The 20th GERPISA international colloquium in Krakow traced back, among others, the overall evolution of the global automotive industry in recent years, and allowed us to identify the main challenges in terms of global geopolitical equilibrium. These challenges appear to be strongly interconnected, and must be thought in a systematic and evolving framework. First, the traditional automotive production spaces (North America, Western Europe, Northeast Asia) are counterbalanced by new territories, at their frontiers (South-America, Central and Eastern Europe, China, and India) and even beyond (North Africa, South-east Asia, Middle-east Asia). This process has to be questioned from the technological, economic, historic, productive, geopolitical, firm-level and institutional levels. Second, the transition towards new modalities of mobility and the market construction of new territories should be analysed more carefully, taking into account the reconstruction of traditional value chains and the building of new value chains.

Based on these assumptions and in respect of our present international programme, the 21st GERPISA international colloquium aims at grasping these trends through case studies and more theoretical approaches. The main objective is to focus on market building and competitiveness, especially in regard of the reconstruction of the European automotive industry, without eluding the other territories in relation with the past and present researches of the GERPISA. All proposals are welcome. As part of the GERPISA International Research programme that is currently being developed and to prepare the opening of GERPISA’s 21st International Conference, we would like to invite social science researchers with an interest in the automotive industry to reflect upon this dual structuring/restructuring process.

More specifically, we are calling for empirical and/or conceptual studies focusing on the automotive industry’s new global geopolitical order and organised into seven main themes:

i) The social, political, and economic construction of markets: distribution and services, new cars/used cars
ii) New kinds of mobility: old and new business models
iii) Manufacturers trajectories and corporate governance: production and R&D
iv) Supply chains and suppliers trajectories: towards the global value chain?
v) Emergence processes and restructuring processes affecting the American and Asian industries: policies taking into account competitiveness
vi) Emergence processes and restructuring processes affecting the European industry: policies taking into account competitiveness
vii) Competitiveness, costs, division of labour and changes in employment relationships