Modulaciones

Geographical labour market mobility may involve either out-migration, a permanent or semi-permanent residential move, or commuting, through which workers travel outside their area of residence for

employment.⁴⁵ Migration decisions can be either a ‘proactive choice’ or a ‘reactive necessity’. In the former, migration is a positive strategy to improve wages and/or skills and general quality of life; in the latter, it is ‘undesired but necessary’, a ‘geographical strategy of last resort’

(Castree et al, 2004; 199).⁴⁶

Much of the US policy towards mitigating the impacts of

deindustrialisation rested on the assumption that labour markets would adjust through migration. While such geographical mobility may

improve the effective working of national economies, high levels of mobility can also have negative localised effects. A region’s endowment of human capital is crucial in determining its future prospects for

economic growth (see Florida, 2002; 220-222; also Glaeser, 2000).

Large-scale out-migration can therefore erode local social capital. It can also breakdown social and kinship networks, and engender a lack of commitment to locality (Green, 2004; 630; Donovan et al 2002; 22).

45 This can vary from daily to weekly long-distance commuting (see Green et al, 1999).

46 Often these distinctions are not clear cut and vary for workers from the same plant, it depends on their satisfaction with the areas pre-closure, and their situation in the place of destination (for example see Castree et al, 2004; 203-204 on the migration of Corus workers from Ebbw Vale to Ijmuiden).

Discussion of migratory process should therefore be sensitive to both sender and receiver regions.

Migration

The UK resistance to migration

The lack of willingness in the UK to move for work has been the basis of much academic debate in recent years. Mobility rates in the UK are much lower than in the US, with around 8% and 16% respectively of the population moving home in 1996/7 (Gregg et al, 2004; 378). In the UK most of these moves are also intra-regional, often over very small distances and are much more likely to be for housing rather than job related reasons (Donovan et al, 2002; 2-6; Dixon, 2003, 194).

Migration is also strongly linked to socio-economic status. Through the 1980s, non-manual workers in the UK were three times more likely to make inter-regional moves than manual workers (Bailey and Turok, 2000). This suggests that adjusting to job loss through migration responses has been ‘particularly difficult for manual workers’ (Bailey and Turok, 2000; Webster 2000). Furthermore, while migration from areas of low labour demand to areas of high demand has the potential to reduce overall unemployment, speculative residential moves among the unemployed in the UK are very rare (Dixon, 2003; 191; Gregg et al, 2004; 373-393). It has been suggested that the overrepresentation of the unemployed in social housing appears to limit mobility (Gregg et al, 2004; 397).⁴⁷

Beatty et al (1997) demonstrate in their aggregate studies of labour market change that migration has however been a significant

47 This is probably the result of local authority housing policy which generally gives priority to those currently resident in the district. Only 14 percent of new lettings in social housing are movers from another region compared to 37 percent of new private-sector lettings (Gregg et al, 2004; 384 & 397).

component of adjustment in coalfield areas, with some 59,600 men moving out between 1981 and 1991, 4.8% of the economically active 16-64 year old males. However, Hollywood (2002), using evidence from the Sample of Anonymised Records (SARs) – a sample of individual census returns, finds that migration has not been a significant labour market response by former miners. This apparently conflicting evidence suggests that while out-migration has been a general response to

industrial decline, it has not been by those groups directly affected by job losses. Instead, it involved individuals affected either by multiplier effects, or those who simply to move for residential reasons. There is also a sound financial explanation to the immobility of ex-miners who received fairly substantial redundancy, typically in the region of

£15,000 to £30,000, which was often used to pay off mortgages (Beatty and Fothergill, 1999; 44; Critcher et al, 1995; 22; also Tomaney et al, 1999; 408 on Swan Hunter). Having done this, some were essentially trapped by low property prices compared with other areas, and even by negative equity.

The US frontier spirit

In contrast to the UK, high labour mobility is a well established part of US life. The propensity for migration which fascinated De Tocqueville (1969; 536) some 170 years ago still persists to this day (Gregg et al, 2004; 373). Although the differences have been subject to swings over time, during the last thirty years US labour mobility has been

approximately double that of Europe (see Jacoby and Finkin, 2004; 8-9).

In addition, the occupational structure has been the reverse of that in the UK. In the US during the 1980s manual workers were 30% more likely to move out of their county of residence than non-manual workers (Hughes and McCormick, 2000; 15 cited in Donovan et al 2002; 7).

Migration has therefore been a significant response to

deindustrialisation in the US. An extreme example is the industrial

hobo, documented by Maharidge and Williamson (1985; 7), a new class of people who, on losing blue-collar jobs, simply travelled the country looking for work. The context surrounding this US style mobility is neatly summed up by John Hoerr (1988; 12-13):

‘This is wide, broad shouldered America, where there is always room someplace else for people abandoned by their livelihood. Are you an unemployed steelworker from the Mon Valley?

Well, move on, brother! The first hill is the hardest one to cross. After that, the

opportunities are limitless…Texas, Arizona, or anyplace from here to there where McDonald’s need someone to serve that one-trillionth burger.’

While mobility of this type has been promoted by the Federal Government as a way of boosting national economic efficiency, the costs of the large-scale loss of skilled labour for a transmitting region are high. Migration is self-selective, so that those who move out are likely to be younger and more employable, while older members of communities and African-Americans less likely to move (Raphael and Ricker, 1999; 17-46 cited in Jacoby and Finkin, 2004; 11). The character of the region is therefore altered, leaving behind the ‘poor, elderly and disabled’ and, in short, the likelihood of a recovery diminishes (Sweet, 1999; 248; Cunningham and Martz, 1986). The loss of a viable work force also reduces the tax base, with multiplier effects on local businesses and services.

Such a population loss, experienced by many old industrial areas, also had pronounced implications for local housing markets. These were particularly significant in relation to changing federal policy for housing as the government began to curb its involvement in direct housing provision, relying instead on private sector renting. This policy, known as Section 8, was established as part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and is now the ‘dominant form of federal housing assistance’ (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2003; Ellen

et al, 2005; 5; Turner et al, 2000; 8; 53). Section 8 provides public housing vouchers for low-income families to live in privately rented accommodation. The voucher covers ‘the difference between 30 percent of adjusted family income and a PHA determined payment standard or the gross rent for the unit, whichever is lower’

(www.hud.gov).

Problems can develop with Section 8 in areas of weak housing demand, however, with landlords buying up cheap properties to attract tenants with Section 8 vouchers. In such circumstances there are stronger incentives for landlords to misuse the programme by not sanctioning unacceptable behaviour or by taking in problem tenants to provide a guaranteed income where there are difficulties in finding paying private tenants (Pollock and Rutlowski, 1998 cited in Turner et al, 2000; 23).

There are also racial aspects to this, as mixed or predominantly black neighbourhoods are more likely to have low property values, making them most susceptible to the influx of Section 8 tenants.

The transfer of housing into Section 8 programmes can therefore cause friction with existing residents because of possible negative effects on the values of surrounding properties. There may also be ‘population mix effects’, or a worry that such housing brings in poverty and joblessness affecting the ‘neighbourhood's quality of life’ (Ellen et al, 2005; 11).⁴⁸ In recent years there has been strong neighbourhood opposition to increasing numbers of Section 8 households in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and St Louis (Turner et al, 2000; 15).⁴⁹

48 There are very few studies on the impacts of Section 8 because of difficulties with accessing accurate data (Ellen et al, 2005; 1-2).

49 In Boston when these issues were probed it was found that most of the behaviour problems were actually attributable to unsubsidised families (Turner et al, 2000; 15).

Commuting

Increased commuting is another way through which worker mobility mediates the impacts of local economic shocks. The extent to which commuting may achieve this is highly dependent on geography, and particularly on proximity to more buoyant local labour markets.

Unfortunately for many deindustrialised localities, including

Northumberland and the Mon Valley, their local decline was often part of a more extensive regional trend.

The UK reluctance to commute

Recent empirical work by Beatty et al (2005) has suggested that

increased out-commuting was a very small response to mining job losses in all the coalfields areas over the period 1981-1991, increasing by only 4500 men, or 0.4% of the economically active males (16-64)⁵⁰. There are two main explanations for this. First, the peripheral and relatively inaccessible location of many of the coalfields meant that the monetary and non-monetary costs of travelling to work in surrounding areas created a ‘friction of distance’, which limit the scope of an individual’s employment field (Webster, 2006; 113). Secondly, a reluctance to travel too far for work is considered by some to be ‘culturally ingrained’ in the coalfields, an example of the ‘cognitive lock-in’

referred to earlier⁵¹ (CTRU, 1992; 26 cited in Waddington, 2003; 12).

Parry (2003), in her work on coalmining decline, similarly documented

‘survivalists’ who prioritised local work and were unwilling to travel far, thereby limiting their labour market options.⁵² While the

50 There is of course some geographical diversity of experience with regards

commuting rate change from different coalfield areas which is detailed in Beatty et al (2005) and Townsend and Hudson (2005).

51 Hudson (2005; 587-588) has argued that state policies aimed at breaking unwanted forms of lock-in, including such relative immobility, have been largely unsuccessful.

52 Drawing on work by McCrone (1994), Parry suggests a framework for investigating labour market change in deindustrialised areas which divides individual’s responses to economic change into two different responses; the ‘strategic’ and the ‘survivalist’

approach (Parry, 2003). The approach adopted depends on an individual’s resource endowment in terms of both financial and social capital. The ‘survivalists’ approach is

immediate implications of this reluctance are well documented the inter-generational aspects remain unexplored.

The US more accepting attitude towards commuting

In general commuting patterns in the US have tended to be somewhat broader than those in the UK as a result of the dominance of private transport and the process of suburbanisation (the separation of residential and production geographies). There is little evidence to suggest that a cultural reluctance to commute such as that described in the UK coalfields applies in the US. Past studies show that displaced workers were not averse to commuting increased distances to

employment (see Armstrong and Mullin’s 1987 study of Massachusetts).

However, in many cases the scale of this response would have been limited either by broader regional decline, or, for some of the smaller industrial towns, by the distances between them and other employment centres.

In the Mon Valley, for example, there was already significant commuting by industrial workers at the time of closures. Whereas historically workers would have lived and worked in the same

community this relationship had been changing since the 1970s as well-off steelworkers began to move outwards from the mill towns into the suburbs, escaping from the pollution of the mills (Cunningham and Martz, 1986; 71-72; Mon Valley Regional/ Urban Assistance Team, 1988;

24; Department of Engineering and Public Policy School of Urban and Public Affairs and Department of Social Science, 1983; 9-10; Yamatani et al, 1989). By 1980, over half of all steel workers were working outside their town of residence (Department of Engineering and Public

to find paid work for the primary aim of immediate material gain; ‘strategists’, however, had undergone a process of investing in their labour market futures, putting a long-term strategy ahead of short-term gain and had adopted a range of work (not just paid employment) to achieve an ‘occupational satisfaction qualitatively

comparable to those provided by traditional forms of coalmining’ (Parry, 2003; 241).

Policy School of Urban and Public Affairs and Department of Social Science, 1983; 55-56).

3.4 The role of public money in regeneration and economic