Industrial restructuring as class restructuring: Production decentralization and local uniqueness

Massey D. (1983) Industrial restructuring as class restructuring: production decentralization and local uniqueness, Reg. Studies 17, 73–89. Industrial change is also a process of social change. This article examines the impact on two very different kinds of area of the entry of new forms of economic activity. It points out that, although in each case the new industry was the same (branch plants employing women in low-paid and unskilled jobs), the social effects in the two regions were very different. In one kind of region the old basis of the labour movement is being undermined, in the other the division between labour and capital may be becoming clearer. The social processes of the reproduction of spatial inequality are examined and it is shown how class and other divisions—such as those based on gender—are at the heart of this dynamic.