Participation in Labour Adjustment Assistance: The Regional State and Local Agency

The paper draws on case studies of participation in the Textiles Clothing and Footwear Labour Adjustment Package in eleven locations across Australia. Case studies revealed that location is the decisive factor in determining the participation of retrenched TCF workers in this assistance package. This paper documents this effect and examines the influences that underlie the importance of location. It is argued that places have institutionalised characteristics that constitute local identity and that local differences are reproduced by variations in the regional administration of the national state as it pursues national policy whilst simultaneously embedded in local conditions. Regional variations in state activity affect different gender, ethnic and age groups in the labour market in different ways, thereby transforming the local division of labour. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for labour market interventions more generally.