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To be able to conceptualize the geographic expansion and restructuring of the European automotive business, I draw on Harvey’s idea of uneven growth and spatio-temporal repair ( Harvey, 1982 , 2001 , 2005 , 2010 , 2014 ), which allows me to further develop the spatial idea of integrated peripheries as a selected type of spatio-temporal fix within the contemporary automotive industry ( PavlÃnek, 2018 ). The dynamic and relational view of the uneven development of the European automotive business helps me perceive uneven geographic developments in job creation and job losses.
It concerned the manual extraction of individual restructuring events within the automotive business from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) ( ERM, 2017 ), resulting within the creation or loss of not less than 100 jobs or 10% or extra of the labor power in companies or factories employing at the least 250 staff.
On the same time, the German automakers offshored a higher proportion of the production of parts, especially to Japanese Europe, with a view to benefit from its decrease labor costs ( Chiappini, 2012 ), which resulted in a extra environment friendly intra-company division of labor ( Walker, 1989 ). Additionally, the excessive stage of production in Germany has been sustained by massive exports of largely premium cars to China, which has not been the case in other West European core nations ( Maiza and Bustillo, 2018 ).
Nonetheless, the variety of plant closures and relocations was also comparatively high in Czechia (20), Hungary (14) and Poland (12), which is evidence of the short-term nature of the spatio-temporal fix and of the fixed search of automotive companies for cheaper and more profitable locations in decrease-value international locations, such as Romania that experienced just one manufacturing facility closure (in 2009) and no relocations.
