Post on 29-May-2018
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Foreign Labour Force on the Czech Spatially
Segmented Labour Market
Ji Vyhldal
RILSA Brno
Draft
AbstractThe first part of the text describes changes in the segmentation
theory of labour markets which make it more sensitive to spatial
(geographical) differences and takes them as a constitutive component
in understanding how (national) labour market works and how it
potentially can contribute to social inclusion.
In the second part the assumption of spatially differentiated
labour markets is tested on empirical data about the Czech labour
market.
In the conclusion the new directions of future research are
proposed.
Immigrants and segmented labour markets
The problem of the foreign labour force integration is permanently on the top of
the agenda of not only European politicians and policy-makers. There seems to be a
good many proposals and projects, ready-made conceptions and political manifests
which all wrestle with the problem of immigration, integration of immigrants and all the
consequences it has or may have on indigenous populations. What is desperately sought
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after is modus of integration appropriate and efficient to the foreign labour force coming
to developed countries. Especially in a situation when, as Angus Cameron recently
pointed out, we miss the positive definition of social inclusion, that means when social
inclusion tends to be defined only negatively in exclusion literature - i.e. as not social
exclusion (Cameron 2006: 396).
Usual attitude of Europeans to the immigrants mentioned Michael Kearney
(1991: 58): Foreign labor is desired, but the persons in whom it is embodied are not
desired. The immigration policies of receiving nations can be seen as expression of
this contradiction and as attempts to resolve it. Even if the largest part of the migration
stream heading to Europe is labour migration, which means that the most natural
method of integration of this part of migration stream is to put those people into work,
this solution, of course, is not as easily accessible as it would seem or as it would be
desirable.
There is a considerable body of literature connecting personal characteristics of
immigrants with their prospects on the labour market. Given that a significant
proportion of immigrants come with skills and education perceived in a host country as
rather poor or insufficient, they are expected to seek for jobs rather in the part of labour
market which segmentation theory perceives as secondary. Even though this assumption
is widely accepted, Massey et al. (1993: 458) observed that the distinction between
primary and secondary sectors is arbitrary, leading to great instability in empirical
estimates and a high degree of dependency of results on the decision rule chosen to
allocate jobs to sectors. In some cases even the definition of the secondary sector was
based either on the fact that jobs in this sector were held predominantly by immigrants,
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women or young people (Peck 1996), or the fact that the jobs belonged not into a
capital- but a labour-intensive sector (Piore 2008). In other words, there have to be
groups or individuals exploitable in this way before secondary labour market may come
into existence (cf. Boltanski and Chiapello 2007; Bourdieu 2003; Doeringer and Piore
1985; Peck 1996). So we can conclude that the characteristics of immigrants, which
they at least partially share with women, young people and the disabled of the host
society, not only lead them to the secondary labour market, but the presence of those
characteristics enables constitution of this segment of the labour market.
What can be, on the one hand, seen as an incapability to establish clear rules to
analytically distinguish between the two sectors of the labour market, may also be, on
the other hand, described as an almost unavoidable consequence of the new
economy (in Bourdieus view a system based on an opposition between the dominating
polycultural polyglots and the dominated monocultural locals (Bourdieu 2003), or of the
new capitalism with the main symptoms depicted, for instance, in books of Richard
Sennett (1998, 2006), eventually of the new spirit of capitalism described by Luc
Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2007)), that means of the situation when core firms shift
toward utilization of core-periphery models and contingent labor strategies, distinctions
between the primary and secondary sectors are becoming increasingly blurred (Peck
1996: 63). In the whole labour market then, regardless which segment is actually
considered, increases uncertainty and inequality (Rubery, Wilkinson, and Tarling 1989).
This process of the institutionalisation of the new modes of labour markets
flexibilisation, and what Peck recognises as thepolitical re-regulation of the labor
marketduring a period of excess labor supply and weakened labor unions, (Peck 1996:
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74, emphasis original) has also a geographical component, because, as Pierre Bourdieu
put it,
[a]n industry previously linked to a nation-state or a region (Detroit or
Turin for automobiles) tends increasingly to detach itself through what is
called the network corporation, organized on a continental or world scale
and linking production segments, technological know-how, communication
networks and training facilities scattered between very distant
places (Bourdieu 1998: 84-85)
Segmentation (dualization) of the labour market and the workforce is an answer
to problems posed not only by market (demand) instability and increased supply of
labour, but also by involvement of paid work in the network of social norms, customs
and practices, as well as in the wider system of social reproduction (e.g. unpaid work in
households done almost exclusively by women; breadwinner model causing gender
wage disparity). Both sectors of the labour market and both segments of the labour force
have its own dynamics and cease to be easily discernible when a growing part of the
workforce is compelled to be increasingly flexible, which means for growing number of
workers to compete for jobs on an open (i.e. less and less regulated) market. Pierre
Bourdieu speaks even aboutflexploitation, by which he means a situation when
[c]asualization of employment is part of a mode of domination of a new
kind, based on the creation of a generalized and permanent state of insecurity
aimed at forcing workers into submission, into the acceptance of exploitation
(...) This word evokes very well this rational management of insecurity
which, especially through the concerted manipulation of the space of
production, sets up competition between the workers of the countries with
the greatest social gains and the best organized union resistance - features
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that are linked to a national territory and history - and the workers of the
socially least advanced countries, and so breaks resistance and obtains
obedience and submission, through apparently natural mechanisms which
thus serve as their own justification (Bourdieu 1998: 85, emphasis in
original).
In the new economy the pressure on the primary labour market workforce, to
become at least functionally flexible, is on the increase and even the working careers of
those employees are, and not infrequently, compartmentalised. Nevertheless, it is
obvious that not all foreign workers necessarily fit the low skill, low education
category. Segmentation, Peck (1996: 75) claims, refers to tendencies, not a
taxonomy of labor market positions (emphasis original), witch seems to be true for
immigrants too.
The spatial component of the labour market segmentation
The brief presentation of the segmentation theory and its identified potential
ineffectiveness in empirical determination of the character of the jobs (in the sense if
they belong to the primary or secondary segment of the labour market) in the
contemporary fluid economy gives an opportunity to change a point of view. We can
try to divert attention from the problem whether a job taken by an immigrant belongs to
the primary or secondary labour market to focusing on the more general principles of
labour force allocation, foreign as well as domestic, to jobs, given by and structured
according to the existing spatial (geographical) labour market segmentation. Instead of
concentrating on the individual characteristics of the job seekers and characteristics of
the jobs on offer, as the segmentation theory does, we can try to delineate the
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geographical segmentation of the Czech labour market as a historically developed and
functionally as well as spatially hierarchized structure. In other words, instead of
evaluation of the individual characteristics of job seekers and characteristics of
particular jobs, it is possible try to characterise whole spatial (geographical) segments of
a national labour market and to conceive it as the historically created and spatially
distributed (hierarchised) structure of opportunities (for job seekers and alike for
entrepreneurs). Its segments (regions, precincts), seen verbatim in one picture, or in one
correspondence diagram, constitute not only a map of incidentally divided, indifferent,
and distant segments, but a complex hierarchical structure uncovering their mutual
relationships, often historically constituted and complex in their nature.
A claim of hierarchisation is included already in the segmentation theory
formulation, given by the characteristics of primary and secondary labour markets and
implicit setting one of them as dominant and the other as dominated (or inferior),
however without spatial or geographical component, which changes an universal
assertion of self-evident fact that the primary labour market is in many respects superior
to the secondary one into a unique narrative about the whole network of reciprocal
relationships between different geographical parts of the entity establishing a national
labour market. Usually the spatial component has been perceived as redundant or at
least insignificant. When, for instance, Alain Supiot et al. (2001) analyse European
labour law, they talk about dimensions, fragmentations or state, but these concepts are
dispossessed of their spatial component; they are used without to be, so to say, space-
sensitive. This text is intended as an empirical test of hypothesis that the working
conditions of indigenous as well as foreign labour force (immigrants) are to an
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important degree constituted and influenced by the geographical segmentation of a
national labour market. This hypothesis supposes that immigration stream is funnelled
and canalised according to the individual characteristics of newcomers, indeed, but
structural conditions on the labour market produce a basic matrix which significantly
shapes chances of all workers to get an appropriate job1 whether on the primary or the
secondary labour market, and these chances are different for different individuals in
different geographical parts of the Czech national labour market. In other words,
chances of diverse parts of labour force are unevenly distributed not only according to
the individual characteristics of the job seekers, but also according to the spatial
structure of the labour market.
Hierarchised space and spatialised hierarchy
Even if the assumption that labour markets are not only socially regulated but
also locally variable is not still generally accepted, the fourth generation of the
segmentation theory already emphasizes the spatiality of the labor market and its
underlying regulatory form (Peck 1996: 79). This approach emphasises in the
processes and outcomes of the labour market segmentation besides purely economical
arguments also arguments cultural or sociological. Drift in the insinuated direction
might be interpreted as an effect ofcultural turn in economic geography,
in which scholars have rejected conventional dualisms between the
economic and the cultural in favour of a range of more fluid and hybrid
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1 An appropriate job is intended here, especially in relation to the immigrants, as a job offering a good
assumption of (at least economic) integration.
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conceptions that emphasize the mutual constitution and fundamental
inseparability of these two spheres (James 2006: 289).
Nevertheless, the notion of space, defined as an intersection of the economic and
the cultural (or the social), does not reminds us only a pure fact of existence of territory
defined by its generally recognised boundaries, but introduces also hierarchy, a system
in which all kinds of desired goods and opportunities are distributed unequally, and the
unequal distribution is wielded by geography or, more precisely, by the system of
relations between centre and periphery. Though Bourdieu is sometime portrayed as an
author whose most influential theories and empirical work have tended to
underplay the difference that space/place makes (Holt 2008: 235), he was undoubtedly
aware of the important role physical space/place plays in many forms of inequality
production and reproduction. Which is, after all, clear from the following passage:
There is no space in a hierarchized society that is not itself hierarchized and
that does not express hierarchies and social distances, in a form that is more
or less distorted and, above all, disguised by the naturalization effect
produced by the long-term inscription of social realities in the natural
world (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 124, emphasis in original).
This hierarchisation imposes itself also on the national labour market through
the form of more or less (from the point of view of labour force) insulated or separated
local labour markets. As Peck (1996: 86) observes, [i]f labor market structures, norms,
and practices are conditioned by the (uneven) social context in which they are
embedded, then the functioning of labor market processes will vary across space. A
double inequality, i.e. inside of each of those local labour markets as well as between
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them, is visible from the economic, social-economic and even demographic data about
each of them.
The dispersion of those units across the space can be captured in a two-
dimensional diagram where the distances between them can be expressed not only on
horizontal axis, as a pure geographical distance, but also on vertical axis, as a
visualisation of domination and submission relationships between the local labour
markets2. In this view, the system of local labour markets constitute a set of objective
power relations that impose themselves on all who enter the field and that are
irreducible to the intentions of the individual agents or even to the direct
interactions among the agents (Bourdieu 1985: 724). Such a set of power relations
ensures that in a long-term not only individuals inside a particular local labour market
but also local labour markets itself will respect the achieved distribution of power, it
means at least until the dominating will be able to exercise effectively their power.
The spatial consequences of social inclusion
We have already mentioned the problem of missing positive definition of social
inclusion (cf. Cameron 2005, 2006, 2007). An other problem, which is firmly tied
together with the first one, is an elusive spatiality of the social inclusion, our inability to
localise it in contrast with social exclusion, which always seems to be closely related to
a place or locality. A narrative about social exclusion would be incomplete without
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2 These domination and submission relationships are not an effect of innate qualities of local labour
markets, but rather a product of socio-economic activities pushed ahead by all involved individual and
collective actors in the appropriate forms (age and education structure of population, rate of economic
activity, proportion of investment, present industries etc.).
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reference to a neighbourhood, community, or locality, and, in consequence, if we
collect local data we will tend to produce a local story from them because the problems
we are identifying automaticallyseem to be features of place (Cameron 2006: 398).
Whereas social exclusion produces and is produced in an evident and explicit place/
space localisation, social inclusion, either as a process or as a status, is not ascribed to a
place or locality. Social inclusion is constituted as a set of normative practices
(consumption, lifestyle), velocities and identities rather than a space or a
place. (Cameron 2006: 400).
In accordance with this conclusion would be the reasoning behind the
segmentation theory, which tacitly supposes that strategies used by employers as well as
job seekers, seen as a part of social inclusion through the labour market, are
interchangeable across geographic extension of the whole national labour market and
vary eventually only between the primary and secondary labor market segments. The
spatial segmentation concept is a possible way to overcome this simplifying
presumption of the standard segmentation theory. Local labour markets, as a specific
entity of theoretical and epistemological importance, seem to lie in a blind spot of
contemporary dominating neo-liberal theory of competitive markets, where the space
is reduced to a passive and merely contextual economic backdrop: the local labor
market is portrayed as a container for universal processes (Peck 1996: 84). De-
localised and atomised neo-liberal actors do cope with imaginary universal market
forces in an entirely abstract space.
By contrast, the spatial segmentation theory takes as its point of departure the
fact, that places and localities are not interchangeable at random. As was already
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mentioned above, every space and every locality bears characteristics which determine
its place (on the horizontal as well as on the vertical axis) in the wider (i.e.
predominantly national) system of mutual relations, in the hierarchy having influence
over the processes taking place on the local level. It is clear then that in this sense
locality or space based differentiation and hierarchisation affects all the processes
perceived in neo-liberal theory as universal or de-localised.
Only through the localised, i.e. by the given locality adopted and to the given
locality adapted, strategies may evolve into a local economic field, which exists only
through the agents that are found within it and that deform the space in their vicinity,
conferring a certain structure on it (Bourdieu 2005: 193). In other words, there is the
source of inequality inside each of local markets or fields and variability across all of
them. Actors are supplied unequally according to the volume and structure of specific
capitals, capitals which limit or amplify their command over the structure of the local
field, being the actor an employer (a company, an entrepreneur), a public institution, or
an individual. Strategies and behaviour corresponding to a given locality is inculcated
into the actors, they are included in theirhabitus, a conditioned and limited
spontaneity, or an endowment, which enables the social agent to be a collective
individual or a collective individuated by the fact of embodying objective structure. The
individual, the subjective, is social and collective (Bourdieu 2005: 211, original
emphasis).
Besides the localised (in situ) inequalities, there are inequalities between
localities too. The basic vertical axis stems from provinces and leads up to the capital,
because, as Bourdieu observes (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 125),
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the capital city is - no pun intended - the site of capital, that is, the site in
physical space where the positive poles of all the fields are concentrated
along with most of the agents occupying these dominant positions: which
means that the capital cannot be adequately analyzed except in relation to the
provinces (and provincialness), which is nothing other than being deprived
(in entirely relative terms) of the capital and capital.
This statement drafts the basic outline of the inequalities being found between
localities, it means the inequalities which constitute the differences depicted in
correspondence analysis outputs (see below).
All the differences and inequalities have not only a more or less intangible
quality, captured in and attainable only through official statistics, but they are inscribed
directly in places and even in bodies of its inhabitants. There is a bodily knowledge, as
Bourdieu (2000) argues, of which an incorporated form are the dispositions, where the
very structures of the social world (Bourdieu 2000: 141) are inscribed.
There are many forms of dispositions, in form of skills, knowledges, behaviours
and personal characteristics which can be (and are) legitimately recognised as a form of
capital. Even the flexibility itself can be a capital which an actor can offer to an
employer and it can be exactly the kind of capital the employer is looking for.
Possession or absence of that capital decides about success or failure on the given local
labour market. Which capitals are perceived as valuable, in case of job seekers, is
locality-sensitive variable. Demand for diverse kinds of capital varies not only
according to individual employers, but also from one to the other local labour market.
The locally structured demand applies on the indigenous as well as on the foreign
labour force. Following empirical analysis shows on the structure of the Czech precincts
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how the Czech national labour market is divided into the differentiated structure of local
labour markets.
Analysis of the population of unemployed
Pecks observation that local labour market research agenda should be
concerned less with cartography, and more with the geographic foundations of
structures, practices, and conventions (Peck 1996: 89), it means to be more focused on
the shift fromspace (defined according to cartography) toplace (defined according to
processes and practices which make it distinguishable) (cf. also Cameron 2006; Harvey
1989, 2001). Nevertheless, even if importance of place instead of space is emphasised,
and local labour market can have a different (physical) scope according to gender, social
class, education, age or income, empirical testing requires physical boundaries to be
defined. The boundaries are, regardless of intentions of researcher, usually implicitly
present already in the data itself, or can be at least educible from them, as is the case for
the data used in this research.
The definition of local labour markets is in this case given by the character of
the first source of data we have analysed. It is data about unemployed reported by the
Labour Offices across the whole country, and amassed in the database OKprce, of
which the data are extracted. Structure of those offices and their district of
administration respects the structure of precincts of the Czech republic (according to the
Local Administrative Units (LAU) level 1, formerly the Nomenclature of territorial
units for statistics (NUTS) level 4 of a common classification of territorial units for
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statistics). The boundaries of the precincts were accepted as an approximation of the
boundaries of local labour markets.
In the first step are analysed data about the structure of unemployed in every
precinct to see, who is typically (or often than in others precincts) excluded from the
local labour market and becomes unemployed. The analysis covers all the unemployed
who entered the unemployment or already were unemployed from January 1, 2007 until
June 30, 2008. In the table 1 is the description of variables used in the analysis. To
clarify the extent of the analysed data it is necessary to add that data for all 77 precincts
were used, but only a limited number of them, the 22 mentioned in the table 1, is of
importance, in other words, their position in the correspondence diagram makes them
distinctive. The rest of precincts creates a space of average, a space vis-a-vis to which
the distinctive position of 22 mentioned precincts can be seen as more or less
distinctive.
In this context it should also be noted that it could be misleading to argue that
the boundaries of local labor markets coincide precisely with the boundaries of
precincts. As was already mentioned above to choose precinct as the basic unit of our
analysis is rather a pragmatic choice - the precinct is one of the variables used already in
the process of data collection. Precincts appear also to be an appropriate unit with
respect to the exploratory nature of the entire analysis. The selected unit is sufficiently
small (for example, concerning employees commuting), and, at the same time, large
enough to represent a local labor market. In fact, boundaries of real local labor markets
may be relatively elastic and diverse for various segments of the workforce, depending
on the structure of the workforce itself and job opportunities in the vicinity.
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Nevertheless, for empirical investigation it is necessary to mark out certain boundaries
and precincts seem to be an acceptable approximation.
table 1 - Overview of variables used in the analysis of spatial segmentation of the Czech labourmarket
The way correspondence analysis handles data significantly determines the way
of interpreting the results. Outputs do not estimate the individual chances of job seekers
with regard to their individual characteristics, but describe the whole structure of social
space represented by the selected population. This type of analysis allows to see the
overall structure of the selected social field, i.e. a system of separations and mutual
dependencies, in a single diagram, seeing that local labor markets does not lie "next to
each other but are somehow systematised and hierarchised. In this respect, in each of
these populations of the unemployed, their quantity, their characteristics and their
collective work histories, is inscribed not only the structure of todays opportunities, but
Precincts (selection):
AB - PrahaBE - BerounBM - Brno - CityBR - BruntlBV - BeclavCV - ChomutovHO - HodonnMB - Mlad BoleslavJE - JesenkKA - KarvinKL - KladnoKM - KromMO - MostOV - OstravaPM - Plze - CityPY - Praha - EastPZ - Praha - WestSO - SokolovSY - SvitavyTP - TepliceTR - TebZN - Znojmo
Decisive income at the
beginning of the unemployment
spell (CZK):
up to 6.0006-9.0009-12.00012-15.00015-18.00018.0000 and more
Categorised sum of all
unemployment spells before
January 1, 2007:
up to 6 months6-12 months1-2 years2-5 yearsmore than 5 years
Age categories:
up to 2425-3435-4950 and more
Gender:
malefemale
Categorised number of
unemployment spells before
January 1, 2007:
no spell1 spell2 spells3 spells4 spells5 spells and more
Retraining before January 1,
2007:
yesno
Health condition:
good healthhealth constraintthe handicappedfull or partial disability pension
Education:
Basic + Without educationSecondary without GCSESecondary with GSCEUniversity degree
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also the history of the local labor market which predisposes them to adopt certain
strategies which lead them to certain positions in the overall (national) labour market
hierarchy.
The first diagram presents the result of the correspondence analysis, when all
precincts (77) took part in analysis. Generated social space is on its horizontal axis
differentiated by the amount of cultural and economic capital available to the job
seekers in given precincts. The cultural capital is approximated by the highest attained
education and economic capital is approximated by the decisive income at the
beginning of the unemployment spell. Vertically are precincts distributed due to their
propensity for either long-term or repeated unemployment, an other significant
characteristics of the population under investigation.
diagram 1 about here
The output of analysis creates four groups of precincts, whose populations of
unemployed differ both among each other and also from the vast majority of other
precincts, which are defined either as belonging to the area of a statistical average, when
situated near the intersection of the axes, or are relatively indifferent due to the extreme
values of used variables. The area around axes intersection and the left lower quadrant
are the spaces where these average precincts are situated. The output also makes
discernible two regimes of unemployment characteristic for different local labour
markets. The first regime is characterised by rather more but shorter spells of
unemployment; in the second the number of spells is lower, but they are longer on the
average. It is quite surprising that very low explanatory power have age and gender. All
the categories representing age and gender are situated close to the point of intersection,
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therefore in the area of the statistical average. The four distinctive groups of precincts
identified through the correspondence analysis is possible to entitle as follows:
Centre, Periphery, Farmers and Schism.
Centre: the first group consists of six precincts localised in the upper right
quadrant of the diagram 1 (Praha (AB), Praha-East (PY), Praha-West (PZ), Mlad
Boleslav (MB), Beroun (BE) and Plze-City (PM)). Unemployed population in these
districts is characterised primarily by higher education and higher decisive income,
which means that unemployed in these precincts have higher than average level of both,
cultural and social capital. These characteristics, together with a prevailing lack of past
unemployment spells, or rather short (up to 6 months), show a relatively secured
position of those jobseekers in the labor market in the recent past.
Periphery: the second group is, to a great extent, an inverse mapping of the first
one. Unemployed population in the cluster of six precincts in the upper left quadrant
(Ostrava (OV), Karvin (KA), Chomutov (CV), Sokolov (SO), Most (MO) and Teplice
(TP)) is, broadly speaking, characterised by a lack of both, cultural and economic
capital, when the lack of the former can be considered as a cause of the uncertain
position in the local labor market, characterised by a tendency to long-term
unemployment, resulting finally in the lack of capital of the second sort, the economic.
Unemployed population of these precincts is also burdened with significant health
limitations, which can be both a consequence of the fact that jobs in these precincts are
concentrated in heavy and chemical industries, as well as living in an environment
polluted by that industry. Differences in characteristics of populations of unemployed in
those two groups of precincts represent, in social and in geographical sense, the
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differences between the centre and the periphery of the national economy, as are
inscribed in the variables selected for description of the population of unemployed.
Farmers: the third group consists of 8 precincts (Teb (TR), Hodonn (HO),
Krom (KM), Svitavy (SY), Beclav (BV), Znojmo (ZN), Jesenk (JE) and Bruntl
BR)) and in the diagram is situated in the bottom left quadrant. Majority of them, except
for precincts of Bruntl (BR) and Jesenk (JE), is located near the average in terms of
amount of the cultural and economic capital. The unemployed population of the whole
group of precincts is characterised by a tendency to the repeated (but not necessarily
long-term) unemployment and the prevalence of serious health problems (handicaps and
partial and full disability pensions). Again, the precincts are mostly located in the
periphery not only geographically but, due to their predominantly agricultural character,
also economically and socially.
Schism: the last group we will pay a closer attention to consists only of two
precincts. The first of them, Brno (BM), is of urban character and constitutes a regional
capital and a natural centre of South Moravia. The second, Kladno (KL), is situated in
Bohemian part of the country and borders upon the capital city Prague. In the
correspondence diagram both precincts are located in between two upper quadrants.
This location ushers in that the unemployed population of those two precincts is
somehow divided or inconsistent. Of course that no group of unemployed in the
precincts under investigation is expected to be absolutely homogenous, but the position
of Brno (BM) and Kladno (KL) in the diagram means that their populations of
unemployed consist of two extremely different groups. One of them consists of people
with relatively high cultural and economic capital, the second of people with inverse
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characteristics in comparison to the first. There is more possible explications of that
situation. It can mean that Brno (BM) and Kladno (KL) are on the rise to the status of
'center' or, on the contrary, they already retreat from this status. There is also another
possible explanation which is tied with the already mentioned difficulty in determining
boundaries of a local labor market. The problem with these two precincts can reside in
the fact that these geographically defined units comprise virtually of two diametrically
different local labor markets, which may significantly geographically overlap.
The correspondence analysis, here especially in the form of an exploratory
analysis, reveals the structure of the Czech labour market based on the sub-populations
of unemployed in precincts, it means on the population which can be perceived as those
expelled into unemployment in the local labour markets. Correspondence analysis in
this regard produces a map of social space of the local labour markets, reflecting the
interaction of the used variables. In the following table the general characteristics of the
populations of precincts are presented (the Schism group, consisting of only two
precincts, was omitted).
table 2 - Spatial structure of the Czech labour market according to the proposed spatialsegmentation (4th quarter 2007)
Employed Unemployed Labour Force
count count unemployment rate count
Centre 939691 24517 2,5% 964208
Periphery 460850 48326 9,5% 509177
Farmers 394917 28579 6,7% 423496
Others 3171745 151405 4,6% 3323151
total 4967204 252828 4,8% 5220032
source: CZSO, Labour Market in the Czech Republic 1993 - 2007
Immediately we see that there are important differences between groups of
precincts defined on the basis of correspondence analysis. Whereas in the Centre the
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unemployment rate is about a half of the total unemployment rate for the Czech
republic, unemployment rate for the Periphery is almost twice as high as the total
unemployment rate. In other words, chances to be unemployed for indigenous
population are highly influenced not only by the individual characteristics of the job
seekers but also by the region (local labour market) they live in. The question now is if
the same can be said of foreign labour force in the Czech republic. If their chances on
the labour market are besides their personal characteristics influenced also by spatial
segmentation of the Czech labour market.
The second source of data we are going to use is the survey of 1002 employers
in the Czech republic who utilised foreign labour force in 2006. When we suppose, as
we already did above, that to get a job is an important part of the social inclusion
process for the immigrant workers, then we can ask what are the structural conditions of
that process. In other words, how is the process of matching foreign workers to jobs
affected by the spatial structure of the Czech labour market outlined above.
Spatial segmentation and foreigners labour market
The main idea here is that what was shown in the previous analysis is not only a
spatial segmentation of the domestic labour force, but also a spatial segmentation of the
employers, a distribution of various economic activities across the space which is not
accidental. For instance, the strategic branches and sectors of the national economy
(banks, insurance companies, headquarters of multinational companies etc.), in which
well paid jobs are available more often than anywhere else, reside usually in the capital;
heavy and chemical industries, with completely different structure of jobs and different
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demands for skills and education of employees, are settled for the most of its part in the
precincts referred in our research to as periphery. Further then, other parts of the
country, another local labour markets, might be identified, for instance, as rather
agricultural.
For testing the hypothesis that the Czech labour market is spatially segmented
not only for the indigenous labour force but for the foreign labour force too, we will use
the three main identified spatial segments of the Czech national labour market - the
centre, the periphery, and the farmers - to compare their characteristics with one
another, and also with the residual segment, the precincts belonging to neither of
defined segments, which will be brought together under the caption others.
table 2 - Overview of variables used in the analysis of spatial labour market segmentation on theemployers of the foreign labour force
Spatial segments of the
Czech labour market:
centreperipheryfarmersothers
Sectors of the national
economy:
primary sectorsecondary sectortertiary sectorpublic administration, public
health, research
Categories of employed
foreign workers:
manualswhite-collarsspecialistsmanagerscombination
Employers entity:
head officebranch
Reasons for foreign workers
employment for different
categories of employees:
shortage of indigenous -MANUAL
willingness of foreigners towork for lower wages -MANUAL
shortage of indigenous -WHITE-COLLARS
willingness of foreigners towork for lower wages -WHITE-COLLARS
shortage of indigenous -SPECIAL
willingness of foreigners towork for lower wages -SPECIAL
Foreign workers jobs
classification:
primary LMsecondary LM
Qualification of foreign
employees according to the
job they have:
qualification correspondsqualification do not
correspondsEducation of foreign
employees assessment:
education correspondspart of employees has higher
than necessary educationpart of employees has lower
than necessary educationemploys employees with both
lower and higher education
Career (promotion) chances
of foreign workers:
career allcareer somecareer nobody
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What we will test in this part of analysis is not directly the segmentation of
foreign labour force, of which we have at present no suitable data, but of its employers
located in the Czech republic. Following Bourdieus idea that necessarily social space
translates into physical space (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 124), we suppose that the
primarily socially constituted and reproduced capital - province (periphery) relation
inscribes itself also into the spatial segmentation of job opportunities, expressed in the
preferences of employers. Inscription of those relations in physical space gives in return
inertia and durability to the social structure (Bourdieu et al. 1999). This is what makes
demands of employers relatively stable over the time and what also gives an opportunity
to evolve applicable and effective, it means space-adapted, strategies on the side of job
seekers.
diagram 2 about here
The outcome of the analysis of demands and expectations of employers of the
foreign labour force shows that they differ according to the spatial segment of the Czech
labour market they occupy. Their position in the spatial segmentation of the national
labour market, as the local labour market hypothesis assumes, significantly shapes their
foreign labour force requirements.
To start with, the tenseness or even friction in relationship between centre and
periphery (provinces) is once again reproduced in a graphic form in the diagram 2. That
means nothing else than that requirements formulated by employers in those two spatial
segments do not overlap; foreign labour force required typically in those two segments
is completely different. Employers coming fromperipheralprecincts do offer to
foreigners jobs in the quaternary sector of the national economy (pubic administration,
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public health, research) and besides that also to specialists. In other words, they try to
attract foreign labour force to the sectors and departments requiring higher education
because these sectors and departments are deprived of the educated indigenous labour
force which have tendency to leave peripheral areas and go to areas perceived as
central, which they apprehend as potentially offering them more opportunities. In
consequence, it seems that, even if the centre may be at the first sight for immigrants
more attractive, the peripheral areas can actually offer better jobs to the more educated
and more skilled layer of the foreign labour force.
The characteristics which are connected with the employers coming from the
spatial segments (precincts) labeled as centre indicate that this part of the Czech labour
market is highly competitive. The competitiveness of those local labour market
experience probably all segments of the foreign labour force. There can be a difference
between immigrants with low and high cultural capital, or low and high level of skills,
but all of them are expected to compete through all forms of flexibility. Immigrants, if
they wish to have a job adequate to their attainments, are exposed to a strong
competition, amplified with already mentioned internal migration, especially of people
with higher cultural capital, to the centre. The competitive advantage the foreign labour
force with comparative skills or education has in eyes of employers in these precincts,
as is shown in the diagram, is their willingness to work for lower pay than indigenous
labour force. In the local labour markets belonging to the centre that applies for
specialist, white-collars as well as manual workers, all of them usually getting jobs in
the tertiary sector of the national economy.
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Employers in local labour markets identified asfarmers do have to solve a
problem with shortage of specialists for jobs above all in the primary and secondary
sectors of the national economy. Qualification of foreign labour force in these precincts
usually corresponds to the requirements of employers, and they often offer a further
training to the foreign employees on the manual positions. What is also important to
mention, in this spatial segment of the Czech labour market is the lowest number of
employers of foreign labour force comparing to the segments of centre, periphery and
others. This can also be seen as a part of explanation of difference in unemployment rate
betweenfarmers andperiphery (cf. table 2). With the lower number of foreign workers
in the farmer segments, in comparison with periphery segments, the pressure on force
out of domestic labour force from the local labour market is weaker.
In the precincts which were gathered under the heading others employers offer
to the foreign employees usually jobs from the secondary sectors of the national
economy which are simultaneously jobs of the secondary labour market, i.e. dead end
jobs (no career, low pay, no further training). The data come from period when the
Czech economy steadily grew and suffered from shortage of indigenous labour force.
That was the reason why Czech employers hired foreigners for manual positions in
these precincts.
From the findings presented above we may conclude not only that the Czech
labour market is spatially segmented, but that the proposed spatial segmentation is
meaningful also for evaluation and description of the foreign labour force chances on
that market. At least three spatial segments, distinctive according to the majority of the
Czech labour market, were identified which may be perceived as important also for the
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investigation of foreign labour force in the Czech republic. These segments, centre,
periphery andfarmers, may be used either for the opportunities estimation of the
chances diverse segments of the foreign labour force have on the segmented Czech
labour market, or for description of diverse manners employers in different spatial
segments utilise foreign workforce and how it affects possible social integration. The
correspondence analysis outcomes show that proposed segmentation based on the data
for indigenous population is able to explain at least a part of variability in the data
describing the spatial segmentation of demand for foreign labour force.
Future research
Presented findings also open new questions and new directions which can be
followed by a further research.
It should be reminded that the patterns of hiring foreign labour force in all
spatial segments of the Czech labour market were influenced by the fact of a strong
economic growth in 2007, when the data were collected. However there is, of course, a
fluctuating component in the foreign labour force hiring patterns in the outlined spatial
segments, we may expect a stable (and rather durable) component as well. Whereas the
fluctuating component, as depending on rather economic variables (rate of growth,
currency rate, manufacturing and export records of the industries in given time etc.),
will oscillate according to the actual macroeconomic development, the stable
component is produced through the inscription of the social structures into the physical
space and into its features and also its members. This stable component, since consisting
mainly of naturalised outcomes of past battles and contests, is less dependent on the
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actual state of the economy and can be seen as a base structure to which any proposed
form and method of integration has to correspond and which has to take into account.
Processes of social integration are different in a city area and in a rural precinct.
A further question can be asked whether different spatial segments do really
have a different integration record, and where the difference comes from. Again, the
fluctuating component has to be taken into account.
Generally speaking, the spatial characteristics of social and socially regulated
processes open new spaces and new questions to investigate. Spatial characteristics are
a natural part of our experience and they cannot be omitted. They intervene into our
thinking and into our behaviour, they partake in the structuration of the world we see as
natural. Spatial characteristics have then a capacity to stand as an independent variable
in empirical investigation.
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diagram 1 - The spatial segmentation of the Czech labour market (correspondence analysis)
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diagram 2 - The spatial segmentation of the opportunities of foreign workers on the Czechlabour market (correspondence analysis)