Long-distance Commuting: Challenges and Inequalities

Description

This lecture discusses the increasing trend of long-distance commuting for work-related reasons, exploring the factors driving this phenomenon such as improved transportation options, job market specialization, temporary contracts, and unemployment. It also delves into the concept of 'motility' and how individuals' access and skills influence their mobility choices. The lecture highlights the disparities in mobility capabilities based on economic status, education level, and gender, emphasizing that having the ability to move does not always translate to actual mobility. Furthermore, it examines the impact of economic crises on mobility patterns and the importance of ensuring both the right to mobility and the right to immobility. The discussion concludes by addressing the need to recognize and accommodate diverse mobility preferences to mitigate inequalities in the context of increasing societal pressure for extensive mobility.

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Related concepts (21)

Unemployment

Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period. Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, which is the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force (the total number of people employed added to those unemployed).

Social mobility

Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society. This movement occurs between layers or tiers in an open system of social stratification. Open stratification systems are those in which at least some value is given to achieved status characteristics in a society. The movement can be in a downward or upward direction.

Youth unemployment

Youth unemployment is the situation of young people who are looking for a job but cannot find a job, with the age range being defined by the United Nations as 15–24 years old. An unemployed person is defined as someone who does not have a job but is actively seeking one. To be qualified as unemployed for official and statistical measurement, the individual must be without employment, willing and able to work, of the officially designated "working age" (often from the teens to the mid-60s) and actively searching for a position.

Natural rate of unemployment

The natural rate of unemployment is the name that was given to a key concept in the study of economic activity. Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps, tackling this 'human' problem in the 1960s, both received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work, and the development of the concept is cited as a main motivation behind the prize. A simplistic summary of the concept is: 'The natural rate of unemployment, when an economy is in a steady state of "full employment", is the proportion of the workforce who are unemployed'.

Structural unemployment

Structural unemployment is a form of involuntary unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers (also known as the skills gap). Structural unemployment is often brought about by technological changes that make the job skills of many workers obsolete. Structural unemployment is one of three categories of unemployment distinguished by economists, the others being frictional unemployment and cyclical unemployment.