Robert C. Kloosterman

Mixed Embeddedness: (In)formal Economic Activities and Immigrant Businesses in the Netherlands

Immigrants from non-industrialized countries have become part and parcel of the social fabric of many advanced urban economies, including those in the Netherlands. A significant number of these migrants opt for setting up shop themselves. Lacking access to large financial resources and mostly lacking in educational qualifications, they are funnelled towards the lower end of the opportunity structure of these urban economies. To survive in these cut-throat markets, many migrant entrepreneurs revert to informal economic activities that are strongly dependent on specific social networks - mostly consisting of co-ethnics - to sustain these activities on a more permanent basis. To understand the social position of these migrant entrepreneurs and their chances of upward social mobility, one has to look beyond these co-ethnic networks and focus on their insertion in the wider society in terms of customers, suppliers and various kinds of business organizations. To deal with this latter type of insertion, we propose the use of a more comprehensive concept of mixed embeddedness that aims at incorporating both the co-ethnic social networks as well as the linkages (or lack of linkages) between migrant entrepreneurs and the economic and institutional context of the host society. We illustrate this concept by presenting a case study of Islamic butchers in the Netherlands. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.

The Polycentric Urban Region: Towards a Research Agenda

Focuses on the polycentric urban region concept of city planning. Overview of the concept; Factors affecting the growth of cities and towns; Demise of the basic monocentric model at an intraurban level

Matching opportunities with resources: A framework for analysing (migrant) entrepreneurship from a mixed embeddedness perspective

In this article, an innovative analytical framework for the analysis of (migrant) entrepreneurship is presented. The approach combines the micro-level of the individual entrepreneur (with his or her resources), with the meso-level of the local opportunity structure and links the latter, in more loose way, to the macro-institutional framework. This way, insights on the necessary resources of an (aspiring/nascent) entrepreneur with views on opportunity structures can be combined. A simple typology of the opportunity structure is presented which distinguishes between different kind of openings based, on the one hand, on differences in entry barriers (in terms of human capital), and, on the other, on their dynamics (growing or stagnating). This comprehensive analytical framework relates (shifts in) opportunities, resources and outcomes of immigrant entrepreneurship in a systematic way.

Clustering of Economic Activities in Polycentric Urban Regions: The Case of the Randstad

Local contexts are becoming more important as the impact of the process of globalisation on the spatial distribution of economic activities seems to generate not so much processes of homogenisation as of heterogenisation between regions in advanced economies. The combination of specialisation and spatial concentration of economic activity in advanced economies has attracted much attention from economists and geographers. Here, we explore at what level of spatial aggregation contemporary tendencies of clustering of economic activities articulate themselves within the archetypal polycentric urban region of the Dutch Randstad. To examine this question, we look at profiles of business start-ups in the individual cities of the Randstad. Our focus is on business start-ups as they respond most directly to the changes taking place in the economic environment and especially those regarding the supply of labour. Our findings point to the direction of cluster formation at a supraurban level. The profiles of business start-ups are clearly converging. A process of intraregional-i.e. at the level of the polycentric urban region-homogenisation with respect to new economic activities is taking place. Within the Randstad, notably a decreasing divide between a north wing and a south wing is revealed.

Polycentric Puzzles – Emerging Mega-City Regions Seen through the Lens of Advanced Producer Services

This article was published in the journal, Regional Studies [Routledge

Just for Starters: Commercial Gentrification by Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Amsterdam and Rotterdam Neighbourhoods

Many large European cities are now displaying clear social, ethnic and spatial divisions. These different types of cleavages tend to overlap. Governments try to chase away this spectre of an increasingly divided city by embarking on various policies. These policies generally neglect the (potential) role of immigrant entrepreneurs in improving neighbourhoods. In this contribution, we have focused on the immigrant business start-ups in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Neighbourhoods with high shares of immigrants indeed turn out to show relatively higher rates of immigrant businesses than other neighbourhoods in these two cities. Immigrant entrepreneurs, may, therefore, strengthen the local economy of these neighbourhoods and offer not only specific goods and services but also jobs, nodes of information and role models. Urban policies should, hence, explicitly target their policies to this kind of immigrant-driven process of commercial gentrification by creating cheap commercial properties in these neighbourhoods.

Between Accumulation and Concentration of Capital: Toward a Framework for Comparing Long-Term Trajectories of Urban Systems

In this article, we first seek to develop a more general framework to understand differences in long-term trajectories of urban systems. We use a model that has two dimensions: the level of accumulation of capital and the level of concentration of capital. We then use the model, very much in a heuristic way, to see what insights can be gained when applied to the concrete cases of the urban systems of London and the Dutch Randstad. As the data, especially for the pre-industrial and the industrial era, are still very scarce, this mapping of the long-term trajectories is still highly conjectural. What emerges quite clearly from this novel way of looking at urban development trajectories, though, is the divergence between the two global city regions. This divergence can be explained by the differences in the (pre-industrial) points of departure between London and the Randstad, but also by the difference of insertion in the global economy. A more detailed analysis of the Randstad in the post-industrial era shows that changes in the level of concentration of capital are clearly scale-sensitive; within the Randstad a clear tendency toward deconcentration while relative to the country as a whole the Randstad has maintained its position.

Connecting the 'Workshop of the World': Intra- and Extra-Service Networks of the Pearl River Delta City-Region

Zhang X. and Kloosterman R. C. Connecting the ‘workshop of the world’: intra- and extra-service networks of the Pearl River Delta city-region, Regional Studies. Most research on globalization and city-regions in developing countries has focused on manufacturing activities, disregarding the considerable growth of producer services. Drawing on the Interlocking Network Model, this article presents a first analysis of the intra- and extra-service networks of the Pearl River Delta city-region in China. The central question is how cities in the Pearl River Delta are (re)positioned in the regional urban networks and which national and global cities are their major external connections in the service economy. The result reveals a new pattern of producer-services-led development that differs from the former industrialization experience in the region.

Amsterdamned: The Rise of Unemployment in Amsterdam in the 1980s

At the end of the 1980s, almost a quarter of the labour force in Amsterdam was without a job. This was about twice the Dutch national average. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, the unemployment rates of Amsterdam and the Netherlands as a whole, differed only slightly. Among the unemployed in Amsterdam, the proportion of members of the minority population rose considerably. Remarkably enough, the strong divergence manifested itself at a time when employment in Amsterdam began to increase for the first time in almost 20 years. This paper tries to find explanations for this urban paradox by using the mismatch approach. This approach turns out to be insufficient to explain the Amsterdam unemployment problem.

THIS IS NOT AMERICA: EMBEDDING THE COGNITIVE-CULTURAL URBAN ECONOMY

Abstract. The aim of this article is to broaden the epistemological basis for investigating the current shift to cognitive‐cultural economies and the resurgence of cities and its socio‐spatial articulation. The point of departure here is that the drivers of the structural changes are indeed more or less ubiquitous, but are played out in different national institutional and urban contexts resulting in potentially diverging cognitive‐cultural economies. Four main drivers of change after 1980 are distinguished. The first is the rise of a new technological paradigm based on digital technology. The second is the thrust towards deregulation and privatization as planks of the neo‐liberal political programme. The third is the intensification of all kinds of linkages between regions across the globe. The fourth driver constitutes the processes of individualization and increasing reflexivity that have fragmented consumer markets. By identifying distinct filters which might shape and mould the impact of these more general drivers on concrete urban areas, a comprehensive framework is presented that can be used to analyse and compare the trajectories of cities while linking them to a larger narrative of societal change. A central line of reasoning is that agglomeration economies – pivotal in Allen Scotts analysis of the emergence of a cognitive‐cultural economy – are themselves embedded in concrete social and institutional contexts which impact on how they are played out. To make this point, we build upon Richard Whitleys business systems. Given this institutional diversity, we expect that various institutional contexts will generate different cognitive‐cultural economies.