Discontent and Disadvantage in Left-Behind Places: Regional Effects on EU-Trust and Status Attainment in Europe
Sociologia Ruralis, Volume 65, Issue 2, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.70001
Josef Bernard
Debates on "left-behind" places, rural resentment, and spatial disadvantage suggest that political discontent often arises from perceived inequalities between regions, particularly along the urban–rural divide. The popularity of this argument is reinforced by frequent mapping of electoral outcomes, which commonly reveals a spatial correlation: increased support for Euroscepticism and populism tends to coincide with rural peripherality, population decline, economic and health challenges, and broader forms of social disadvantage.
This paper contributes to the debate by distinguishing between regional attitudinal effects and the effects of social mobility. It proposes a multidimensional framework for understanding regional left-behindness and demonstrates that regional effects do not operate uniformly across different national contexts.
Drawing on data from the European Values Study, the analysis examines how intergenerational educational mobility and distrust in the European Union are shaped by regional disadvantage across Europe. The findings indicate that these effects are generally weak and vary considerably. While distrust in the EU is more strongly associated with patterns of regional growth, low educational mobility appears to be more influenced by the limited economic prospects typically found in rural areas. However, the strength and nature of these relationships differ markedly across countries.
