Foreign Direct Investment and International Migration to Dutch Cities

This article assesses the push- and pull-factor explanation in Sassen’s theory on migration from newly industrialising countries to cities in OECD countries separately. The former explanation argues that foreign direct investments spawn migration flows to the country where these investments stem from. The pull-factor explanation revolves around demand for low-skilled workers in cities due to the clustering of advanced producer services. It is found that Dutch investment flows indeed function as a push factor for migration to Dutch cities, but that the local settlement of immigrants is not related to the clustering of advanced producer services

De invloed van immigratie op de lonen in Amsterdam en Rotterdam.

De substitutiethese – het idee dat immigratie de lonen van de gevestigde bevolking drukt – blijkt voor sommige geavanceerde economieën wel op te gaan en voor andere niet. Tot op heden is onduidelijk wat daarvan de oorzaak is. In dit artikel wordt de substitutiethese daarom gecontextualiseerd naar stedelijke economie. De verwachting dat een sterk ontwikkelde dienstensector neerwaartse loondruk door immigratie afzwakt, wordt vervolgens onderzocht door postindustrieel Amsterdam met industrieel Rotterdam te vergelijken

Unravelling the Global City Debate: Economic Inequality and Ethnocentrism in Contemporary Dutch Cities

It is hard to overestimate the scholarly impact of Saskia Sassen’s global city theoretical framework, which revolves around the impact of economic globalization on the social, economic, and political reality of cities in advanced economies. Yet, more than two decades of research dedicated to a ‘global city debate’ have left its main issues unresolved. In Unravelling the Global City Debate Jeroen van der Waal argues that this is because scholars have hitherto merely interpreted urban change according to the central theoretical notions in this debate, and neglected to assess their empirical validity. Therefore he unravels the global city debate into the distinct theoretical notions it consists of and puts these to rigorous empirical tests by using data on one of the most urbanized and globalized developed economies in the world: the Netherlands. By doing so, he shows that the standard research practice in the global city debate leaves much to be desired, for it yields both an under- and overestimation of the impact of economic globalization on urban labour markets in contemporary cities in the advanced economie

The conditionality of the substitution thesis on type of urban economy

Studies on the substitution thesis in advanced economies show scattered results: the impact of immigration on the wages and unemployment of lower-educated natives and immigrants varies strongly. In both studies on the substitution thesis itself, as well as studies on the unequal development of urban economies in post-industrialism, there are suggestions that this is because the substitution thesis is conditional on the type of urban economy. More specific, they indicate there is reason to expect that a strong service-centered urban economy yields more labour demand for the lower educated, which consequently mitigates the substitution between immigrants and natives or earlier waves of immigrants. The empirical validity of this expectation is tested by comparing the impact of immigration on the employment level of lower-educated urbanites between 22 Dutch metropolitan areas. The findings corroborate the central hypothesis: immigration leads to higher unemployment levels, but this impact is weaker in the most service-centered urban economies

Buitenlandse investeringen en internationale migratie naar Nederlandse steden

Verklaringen voor de migratie van laaggeschoolden van arme naar rijke landen worden, conform klassieke migratietheorieën, vanouds gevonden in slechte economische omstandigheden in de herkomstlanden. Volgens Sassen brengt het hedendaagse mondialiseringsproces echter nieuwe, aanvullende push en pull factoren voor deze migratiestromen met zich mee. Buitenlandse investeringen in nieuwe industrielanden zouden migratiestromen veroorzaken richting steden in de landen waaruit de investeringen afkomstig zijn. Bovendien zouden migranten zich binnen die landen vooral vestigen in steden waar geavanceerde producentendiensten geclusterd zijn, omdat die een hoge arbeidsvraag naar laaggeschoolden kennen. In dit artikel wordt de empirische houdbaarheid van deze veronderstellingen onderzocht door te kijken naar migratie vanuit nieuwe industrielanden naar Nederlandse steden

The Impact of e-government on the organization; a case study inAmsterdam

In order to improve service delivery and in order to achieve centrally formulated goals,Dutch local governments (municipalities) introduce innovative technologies in their organizations.The implementation of technology affects the organizations in several ways. The structuration modelof technology defines elements in the organization which are affected by technology. This model isused to determine the effect of e-government technology on e.g. human actors and organizationstructure. We use the e-government maturity model to define different stages of e-government. Thisenabled us to analyze the impact of e-government during different stages of e-governmentdevelopment in practice. This study can be helpful for e.g. managers of e-government projects as theseprojects are often described to be unmanageable and complex, and this paper gives insight in the effectof e-government on the organization

Cultural Value Orientations and Christian Religiosity: On Moral Traditionalism, Authoritarianism, and Their Implications for Voting Behavior

Drawing upon problems of interpretation in political sociological research, this article questions the common practice of lumping together moral traditionalism and authoritarianism. First, it is demonstrated that of the two only moral traditionalism relates to religious orthodoxy. Second, the well-established strong correlation between both value orientations proves to be caused, in the case at hand solely by the circumstance that nontraditionalism and nonauthoritarianism go hand in hand; moral traditionalism and authoritarianism are almost unrelated. Third, moral traditionalists are shown to vote for Christian right-wing parties, whereas authoritarianism more commonly leads to a vote for a secular right-wing party. Fourth, whereas moral traditionalism proves decisive for the voting behavior of Christians, it is authoritarianism that underlies the non-Christian vote. These findings from The Netherlands (consistent with theories on cultural modernization) lead to the conclusion that attention should be paid to the distinction between these orientations because this aids the interpretation of research fi ndings, and because authoritarianism will probably gain a more central role in politics at the cost of moral traditionalism