Research Title: Financial Crisis, Regional Policy and the Construction of Territory: the Case of the Spanish Regions
Listen to Paula Portas sharing her tips on how to write a successful application for the Early Career Grant Scheme:
- (English) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOHEYOGpi7w&feature=emb_title
- (Spanish) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOBi4u0X7TA&feature=emb_title
The financial saga leading to the demise of savings banks since 2009 became a key arena where discourses on territory, governance and identity were played out in Spain. The proposed project examines regional governance in relation to finance policy and politics in Spain. It interrogates and compares the policy processes unleashed by the financial restructuring of the savings banks (SBs) in three exemplary regions (Catalonia, Galicia and Extremadura). It aims to trace the variegated discourses –languages and practices— on finance/savings banks, identity and territory circulating on policy related sites, to provide an understanding of the diverse policy responses from the regions and to explore the financial construction of the region. The project aims to contribute to wider debates on the nature of the region.
The research asks why some regions have strongly resisted financial restructuring whilst others have led it. How is the region performed in finance policy? What territory/identity linked narratives are deployed to construct the region (or not) as a financial regulatory boundary and delimited space of public action? What policy and power technologies and strategies are deployed? To what effects? What do these processes say about the nature of the region?