ABSTRACT
A major feature of post-war Europe has been growing internationalization of the context within which spatial divisions of labour are created. Southern European countries and, increasingly, the United Kingdom have tended to attract some of the production stages requiring low-cost labour. However, in most of western Europe democratic regimes prevailed and, in practice, the labour supply was secured by two processes: internal reorganization of labour and international migration. Gross National Product (GNP) per capita provides a crude indicator of the state of development in western Europe in the mid-1980s. France, as early as 1945, established the Office National de Immigration to recruit temporary labour, mainly from southern Europe. In contrast, German multinational company (MNCs) have concentrated more investment within Europe, especially southern Europe. Hamilton found that MNCs were subject to centralization tendencies. Switzerland, too, had its MNCs, led by Bally who established several shoe factories in South America in the 1870s.
