Chapter Three examines the regional development effects of foreign direct investment in the integrated peripheries of the automotive industry by analyzing supplier linkages between foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms. It develops the spatial concept of integrated peripheries in core-based transnational production networks to explain the rapid growth of the automotive industry in Europe’s peripheral regions. Conceptually, it draws on the dynamic notion of uneven development in contemporary capitalism. Namely, it draws on the concept of spatiotemporal fix and on the global production networks concept of strategic coupling to investigate the mode of articulation of integrated peripheries into transnational macroregional production networks. Empirically, it analyzes the quantity and quality of supplier linkages in the automotive industry of Slovakia. The empirical analysis uncovered weak and dependent supplier linkages between foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms, which limits the potential for technology transfer and undermines potentially positive long-term regional development effects of large foreign direct investment by automotive industry corporations.

Chapter Eight summarizes basic points and arguments of the book and discusses its conceptual and methodological contribution to the global production networks and global value chains perspectives, and to the understanding of the changing geography of the contemporary European automotive industry. The topics include the long-term effects of foreign direct investment for economic development in less developed countries and in peripheral regions; the spatial concept of integrated peripheries and its application in the explanation of automotive industry’s gradual expansion from core to peripheral regions; the regional development effects of automotive foreign direct investment in integrated peripheries; the internationalization and restructuring of the European automotive industry; the core-periphery structure of the European automotive industry; value creation and value capture in the automotive industry; and the transition to the production of electric vehicles in eastern Europe.

Chapter Four draws on the dynamic theory of uneven development and spatiotemporal fix to conceptualize the changing geography of the European automotive industry based on the spatial profit-seeking strategies of automotive firms. It employs the spatial concept of integrated peripheries to explain the growth of the automotive industry in peripheral regions and its contemporaneous restructuring in existing locations. The empirical analysis is based on 2,124 restructuring events of large automotive industry firms in the European Union countries and Norway between 2005 and 2016, and on 91 interviews with foreign automotive industry subsidiaries conducted in Czechia and Slovakia between 2009 and 2015. Large differences in labor and other production costs across the European Union explain the growth in the east European integrated periphery and simultaneous restructuring in both traditional core regions and old integrated peripheries in western Europe. The empirical analysis also confirmed the increasing internationalization and the decreasing role played by large domestic firms in the European automotive industry.