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Recent economic recession has highlighted the role of labour market flexibility as a key factor of competitiveness of a country. Despite the fact that labour mobility can essentially be seen as part of labour market flexibility, there is notable research gap concerning spatial mobility and other facets of labour market flexibility. The purpose of this special issue is to fill these gaps.

The papers in the special issue represent various quantitative methods and databases, whereas mainly micro data (workplace, labour force or immigrant surveys, job search portal, etc.) is used. However, the type of labour market flexibility addressed is both micro- and macro-level.

It is demonstrated that labour occupational mobility is determined by the business cycle, numerical flexibility, occupational categories, and sector. Spatial mobility may have counterintuitive effects on individual occupational mobility depending on gender and it is related to various flexibilities in the workplace. It is also suggested that different types of flexibilities on a firm level are interdependent of each other.

The special issue adds to the labour market related knowledge by integrating labour market flexibility and mobility. Individually, both phenomena have been studied before, but not much research is devoted to their inter-linkages. The special issue also contributes by examining labour market flexibility and spatial mobility in the context of different countries, economic cycles, and institutional settings.

According to the Colombian Labour Ministry, in 2015, 750,000 persons officially worked as household employees. Ninety-eight per cent of these employees are women who tend to live in Bogotá’s (southern) urban fringe and travel to the city’s wealthier north on a daily basis. Yet public transportation in the Colombian capital is subject to stratification. Besides overcrowding and delays, petty crime and sexual harassment, fringe areas remain underserved. Based on ethnographic data, in this chapter, the authors discuss findings from a 3-year research project on female household employees’ subjective experience of space. Specifically, the authors explore their capacity (motility) to be mobile. This perspective breaks with the limits of bounded categories such as ‘urban’, ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘class’, to highlight their situational and spatial mutability. Moreover, an investigation of motility includes people’s potential to move as well as their subjective experiences of mobility. The research shows how gender intersects with local labour regimes and infrastructure to negatively affect women’s mobility. Urban stratification is not only a question of locale of residence and access to services, but importantly (re)produced in the household employees’ subjective experience of their daily commute, which they describe as suffering. In their limited spare time, female household employees abstain from travelling, effectively curbing their active appropriation of urban space. The research thus illuminates how spatial, social and economic dimensions mutually interact to impact on the women’s lives and possibilities.

Location-based mobile games, like Pokémon GO, have been tremendously prevalent in recent years. Marketing professionals have considered this type of game as a promising marketing platform. The purpose of this study is to explore the marketing potential of location-based mobile games by examining players’ responses to sponsors featured in Pokémon GO.

A survey was conducted among gamers of Pokémon GO to examine the psychological process of the gameplay, and how it influences some marketing outcomes. A conceptual model was built based on the survey results.

Results indicated that gamers of Pokémon GO experienced spatial presence, which positively influenced their attitudes toward and intentions to visit the sponsors. Moreover, spatial presence was positively influenced by players’ game engagement, perceived mobility and contextual perceived value. Some motives of playing Pokémon GO were also identified, including the entertainment motive and social motive.

This study is the first one to analyze the marketing potential of Pokémon GO, which is a successful location-based mobile game. The results are meaningful to marketing professionals who are interested in this innovative media platform. This study is also the first one to apply the theory of spatial presence to the investigations of this type of game. It showcases the power of this theory in guiding the research of interactive marketing with mobile gaming.

This study aims to explore the consumption practices of globally-mobile, young consumers from China who experience both upward social mobility and geographically outbound mobility by studying abroad, echoing emerging scholarship of “moving consumption”.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 27 first-generation Chinese international students studying in the USA.

The informants interpret outbound geographical mobility and upward social mobility in an overlapping manner. For them, cosmopolitan consumption practices are a form of boundary work and identity construction, reflecting their international experience. At the same time, the informants seek affirmation of the meanings and references of their consumption in their remote, native cultural contexts. In this way, they ensure that their tastes align with the popular “West” with which Chinese consumers are already familiar.

This study examines international student mobility that is unique to the younger generation. It considers how such form of mobility shapes the consumption patterns of Chinese youth with substantial purchasing power. Young, affluent international students differ in fundamental ways from other cross-cultural, cross-border travelers such as migrants, globally-mobile professionals, global citizens, nomads, sojourners and tourists. Thus, this study not only sheds light on the under-researched subject of “moving consumption” but also addresses youth cultures in transitional economies by exploring how Chinese youth consume when they are away from home and exposed to global consumerism first-hand.

The research analyses the spatial-temporal behaviour of international visitors using mobile positioning data (MPD) in three second-tier cities in Hungary: Szeged, Debrecen and Pécs. The purpose of this study is to identify the origins of visitors, length of stay, seasonal concentrations and mobility between cities.

A large volume of data generated by foreign mobile phone users was processed and analysed for six consecutive months in 2018. The movements of around 3.5 million foreigners visiting Hungary were captured.

The data showed significant differences in tourist turnover, mobility patterns and flows indicating different levels of tourism activity and potential in the three cities. This included day trips, cross-border tourism, seasonal fluctuations and activity-driven demand (e.g. special events and cultural tourism).

MPD cannot fully explain or predict drivers of visitor behaviour, such as purpose of visit, the precise activities that they undertake there and the experiences that they gain. It can, however, provide information on spatial and temporal flows, patterns and concentrations of visitors.

The investigated cities should follow distinct tourism development policies to attract more tourists and strengthen the links with their neighbouring destinations at the same time as differentiating themselves through marketing as competitive alternative destinations.

Augmenting tourism has socio-economic implications for residents and communities. The development of cultural tourism and local event-based tourism must incorporate community needs.

The paper analyses the extent to which MPD can provide insights into visitors’ spatio-temporal mobility and flows in relatively under-visited second-tier cities and it highlights opportunities and gaps for big data research in an urban context.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to conribute to debates on disadvantage and social exclusion by examining the evolution of the concept of “periphery”, with specific reference to Paris.

The paper draws on research undertaken on the “suburbs” of Paris in order to highlight some of the socio‐spatial dimensions of social exclusion.

The notion of periphery has evolved from being a purely spatial concept, to a functional concept, and during the crises of the 1980s it became a key social concept in France.

Today, it is the absence of employment, or common values which characterises those who make up a social periphery. It is the unwaged, or the poor (in waged work or retirees), and immigrants, who live in the Parisian socio‐suburban periphery.

This chapter examines observed regional inequalities and centralization tendencies in Norway. Small, rural, municipalities experienced a favourable population development from 1970 to the mid-1980s. After this, the percentage population growth has been strongest in the largest municipalities/cities, and this tendency has accelerated during the last 10–15 years. Data post-1970 strongly support the reasonable hypothesis that population growth is positively related to centrality. The major source of changes lies within the labour market regions, whereas the changes between the regions are modest. Jobs have not become more centralized than households over the period.

A conceptual model is developed, offering a useful taxonomy of municipalities in three dimensions: the unemployment rate, the employment growth, and housing prices. This provides a classification that contributes to clarify the changes in the urban-rural divide. The discussion demonstrates that distinguishing between different categories is important, since different explanations of centralization and regional disparities call for different menus of policy instruments.

We study the relationship between population growth, unemployment rates, and employment growth in Norwegian municipalities, to distinguish between disequilibrium and equilibrium explanations of the situation in regional labour markets. At a national level our results indicate that neoclassical adjustments dominate weakly over amenity-based mechanisms. However, results from many regions support the hypothesis that amenity-based adjustments are dominant for municipalities within a labour market region. One possible explanation is that the diversity in job opportunities is considered as an amenity. A thicker labour market is better fit to meet the demand of workers with specific qualifications.

Through an intervention from a geographical perspective on organizational space, this article aims to offer a new horizon in understanding international business strategy.

Starts with two interrelated questions: does space exist in organizations and how does an organization manipulate and produce this organizational space in order to gain competitive advantage? By tackling these questions in the context of international business activities, this paper engages existing (international) management theories.

This article critically reviews the narrow focus of most international business theories on physical location and distance as a significant determinant of foreign direct investment and diverse activities of transnational corporations (TNCs). Quantitative empirical studies in this genre tend to emphasize physical space as a mere “container” of different locations of TNC activities and to measure the distance between these locations as an independent variable in statistical models. Drawing upon recent theoretical developments in economic geography, the paper develops a relational perspective on business organizations. In such an organization space, there are no fixed locations manifesting themselves in physically measurable forms. Instead, locations and distances in an organizational space are relational and thus discursively constructed through actor‐specific strategies and practice. The paper argues that one key strategic goal of business organizations is to continuously expand its organizational space (viz. physical space) and to economize on this spatial expansion.

Reveals the need for a critical reexamination of existing management and organization theories to take account of how space and boundaries may influence the strategy, structure, and performance of business organizations.

Examines the properties of organizational space and applies the proposed concept to the case of TNCs.

This chapter is based on a study of 60 migrant women in Washington State, USA, and their communication with their families in and across borders through information and communication technologies (ICTs). Four themes were identified in the research concerning the uneasy ways family members used the ICTs to: (1) predicate migration decision-making through word-of-mouth and social media; (2) facilitate the movement of members across borders through stepwise migration; (3) affect the transition to a transnational family through establishing a sense of co-presence; and (4) mediate care through communication chains. The significance of the study demonstrates the need for relational thinking about transnational family communication and the mobilities of families. Transnational family members develop sophisticated ways of communicating through ICTs, albeit with difficulty, and which are embedded in interdependent systems of migration and mobilities.