Benjamin Irvine

This legislation is an important first step towards breaking down that nexus of legal, social and economic barriers that make up what W.E.B. Du Bois called "the color line" .

The labour market in Spain, like in many other countries is highly segmented by race. Adminstrative irregularity being one of its sharpest and cruelist expressions.

But the time available to present applications will surely have to be extended beyond the current proposed window between April and June of this year. That is, if this measure is to reach all of those that it is intended to benefit.

The devil will, as always, be in the detail of implementation. The process will reportedly be simplistic, accesible and minimize bureacratic hurdles.

The need for a mass regularization was the main conclusion I drew with regards to public policy from my research into informal waste work in the Spanish context and I am extremely pleased to see this measure finally adopted.

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “S...

...often working for sub-minimum-wages in the underground economy in activities like scrap metal recycling. I wrote about the contribution of migrant informal scrap metal collectors to the Spanish steel industry in this article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This has the potential to bring substantial improvements in the labour market options, incomes and material conditions of many irregularized migrant workers. Many of which have been contributing to the Spanish economy for years...

El Consejo de Ministros aprueba la tramitación urgente del Real Decreto para regularizar a personas migrantes Un permiso de un año para trabajar, la inclusión de solicitantes de asilo y la regularización simultánea de hijos menores de solicitantes, son las principales características de la regularización de p...

Between 500,000 and 700,000 migrant workers in Spain may benefit from the mass regularisation campaign approved yesterday. This is a substantial victory for the @regularizaciony.bsky.social campaign www.elsaltodiario.com/migracion/co...

Hot, dry weather, exacerbated by climate change, shrinks the soil under buildings. In London this means a million properties will be at risk of subsidence by 2030 according to Aviva Plc.

The climate squeeze is getting tighter

Just read Edward Said's essay "traveling theory". It is mind-expanding. A worldly cruise through Lukacs, Williams, Foucault and more exploring what happens when a theory, produced in a particular time and place, travels. Guaranteed to jolt your neurons to a higher state of critical consciousness.

Even when Ehrlich's "the population bomb" was published in the 1960's, the ticking time bomb was the opposite of what he diagnosed: a degrowing population, aging societies and how to sustain intergenerational reproduction. Wrapping our heads around this late capitalist clusterfuck seems essential.

Microdosing retirement by living a no push notification life.

Urban planning, Urban geography, Urban political science

Damn, nailed it

Here is our panel with colleagues from @bcnuej.bsky.social, consider sending your presentation proposal by DEC 5th via the link below, for the @pollenetwork.bsky.social conference to be held in Barcelona end of June 2026!

nomadit.co.uk/conference/p...

This feels difficult to write because it seems to demand a terse, on the nose way of summarising what has already been said more delicately and comprehensively in previous chapters. How do you make it not repetitive?

I'm writing the last chapter for my PHD thesis, a "discussion" chapter which summarises findings from the empirical chapters, how the thesis answers the research questions and it's contribution to debates in critical urban geography. Would love to see examples of recent theses that did this well!

Also looking forward to getting this one!

Speaking of abundance, this new book looks excellent

Read it in full here: degrowth.org/blog/2025/09...

This is the argument made by my friend and colleague Riccardo Mastini in a policy brief on a Green New Deal beyond growth for @r-degrowth.bsky.social

Wealth taxes and the expansion of high-quality universal public services should therefore be essential components of any "Green New Deal" program. They can help move our economies and societies towards private sufficiency and public abundance

Public goods/services such as (collective transport) are usually more efficient at meeting fundamental human needs than their private counterparts. We can have high quality public services that are both efficient and beautiful

Any just response to climate change requires "recomposing" both the character and distribution of consumption. The extreme consumption of the super rich needs to be reigned in, but this doesn't need to mean austerity for ordinary people

privatization and underinvestment has created a sense of scarcity but it is not that we don't produce enough to have functional and attractive public services. The growth of the superrich means that society does not share the abundance that is already being produced

E.g. the interior of Barcelona´s Estació de França 😮‍💨. There´s no reason all our train stations can't also be this beautiful.

We can't afford the rich. Wealth taxes would degrow their crass, wasteful and ostentatious displays of private wealth and fund efficient, quality and beautiful universal public services.

The results are in on the UK's experiment in extreme privatization. It's costing the British public a lot and one of the main reasons everythings so expensive and doesn't work anymore.

Huw Lemmey makes a case that anyone committed to the principles of democracy can't deny without becoming an authoritarian. The UK government has recently taken a huge stride towards a totally authoritarian state. How long until protest is banned altogether?

A necessary remedy to the lack of ambition when it comes to rethinking public services.