Dimitris Ballas (p), Danny Dorling, Benjamin Hennig

Michael Wyrwich

This paper presents a human cartographic approach to the analysis of the impact of austerity and the economic crisis across Europe’s regions, highlighting particular areas and types of regions. First, the paper reflects on past insights and debates on the analysis and mapping of poverty and wealth and of austerities in particular. It then presents and discusses a wide range of human cartograms and maps (including unemployment, poverty as well as related themes such as education attainment and migration) highlighting social and spatial inequalities and also illustrating that the real social divides within Europe are more often within states rather than between them. To that end the paper also argues the case for a co-ordination of urban, regional, national and European policies and EU spending to ameliorate the impacts of austerity and to enhance social and territorial cohesion. Finally, the paper highlights the increasingly important role of geographers and of the fields of Regional Science and Regional Studies in the debates about the future of the European project and of the possibility of a Europe of cities and regions rather than a Europe of nation-states.

Michael Wyrwich (p), Elisabeth Bublitz

Dimitris Ballas

To what degree can technological change reduce social inequalities across regions? As part of the disruptive effects of the second industrialization, we analyze whether technological innovations facilitated labor market access for people with impairments, fostering social inclusiveness in the absence of today’s welfare system. A higher level of office jobs, not factory jobs, caused an increase of the share of disabled people employed in a region. However, overall employment growth of disabled employees was lower than that of the general population. This suggests that the emergence of the modern office lowered entry barriers to a specific sector but that the benefits of the industrialization in terms of labor force participation were not distributed equally across the population.