Labour’s Spatial Fix: State Socialist Hungary in the 1970s

Abstract

AbstractLabour’s spatial fix has become a key term in labour geography scholarship in recent decades. The concept has been widely used to understand labour’s agency in its own social reproduction in different historical and geographical capitalist social formations. Departing from the position that state socialism was part of global capitalism, this paper applies the concept of labour’s spatial fix to the context of state socialist Hungary. The analysis differentiates between three dimensions of labour’s spatial fix in social reproduction: wage work (with particular attention given to female employment), income from the “second economy” and housing. The interrelatedness of these dimensions of labour’s spatial fix, as well as their different geographies, are shown in an analysis covering Hungary of the 1970s. It is argued that there is a need for more extensive research on how conditions for social reproduction are established in the concept of labour’s spatial fix.