Scale and spaces of global labor markets

In this chapter I argue is, first, that other scales, and in particular the regional, have become more significant in the past few decades and that these may be as important as the global for the formation of labor markets and the circulation of capital. Second, states may be dynamic players in the determination of the boundaries of labor markets, not only in response to economic demands but also increasingly due to pressure for greater control, and even sometimes closure, from anti-immigrant populist and nationalist movements. While the state is no longer seen as a container, it nevertheless retains considerable regulatory power within which to generate its sources of labor supply using different scalar arrangements.. We see this most clearly in the discourses and practices of the British state in relation to the regional, in this case the EU, and the global, where in the past 20 years it has reconstructed a division of labor within an expanding European spatiality, providing it with flexible sources of labor and skills