Autonomous territories are geographically delimited areas where political, social, and cultural capacities have been devolved to accord a measure of self-governance to the region. The & Aring;land Islands, an autonomous territory within the unitary Finnish state, have issued stamps for more than 40 years as an element of the islands' autonomous capacities. This paper explores the & Aring;land Islands' stamps issued between 1984 and 2024 by conducting a thematic analysis and categorizing the stamps by visual content. The paper develops this analysis by considering how the stamps issued by the & Aring;land Islands differ thematically from those produced by the Finnish state and by exploring the themes of autonomy and & Aring;land as islands of peace in the visual representations on the stamps. For autonomies, the issuance of stamps is an opportunity to express cultural competence as distinct from but still as part of the central state. Stamps are a medium through which territory is visually narrated not only by states but a variety of actors in the international system.
This paper investigates the sensitivity of neighbourhood effect estimates to the operationalization of contextual poverty. It introduces the Problem of Uncertain Contextual Characteristic (PUCC), which refers to uncertainty surrounding what is measured and represented when constructing contextual variables, potentially resulting in estimation bias. Using longitudinal micro-data from Dutch population registers (2011-2020), we assess four key parameters when operationalizing poverty: poverty dimensions, reference groups, poverty-line thresholds, and aggregation statistics. We undertake a systematic analysis modelling the effect of each poverty indicator while keeping all other factors constant. We also generate models including different residential context scales and geographies to compare the effects of PUCC with other sources of estimation variation. Results show that the operationalization of contextual poverty substantially influences the estimated neighbourhood effects on individual income. In our analyses, the operationalization of contextual poverty introduced greater variation than the residential context's scale or the geographical extent of the study. Findings further suggest that PUCC and the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) are closely related, as the impact of contextual poverty measures varies significantly across spatial scales.
Flexibility is the defining promise of the gig economy, yet also its central contradiction. Often framed as a benefit, flexibility operates dialectically, as both a mechanism of control and a potential site of agency. Workers' ability to navigate or resist precarity is shaped by their position within segmented labour markets, their subjectivities, and broader socio-economic structures. The gig economy is not a single labour market, then, but a stratified one in which conditions vary drastically across sectors and worker groups. This paper examines two differently situated workers in distinct segments of gig work to explore the determinants of precarity. It identifies three key dialectical tensions: (1) flexibility as both freedom and control; (2) gig work as promizing autonomy but delivering insecurity; and (3) the gig economy as simultaneously embedded in and excluded from Sweden's labour market model, undermining protections whilst reproducing exclusion. Through digital mediation, task atomization, and misclassification, gig work entrenches inequality in new ways. In Sweden, Europe's most segregated labour market, the gig economy exacerbates existing divisions. Whilst some workers benefit, others, particularly racialized migrants, face deepened precarity and algorithmic discipline. Rather than disrupting hierarchies, Sweden's gig economy reinforces them through new forms of segmentation and spatio-temporal discipline.
As populations age, many countries are raising retirement ages and encouraging longer working lives. In Sweden, where old-age employment rates are already high, questions remain about how these patterns vary across regions and labour market segments. This article provides a comprehensive overview of old-age employment trends from 1990 to 2021, using detailed population register data. While employment among older adults has increased steadily, spatial variation is surprisingly limited. Instead, differences are more evident across types of employment and firm sizes, with self-employment more prevalent in urban areas and public sector and smaller firms gaining importance for older workers in rural regions. The findings suggest that local economic conditions only play a limited role in old-age employment. Rather than confirming strong spatial divides, this study challenges common assumptions about regional economic differences and raises important questions for future research on the intersections of ageing, work, and geography.
In ageing societies, there is a necessity to take into consideration the multifaceted backgrounds and needs of older adults to ensure proper services and the quality of living in later life. In this article, we examine the experiences and life expectancies of ageing LGBTQI+ people in Finland and in Sweden. We understand that older adults, as well as LGBTQI+ people, are not a homogenous group but come from versatile backgrounds. In the study, we examine ageing in the context of place. The article answers the call of geographers of ageing to emphasize the importance of place in ageing (in-place) studies. We elaborate on the meanings of being 'in place' as a viewpoint on housing, care, community and society. Furthermore, we focus on ageing 'out of place,' which refers to experiences of alienation and exclusion of LGBTQI+ people in, for example, public places. The results show that the former criminalization, psychiatric classifications and negative attitudes have had an influence on older LGBTQI+ adults, especially, and this is reflected in how they see places and their possibilities to behave or have proper care. Thus, many LGBTQI+ people want to age surrounded by the members of their own community. However, currently, few possibilities for this are being provided by society.
This study builds on recent research on the functional division of labour and adapts an approach from the management literature to examine the functional economic specialisation of local economies. We introduce a measure of local functional specialisation that spans private sector activities and accounts for services without imposing a conventional manufacturing framework. Evidence from Sweden suggests that analysing local functional specialisation provides a promising lens for understanding how local economies position themselves within today's vertically disintegrated and spatially fragmented systems of value creation. To support further research, we make available matrices that map occupations into functional categories.
Once a moment of rebellion and resistance against authority, carnivals are increasingly part of local and national cultural calendars with negotiation of power being of interest to cultural geographers for decades. Given the dependence on this imagery, costume, masks and other aspects of the imaginary, what happens when the theatricality of carnival with its masks, costumes and music is largely removed? The Basel Fasnacht that was due to take place in 2020 but cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic yet participants continued anyway. The case study thus presents a unique opportunity to examine a carnival that rebelled against the incoming regulations that would characterise the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing together carnival theory and Baudrillard's work on simulation and simulacra along with urban geographical thinking of Soja and Simmel I argue that in the 2020 Basel Fasnacht the symbolic presence of the new structure and signs it deployed were made to bear the weight of political resistance. Hyperreality and social order of everyday life temporarily collapsed as the referential signs become once more connected to the reality of the rebellion on the streets of Basel as relations between participant bodies and wider politics of authority emerged through demonstration against incoming social restrictions.
Within amid ongoing energy transitions, place attachment frequently intersects with the global politics of place, particularly in places where local communities oppose mining. The paper examines local perceptions of mineral exploration and mining in Northern Finland through the lens of place attachment and diverse senses of place. Focusing on the municipalities of Rovaniemi and Kuusamo, and K & auml;yl & auml; village, the study employs a multimethod design combining survey data, semi-structured interviews, and participatory mapping to analyse the perceived social, environmental, and emotional impacts of mining and exploration on rural landscapes. The results reveal deep residential and emotional attachments, alongside strong concerns about the social, economic and environmental effects of mining. The adverse impacts of mining may influence residents' attachments and sense of place in environmentally valuable rural landscapes, generating anxiety and fear and raising concerns about livelihood continuity, sustainability and stewardship values. Both actual and anticipated exploration and mining activities also undermine residents' sense of ownership in property investments in residential and recreational areas by disrupting place attachment and creating uncertainty about the future. The paper concludes that improved sustainability performance in the mining sector is essential for socially equitable and environmentally responsible land use planning.
The development and popularisation of digital media are reshaping our spatial cognition and accelerating the fusion of virtual and physical place experiences. However, research on how place meaning is understood in screen-mediated virtual spaces and how media environments with varying levels of immersion shape this understanding remains underexplored. This study addresses two core questions: How do digital media with different levels of immersion influence the understanding of place meaning in screen-mediated virtual places? And what is the relationship between virtual and physical place experiences in this process? Through a comparative case study of the 'Pixel China' project on Bilibili, we analyse the experiential differences between high-immersion video game players and low-immersion social media viewers. Findings reveal that players, through immersive place construction, cultivate a dialectical place attitude and reconstruct virtual places as expressions of personal spatial vision. In contrast, viewers, through collective interpretation and association, perceive virtual places as digital utopias for reflecting upon physical environment. This study contributes to digital geography by clarifying the mediating role of media environments in virtual place meaning construction and the virtual-physical place interactive relationship.
With increasing ethnic diversity, the high level of segregation between ethnic groups remains a major social problem in many cities. This study provides detailed insight into activity space segregation by analysing ethnic exposure across all activity places people visit, aiming to detect where ethnic groups are more exposed to each other and where they are more separated. Our study is based on survey and smartphone tracking data collected over a one-month period. Smartphone tracking allows for mapping people's space-time paths, while the survey data characterize the ethnic context of each activity place. We examined where ethnic groups living in segregated neighbourhoods - both minority-dominant and majority-dominant - meet each other during their daily activities. The experiment was conducted in Tallinn, Estonia, where an Estonian-speaking majority and a Russian-speaking minority reside in two neighbourhoods. The results indicate that the activity spaces of the ethnic groups living in segregated neighbourhoods are also segregated. The minority group is more exposed to members of the majority population in dining places, kindergartens, indoor sporting places, and cultural activity places. Minority group exposure to own-group members is higher in places related to visiting friends and family, children's schools and hobby places, and places related to personal services.
Despite efforts to regulate offshore firms, these entities remain widespread and influential in the global economy - yet their role in studies on global production has been understudied. This paper addresses this gap by examining the strategic importance of offshore firms in Ukraines sunflower oil industry, a globally significant sector. Our findings show that although offshore enterprises make up just over one-third of the firms analysed, they dominate the sector in terms of revenues and exports. Alongside firms ownership (foreign, offshore, and domestic), we investigated the role of other structural factors on value capture, such as firm size, position within production network (seed producers, oil producers, and exporters), and level of production diversification across two periods: before and after the 2014 Russian aggression. A firm's position in the production network proves crucial for the level of value capture. While foreign-owned firms achieved the highest relative value capture, offshore firms secured the largest absolute value. The results indicate that legal protection and international reputation, rather than tax avoidance, may be important motives for offshore registration in this industry.
Regional development has long been understood through its integration into global economies. Recent global crises have challenged this view, prompting new debates on fragmentation and the spatial reorganisation of production. Within global production network (GPN) debates, regional assets and their strategic value for transnational corporations (TNCs) are considered central to development. Our empirical case of Alpine wool illustrates an economic constellation that has experienced abandonment by TNCs, which has resulted in the strong economic devaluation of regional wool. The present paper explores this disarticulation with a particular focus on regional value creation, TNC power, and embeddedness. Thus, it provides a regionalized perspective on development within a broader GPN context. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the following research question: How can regional economic power unfold after disarticulation beyond classical GPN linkages? Regional lead firms represent a key element in regional adaptation to the effects of disarticulation and segmentation. Their initiatives aiming to revalorize Alpine wool through new, multi-scalar networks provide a new basis for regional value creation, thereby providing an empirical example of endogenous development potential. The innovation of niche products serves a central role in this setting, which positions disarticulation as a window of opportunity.
This introductory paper invites to rethink development in the face of mounting global challenges by engaging with post-/decolonial, feminist, and alternative approaches, and taking issue with the mainstream paradigm of development based on modernization and material prosperity. The paper questions whether technocratic and universalist assumptions of mainstream development are adequate to recognize and value contextual, place-based, and diverse knowledges. It also explores how development processes can be collaborative, care-centred, and rooted in the agency of communities. We call for bridging divides between post-/decolonial, feminist and alternative approaches; in particular by moving beyond the persistent Global North - South binary, as this currently stands in the way of meaningful exchanges. As the introduction to the special issue, this paper sets the stage for seven contributions that explore development from multiple disciplinary and geographical perspectives. It does not seek to prescribe a new model, but rather to encourage thinking outside the box, towards plural, inclusive, and ethically grounded approaches that reflect the complexity of lived realities and the diversity of visions for a better future.
Green hydrogen production appears to have opened a window of opportunity for late-comer industrialization. The article presents a new framework for assessing corresponding prospects. Details of investment projects, characteristics of the associated technologies and features that mark the host region explain linkage-based development. Features of the host region are influenced by strategic industrial policies. Bargaining with lead firms affects details of investment projects. These thoughts are applied to Antofagasta, a region in north Chile that benefits from the highest solar irradiation worldwide and is, therefore, very attractive for producing green hydrogen. Expert interviews and information from secondary sources reveal opportunities for production linkages with the mining sector and chemicals industry. Local suppliers can participate in the new value chains as providers of generic, low value-adding products and services. Pro-market policies reinforce these chances. Yet, there remain limitations and uncertainties regarding development in Antofagasta, even for a kind of late-comer industrialization that is not overly ambitious. Complex technologies, which meet a region that performs rather poorly in terms of innovative capacities, and low labour market effects are identified as barriers. This finding casts doubts on the suitability of green hydrogen as a driver of a structural transformation of peripheral economies.
This study reconceptualises over-embeddedness by moving beyond its conventional interpretation as excessive reliance on inter-firm networks and explores its negative aspects in the context of Turkish grocery retailers operating in the German retail market since the late 1960s. Existing literature often conceptualises over-embeddedness through a narrow structural lens, focusing primarily on network size and density, while neglecting the territorial and societal dimensions. Drawing on Hess's (2004) "'Spatial' Relationships? Towards a Reconceptualization of Embeddedness." Progress in Human Geography 28 (2): 165-186. tripartite typology and engaging with recent revisions of the mixed embeddedness approach, this study proposes a framework that incorporates territorial, societal, and network over-embeddedness as analytically distinct but interrelated forms. Rather than relying on the ambiguous notion of a threshold, we develop a set of empirically grounded indicators to identify over-embeddedness as a gradual and context-specific process. Our findings demonstrate how different types of over-embeddedness can constrain innovation, reinforce path dependencies, and limit entrepreneurial adaptation and growth. By applying this expanded conceptual lens to ethnic business relations, the study not only addresses the overlooked risks of territorial and societal over-embeddedness but also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of embeddedness dynamics in migrant entrepreneurship.
This paper examines the interplay between pro-growth and smart shrinkage planning approaches to persistent population decline in three small-sized Japanese municipalities: Yubari, Hokkaido; Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture; and Manazuru, Kanagawa Prefecture. To articulate the extent to which shrinking cities deviate from historically normative pro-growth urban planning practice, this paper proposes an analytical framework to examine policy responses at the municipal level to depopulation across the dimensions of assessment, response, and capacity. Applying this framework to the three case studies reveals heterogeneous local policy approaches. Findings show a spectrum of municipal responses, ranging from outright resistance to proactive adaptation to depopulation, highlighting the heterogeneous application of pro-growth and smart shrinkage policies. This paper argues that despite decades of depopulation, the conceptualization and application of smart shrinkage policies remains inconsistent. This indicates how challenging it may be to reimagine urban planning that does not centre population growth as a normative goal.
Narratives around sustainability often rest on an implicit model of development, contrasting the capacities of the Global South versus North, or different regions within Europe, who are then seen as leaders or followers within the race to transition away from carbon-intensity. Against such tendencies, there is a need to deconstruct this story of carbon governance from the ground up, questioning the abstractions involved and attending to the everyday politics and tensions present in sustainability transitions. Drawing theoretically from ideas of buen vivir and the critiques of post-development, we initiate a conversation bringing global south solutions to global north problems, especially focused around how to centre the local. We draw on experiences of transition across different local levels to argue for more grounded, particular and contested visions of what it will take to reach a sustainable future. In this, we point to the diverse challenges faced by grassroots actors in their attempts to move towards a sustainable future, problematizing and disrupting easy narratives of European energy transition progress, or Western high emissions lifestyles. In problematizing such a trajectory, we argue that ideas from post-development can contribute towards sustainable futures, rooted in the recognition and valuing of local knowledge and practice.
During the past decade, development theories guiding mainstream development agenda were put into question by recurring waves of crises, including but not limited to the Covid-19 pandemic, state-led capitalist expansion, reordering of global geopolitics, regional imbalances, growing inequality, and rising nationalist movements. With salient spatial and geographical dimensions in nature, some of the most critical challenges of development call for deeper engagement from scholars of geography and regional studies. This paper employs 'learning' as a conceptual device for systematically rereading and reorganizing development interventions to pave the way for a theorizing of Global Development that is relational, pragmatic, and dynamic to better address the challenges of uneven development, left-behind places, poverty, and inequality. Development theory literature normally discusses learning in the economistic context of efficiency of labour and markets. We, however, try to provide a systematic framework to bring learning to the discussions on community resilience, collective action, and political voice for the marginalized.
This paper explores the idea of 'everyday spaces of public transportation' through the lived experiences of bus users, both drivers and passengers, while they journey through city spaces. We bring scholarship on urban bus travel and the power relations that structure this process in dialogue with an empirical case study on Hong Kong. We present an analysis of interviews supplemented with the first author's auto-ethnographic observations as a bus driver to contribute new insights into how users experience their mundane bus journeys. This study extends existing knowledge that often focuses on quantitative metrics such as travel times, and offers a unique contribution as the first of its kind to present perspectives from the joint positionality of a bus driver and a geographical researcher. The Hong Kong government claims to prioritize so-called people-centred urban transport, but this claim is yet to receive more critical attention. Our study highlights some compelling ways in which bus users have crafted their own paths, sometimes in conflict with norms or regulations established by authorities. This study seeks to move beyond efficiency discussions in bus transportation; it shows the co-existence of multiple and sometimes ambiguous experiences that provide 'lived' nuances of the mutually constitutive nature of power dynamics and the everyday spaces of public bus transportation.
