Foreign Labour Force on the Czech Spatially

Segmented Labour Market

Jiří Vyhlídal
RILSA Brno

Draft

Abstract
The first part of the text describes changes in the segmentation
theory of labour markets which make it more sensitive to spatial
(geographical) differences and takes them as a constitutive component
in understanding how (national) labour market works and how it
potentially can contribute to social inclusion.

In the second part the assumption of spatially differentiated

labour markets is tested on empirical data about the Czech labour
market.

In the conclusion the new directions of future research are

proposed.

Immigrants and segmented labour markets

The problem of the foreign labour force integration is permanently on the top of

the agenda of not only European politicians and policy-makers. There seems to be a

good many proposals and projects, ready-made conceptions and political manifests

which all wrestle with the problem of immigration, integration of immigrants and all the

consequences it has or may have on indigenous populations. What is desperately sought

1
after is modus of integration appropriate and efficient to the foreign labour force coming

to developed countries. Especially in a situation when, as Angus Cameron recently

pointed out, we miss the positive definition of social inclusion, that means when “social

inclusion tends to be defined only negatively in exclusion literature - i.e. as ‘not social

exclusion’” (Cameron 2006: 396).

Usual attitude of Europeans to the immigrants mentioned Michael Kearney

(1991: 58): “Foreign labor is desired, but the persons in whom it is embodied are not

desired. The immigration policies of ‘receiving nations’ can be seen as expression of

this contradiction and as attempts to resolve it.” Even if the largest part of the migration

stream heading to Europe is labour migration, which means that the most natural

method of integration of this part of migration stream is to put those people into work,

this solution, of course, is not as easily accessible as it would seem or as it would be

desirable.

There is a considerable body of literature connecting personal characteristics of

immigrants with their prospects on the labour market. Given that a significant

proportion of immigrants come with skills and education perceived in a host country as

rather poor or insufficient, they are expected to seek for jobs rather in the part of labour

market which segmentation theory perceives as secondary. Even though this assumption

is widely accepted, Massey et al. (1993: 458) observed that “the distinction between

‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sectors is arbitrary, leading to great instability in empirical

estimates and a high degree of dependency of results on the decision rule chosen to

allocate jobs to sectors.” In some cases even the definition of the secondary sector was

based either on the fact that jobs in this sector were held predominantly by immigrants,

2
women or young people (Peck 1996), or the fact that the jobs belonged not into a

capital- but a labour-intensive sector (Piore 2008). In other words, there have to be

groups or individuals exploitable in this way before secondary labour market may come

into existence (cf. Boltanski and Chiapello 2007; Bourdieu 2003; Doeringer and Piore

1985; Peck 1996). So we can conclude that the characteristics of immigrants, which

they at least partially share with women, young people and the disabled of the host

society, not only lead them to the secondary labour market, but the presence of those

characteristics enables constitution of this segment of the labour market.

What can be, on the one hand, seen as an incapability to establish clear rules to

analytically distinguish between the two sectors of the labour market, may also be, on

the other hand, described as an almost unavoidable consequence of the ‘new

economy’ (in Bourdieu’s view a system based on an opposition between the dominating

polycultural polyglots and the dominated monocultural locals (Bourdieu 2003), or of the

‘new capitalism’ with the main symptoms depicted, for instance, in books of Richard

Sennett (1998, 2006), eventually of the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ described by Luc

Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2007)), that means of the situation when “core firms shift

toward utilization of core-periphery models and contingent labor strategies, distinctions

between the primary and secondary sectors are becoming increasingly blurred” (Peck

1996: 63). In the whole labour market then, regardless which segment is actually

considered, increases uncertainty and inequality (Rubery, Wilkinson, and Tarling 1989).

This process of the institutionalisation of the new modes of labour markets

flexibilisation, and what Peck recognises as “ the political re-regulation of the labor

market during a period of excess labor supply and weakened labor unions,” (Peck 1996:

3
74, emphasis original) has also a geographical component, because, as Pierre Bourdieu

put it,

“[a]n industry previously linked to a nation-state or a region (Detroit or

Turin for automobiles) tends increasingly to detach itself through what is

called the ‘network corporation’, organized on a continental or world scale

and linking production segments, technological know-how, communication

networks and training facilities scattered between very distant

places” (Bourdieu 1998: 84-85)

Segmentation (dualization) of the labour market and the workforce is an answer

to problems posed not only by market (demand) instability and increased supply of

labour, but also by involvement of paid work in the network of social norms, customs

and practices, as well as in the wider system of social reproduction (e.g. unpaid work in

households done almost exclusively by women; breadwinner model causing gender

wage disparity). Both sectors of the labour market and both segments of the labour force

have its own dynamics and cease to be easily discernible when a growing part of the

workforce is compelled to be increasingly flexible, which means for growing number of

workers to compete for jobs on an open (i.e. less and less regulated) market. Pierre

Bourdieu speaks even about flexploitation, by which he means a situation when

“[c]asualization of employment is part of a mode of domination of a new

kind, based on the creation of a generalized and permanent state of insecurity

aimed at forcing workers into submission, into the acceptance of exploitation

(...) This word evokes very well this rational management of insecurity

which, especially through the concerted manipulation of the space of

production, sets up competition between the workers of the countries with

the greatest social gains and the best organized union resistance - features

4
 that are linked to a national territory and history - and the workers of the

socially least advanced countries, and so breaks resistance and obtains

obedience and submission, through apparently natural mechanisms which

thus serve as their own justification” (Bourdieu 1998: 85, emphasis in

original).

In the ‘new economy’ the pressure on the primary labour market workforce, to

become at least functionally flexible, is on the increase and even the working careers of

those employees are, and not infrequently, compartmentalised. Nevertheless, it is

obvious that not all foreign workers necessarily fit the ‘low skill, low education’

category. “Segmentation,” Peck (1996: 75) claims, “refers to tendencies, not a

taxonomy of labor market positions” (emphasis original), witch seems to be true for

immigrants too.

The spatial component of the labour market segmentation

The brief presentation of the segmentation theory and its identified potential

ineffectiveness in empirical determination of the character of the jobs (in the sense if

they belong to the primary or secondary segment of the labour market) in the

contemporary ‘fluid’ economy gives an opportunity to change a point of view. We can

try to divert attention from the problem whether a job taken by an immigrant belongs to

the primary or secondary labour market to focusing on the more general principles of

labour force allocation, foreign as well as domestic, to jobs, given by and structured

according to the existing spatial (geographical) labour market segmentation. Instead of

concentrating on the individual characteristics of the job seekers and characteristics of

the jobs on offer, as the segmentation theory does, we can try to delineate the

5
geographical segmentation of the Czech labour market as a historically developed and

functionally as well as spatially hierarchized structure. In other words, instead of

evaluation of the individual characteristics of job seekers and characteristics of

particular jobs, it is possible try to characterise whole spatial (geographical) segments of

a national labour market and to conceive it as the historically created and spatially

distributed (hierarchised) structure of opportunities (for job seekers and alike for

entrepreneurs). Its segments (regions, precincts), seen verbatim in one picture, or in one

correspondence diagram, constitute not only a map of incidentally divided, indifferent,

and distant segments, but a complex hierarchical structure uncovering their mutual

relationships, often historically constituted and complex in their nature.

A claim of hierarchisation is included already in the segmentation theory

formulation, given by the characteristics of primary and secondary labour markets and

implicit setting one of them as dominant and the other as dominated (or inferior),

however without spatial or geographical component, which changes an universal

assertion of self-evident fact that the primary labour market is in many respects superior

to the secondary one into a unique narrative about the whole network of reciprocal

relationships between different geographical parts of the entity establishing a national

labour market. Usually the spatial component has been perceived as redundant or at

least insignificant. When, for instance, Alain Supiot et al. (2001) analyse European

labour law, they talk about dimensions, fragmentations or state, but these concepts are

dispossessed of their spatial component; they are used without to be, so to say, space-

sensitive. This text is intended as an empirical test of hypothesis that the working

conditions of indigenous as well as foreign labour force (immigrants) are to an

6
important degree constituted and influenced by the geographical segmentation of a

national labour market. This hypothesis supposes that immigration stream is funnelled

and canalised according to the individual characteristics of newcomers, indeed, but

structural conditions on the labour market produce a basic matrix which significantly

shapes chances of all workers to get an appropriate job1 whether on the primary or the

secondary labour market, and these chances are different for different individuals in

different geographical parts of the Czech national labour market. In other words,

chances of diverse parts of labour force are unevenly distributed not only according to

the individual characteristics of the job seekers, but also according to the spatial

structure of the labour market.

Hierarchised space and spatialised hierarchy

Even if the assumption that labour markets are not only socially regulated but

also locally variable is not still generally accepted, the fourth generation of the

segmentation theory already “emphasizes the spatiality of the labor market and its

underlying regulatory form” (Peck 1996: 79). This approach emphasises in the

processes and outcomes of the labour market segmentation besides purely economical

arguments also arguments cultural or sociological. Drift in the insinuated direction

might be interpreted as an effect of cultural turn in economic geography,

“in which scholars have rejected conventional dualisms between ‘the

economic’ and ‘the cultural’ in favour of a range of more fluid and hybrid

1 An appropriate job is intended here, especially in relation to the immigrants, as a job offering a good

assumption of (at least economic) integration.

7
 conceptions that emphasize the mutual constitution and fundamental

inseparability of these two spheres” (James 2006: 289).

Nevertheless, the notion of space, defined as an intersection of the economic and

the cultural (or the social), does not reminds us only a pure fact of existence of territory

defined by its generally recognised boundaries, but introduces also hierarchy, a system

in which all kinds of desired goods and opportunities are distributed unequally, and the

unequal distribution is wielded by geography or, more precisely, by the system of

relations between centre and periphery. Though Bourdieu is sometime portrayed as an

author whose “most influential theories and empirical work have tended to

underplay the difference that space/place makes” (Holt 2008: 235), he was undoubtedly

aware of the important role physical space/place plays in many forms of inequality

production and reproduction. Which is, after all, clear from the following passage:

“There is no space in a hierarchized society that is not itself hierarchized and

that does not express hierarchies and social distances, in a form that is more

or less distorted and, above all, disguised by the naturalization effect

produced by the long-term inscription of social realities in the natural

world” (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 124, emphasis in original).

This hierarchisation imposes itself also on the national labour market through

the form of more or less (from the point of view of labour force) insulated or separated

local labour markets. As Peck (1996: 86) observes, “[i]f labor market structures, norms,

and practices are conditioned by the (uneven) social context in which they are

embedded, then the functioning of labor market processes will vary across space.” A

double inequality, i.e. inside of each of those local labour markets as well as between

8
them, is visible from the economic, social-economic and even demographic data about

each of them.

The dispersion of those units across the space can be captured in a two-

dimensional diagram where the distances between them can be expressed not only on

horizontal axis, as a pure geographical distance, but also on vertical axis, as a

visualisation of domination and submission relationships between the local labour

markets2. In this view, the system of local labour markets constitute “a set of objective

power relations that impose themselves on all who enter the field and that are

irreducible to the intentions of the individual agents or even to the direct

interactions among the agents” (Bourdieu 1985: 724). Such a set of power relations

ensures that in a long-term not only individuals inside a particular local labour market

but also local labour markets itself will respect the achieved distribution of power, it

means at least until the dominating will be able to exercise effectively their power.

The spatial consequences of social inclusion

We have already mentioned the problem of missing positive definition of social

inclusion (cf. Cameron 2005, 2006, 2007). An other problem, which is firmly tied

together with the first one, is an elusive spatiality of the social inclusion, our inability to

localise it in contrast with social exclusion, which always seems to be closely related to

a place or locality. A narrative about social exclusion would be incomplete without

2 These domination and submission relationships are not an effect of innate qualities of local labour

markets, but rather a product of socio-economic activities pushed ahead by all involved individual and

collective actors in the appropriate forms (age and education structure of population, rate of economic

activity, proportion of investment, present industries etc.).

9
reference to a neighbourhood, community, or locality, and, in consequence, “if we

collect local data we will tend to produce a local story from them because the problems

we are identifying automatically seem to be features of place” (Cameron 2006: 398).

Whereas social exclusion produces and is produced in an evident and explicit place/

space localisation, social inclusion, either as a process or as a status, is not ascribed to a

place or locality. “Social inclusion is constituted as a set of normative practices

(consumption, lifestyle), velocities and identities rather than a space or a

place.” (Cameron 2006: 400).

In accordance with this conclusion would be the reasoning behind the

segmentation theory, which tacitly supposes that strategies used by employers as well as

job seekers, seen as a part of social inclusion through the labour market, are

interchangeable across geographic extension of the whole national labour market and

vary eventually only between the primary and secondary labor market segments. The

spatial segmentation concept is a possible way to overcome this simplifying

presumption of the standard segmentation theory. Local labour markets, as a specific

entity of theoretical and epistemological importance, seem to lie in a blind spot of

contemporary dominating neo-liberal theory of competitive markets, where the “space

is reduced to a passive and merely contextual economic backdrop: the local labor

market is portrayed as a container for universal processes” (Peck 1996: 84). De-

localised and atomised neo-liberal actors do cope with imaginary universal market

forces in an entirely abstract space.

By contrast, the spatial segmentation theory takes as its point of departure the

fact, that places and localities are not interchangeable at random. As was already

10
mentioned above, every space and every locality bears characteristics which determine

its place (on the horizontal as well as on the vertical axis) in the wider (i.e.

predominantly national) system of mutual relations, in the hierarchy having influence

over the processes taking place on the local level. It is clear then that in this sense

locality or space based differentiation and hierarchisation affects all the processes

perceived in neo-liberal theory as universal or de-localised.

Only through the localised, i.e. by the given locality adopted and to the given

locality adapted, strategies may evolve into a local economic field, “which exists only

through the agents that are found within it and that deform the space in their vicinity,

conferring a certain structure on it” (Bourdieu 2005: 193). In other words, there is the

source of inequality inside each of local markets or fields and variability across all of

them. Actors are supplied unequally according to the volume and structure of specific

capitals, capitals which limit or amplify their command over the structure of the local

field, being the actor an employer (a company, an entrepreneur), a public institution, or

an individual. Strategies and behaviour corresponding to a given locality is inculcated

into the actors, they are included in their habitus, a “conditioned and limited

spontaneity,” or an endowment, which enables the social agent to be “a collective

individual or a collective individuated by the fact of embodying objective structure. The

individual, the subjective, is social and collective” (Bourdieu 2005: 211, original

emphasis).

Besides the localised (in situ) inequalities, there are inequalities between

localities too. The basic vertical axis stems from provinces and leads up to the capital,

because, as Bourdieu observes (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 125),

11
 “the capital city is - no pun intended - the site of capital, that is, the site in

physical space where the positive poles of all the fields are concentrated

along with most of the agents occupying these dominant positions: which

means that the capital cannot be adequately analyzed except in relation to the

provinces (and “provincialness”), which is nothing other than being deprived

(in entirely relative terms) of the capital and capital.”

This statement drafts the basic outline of the inequalities being found between

localities, it means the inequalities which constitute the differences depicted in

correspondence analysis outputs (see below).

All the differences and inequalities have not only a more or less intangible

quality, captured in and attainable only through official statistics, but they are inscribed

directly in places and even in bodies of its inhabitants. There is a bodily knowledge, as

Bourdieu (2000) argues, of which an incorporated form are the dispositions, where “the

very structures of the social world” (Bourdieu 2000: 141) are inscribed.

There are many forms of dispositions, in form of skills, knowledges, behaviours

and personal characteristics which can be (and are) legitimately recognised as a form of

capital. Even the flexibility itself can be a capital which an actor can offer to an

employer and it can be exactly the kind of capital the employer is looking for.

Possession or absence of that capital decides about success or failure on the given local

labour market. Which capitals are perceived as valuable, in case of job seekers, is

locality-sensitive variable. Demand for diverse kinds of capital varies not only

according to individual employers, but also from one to the other local labour market.

The locally structured demand applies on the indigenous as well as on the foreign

labour force. Following empirical analysis shows on the structure of the Czech precincts

12
how the Czech national labour market is divided into the differentiated structure of local

labour markets.

Analysis of the population of unemployed

Peck’s observation that local labour market research agenda should be

“concerned less with cartography, and more with the geographic foundations of

structures, practices, and conventions” (Peck 1996: 89), it means to be more focused on

the shift from space (defined according to cartography) to place (defined according to

processes and practices which make it distinguishable) (cf. also Cameron 2006; Harvey

1989, 2001). Nevertheless, even if importance of place instead of space is emphasised,

and local labour market can have a different (physical) scope according to gender, social

class, education, age or income, empirical testing requires physical boundaries to be

defined. The boundaries are, regardless of intentions of researcher, usually implicitly

present already in the data itself, or can be at least educible from them, as is the case for

the data used in this research.

The definition of local labour markets is in this case given by the character of

the first source of data we have analysed. It is data about unemployed reported by the

Labour Offices across the whole country, and amassed in the database “OKpráce”, of

which the data are extracted. Structure of those offices and their district of

administration respects the structure of precincts of the Czech republic (according to the

“Local Administrative Units” (LAU) level 1, formerly the “Nomenclature of territorial

units for statistics” (NUTS) level 4 of a common classification of territorial units for

13
statistics). The boundaries of the precincts were accepted as an approximation of the

boundaries of local labour markets.

In the first step are analysed data about the structure of unemployed in every

precinct to see, who is typically (or often than in others precincts) excluded from the

local labour market and becomes unemployed. The analysis covers all the unemployed

who entered the unemployment or already were unemployed from January 1, 2007 until

June 30, 2008. In the table 1 is the description of variables used in the analysis. To

clarify the extent of the analysed data it is necessary to add that data for all 77 precincts

were used, but only a limited number of them, the 22 mentioned in the table 1, is of

importance, in other words, their position in the correspondence diagram makes them

distinctive. The rest of precincts creates a ‘space of average’, a space vis-a-vis to which

the distinctive position of 22 mentioned precincts can be seen as more or less

distinctive.

In this context it should also be noted that it could be misleading to argue that

the boundaries of local labor markets coincide precisely with the boundaries of

precincts. As was already mentioned above to choose precinct as the basic unit of our

analysis is rather a pragmatic choice - the precinct is one of the variables used already in

the process of data collection. Precincts appear also to be an appropriate unit with

respect to the exploratory nature of the entire analysis. The selected unit is sufficiently

small (for example, concerning employees’ commuting), and, at the same time, large

enough to represent a local labor market. In fact, boundaries of real local labor markets

may be relatively elastic and diverse for various segments of the workforce, depending

on the structure of the workforce itself and job opportunities in the vicinity.

14
Nevertheless, for empirical investigation it is necessary to mark out certain boundaries

and precincts seem to be an acceptable approximation.

table 1 - Overview of variables used in the analysis of spatial segmentation of the Czech labour
market
Precincts (selection): Decisive income at the Categorised number of
AB - Praha beginning of the unemployment unemployment spells before
BE - Beroun spell (CZK): January 1, 2007:
BM - Brno - City up to 6.000 no spell
BR - Bruntál 6-9.000 1 spell
BV - Břeclav 9-12.000 2 spells
CV - Chomutov 12-15.000 3 spells
HO - Hodonín 15-18.000 4 spells
MB - Mladá Boleslav 18.0000 and more 5 spells and more
JE - Jeseník
KA - Karviná Categorised sum of all Retraining before January 1,
KL - Kladno unemployment spells before 2007:
KM - Kroměříž January 1, 2007: yes
MO - Most up to 6 months no
OV - Ostrava 6-12 months
PM - Plzeň - City 1-2 years Health condition:
PY - Praha - East 2-5 years good health
PZ - Praha - West more than 5 years health constraint
SO - Sokolov the handicapped
SY - Svitavy Age categories: full or partial disability pension
TP - Teplice up to 24
TR - Třebíč 25-34 Education:
ZN - Znojmo 35-49 Basic + Without education
50 and more Secondary without GCSE
Secondary with GSCE
Gender: University degree
male
female

The way correspondence analysis handles data significantly determines the way

of interpreting the results. Outputs do not estimate the individual chances of job seekers

with regard to their individual characteristics, but describe the whole structure of social

space represented by the selected population. This type of analysis allows to see the

overall structure of the selected social field, i.e. a system of separations and mutual

dependencies, in a single diagram, seeing that local labor markets does not lie "next to

each other” but are somehow systematised and hierarchised. In this respect, in each of

these populations of the unemployed, their quantity, their characteristics and their

collective work histories, is inscribed not only the structure of today’s opportunities, but

15
also the history of the local labor market which predisposes them to adopt certain

strategies which lead them to certain positions in the overall (national) labour market

hierarchy.

The first diagram presents the result of the correspondence analysis, when all

precincts (77) took part in analysis. Generated social space is on its horizontal axis

differentiated by the amount of cultural and economic capital available to the job

seekers in given precincts. The cultural capital is approximated by the highest attained

education and economic capital is approximated by the decisive income at the

beginning of the unemployment spell. Vertically are precincts distributed due to their

propensity for either long-term or repeated unemployment, an other significant

characteristics of the population under investigation.

diagram 1 about here

The output of analysis creates four groups of precincts, whose populations of

unemployed differ both among each other and also from the vast majority of other

precincts, which are defined either as belonging to the area of a statistical average, when

situated near the intersection of the axes, or are relatively indifferent due to the extreme

values of used variables. The area around axes’ intersection and the left lower quadrant

are the spaces where these ‘average’ precincts are situated. The output also makes

discernible two regimes of unemployment characteristic for different local labour

markets. The first regime is characterised by rather more but shorter spells of

unemployment; in the second the number of spells is lower, but they are longer on the

average. It is quite surprising that very low explanatory power have age and gender. All

the categories representing age and gender are situated close to the point of intersection,

16
therefore in the area of the statistical average. The four distinctive groups of precincts

identified through the correspondence analysis is possible to entitle as follows:

“Centre”, “Periphery”, “Farmers” and “Schism”.

Centre: the first group consists of six precincts localised in the upper right

quadrant of the diagram 1 (Praha (AB), Praha-East (PY), Praha-West (PZ), Mladá

Boleslav (MB), Beroun (BE) and Plzeň-City (PM)). Unemployed population in these

districts is characterised primarily by higher education and higher decisive income,

which means that unemployed in these precincts have higher than average level of both,

cultural and social capital. These characteristics, together with a prevailing lack of past

unemployment spells, or rather short (up to 6 months), show a relatively secured

position of those jobseekers in the labor market in the recent past.

Periphery: the second group is, to a great extent, an inverse mapping of the first

one. Unemployed population in the cluster of six precincts in the upper left quadrant

(Ostrava (OV), Karviná (KA), Chomutov (CV), Sokolov (SO), Most (MO) and Teplice

(TP)) is, broadly speaking, characterised by a lack of both, cultural and economic

capital, when the lack of the former can be considered as a cause of the uncertain

position in the local labor market, characterised by a tendency to long-term

unemployment, resulting finally in the lack of capital of the second sort, the economic.

Unemployed population of these precincts is also burdened with significant health

limitations, which can be both a consequence of the fact that jobs in these precincts are

concentrated in heavy and chemical industries, as well as living in an environment

polluted by that industry. Differences in characteristics of populations of unemployed in

those two groups of precincts represent, in social and in geographical sense, the

17
differences between the centre and the periphery of the national economy, as are

inscribed in the variables selected for description of the population of unemployed.

Farmers: the third group consists of 8 precincts (Třebíč (TR), Hodonín (HO),

Kroměříž (KM), Svitavy (SY), Břeclav (BV), Znojmo (ZN), Jeseník (JE) and Bruntál

BR)) and in the diagram is situated in the bottom left quadrant. Majority of them, except

for precincts of Bruntál (BR) and Jeseník (JE), is located near the average in terms of

amount of the cultural and economic capital. The unemployed population of the whole

group of precincts is characterised by a tendency to the repeated (but not necessarily

long-term) unemployment and the prevalence of serious health problems (handicaps and

partial and full disability pensions). Again, the precincts are mostly located in the

periphery not only geographically but, due to their predominantly agricultural character,

also economically and socially.

Schism: the last group we will pay a closer attention to consists only of two

precincts. The first of them, Brno (BM), is of urban character and constitutes a regional

capital and a natural centre of South Moravia. The second, Kladno (KL), is situated in

Bohemian part of the country and borders upon the capital city Prague. In the

correspondence diagram both precincts are located in between two upper quadrants.

This location ushers in that the unemployed population of those two precincts is

somehow divided or inconsistent. Of course that no group of unemployed in the

precincts under investigation is expected to be absolutely homogenous, but the position

of Brno (BM) and Kladno (KL) in the diagram means that their populations of

unemployed consist of two extremely different groups. One of them consists of people

with relatively high cultural and economic capital, the second of people with inverse

18
characteristics in comparison to the first. There is more possible explications of that

situation. It can mean that Brno (BM) and Kladno (KL) are on the rise to the status of

'center' or, on the contrary, they already retreat from this status. There is also another

possible explanation which is tied with the already mentioned difficulty in determining

boundaries of a local labor market. The problem with these two precincts can reside in

the fact that these geographically defined units comprise virtually of two diametrically

different local labor markets, which may significantly geographically overlap.

The correspondence analysis, here especially in the form of an exploratory

analysis, reveals the structure of the Czech labour market based on the sub-populations

of unemployed in precincts, it means on the population which can be perceived as those

expelled into unemployment in the local labour markets. Correspondence analysis in

this regard produces a map of social space of the local labour markets, reflecting the

interaction of the used variables. In the following table the general characteristics of the

populations of precincts are presented (the ‘Schism’ group, consisting of only two

precincts, was omitted).

table 2 - Spatial structure of the Czech labour market according to the proposed spatial
segmentation (4th quarter 2007)
Employed Unemployed Labour Force
count count unemployment rate count
Centre 939691 24517 2,5% 964208
Periphery 460850 48326 9,5% 509177
Farmers 394917 28579 6,7% 423496
Others 3171745 151405 4,6% 3323151
total 4967204 252828 4,8% 5220032
source: CZSO, Labour Market in the Czech Republic 1993 - 2007

Immediately we see that there are important differences between groups of

precincts defined on the basis of correspondence analysis. Whereas in the ‘Centre’ the

19
unemployment rate is about a half of the total unemployment rate for the Czech

republic, unemployment rate for the ‘Periphery’ is almost twice as high as the total

unemployment rate. In other words, chances to be unemployed for indigenous

population are highly influenced not only by the individual characteristics of the job

seekers but also by the region (local labour market) they live in. The question now is if

the same can be said of foreign labour force in the Czech republic. If their chances on

the labour market are besides their personal characteristics influenced also by spatial

segmentation of the Czech labour market.

The second source of data we are going to use is the survey of 1002 employers

in the Czech republic who utilised foreign labour force in 2006. When we suppose, as

we already did above, that to get a job is an important part of the social inclusion

process for the immigrant workers, then we can ask what are the structural conditions of

that process. In other words, how is the process of matching foreign workers to jobs

affected by the spatial structure of the Czech labour market outlined above.

Spatial segmentation and foreigners’ labour market

The main idea here is that what was shown in the previous analysis is not only a

spatial segmentation of the domestic labour force, but also a spatial segmentation of the

employers, a distribution of various economic activities across the space which is not

accidental. For instance, the strategic branches and sectors of the national economy

(banks, insurance companies, headquarters of multinational companies etc.), in which

well paid jobs are available more often than anywhere else, reside usually in the capital;

heavy and chemical industries, with completely different structure of jobs and different

20
demands for skills and education of employees, are settled for the most of its part in the

precincts referred in our research to as ‘periphery’. Further then, other parts of the

country, another local labour markets, might be identified, for instance, as rather

agricultural.

For testing the hypothesis that the Czech labour market is spatially segmented

not only for the indigenous labour force but for the foreign labour force too, we will use

the three main identified spatial segments of the Czech national labour market - the

‘centre’, the ‘periphery’, and the ‘farmers’ - to compare their characteristics with one

another, and also with the residual segment, the precincts belonging to neither of

defined segments, which will be brought together under the caption ‘others’.

table 2 - Overview of variables used in the analysis of spatial labour market segmentation on the
employers of the foreign labour force
Spatial segments of the Reasons for foreign workers Qualification of foreign
Czech labour market: employment for different employees according to the
centre categories of employees: job they have:
periphery shortage of indigenous - qualification corresponds
farmers MANUAL qualification do not
others willingness of foreigners to corresponds
work for lower wages -
Sectors of the national MANUAL Education of foreign
economy: shortage of indigenous - employees assessment:
primary sector WHITE-COLLARS education corresponds
secondary sector willingness of foreigners to part of employees has higher
tertiary sector work for lower wages - than necessary education
public administration, public WHITE-COLLARS part of employees has lower
health, research shortage of indigenous - than necessary education
SPECIAL employs employees with both
Categories of employed willingness of foreigners to lower and higher education
foreign workers: work for lower wages -
manuals SPECIAL Career (promotion) chances
white-collars of foreign workers:
specialists Foreign workers’ jobs career all
managers classification: career some
combination primary LM career nobody
secondary LM
Employer’s entity:
head office
branch

21
 What we will test in this part of analysis is not directly the segmentation of

foreign labour force, of which we have at present no suitable data, but of its employers

located in the Czech republic. Following Bourdieu’s idea that necessarily “social space

translates into physical space” (Bourdieu et al. 1999: 124), we suppose that the

primarily socially constituted and reproduced capital - province (periphery) relation

inscribes itself also into the spatial segmentation of job opportunities, expressed in the

preferences of employers. Inscription of those relations in physical space gives in return

inertia and durability to the social structure (Bourdieu et al. 1999). This is what makes

demands of employers relatively stable over the time and what also gives an opportunity

to evolve applicable and effective, it means space-adapted, strategies on the side of job

seekers.

diagram 2 about here

The outcome of the analysis of demands and expectations of employers of the

foreign labour force shows that they differ according to the spatial segment of the Czech

labour market they occupy. Their position in the spatial segmentation of the national

labour market, as the local labour market hypothesis assumes, significantly shapes their

foreign labour force requirements.

To start with, the tenseness or even friction in relationship between centre and

periphery (provinces) is once again reproduced in a graphic form in the diagram 2. That

means nothing else than that requirements formulated by employers in those two spatial

segments do not overlap; foreign labour force required typically in those two segments

is completely different. Employers coming from peripheral precincts do offer to

foreigners jobs in the quaternary sector of the national economy (pubic administration,

22
public health, research) and besides that also to specialists. In other words, they try to

attract foreign labour force to the sectors and departments requiring higher education

because these sectors and departments are deprived of the educated indigenous labour

force which have tendency to leave peripheral areas and go to areas perceived as

central, which they apprehend as potentially offering them more opportunities. In

consequence, it seems that, even if the centre may be at the first sight for immigrants

more attractive, the peripheral areas can actually offer better jobs to the more educated

and more skilled layer of the foreign labour force.

The characteristics which are connected with the employers coming from the

spatial segments (precincts) labeled as centre indicate that this part of the Czech labour

market is highly competitive. The competitiveness of those local labour market

experience probably all segments of the foreign labour force. There can be a difference

between immigrants with low and high cultural capital, or low and high level of skills,

but all of them are expected to compete through all forms of flexibility. Immigrants, if

they wish to have a job adequate to their attainments, are exposed to a strong

competition, amplified with already mentioned internal migration, especially of people

with higher cultural capital, to the centre. The competitive advantage the foreign labour

force with comparative skills or education has in eyes of employers in these precincts,

as is shown in the diagram, is their willingness to work for lower pay than indigenous

labour force. In the local labour markets belonging to the centre that applies for

specialist, white-collars as well as manual workers, all of them usually getting jobs in

the tertiary sector of the national economy.

23
 Employers in local labour markets identified as farmers do have to solve a

problem with shortage of specialists for jobs above all in the primary and secondary

sectors of the national economy. Qualification of foreign labour force in these precincts

usually corresponds to the requirements of employers, and they often offer a further

training to the foreign employees on the manual positions. What is also important to

mention, in this spatial segment of the Czech labour market is the lowest number of

employers of foreign labour force comparing to the segments of centre, periphery and

others. This can also be seen as a part of explanation of difference in unemployment rate

between farmers and periphery (cf. table 2). With the lower number of foreign workers

in the farmer segments, in comparison with periphery segments, the pressure on force

out of domestic labour force from the local labour market is weaker.

In the precincts which were gathered under the heading others employers offer

to the foreign employees usually jobs from the secondary sectors of the national

economy which are simultaneously jobs of the secondary labour market, i.e. ‘dead end’

jobs (no career, low pay, no further training). The data come from period when the

Czech economy steadily grew and suffered from shortage of indigenous labour force.

That was the reason why Czech employers hired foreigners for manual positions in

these precincts.

From the findings presented above we may conclude not only that the Czech

labour market is spatially segmented, but that the proposed spatial segmentation is

meaningful also for evaluation and description of the foreign labour force chances on

that market. At least three spatial segments, distinctive according to the majority of the

Czech labour market, were identified which may be perceived as important also for the

24
investigation of foreign labour force in the Czech republic. These segments, centre,

periphery and farmers, may be used either for the opportunities estimation of the

chances diverse segments of the foreign labour force have on the segmented Czech

labour market, or for description of diverse manners employers in different spatial

segments utilise foreign workforce and how it affects possible social integration. The

correspondence analysis outcomes show that proposed segmentation based on the data

for indigenous population is able to explain at least a part of variability in the data

describing the spatial segmentation of demand for foreign labour force.

Future research
Presented findings also open new questions and new directions which can be

followed by a further research.

It should be reminded that the patterns of hiring foreign labour force in all

spatial segments of the Czech labour market were influenced by the fact of a strong

economic growth in 2007, when the data were collected. However there is, of course, a

fluctuating component in the foreign labour force hiring patterns in the outlined spatial

segments, we may expect a stable (and rather durable) component as well. Whereas the

fluctuating component, as depending on rather economic variables (rate of growth,

currency rate, manufacturing and export records of the industries in given time etc.),

will oscillate according to the actual macroeconomic development, the stable

component is produced through the inscription of the social structures into the physical

space and into its features and also its members. This stable component, since consisting

mainly of naturalised outcomes of past battles and contests, is less dependent on the

25
actual state of the economy and can be seen as a base structure to which any proposed

form and method of integration has to correspond and which has to take into account.

Processes of social integration are different in a city area and in a rural precinct.

A further question can be asked whether different spatial segments do really

have a different integration record, and where the difference comes from. Again, the

fluctuating component has to be taken into account.

Generally speaking, the spatial characteristics of social and socially regulated

processes open new spaces and new questions to investigate. Spatial characteristics are

a natural part of our experience and they cannot be omitted. They intervene into our

thinking and into our behaviour, they partake in the structuration of the world we see as

natural. Spatial characteristics have then a capacity to stand as an independent variable

in empirical investigation.

26
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diagram 1 - The spatial segmentation of the Czech labour market (correspondence analysis)

29
diagram 2 - The spatial segmentation of the opportunities of foreign workers on the Czech
labour market (correspondence analysis)

30