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The growth of digital platforms is spawning new, if often precarious, forms of work. One such type of work that has particularly grown in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that of digital platform-facilitated on-demand food delivery services. Such deliveries are often undertaken by younger workers. Given this, here we explore the following research questions: (i) what forms of labour precarity are found and reproduced in the physical and digital spaces that young food delivery platform (FDP) workers create and inhabit?; and (ii) what types of agency do FDP workers develop within these spaces in order to navigate – and sometimes resist – precarity? Drawing upon concepts from critical Youth Studies, Geographical Political Economy and Labour Geography, the article develops the concept of precarious youthspaces of work to investigate the connections between youths' everyday lives and the production of space. To do so we present a qualitative study conducted in Athens, Greece, that sought to capture the multifaceted working arrangements of FDP workers, both offline and online. Our analysis reveals that FDP workers suffer various forms of labour precarity which they must navigate. But such workers are not just accommodating to precarity. They have also generated forms of collective oppositional agency that are reshaping local labour markets. However, whilst their agency has sometimes generated solidarity and robust collective movements it has also led to divisions that have limited cooperation amongst FDP workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate how production Cooperatives with a Sharing Economy Business Model (CSE‐BMs) foster innovations in structurally weak rural places. Taking a place‐based social capital perspective, we argue that the strength of CSE‐BMs in developing process, service, product, and social innovation lies in their ability to reconfigure shared resources across communities and actors located on different levels of power and with different access to resources. Empirically, we reconstruct the mobilization and reconfiguration of shared resources across the network in an in‐depth case study of a CSE‐BM in rural Greece. We find that CSE‐BMs can mobilize resources across the network by offering value propositions that stakeholders regard as credible because decision‐makers show attachment to the place. To realize sufficient value for members to sustain their contributions to the CSE‐BM, product, service, and process innovations are complemented by social innovations. Mobilizing and reconfiguring shared resources across different interest groups unleashes the innovative potential of CSE‐BMs but causes tensions between different mindsets at the same time. Cooperatives offer an organizational structure to turn these tensions from a threat into an opportunity for innovation. Our findings contribute to the Sharing Economy Business Model (SE‐BM) literature on typology building and the construction of ideal types. We also advance the SE‐BM debate by shedding light on the potential of cooperative forms of organizing collaborative production in the sharing economy. Practically, we contribute to the discussion about the importance of physical vs. digital platforms as intermediaries in SE‐BMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the economic crisis of 2008/2009, the European Union developed the Youth Guarantee (YG) Action Plan to tackle youth labour market disengagement by 'fostering employability' and 'removing barriers' to employment. The current study adopts a Geographical Political Economy approach to analysing the YG's underpinnings and the conditions that differentiate its application on a regional level to explore whether – and, if so, how – the YG helps young people in the Southern EU to enter the labour market. The article introduces the first comparative, cross-regional investigation of the YG programme, targeting the NUTS-II regions of Spain and Italy. It uses mixed methods, supplementing quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews with key informants. We show that in Spanish and Italian regions the YG is closely entwined with socio-spatial inequality and labour precarity, which is reflected in the growing rates of temporary employment and inactive youth. Crucially, we conclude, such outcomes are not simply the result of the institutional/operational misapplications of the YG, as is often assumed. Rather, these misapplications are systematically reinforced by the mechanics of labour flexibilisation within a recessionary and crisis-prone environment, one whose geographical unevenness means that the YG is playing out in quite different ways in different places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most fundamental problematics of European integration is the issue of the common European identity. The academic and policy debates that are developed around this issue highlight the fact that the EU cannot be transformed into a nation-state or even retain the characteristics that we know form nation-states, such as cultural identity and collective memory. Nevertheless, the European identity ‒ partly a social reminder and partly a social construction ‒ demands a transnational sense of identification. During the transition from “communitarianism” to “sociability” and modernity, new networks of relationships emerge and the phobic syndrome of otherness is more easily dealt with. Nevertheless, despite the forces of modernization ‒ such as the growing familiarity with social diversifications, travel facilities and mixed marriages, among others ‒ social groups continue to play a leading role in forming collective memories and identities and developing trust-building mechanisms. In any case, what still constitute the pivotal factors for such formations are collective memories and identifications. Against these backdrops, the European identity still lacks the necessary social groups as well as the collective memories and identifications to drive this trust-building forward. Due to that, the acceptance of the European identity is subject to constant fluctuations, which warrants investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovation is conceptualised as having two intimately related pillars: institutional innovation and locally embedded innovation, in the sense of social economy. Two main research questions were addressed: how political, institutional innovation is fostered and how does it influence social economy? A mixed methods research was conducted in the Mühlviertel NUTS3 region. Despite a framework of enhanced autonomy and institutional innovation for the main stakeholders, both macro and micro analysis illustrate a lack of intermediate space to: a) link the innovative agenda to high-state political agendas, and b) link institutional innovation to social economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]