Core-periphery Relations Research Articles

Immigrants, slums, and housing policy: The spatial dispersal of the Ethiopian population in Israel

Nearly 40 years after the first wave of Ethiopian immigration to Israel, the country’s Ethiopian population still suffers from significant socioeconomic disadvantage: Many of its members live in highly homogeneous poor neighborhoods, which expose them to a variety of negative externalities. This study is the first to examine empirically the impact of Israel’s policy of absorption and spatial distribution on the formation of homogeneous ghettos of Ethiopians, and the contribution of the government’s major housing assistance programs for Ethiopians to solving or exacerbating this problem. The study, structured into four main stages, embraces a mixed-methods research approach drawing on diverse theoretical and methodological frameworks. In the first stage, we use descriptive statistics to introduce the current characteristics of the Ethiopian population in Israel and compare them with those of other marginalized social groups. In the second stage, we analyze the government’s various housingassistance programs for the Ethiopian population, focusing on three flagship programs. The third stage analyzes the spatial outcomes of the primary housing-assistance program, which remains active to date. Lastly, through in-depth interviews with policymakers and Ethiopian leaders, we delve into the underlying considerations that lay behind the policy decisions made. The research findings indicate that Ethiopians experience social and economic disadvantages, yet their spatial situation seems to be better than that of other disadvantaged groups, because a significant part of this population apparently enjoys the advantages of living in the center of the country. The findings further show that while the various government housing-assistance programs have elevated homeownership rates among Ethiopians, they have not prevent the formation and proliferation of spatial concentrations of poverty. Nor have they ever provided both the means and the knowledge needed to enable Ethiopians households to enhance their quality of life by moving out of these neighborhoods. To truly address the problem of homogeneous concentrations of poverty, a holistic but tailor-made housing policy is essential. This policy should not simply mirroring the national housing policy, which focuses almost exclusively on homeownership, but rather incorporate diverse policy measures for different populations. A good and just housing policy must take into account the existing spatial dynamic and the core–periphery relations and ensure an environment that provides quality employment and education opportunities alongside social networks that the residents can leverage to increase their social, economic, and cultural capital. Otherwise, the government housing-assistance programs will continue to be mere lip service and too little, too late.

Beyond the Rhetoric of Revanchism Towards the Metropolitan Core: An Analysis of Symbolic Representations of Milan From Its Peripheries

Socio-political research has shown that in metropolitan peripheries, populist parties have gained significant support. This is because these parties capitalise on a widespread feeling of exclusion, leading to a revanchist social representation of affluent metropolitan centres. This article contributes to the debate on metropolitan dynamics by exploring the social representations of the centre–periphery relationship, showing how symbolic representations play a role in shaping codes of action and revanchism alone is insufficient to understand the core–periphery relationship. Four suburbs with similar socioeconomic characteristics in the functional urban area of Milan were selected. Milan is the most important Italian metropolis, and it has a relevant socio-political fracture. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to analyse the cultural meanings of living on the periphery among local leaders. The metropolitan centre is perceived as necessary, evoking ‘efficient’ representations; however, these peripheral contexts are meaningful places of belonging. This article shows that an analysis of the dynamics at work at the metropolitan level should consider peripheral contexts.

Decentralization in Ukraine: Reorganizing Core–Periphery Relations?

This article seeks to determine whether (and how) Ukraine’s Decentralization Reform is reorganizing core-periphery relations. Involving a profound rescaling and reterritorialization of the nation-state, the reform is widely considered one of the most transformational policies of the three decades of the country’s independence and is credited with fostering local self-governance and motivating resistance in the war with Russia. However, such emancipatory ideals promoted by Western institutions and reflected in urbanist literature are contradicted by ongoing economic restructuring—austerity, privatization, and deregulation—where the devolvement of responsibility has placed Ukrainian localities into the competitive environment of place entrepreneurialism. The article outlines how the Decentralization Reform’s attempts to address uneven geographical development are instead reproducing unevenness across local, national, and global scales and advancing the (re)production of neoliberal capitalist space. The global philanthropic project of rebuilding Ukrainian cities in the face of imperial war is intensifying this dynamic, making Ukrainian (sub)urban space an important site for exploring alternatives within and beyond the post-Soviet condition.

Asymmetric patterns in territorial cooperation between core and periphery: The participation of Central and Eastern Europe in transnational and interregional cooperation programmes

AbstractThe study deals with the issue of core–periphery relations in the European Union, investigating its patterns in relation to the participation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states in European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) programmes between 2007 and 2020. Core–periphery patterns do exist in the European space, where besides the North‐Western core (‘Core’), there are two distinct peripheries, CEE and Southern Europe. The peripheral position is reflected in the weak performance of CEE in European‐wide RDI networks subsidised by the EU. On the basis of the KEEP database, the study analyses the signs of core–periphery relations by identifying whether there is asymmetry in the participation of CEE and Core countries in cooperation projects under the transnational (INTERREG B) and interregional (INTERREG C) strands (together, TI) of ETC. The findings of the study show that there is a significant difference in the forms of involvement of actors from North‐Western Europe and CEE in the TI programmes. Actors from CEE countries are very motivated to become involved in TI projects. However, they are significantly underrepresented in lead partner positions, especially in funding. The study's results suggest that participation activity patterns are significantly asymmetric in TI programmes, showing signs of a core–periphery dynamic even in such place‐based, cohesion‐oriented programmes. The consequence is that the articulation of geographic characteristics, special needs and issues associated with CEE is limited as they play a rather adaptive and imitating role in those territorial cooperation programmes that are influential in discourses and policies about territorial development in the European arena.

Peripheral housing rentierisation in Southern Europe: reflections from the Portuguese case

Housing is increasingly treated as a source of capital gain and rent extraction rather than a source of shelter and security for the household. This is the outcome of financialised home ownership that has led to the concentration of real estate assets by the well-off while the lower socioeconomic strata have faced unaffordable house prices and rents. As is often the case with new research agendas, the analysis has thus far focused on the most advanced capitalist countries where these trends first emerged. This article aims to expand the analysis to the peripheral countries of the European Union focusing, in particular, on Portugal. It shows that in the periphery the accumulation of assets is increasingly driven by small-scale investors from core countries that contributes to widening the gap between housing prices and rents and the living wages of the resident population, deepening wealth inequality within and across countries. In so doing, it underlines the importance of bringing core-periphery relations into the analysis of housing rentierisation.

Measurement of digital development with partial orders, Tiered DEA, and cluster analysis for the European Union

AbstractThe digital economy is increasingly seen as an essential cornerstone in developing national strategies and industrial policies to enhance national competitiveness. On the other hand, a realistic assessment of digital readiness is essential for developing appropriate policies. In our paper, we group the countries of the European Union (EU) using three different methods applied to a dataset consisting of the four main dimensions of the EU's Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) in order to identify Europe's main geographical “fault lines” in terms of digital readiness. DESI is a composite index aggregating several digitalization-related indicators to benchmark the progress of digital transformation in each member state. However, our methods aim not to rank countries but to identify groups of countries that are close to each other. The three methods used in the paper are partially ordered sets (poset), Tiered Data Envelopment Analysis (TDEA), and cluster analysis, known from multivariate statistics. The three types of clustering show a high degree of similarity, indicating the robustness of the results. Another research question relates to the extent to which the digital development of the EU Member States corresponds to the economic development of the countries and core–periphery relationships. While we can observe a high degree of similarity between the more and less developed clusters in terms of digital readiness and the groups that can be identified in terms of economic development and institutional quality, we also notice some peculiar exceptions (which could provide examples of best practices).

The role of services in economic development and the core-periphery relationship

The role of services in economic development and the core-periphery relationship

Finding space in the modes of production debate: The value of Latin America

This article is inspired by several recent scholarly developments. First, there has been renewed interest in debates surrounding the concept ‘mode of production’. Second, there has been a passionate debate about how we understand core–periphery relations in relation to the broader question of capitalist development. Finally, it has been argued that, beyond opposition to neoliberal development, there has also been a revival of Marxist theoretical perspectives and praxis in Latin America. However, despite some diverse work engaging with debates that use the concept ‘mode of production’ in the Latin American context, there has been no systematic attempt to look at major Latin America Marxist thinkers and their contribution to this debate. This article seeks to correct for this by looking at the key work of René Zavaleta and José Carlos Mariátegui as two of the continent’s most original Marxist thinkers. By doing so, I offer three distinct contributions. First I remove the mode of production debate from its relatively narrow, Eurocentric preoccupations, and second, I displace the largely temporal concerns of the debate (when was capitalism?) to give it a more spatial rendering (where is capitalism?). This opens the possibilities of thinking about co-existing differential spaces within a social formation. Finally, this method of analysis is therefore able to give a realistic assessment of the social forces involved in contemporary struggles by specifying what social antagonisms exist and where alliances can be constructed. I conclude that an analysis grounded in modes of production is thus attentive to specificity, and this provides a basis for thinking about transformative possibilities in and beyond Latin America.

Subordinate housing financialization: tracing global institutional investment into Lisbon’s urban development

ABSTRACT This article contributes to scholarship on housing financialization and core–periphery relations by exploring the role of transnational institutional investors in housing production in Lisbon. Using a “follow-the-money” approach, I trace current investments into large-scale housing developments, finding a dominance of capital-rich institutional actors originating primarily in core economies. The resulting developments are largely build-to-sell projects, which are framed as a necessary response to existing housing demands. I argue that such investment reflects and reinforces subordinate financialization through housing, as Lisbon’s status as a city of the semi-periphery dependent on outside investment provides fertile ground for investors to build projects to fit their criteria. This in turn produces uneven development on the urban scale. Using an independently-built database of projects and investors along with qualitative methods, the paper connects global relations of financial subordination to housing development, and adds to our understanding of institutional investors – increasingly powerful actors in real estate.

The Politicization of Core-Periphery Relations in the EU

The Politicization of Core-Periphery Relations in the EU

Reciprocal migration: the coloniality of recent two-way migration links between Angola and Portugal

Reciprocal migration—which we define as the mutual exchange of origin and destination by two different migrating groups—is hardly acknowledged in the migration literature. In terms of the temporalities of migration, which are usually seen as sequences or transitions, reciprocal migrations are simultaneous. We analyse the reciprocal migrations between Angola and Portugal over the time-frame of the past 10–15 years. In-depth interviews were carried out with Portuguese migrants in Angola, most of whom moved there in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis, and with Angolan third-level students and recent graduates in Portugal. A key operational concept in our analysis is the plastic notion of skill and its differential racialisation. Portuguese migrants in Angola are automatically regarded as ‘skilled’ even when they are not, whereas Angolan students and graduates in Portugal, when they seek work, are often viewed as ‘unskilled African migrant workers’. We thus distinguish and deconstruct the geographical binary between transnational origin and destination spaces and the social binary between ‘skilled white bodies’ and ‘unskilled black bodies’. These racialised embodied tropes draw on histories of Portuguese colonisation and the contested notion of ‘Lusotropicalism’, as well as the so-called Lusophone migration system involving complex transnational relations and two-way migration flows. Theoretically we frame this asymmetrical system of reciprocal migration within a modified version of core–periphery relations, as well as the coloniality of power and its enduring influence over the racialisation of skill, education, culture and language across the Portuguese–Angolan transnational space.

Social complexity and core-periphery relationships in an Andean Formative ceremonial centre: domestic occupation at Chavín de Huántar

The site of Chavín de Huántar, Peru, lies at the heart of developing social complexity in the Andean Formative period. The archaeological contexts on the site's immediate periphery are assessed to investigate the nature of occupation, activities practised, and relationships between the area's inhabitants and Chavín's ceremonial centre. The peripheral Wacheqsa sector, which began as a modest, domestic occupation in the second millennium BC, was reconfigured c. 800 cal BC into a more substantial settlement, perhaps inhabited by craftspeople producing artefacts for the Chavín authorities. The implications of this study are relevant to wider questions regarding relationships between monumental ceremonial centres and their immediate peripheries, and the study of early socio-economic complexity.

A core–periphery framework for understanding the place of Latin America in the global architecture of finance

Abstract This paper contributes to the understanding of subordinate financialisation in emerging and developing economies by setting out a novel core–periphery framework that elucidates the place of Latin America in the global architecture of finance. This framework builds on the centre–periphery financial model of uneven regional credit and economic growth, originally proposed by Victoria Chick and Sheila Dow in 1988. In the era of deregulated financial flows and market-based credit, the core–periphery relationship has become a three-level hierarchical system, in which Latin American nations occupy a subordinate place. The key drivers of this structural shift within these nations have been the liberalisation of cross-border financial flows and investment, the deregulation of banking and the adoption of private pension systems. These drivers’ adoption can be traced to both push and pull factors: specifically, recurrent financial crises requiring external intervention (especially by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)), and the possibility of engaging with the financial instruments and megabanks driving the globalisation of finance. Participating in this hierarchical system has required importing elements of the financial architecture that evolved in the 1980s in advanced economies and has also arguably deepened this region’s financial dependency and vulnerability.

Combating climate change: Dismantling the spatial and temporal assumptions of the core and periphery

AbstractIn this commentary, I examine the implications of core periphery relationship with respect to challenges, implications, and responses to climate change. As authors in the special issue have demonstrated with respect to economic growth, the core‐periphery dynamic is challenged in climate change. Climate change is disrupting the fundamental conditions of human life. Its impacts are also profoundly unequal and the risks of climate change compound. Climate change exacerbates existing inequities by placing further burdens on communities that are already vulnerable. While some individuals and communities will have resources to adapt to or avoid the worst impacts of climate change, others will find their homes becoming uninhabitable, their livelihoods vanishing, and their health and security threatened. Sea level rise alone will create up to one billion climate refugees by the year 2100.

Barricade the King’s Highway! Deteriorating Core-Periphery Relations, Mobilization, and Repression in Jordan’s Hinterland

ABSTRACT Even before the Arab Uprising waves, the grievances of increased demands on services and subsidies, shifting economic policy, the deteriorating core-periphery relations between Amman and erstwhile major centers in the Jordanian hinterland (e.g., al-Karak, Maʿān, al-Ṭafilah) have all characterized one aspect of the delicate balance of power in the Hashemite Kingdom. This article will examine the nature of this deterioration, and how the monarchy has variously conceded to, repressed, and thereby withstood repeated protests emanating from the hinterlands. Finally, this article examines a case study of the city of Maʿān as a bellwether hub of popular protest in Jordan.

Structural core–periphery divergences in the EU: the case of responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020

ABSTRACT Pandemic responses within the EU deviate from past large-scale crisis management substituting the austerity paradigm with the normalisation of generous fiscal support. Yet, traditional north-south fault lines remain. The article addresses such a puzzle systematically assessing the core-periphery divide in pandemic management and outcomes across the EU 27. The analysis highlights gaps and geographical heterogeneities across the north-south divide, refuting their sole attribution to differences in the scale of the health crisis. Conversely, we show the contribution of containment measures to heterogeneous economic outcomes across the core and periphery, which extend to the Southern Member States marginally impacted by the outbreak. Findings confirm the pandemic furthered divergences across the Member States, highlighting how the absence of austerity alone is not sufficient to enact convergence within the EU27. Supporting structural imbalances and the need for transnational solidarity, the work contributes to the debate on core-periphery relations and the future of economic integration in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe and foreseen reform of the Stability and Growth Pact.

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND INEQUALITY WITHIN CITY REGIONS: A STUDY OF THE YANGTZE RIVER DELTA, CHINA

ABSTRACT The city region has emerged as an important form of regional development and governance. However, the dynamics of spatial inequality in city regions are misunderstood. This study examines the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) to determine the spatiotemporal evolution of regional inequality across prefecture-level municipalities from 1990 to 2018. It finds that regional inequality has steadily increased since the 1990s but has declined somewhat in recent years. This is associated with faster growth and higher upward mobility of central regions in the early reform period and increases in the upward mobility of the periphery in recent years. The gradient-distance curve of the Shanghai-centered economy sharpened and then flattened, indicating the polarization of growth in the core regions, followed by the diffusion of development and improved regional integration. However, the core-periphery remains stronger within provinces between provincial capitals and other regions. Despite regional integration and peripheral development, the problem of spatial exclusion and core-periphery structures persists. More attention needs to be given to the core-periphery relationship and the development of peripheral regions to promote regional integration and reduce spatial polarization.

Petojo Enclek Traditional Market Building: Application of Technology Systems as Substantiation of Improving the Quality of Life and Landscape Transformation in Batavia

Abstract. Traditional markets are places and means of meeting sellers and buyers and are marked by direct buyer-seller transactions and usually there is a bargaining process. This research is a study of environmental changes and Petojo Enclek Market in the 20th - 21st Century. The purpose of this research is to see changes in Petojo Enclek Market based on archives, ancient maps, ancient photos, history, technology used in buildings, and market conditions in the past. recently. In this study using qualitative methods, the stages of this research include data collection, data processing, data analysis and data interpretation. The theory used in this study is the Core-Periphery by John Friedman and Weaver, where the Core-Periphery relationship can occur due to the expansion (development) of markets and other infrastructure. This research, it can be seen that there are significant changes in the Petojo Enclek Market building and its surroundings.

De-centering transitions: Low-carbon innovation from the peripheries

Socio-technical transitions have garnered significant attention in recent years. Both in theory and practice, however, concerns have been raised about the elitist character of low-carbon transitions. Such dynamics are predominantly imagined through core-periphery relationships. More recently, calls to ‘decentre’ transitions draw attention to the social and spatial dynamics of transitions in the peripheries. recognizing and fostering transitions from the peripheries offers important opportunities for progressing low-carbon innovation in practice and opens the door to deeper structural transformations. This perspective must nevertheless acknowledge the risk of transitions creating new core-periphery dependencies and reinforcing the strength of elites.

Spatial gaps – Narrowing or widening? Changes in spatial dynamics in the new millennium

Spatial dynamics and its impact on core–periphery relations and on people’s lives have always been a major concern for both scholars and decision makers in many parts of the world. These issues are of greater concern today than ever before because of the global housing affordability crisis that is intertwined with changes in traditional internal migration patterns. This study offers a unique analysis, combining theoretical developments and in-depth empirical research, using big data on the entire Israeli population ages 21 + . It examines changes in spatial dynamics in Israel to understand whether core–periphery disparities have been narrowing or widening in the past two decades. The research findings show mixed trends. With regard to educational level and the distribution of age groups, they indicate the strengthening of the peripheral areas. However, the distribution of income classes shows the strengthening of the center of the country (Tel Aviv area) and the weakening of the other areas. This reflects the relatively stable spatial gaps between the center and the periphery. However, this study further shows that there is a high probability that young, educated, and affluent households will abandon the periphery and that the gaps will eventually widen. Though the findings focus on Israel, they are relevant to many countries because they address core–periphery relations from a spatial-demographic perspective, thus emphasizing the great importance of making peripheral areas attractive places to live.