each other. As such, labour markets are neces-
sarily geographical (Martin, 2000b). These
labour markets are often very local, including
places such as the street corner where day
labourers stand hoping for work or the town
in which the local newspaper publishes adverts
looking for staff. However, under conditions of
neo-liberalglobalizationthese transactions
are being spatially stretched to incorporate
migrantswho might cross continents looking
for work. Thus, the labour markets in some
global citiessuch as London are places
where native-born Londoners are competing
for jobs – at both the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ ends
of the occupational hierarchy – with workers
from the rest of the world. Indeed, there is
now a large literature exploring the complex
labour markets of such cities and regions
(May, Wills, Datta, Evans and Herbert, 2007).
Geographical understandings of the labour
market were traditionally focused on mapping
the geographical area from which workers
travelled to work. As such, large urban
connurbations often attracted workers from
relatively far away, using the commuter trans-
portation networks on which all cities depend.
However, this approach to mapping the labour
market tells us nothing about thepowerrela-
tions or the role of geography in the operation
of labour markets. Labour power is a unique
form ofcommodityand in order to buy la-
bour power, employers have to deal with the
people who embody that power (Peck, 1996).
As such, the labour market depends upon
employers managing their workers through
thelabour processin order to realize the
commodity – labour power – that they buy.
People come to work with their own perso-
nalities, expectations of work and political
traditions, and the potential conflict between
employers and workers is the root of trade
union organization (seelabour geography).
Such social relations also reflect theplace
in which the labour market is grounded.
Unequal opportunities to develop skills and
different life experiences afford people varying
potential to ‘sell themselves’ in the market for
jobs; skills reflect previous opportunities for
education, work and training, and the history
of employment, in any location. As is well
documented, workers in rustbelt regions
that long depended on male manual work
struggle to find work in the new service econ-
omy (seeservices). The changing nature of
the economy demands new kinds of workers,
with different physical and mental qualities
(McDowell, 2003). There is often a spatial
mismatch between the needs of employers
and the needs of those looking for work, and
workers find themselves being de-skilled or
having to re-train in order to secure employ-
ment. As such, the labour market has a direct
relationship to and impact upon the configur-
ation ofgender,ethnicandclassrelations in
and across space. Processes of direct and in-
direct discrimination in labour demand fur-
ther accentuate these structural divisions in
labour supply. Employers view potential work-
ers through their own characterization of the
‘good worker’ and employees find themselves
in segregated workplaces and jobs as a result.
Jobs are gendered and women are still largely
concentrated in part-time, lower status and
lower paid work (McDowell, 2001). Jobs
are similarly racialized and socially con-
structed as being better suited to men and/or
women from particular ethnic groups. Thus,
while many minority ethnic women are nurses
in the UK, they face direct and indirect
discrimination in securing employment in
managerial grades.
In recent years, governments have turned
their attention to the labour market in order
to reduce welfare receipt and ‘make work pay’.
In what has been calledworkfare, governments
in many post-industrial economies have re-
duced welfare payments and/or developed ac-
tive labour market strategies that demand
evidence of job-search and training on the
part of the unemployed. These policies have
been developed without regard to the geog-
raphy of labour demand or the cost of going
to work. Governments have altered the supply
of labour without concern for the quality of
the jobs to be filled. As such, and despite
national-level variations in legal minimum
wages and statutory employment rights, there
have been concerted efforts directed at labour
market flexibility. A number of scholars have
argued that these strategies are ideologically
driven, seeking to create new sources of very
cheap labour. As Peck puts it:
Stripped down to its labor-regulatory
essence, workfare is not about creating jobs
for people that don’t have them; it is about
creating workers for jobs nobody wants. In a
Foucauldian sense, it is seeking to make ‘do-
cile bodies’ for the new economy: flexible,
self-reliant and self-disciplining (2001, p. 6).
In countries such as the UK and the USA,
these labour market policies are being aug-
mented by efforts at managed migration,
whereby workers are recruited to fill specific
gaps in the labour market, often doing jobs
that native workers are unwilling to do. ThisGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_L Final Proof page 405 31.3.2009 2:44pmLABOUR MARKET