A Relational Approach to Regional Economic Development: Essays on Migration, Globalization, and Inequality

The rise of economic populism and movements for greater racial, gender, and class equality over the last few years have foregrounded the massive problems of spatial and social inequality in the United States. Academic research focused on these disparities increasingly suggests that a mix of rising economic inequalities across the U.S. urban system, as well as inadequate attention to deep historical economic injustices, have eroded economic mobility for many people and places. Providing concrete solutions to this issue is a thorny problem for social science and policy which requires that we address inter-regional, intra-regional, and inter-personal inequalities, as well as their interconnections. The following chapters argue that a relational perspective of economic development – one that centers how the behaviors, interactions, and organization of economic actors shape economic development – is a fruitful way forward to understanding and mitigating these inequalities. Focusing on how globalization and emerging migration patterns shape and respond to actors’ (e.g. workers, firms, and other collective organizations) economic relations, the three papers in this thesis show how a relational approach to regional economic development can be employed to better understand inequality and opportunity for different people and places across the U.S. urban system.Ph.D