Sébastien Breau

This paper assesses publication trends in the regional economic resilience literature in economic geography and regional studies. Through a scoping review, we develop a dataset of 204 articles published prior to 2026 with a corpus-defined lower bound of 2005. After examining publication trends and scholarly attention received by special issues, journals, articles, and authors, we turn to the conceptual approaches employed, research methods used, and the resilience dimensions examined. Our analysis reveals a disconnect: while the evolutionary perspective dominates conceptually, the robustness dimension at the heart of this perspective is empirically underexplored. We outline ways to advance the evolutionary approach.

Previous research investigating the association between income inequality and health outcomes reported mixed results. Although there is extensive research on this topic, there is limited empirical evidence within Canada. This paper adds to previous Canadian research by testing the hypothesis that there is an association between urban income inequality and health. To do so, we combined information from the Canadian Census/National Household Survey and the Canadian Community Health Survey for the years 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016, which yields on average more than 135,000 individual‐level respondents living in 126 urban areas. Using multilevel logistic regression models, we found that a one‐unit increase in the Gini coefficient is associated with an increased likelihood of poorer self‐rated health across all Census years (with ORs between 1.02 and 1.03; 95% CIs of 1.00–1.05), with the association appearing to be weaker in 2006. Income inequality has similar negative effects on self‐rated mental health, an association that is also consistent across the period of study. Additional analysis shows that the association between inequality and both health indicators is, however, sensitive to the choice of inequality measure. Future research in the Canadian context would benefit from longitudinal analysis.

A substantial body of research has documented the shift from convergence to divergence in inter-regional income disparities and identified the key forces driving this transformation, including educational sorting, technological change and globalization. Yet, despite growing recognition that spatial patterns of income inequality are sensitive to the choice of geographical scale, relatively few studies have explored scalar dynamics in the U.S. In this paper, we apply a two-stage nested Theil decomposition method to examine the role played by the choice of geographical scale in describing patterns of inter-regional income inequalities over the 1970 to 2020 period. We use three geographical scales in our analysis: quasi-states, commuting zones, and counties. We find that inter-regional income inequalities increase over time across all three scales, but the speed of this increase varies significantly across the different geographical scales. In 1970, inter-regional income inequalities between states explained most of the overall levels of inter-regional income inequalities. Over the ensuing decades, however, inter-regional income inequalities within commuting zones subsequently rise more rapidly (than inequalities between states or commuting zones) and by 2020 explain the largest portion of overall inter-regional inequalities. This suggests that smaller-scale divergence, especially inequalities within local labor market areas, is a key driver of the recent rise in inter-regional inequality. By highlighting the growing importance of intra-metropolitan or intra–labor market inequalities, this study contributes to theoretical debates on spatial divergence and urban sorting, emphasizing that the mechanisms driving regional inequality must be understood not only across regions but also within them.

‘Left‐behind places’ (LBPs) are generally defined as places experiencing economic stagnation and decline, typically reflected in post‐industrial regions and rural areas. In recent years, the concept has gained increased popularity within urban and regional studies in the United Kingdom (UK) and other European countries. Research on the topic in the Canadian context, however, remains limited, with few studies specifically discussing how LBPs are defined in Canada, and even fewer attempting to empirically assess where they may be located across the country. The paper's objectives are twofold: (i) it examines the evolution of the concept of LBPs through an extensive literature review and (ii) explores its application to Canada. The paper employs Statistics Canada's 2021 Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation (CIMD) dataset as a proxy for identifying LBPs across the country and examines their spatial dynamics at the census subdivision (CSD) level using local indicators of spatial association (LISA) statistics. A multinomial logistic regression model is also developed to explore regional factors. The analysis finds high clustering of CSDs with high levels of deprivation in rural, northern, and remote areas of Canada, as well as high clustering of CSDs with high levels of economic dependency in and around major Canadian cities.

This article uses the New Immigrant Survey to assess the occupational mobility of US immigrants. Estimates from OLS and Heckman selection models show the occupational mobility of immigrants follows a U‐shaped pattern: immigrants arriving in the United States see their occupational status decline before it gradually improves. However, even 9 years after coming to the United States, the occupational status of immigrants remains lower than prior to their arrival in the country. Our findings also suggest that immigrant women with higher occupational status tend to move more often to the United States than immigrant men. Conversely, immigrant women are more likely than men to experience career interruptions after migration. Finally, occupational employment growth rates (defined as the growth rate in the number of jobs for an occupation) have a positive impact on both men and women immigrants' ability to recover their occupational status, though the impact appears to be greater for immigrant women.

Investing in accessible, affordable and sustainable modes of transportation is increasingly seen as an important policy tool for fostering the development of more inclusive cities and combating the rise in inequality. In this article, we review how the concept of inclusive growth has gained traction at the local level framed within a discourse of building more equitable and sustainable cities with a particular emphasis on transportation infrastructure projects as a way of operationalizing the concept as a policy tool. Using Montreal as a case study, we then proceed to evaluate two competing proposals for major public transit infrastructure projects (the Pink line and the REM Phase II) to see if one may potentially offer more inclusive outcomes in terms of transit access and mobility. We do so by first examining changes in the spatial configurations of neighbourhood income disparities in the city between 1981 and 2016. After identifying a pattern of growing spatial polarization between higher- and lower-income neighbourhoods, we use a buffer analysis of transit stations to assess which of the two proposed transit infrastructure projects is best positioned to curb the growth of neighbourhood disparities. Our results suggest the proposed Pink line project provides more coverage in terms of accessibility and connecting economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods from Montreal Nord to Lachine with the downtown core.

The Great Recession of 2007–2009 had profound effects on all sectors of the U.S. economy. In this article we assess the relationship between the academic job market in U.S. geography and the business cycle. Specifically, we examine the responsiveness of the job market to the business cycle since the early 1970s, the impacts of the Great Recession on hiring, and how hiring networks changed with the recession. For our analyses we draw on data from American Association of Geographers (AAG) publications, principally the AAG Newsletter (Jobs in Geography) and the Guide to Geography Programs in the Americas. We find that (1) the academic job market in geography is tightly linked to the business cycle and highly vulnerable to recessions, (2) the 2007–2009 recession destabilized demand and supply in the market with impacts on hiring lasting at least ten years, and (3) hiring networks among PhD-granting programs contracted, had lower connectivity, and witnessed a reshuffling of the top-hiring schools postrecession. Overall, the Great Recession dampened the likelihood of securing a tenure-track position in U.S. geography more so than any recession over the past fifty years. The arrival of COVID-19 and the accompanying contraction of gross domestic product are likely to further adversely affect faculty hiring.