ABSTRACT
In this chapter we examine the political-economic relations that cause poor jobs and unemployment. Poor jobs not only give poor incomes but also disempower and devalue workers within the production process, with negative impacts on their autonomy, personal development and self-esteem. Moreover, the structures of the economy cause competition between workers for jobs, particularly at the lower end of the labour market, and thus social and political atomisation. The economy oppresses the poor not only materially but also culturally. These problems are not just the result of the competitive failure of particular territorial economies but are systematically produced by capitalism, particularly in its modern form. Section 4.2 shows the systemic ways in which capitalism generates poor jobs, economic insecurity and unemployment. Section 4.3 discusses how these are distributed unequally both socially and spatially, and how these unequal distributions have their own political effects. Section 4.4 describes the worsening of the causes of poverty, which has occurred since the economic turning point of the 1970s. In section 4.5, we offer an explanation of this period as one of economic crisis compounded by the neoliberal strategy adopted by capital, within which spatial mobility plays a central role. More generally, we shall argue that economic disadvantage is not merely patterned by space but actively produced through it.
