Work-Life Advantage

Al James is Reader in Economic Geography at Newcastle University, UK. His research interests include gendered labour geographies of work-life and socially inclusive growth; the regional cultural economy of learning and innovation; and the hybrid economic/development geographies of India's new service economy. His work has been funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, Nuffield Foundation, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Isaac Newton Trust. He has published in a wide range of leading international journals, including Progress in Human Geography, Journal of Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Geoforum, Gender Work and Organization, Gender Place and Culture, Environment and Planning A and Development and Change. From 2008–2011, he was Secretary of the RGS-IBG's Economic Geography Research Group.

List of Figures viii

List of Tables ix

Series Editor’s Preface xi

Preface and Acknowledgements xii

List of Abbreviations xv

1 Inclusive Regional Learning? 1

2 Recentering Regional Learning: Beyond Masculinist Geographies of Regional Advantage 16

3 Work]Life Balance and its Uncertain ‘Business Case’ 38

4 Researching Labour Geographies of Work-Life and Learning in Ireland and the UK 67

5 Juggling Work, Home and Family in the Knowledge Economy 86

6 Overcoming Work-Life Conflict and the Gendered Limits to Learning and Innovation? 117

7 Work-Life Balance, Cross-Firm Worker Mobility and Gendered Knowledge Spillovers 145

8 Conclusions: Gendered Regional Learning and Work-Life Advantage 176

References 197

Index 226