R.A.H. Pijpers

Multiple Worlds in a Single Street: Ethnic Entrepreneurship and the Construction of a Global Sense of Place

Abstract Doreen Masseys rethinking of space and place has made a significant contribution to the understanding of place development. In this paper, a reading of Masseys work is applied to the issue of place-making; in particular, to the question of how to improve the social and economic position of an ethnically diverse neighbourhood. The case study is of the Willemsweg, a multiethnic shopping street in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which has recently received support for a major uplift. It is pointed out that each of the place meanings adhered to by different local actors embodies a specific global sense of place, yet the consequences of this plurality of ‘trajectories’ for actual place-making remain difficult to grasp empirically. For this reason, a relational approach is elaborated which joins Masseys notion of ‘throwntogetherness’ with various meso theoretical concepts which shed light on specific trajectories.

Beyond the Regional Cradle and Policy Trap: Proximity and Embedding as Development Potentialities

Prompted by the alleged rise of the “knowledge economy”, the nexus between knowledge and space presents one of the key fascinations in the field of economic geography and regional studies. Over the years, a lively, even frenzied debate, has emerged, yielding some consensus, but also many doubts and open questions. The debate starts with approaching the role of knowledge primarily from an “endogenous” development perspective. This means that a city’s or region’s wealth is attributed, first and foremost, to its capacity to accumulate and valorise knowledge. Understanding this “local” capacity in technical, organisational, institutional and even socio-economic terms poses a key challenge for our thinking and inquiries. Especially in policy debates, these capacities are principally seen as generally attainable. The implication is that once basic resource conditions (such as physical infrastructure, education and business services) are met, each region is seen as capable of nurturing its own innovative capacities. As a result, a substantial part of policy-making has been geared towards the shaping and circulation of regional “selfhelp” practices, based on concepts such as clusters, Regional Innovation Systems, Triple Helix and the creative class. A problem with the “endogenous” perspective is its emphasis on factors and processes within the region (Van Reine & Dankbaar, 2011). More specifically, it assumes that there are ubiquitous regional advantages “out there” waiting to be grasped and promoted. These advantages are twofold. In part, they are based on spatial proximity, and the way that spatial proximity intersects with other forms of proximity such as social, cognitive, organizational and institutional (Boschma, 2005; Capello & Faggian, 2005; Mattes, 2011), as a

Identity construction and 'coincidental' entrepreneurship among gay Filipino guesthouse owners in Amsterdam.

This article centralizes gay Filipino entrepreneurs in the guesthouse industry in the city of Amsterdam, drawing on the narratives and trajectories of five of them. The article highlights the common threads of experiences of these immigrant entrepreneurs, as these provide interesting insights into the processes of their identity (re)construction and social embedding in the Netherlands and the role of their entrepreneurial involvement in these processes. In addition, the article describes how they relate to their home country, the wider Filipino community in the Netherlands, and the wider Dutch gay community. It will be shown that these experiences and relations sit uneasily with established positions in debates on home and belonging within transnational migration studies and queer studies, notably the idea that moving to western countries of destination cannot be treated as equivalent to moving to ‘queer cultural homelands.’ In addition, the article shows that immigrant entrepreneurship does not revolve around ethnicity per se in the sense that entrepreneurial practices cannot be understood separately from other identity forming structures such as sexuality and class.

Older People's Self-Selected Spaces of Encounter in Urban Aging Environments in the Netherlands

Using a narrative methodology involving 216 older people in six urban aging environments in the Netherlands, we examined how they use and experience (semi–)public spaces as spaces of encounter, and the meanings they derive from using and experiencing these spaces. The research shows that, first, older people prefer commercial spaces like shopping malls to planned and designed activity spaces in care homes or neighborhood centers. Second, older people struggle with the transformations that have taken place in urban social life since they were young adults. Third, especially frail older people derive meaning from a more passive experience of urban social life, in an observer role. The findings allow us to contribute to ongoing debates on the shifting boundaries between public and private space, and the moral implications of these shifting boundaries from the perspective of a diverse group of older users.

Editorial: Sailing in the Ocean of Knowledge, 2008–13

Regional Studies is a broad journal that publishes significant research on a wide range of topics and perspectives on regional development. Naturally the evolution in the content and form of the journal is closely connected to wider changes in its related subject fields. When we started as an Editorial team six years ago, we were told that Regional Studies moves like an oil tanker, that it would be hard to change direction. Nevertheless, in our ‘signing on’ editorial (NEEDHAM et al., 2009) we promised to reach out to ‘new territories’, while upholding and even enhancing the journal’s high standard of quality. We welcomed papers adopting and elaborating upcoming conceptual and analytical approaches, notably in the fields of evolutionary and relational thinking, networking, ‘mixed methods’, and multi-scalar perspectives. We explicitly invited ‘non-Western’ contributions. We called for ‘evidence-based’ policy studies adopting multiand interdisciplinary approaches. With respect to the journal’s quality, we promised to continue the journal’s reputation for maintaining strict standards of conceptual precision, clarity of argumentation and analytical rigour. How did we navigate the ship? And what has been the impact of our efforts on the field of regional studies? The ‘quality’ issue proved to be the easiest challenge. As a team, we spent considerable time discussing validation. What constitutes a sound, well-founded definition or argument? How should evidence be validated, and concluding statements drawn and qualified? What constitutes a truly significant contribution in terms of its potential to influence scholarship or policy? We discussed, for instance, the role and value of single case studies. Single case studies are useful for exploring poorly understood and highly complex phenomena, for analysing new trends (cf. SHEARMUR and DOLOREUX, 2014), or perhaps for generalizing theory. However, in our eyes, they are less suitable for making broad inferences about empirical patterns, as often occurs. Other submissions developed elaborate methodologies in modelling or simulation but lacked accompanying empirical illustrations to realistic regional research applications. While such technical papers often exhibited a high level of analytical sophistication, their potential to advance the frontier in regional studies by enhancing the researcher’s toolkit was often insufficiently clear. On the other hand, some of the papers we received were addressing important topics that are central to the journal’s mission and focus, yet their research designs or methods were simply not state-of-the-art either. Such considerations, amongst others, helped us to raise the quality bar and to steer the scope of the journal, at the same time providing a stricter set of criteria to assess revisions, and helping to give more specific guidelines to our reviewers.

Bordering labor migration from New EU member states: Socio‐Spatial exclusion and the ‘orderly’ geometrics of migration forecasts

Abstract The enlargement process of the European Union has resulted in a numerous series of migration forecasts, carried out from the late 1990s through the actual accession of ten new member states in May 2004. In the years and months prior to enlargement, national governments in most “old” member states, driven by fears of mass inflows of workers from new member states, consecutively decided to restrict east‐west migration for a period of at least two years. In all cases, decision‐making processes were informed by migration forecasts. This paper aims to scrutinize subjacent motivations of making and subsequently justifying policy on the basis of migration forecasts. Drawing on literature on the role of aesthetic order in model‐based migration forecasts and their sub‐structuring framework of neo‐classical equilibrium theory, it will be argued that the “tangible” numbers produced by these studies provide a certain rationale for order‐enhancing and fear‐decreasing bordering policies of the kind currently taking place in the European Union. Methods, outcomes and policy influences of migration forecasts address and portray a latent desire to retain borders in the EUs formally borderless member states.

Expanding Capabilities in Integrated Service Areas (ISAs) As Communities of Care : A Study of Dutch Older Adults’ Narratives on the Life They Have Reason to Value

Abstract We apply the capability approach to understand the scope and limitations of community efforts to support older adults dwelling in integrated service areas (ISAs) in the Netherlands. An ISA is a neighborhood-based form of care organization aimed at the widening of opportunities to achieve well-being goals by building on local community resources. To gain insight in the complex effects of ISAs on older adults’ well-being, a narrative study was performed on their daily lived experiences. Emerging narrative patterns were aggregated in a Manifesto of the Independently Living Older Person. Narrative patterns and Manifesto provided insight in both respondents’ capabilities and functionings, expressing values such as autonomy, human dignity and contributions to community care by older adults themselves. Older adults balance realistic and optimistic expectations for the future in ways that can be explained using the concepts of capability security, adaptive preferences, care-receiving and caring-with. Since interventions transpire through local interactions and shared practices, ISAs represent a social space in between individuality and collectivity where older adults enact community by sharing common ends. Findings imply that the complex interventions developed in ISAs expand older adults’ capabilities involving the challenge for all stakeholders to negotiate individual freedoms in community care settings.

Integrating Services for Older People in Aging Communities in The Netherlands: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Approaches

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to discuss approaches to services integration for older people in urban and rural aging environments in The Netherlands, and the preliminary effects of these approaches on local aging conditions. In urban areas, services integration revolves around the creation of functional spatial hierarchy. In rural areas, the emphasis is on forging links between service providers. Outcomes for health and use of professional care services are similar. Out-comes for housing, informal care, and accessibility of services differ between urban and rural areas in ways that can be traced back to local aging conditions and elements of the specific approach to services integration used. In both urban and rural areas, much more could be done to connect formal programs to the lifeworlds of older dwellers.