Structural Heterogeneity in Europe

Abstract

Abstract Structural heterogeneity is probably the most important category of dependency theory to characterize the “development of underdevelopment” in the Global South. Should it therefore be a provocation to speak of structural heterogeneity in Europe? No, this article argues, because with reference to Osvaldo Sunkel, Fred Scholz and Neil Brenner among others, the political-economic logic of transnational economic integration based on socio-spatial fragmentation now also encompasses the Global North; or more specifically: the structural logic of economic transnationalisation and sociospatial fragmentation constitutes the core dynamics of European integration. So, the critical development debates of the 1970s should be rediscovered as pioneering concepts and updated in terms of spatial theory in the sense of a local solidarity perspective.