Mega-events and their host cities have been the subject of academic research for more than a decade. In urban studies, the power of mega-events to place a host city in the spotlight of global media has been regarded as the best example of development by âspectacleâ. The advantage of this urban strategy is that it can catalyse a cityâs ongoing projects and attract international financial and political support. However, the downside of this accelerated place-making is gentrification, which usually results in the displacement of local residents (Bernstock 2016) and local businesses (Raco and Tunney 2010). Urban development through the hosting of spectacle also amplifies ongoing contested issues in the host city, such as those involving governance, community participation and affordable housing. A mega-event requires that city stakeholders repeatedly renegotiate these issues and redefine their internal power relations.
In the case of the Olympic Games, since the 1950s, the lasting effects of this type of sport mega-event have been referred to as the âlegacyâ, though the strategic use of the Olympics to create specific outcomes in the name of legacy is a more recent phenomenon (Gold and Gold 2008; Burbank et al. 2002; Kassens-Noor et al. 2015). Today, legacy is considered a principal driver for the Olympics, alongside the Olympic Movementâs historical political ideals of peace that underpin the staging of these international sporting contests. While this rhetorical sense behind the Olympic legacy triggers interest among cities in hosting this mega-event, it has also generated a large amount of critical literature and discourse. Much of the literature on past Olympic Games (Watt 2013; Flyvbjerg et al. 2003) suggests good reason for caution in approaching optimistic claims about legacy. A review of the official literature about legacy indicates that this term has been conceptualised rather loosely and is limited to a specific period and specific themes. This study contributes to the scholarship on the Olympics by defining this term, historicising its usage (Davis 2012; Gold and Gold 2008) and evaluating the relations between official discourses on legacy, as formulated in the applied fields of planning and practice, and the actual effects seen on the ground in host cities (Burbank et al. 2002; Cashman, 2006).
The Olympic Games have also served as an urban moment from which to observe the transition within host neighbourhoods by time frames of âbeforeâ, âduringâ and âafterâ the Games. Many analyses of the Olympics are dominated by a viewpoint from either before the Games (legacy estimation) or after the Games (efforts to compare post-event delivery outcomes with pre-event promises) (Lindsay 2014). There is little research that addresses the transformation and changes which occur during the Olympic setup. These âbefore and afterâ assessments therefore overlook shifting forces and dynamics happening in a cityâs various communities while it is preparing for the Games.
Thematically, much of the analysis of the legacy in socio-economic terms has focused on community volunteering, tourism and inward investment (Siegfried and Zimbalist 2000; Gold and Gold 2008; Minnaert 2014) and is dominated by metric approaches. The critical socio-economic role of the Olympics as a huge temporary employer and the impact of this employment on mobilising residentsâ careers and networks have seldom been studied.
Gold and Gold (2008) argue that it is important to consider that different sorts of outcomes may have different durations and geographies of effect. Essentially, the legacy of the Olympics can have distinct effects on various groups and communities within a host city, mobilising them towards different destinies. A review of the official evaluation reports from London 2012 organisation and critical writing from the research institutes shows that most efforts towards legacy evaluation have been focused on the gap between intended and actual effects as indicated by national or city-scale statistics. In contrast, there are very few studies of the effects of the Olympic Games on specific groups of people or neighbourhoods (Raco and Tunney 2010; Minnaert 2014; Saborio 2013; Lindsay 2014). For instance, the Olympics could bring benefits to many major industries and companies in a host city, but direct benefits for the working-class population of the city have hardly been investigated. This research gap becomes even more important when it relates to the effects on people in the very neighbourhood of the Olympic site, often a brownfield or low-price part of the city, housing non-affluent residents.
This research intends to address part of these gaps by investigating the way the Olympic Games leaves employment legacies within the neighbourhoods of an Olympic site. The study considers the building-up phase until the end of the Games in 2012. It looks at the way Olympic delivery affects local workforces through recruiting as a major project employer and the way members of local communities pursue their career prospects during the hosting of the Games. Thus, this study sets out to evaluate the meanings and uses of employment legacy for both Olympic deliverers and local communities by examining the actual consequences of the Olympic Games as a leading employer in one particular area.
I focus particularly on the employment legacy of the London Olympic Games 2012 among local East Londoners. More specifically, I investigate the reality of promised employment boosts for local residents, an intended legacy which featured prominently in the London 2012 bidding process. I use London 2012 as a case study to address the challenges involved in using global mega-events to realise a host cityâs socio-economic goals.
The Research Context
London is a special case for examining the outcome of a high-profile event such as the Olympics, not just because it is the capital city of the UK, but also because of its role as a European and global hub for international capital. Significantly, in the period leading up to the Games, the 2008 worldwide financial crisis played a triggering role in an already shifting socio-economic structure in London, particularly in its labour market. The city underwent austerity measures and experienced a period of higher unemployment, while the arrival of economic migrants from European nations and the high flow of net migration from other more conventional routes generated high urban pressure in the context of the âsuper-diversityâ present on the streets of London (Ha...