Crisis, dispossession and labor market in Spain: impacts on the Metropolitan Region of Madrid

Abstract

The Spanish urban areas have experienced a crisis that is global in its dimension but has different local manifestations. Such crisis has intensively affected the labor markets of these areas. Dispossession processes are reflected in the strong growth of unemployment, job insecurity, wage devaluation and less protection for workers, who are concentrated in the most vulnerable urban sectors. The article offers a theoretical reflection on these issues and analyzes what has happened in the metropolitan region of Madrid, in the Spanish context, by using different indicators. It also specifies deep internal disparities in the impact of the crisis within the agglomeration, which increase the territorial segmentation that has been inherited and pose new challenges.