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

Unravelling The Global City Debate on Social Inequality

Analyzing the social consequences of globalization in cities based on global city theory is therefore not only obscuring a core feature of globalization as international competition, but also overstates the social consequences of globalization for many workers in cities in the advanced economies. After all, as argued before, economic restructuring in cities with the advanced economies is largely driven by local and national processes instead of international or global ones. Our findings in

Tolerantie in de postindustriële stad

In hedendaagse westerse samenlevingen kan intolerantie jegens etnische minderheden met name worden gevonden onder laagopgeleiden. Op basis van verschillende theorieën in de stadsstudies kan echter worden verondersteld dat zij in de meest postindustriële steden minder etnocentrisch zijn dan in de minst postindustriële steden. Dit artikel vergelijkt het etnocentrisme van laagopgeleide autochtonen woonachtig in de 22 Nederlandse grootstedelijke gebieden, en toont aan dat dit inderdaad het geval is. Vervolgens wordt onderzocht of dit kan worden verklaard door de grotere arbeidsmarktkansen aldaar of het tolerantere culturele klimaat

Het `global city'-debat over sociale ongelijkheid ontrafeld

Op het terrein van de stadsstudies woedt al geruime tijd een discussie over de sociale gevolgen van internationalisering van grootstedelijke economieën. Die discussie is vooral aangezwengeld door Saskia Sassens theorie over global cities waarin zij poneert dat mondialisering tot polarisering van stedelijke arbeidsmarkten leidt. Polarisering is echter vooral het gevolg van economische structuurveranderingen en die worden niet door mondialisering veroorzaakt. Toenemende internationale concurrentie leidt in westerse steden niet tot polarisering maar tot upgrading van lokale arbeidsmarkten

Stille revolutie, contra-revolutie of cultureel conflict?

In this paper we investigate the linkage between changes in the political culture on the one hand and changes in class-party alignments on the other. First we investigate how the political culture in Western countries has changed over-time. Three views are tested using data on party-manifestos. The first predicts that only new-leftist issues will increase in salience. The second predicts that both new-leftist and new-rightist issues will emerge at the same time. The third, which is empirically corroborated, predicts that first new-leftist issues will emerge followed by a rise in new right-wing issues. Second, we investigate how the emergence of these new issues has affected the traditional class-party alignments. Using the Intern