Labour-Market Changes and New Forms of Work in Old Industrial Regions: Maybe Flexibility for Some but Not Flexible Accumulation

Abstract

In the last decade or so it has become clear that significant changes are occurring in the organization of economic activities, work and employment, and living conditions in the advanced capitalist economies, They raise important theoretical questions as to the most appropriate way of interpreting them, Many of the answers that have been offered draw heavily, i one guise or another, upon notions of increased ‘flexibility’, a transition from a Fordist to a flexible regime of accumulation, from Fordist mass-production systems to flexible production systems. In this paper, these theoretical claims are set against the evidence of changes in the ‘old industrial regions' of the capitalist world. Whereas there undoubtedly are some economic activities and localities that can validly be characterized as exhibiting symptoms of flexible production systems or flexible accumulation, the evidence for the old industrial regions does not point to such a conclusion, This raises further important questions as to how to characterize the changes that are currently in progress.