The global region

The Global Region investigates change in the organization and location of production during the 1980s by relating processes of global restructuring in the coal, steel and automobile industries to UK state policies and the interaction between different rounds of investment in the north east of England. In that region, decline in the old economic base of coal and steel was underpinned by government policies, which also supported a major investment by Nissan in Western Europe's first automobile assembly plant. In the process, dramatic changes were made to prevailing conceptions about the nature of work.