupposing urban-like infrastructure, which is absent in peripheries, also become invalid. Secondly, conflicts between tourism and extractive industries do occur at the discursive level where they tend to be described in dualistic terms. However, in terms of labor-market processes, findings show that tourism and resource extraction are actually rather interrelated. Within mining tourism, such a related diversification occurs due to the spatial distribution of mining and tourism skills and the interaction between them. Thirdly, the location of tourism destinations is broadly governed by resource-extractive infrastructure. Therefore, tourism destinations are normally located in places that have previously been made accessible via investments in the resource-extractive sector. Hence, resource extraction projects (unintentionally) produce accessibility to the touristic “wilderness”.In summary, resource extraction becomes a precondition for tourism development in northern Sweden, rather than a conflicting land-use competitor. Therefore, planners and decision makers should consider incorporating aspects of tourism in future plans for resource extraction as these industries often spatially overlap, intertwine, and consequently form a development symbiosis in northern resource peripheries.
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| 2. |
- Danley, Therese, 1986-
(författare)
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Rough starts and tough times : geographies of workers and firms in transition
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Economic change can lead to multiple and sometimes conflicting outcomes for workers, employers, and regions. At the center of economic change are the dynamic interactions among diverse workers and firms in specific labor market contexts. This thesis approached those spatial interactions from the perspective of labor market matching, where the different opportunities for workers and firms to match were investigated. This adds to the growing body of literature that seeks to understand what factors are behind the growing regional divergence in earnings and employment, and who is particularly impacted by the uneven labor market changes. To this end, the aim of this thesis was to analyze the regional patterns and outcomes for workers and firms in the labor market matching process. Four quantitative studies were conducted using data from Swedish administrative registers from 1995 to 2012. Given that the dynamics of labor market matching are complex, the studies approached the aim from different angles and for different groups of workers. In particular, the outcomes and patterns were investigated in relation to crucial periods for workers and firms, where frictions in labor market matching could potentially have particularly negative effects. The studies investigated earnings, employment, and hiring for young workers in low-paid jobs, for workers displaced by firm closures, and for new firms competing for survival. The empirical results indicate the importance of a flexible labor market that facilitates the matching process where individuals' existing competencies can be applied and developed. This is a particular challenge for workers who lose their jobs to establishment closures outside the large regions, since the results show that worse job matches and less productive re-employment opportunities are more common and can have particularly negative consequences in smaller and more peripheral regions. However, even if there are more job opportunities in larger regions, the results suggest the opportunities are not necessarily accessible to everyone. Results indicate that workers in low-wage jobs do not benefit from a boost in earnings in larger regions, which may put them in a precarious situation considering the higher cost of living in those regions. Lastly, the thesis highlights the importance of not only individual human capital in determining a job match, but also its relational dimension which captures how well different workers’ skills are matched to one another in the workplace. This was found to be associated with individual earnings recovery after plant closure and new firm survival. The findings call for policies that carefully combine supply- and demand-side approaches in economic development.
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| 3. |
- Eriksson, Rikard, 1979-
(författare)
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Labour mobility and plant performance : The influence of proximity, relatedness and agglomeration
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to shed new light on the theorizations discussing the economic benefits of geographical clustering in a space economy increasingly characterized by globalization processes. This is made possible through the employment of a plant-perspective and a focus on how the relative fixity and mobility of labour influence plant performance throughout the entire Swedish economy. By means of the longitudinal micro database ASTRID, connecting attributes of individuals to features of plants and localities for the whole Swedish economy, the empirical findings indicate that both localization and urbanization economies produce significant labour market externalities and that such inter-plant linkages positively affect plant performance as compared to the partial effects of relative regional specialization and diversification. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that it is necessary both to distinguish how well the external skills retrieved via labour mobility match the existing knowledge base of plants and to determine the geographical dimension of such flows to verify the relative effect of labour market-induced externalities. Finally, it is demonstrated that whereas general urbanization is beneficial within close distance to the plant, the composition of economic activities is more influential at greater distances. In such cases the geographical dimension influences whether plants benefit from being located in similar or different local settings. In conclusion, it is argued that the circulation of labour skills, created and reproduced through the place-specific industrial setup, is crucial for understanding the mechanisms creating geographical variations in plant performance as compared to other regional conditions often proxied as relative specialization or diversification. This is because the relative fixity of labour tends to create place- and sector-specific skills which by means of their mobility in space are likely to facilitate the recombination of local skills, make the acquirement of non-local skills possible and secure sufficient affinity between economic actors by strengthening other dimensions of proximity – all aspects regarded as crucial to facilitate interactive learning processes and contribute to sustained regional growth.
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| 4. |
- Hane-Weijman, Emelie, 1984-
(författare)
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Returning to Work : geographies of Employment in Turbulent Times
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis adds to theorizations of resilience, by placing workers and employment on the center stage. This has been addressed by contextualizing gross employment changes and workers’ way back to employment after redundancy. Swedish longitudinal microdata from 1990-2010 were used. This made it possible to study employer-employee links that disappeared and appeared, and to follow redundant workers over time and space. The empirical findings conclude there are big regional differences in resilience, absorptive capacity and employment growth. The trajectories of regional net employment growth are diverging – an unequal spatial development that might become reinforced with time as the empirical results show that resilience is a path-dependent phenomenon. Moreover, industry proximity is an important factor when analyzing both regional absorptive capacity and labour matching, thus significantly affecting worker adaptability in times of turbulence.This is explained by the frictions and skill (mis)matching that arise in the labour market and in new employment positions due to industry proximities. A cohesive and diverse region is more resistant to shocks as well as adaptable in the aftermath of the crisis, while a specialized region is more sensitive and less resilient in general. In addition, a worker facing redundancy in a region where there is a big share of the same or related industries to the industry she became redundant from decreases the time to re-employment as there is a big supply of jobs that need similar skills and competences. However, there are significant differences in the mobilities of redundant workers, where some groups are more inclined to diversify into new regions and industries, while some have more invested in the industry and region. However, staying in the same industry that experienced the major lay-off means a less stable employment, but moving into unrelated industries increases the workers’ chances of experiencing skill mismatch and becoming underemployed. Finding a new job in related industries means a more stable employment and increases the chances of upward mobility. In conclusion, based on these findings, it is argued in the thesis that regional branching into related industries is a good regional resilience strategy. However, it needs to be combined with policies aiming for related labour branching as well in order to be able to reallocate skills into new parts of the economy while avoiding skill mismatch. This provides a good base for regional diversification that can result in path re-orientation and renewal.
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| 5. |
- Rataj, Marcin, 1978-
(författare)
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The Geography of Entrepreneurship : regional and individual determinants of new firm formation in Sweden
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- While there is a rich and growing body of literature on both individual and regional determinants of entrepreneurship, the dominant perspective assumes that these factor play a similar role in different spatial contexts. The thesis investigates in the first place the link between firm formation and economic opportunities that might be conditional on the regional setting. That is, that do not necessarily provide universal outcomes. Investigating that link might be of particular significance for the formation and performance of new firms in peripheral and stagnating regions. Such regions may benefit the most from tailored-made and research-guided policies.To address this goal, three quantitative studies were conducted based on data from Swedish registers and other sources provided by Statistics Sweden. Each study aimed to answer key questions regarding firm formation and regional development: (1) can regional unemployment trigger a new wave of business formation, (2) how can regional characteristics compensate for a relative absence of agglomeration externalities, and (3) how may the region utilize the potential of people moving into a region (non-local entrepreneurs) to foster entrepreneurship?The results suggest that while entrepreneurial activities indeed might absorb some redundant employees during times of less favorable labour market conditions, entrepreneurial policies cannot be considered a universal and anticyclical driver of economic growth. Instead, the more acute the labour market conditions are, the lower the quality of an average start-up becomes. According to the results, human capital, social capital and entrepreneurial culture are important for the variation in start-up rates across municipalities in Sweden. Human capital and entrepreneurial culture might enhance start-up activities in a similar way in different regional contexts. Social capital, in contrast, might exert effects of different magnitude depending on other regional characteristics and can moderate the scarcity of local resources. Finally, the results show that benefits stemming from access to local networks, information or locally recognizable credibility can be diminished when more diversity is introduced into the regional economy.Overall, the results suggest that regional disadvantages might be offset at least to some degree by other types of regional assets. These findings calls for more flexibility in our thinking about entrepreneurship agendas as a part of regional development that do not need to deal with all regional challenges, but instead focus on some regional advantages and how they can compensate for a lack of resources that are abundant in other regions.
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