Rethinking ‘left-behind’ places in a context of rising spatial inequalities and political discontent

ABSTRACT

The term ‘left behind places' refers to post-industrial and rural areas characterised by economic under-performance and decline. This special issue aims to develop a broader understanding of the diverse meanings and manifestations of ‘left behind places'. This editorial provides a review of how ‘left-behind' places have been conceptualised in the literature and introduces the contributions according to four themes: the origins and meaning of the term ‘left behind'; the production of ‘left behind places’ through broader processes of socio-spatial restructuring; (re)conceptualising ‘left behindness' in terms of feelings of embitterment and hope; and, unpacking how local and national actors respond to decline and marginalisation.

KEYWORDS:

• ‘Left behind places’
• spatial inequalities
• geography of discontent
• peripheralisation
• place-based policies

JEL:

• R1
• R10
• R11
• R23
• R28
• R58

View correction statement:

Correction

1. INTRODUCTION

Concern about spatial inequalities between regions has grown since the global financial crisis of 2008 (De Ruyter et al., 2021; Martin et al., 2022). In particular, growing spatial polarisation between the ‘superstar’ cities in which the knowledge economy is concentrated and ‘left-behind’ places has attracted attention from both researchers and policymakers (Bolton et al., 2020; Hendrickson et al., 2018; Martin et al., 2021). Much of this interest has been sparked by the growth of political discontent and populism since the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016, based on popular resentment against political elites and institutions (Gordon, 2018; Rodrik, 2018). ‘Left-behind’ places are commonly portrayed as hotbeds of discontent, taking their revenge against established actors and norms by voting for antisystem parties and movements (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018; Rodríguez-Pose et al., 2023). This ‘geography of discontent’ (McCann, 2020) is evident across a number of countries (Cagé & Piketty, 2024; Dvořák & Zouhar, 2023; McQuarrie, 2017), although specific patterns of populist support vary considerably (Coquard, 2019; de Lange et al., 2023; Neel, 2018).

The concept of ‘left-behind’ places has become widely used to refer to post-industrial cities and towns as well as some rural areas characterised by economic underperformance and decline (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). They are held to have been ‘left-behind’ by broader processes of globalisation, technological change, labour market restructuring and political realignment (Martin et al., 2021; Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). While the term ‘left-behind’ places is new, these underlying processes have been in operation since at least the 1970s, generating spatially uneven outcomes between growing and underperforming regions (Hudson, 2007; Massey, 1979). The latter have previously been subject to various labels such as ‘lagging’, ‘depressed’, ‘distressed’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘deprived’ (Gudgin, 1995; Hudson, 2007; Martin et al., 2021). The post-2008 concern with ‘left-behind’ places can be seen as somewhat Anglo-American in origin, with such regions often referred to by different labels in different countries. These include ‘la France périphérique’ (peripheral France), ‘abgehängte Regionen’ (suspended regions) in Germany, ‘Aree Interne’ (inner areas) in Italy, ‘Krimpgebieden’ (shrinking areas) in the Netherlands, ‘la España vaciada’ (the hollowed-out Spain), and ‘legacy cities’ and the ‘rustbelt’ in the United States (Pike et al., 2023, in this issue).

Against this backdrop, the aim of this special issue is to advance current debates on regional inequalities by providing a richer and more nuanced cross-national examination of ‘left-behind’ regions. It moves beyond the largely quantitative electoral work that has identified such regions as hotspots of discontent by opening up the condition and feeling of ‘left-behindness’ across a range of socio-spatial contexts. The special issue seeks to develop a broader understanding of the diverse meanings and manifestations of ‘left-behind’ places by: exploring the origins and meaning of the term; examining their production through broader processes of socio-spatial restructuring; (re)conceptualising ‘left-behindness’ in terms of the contrasting feelings of embitterment and hope; and, unpacking how local and national actors respond to decline and marginalisation. Before turning to introduce the individual contributions to the special issue, we provide a broader outline of how ‘left-behind’ places have been conceptualised in the literature.

2. CONCEPTUALISING ‘LEFT-BEHIND’ PLACES

According to Rodríguez-Pose (2018, p. 190), ‘the places that “don’t matter” have increasingly used the ballot box (and, in some cases, outright revolt) to rebel against the feeling of being left-behind; against the feeling of lacking opportunities and future prospects’. As such, political populism has tended to attract higher levels of support in poorer areas that have suffered lengthy periods of decline in which voters feel abandoned and without much hope of improving their prospects. In the US, for instance, recent elections have revealed a growing divide between rapidly growing metropolitan areas and declining small towns and rural areas (Cramer, 2016; Hendrickson et al., 2018). In Europe, a more nuanced pattern is evident, with people living in suburbs, towns and rural areas feeling less satisfied with democracy and less trusting of political institutions than their counterparts in inner urban areas (Kenny & Luca, 2021).

More broadly, the emergence of ‘left-behind’ places can be conceptualised as a product of interrelated processes of metropolitanisation and peripheralisation (Görmar et al., 2019; Kühn, 2015). While peripheralisation was traditionally associated with remote rural peripheries, it can be extended to regions less geographically distant from large cities – including former industrial districts, coastal locations and rural areas – which have experienced increasing marginalisation as ‘inner peripheries’ (ESPON, 2017). According to Leibert and Golinski (2016), peripheralisation operates through four key mechanisms: out-migration, usually of the younger, highly qualified and better educated sections of the population; disconnection from infrastructure and knowledge networks as a result of decisions made in centres of economic and political power; dependence upon larger cites for the provision of funding and services; and, discursive marginalisation or stigmatisation through the creation and perpetuation of negative regional images and perceptions. Peripheralisation is a relational and multi-scalar process that connects the growth and decline of different places, operating across regions, settlements, neighbourhoods and households.

Another way in which the problems of ‘left-behind’ regions has been conceptualised is in terms of these regions being stuck in development traps. Drawing on the notion of the ‘middle income traps’ in development studies, Diemer et al. (2022) argue that such regions are defined by a lack of economic dynamism and underperformance relative to their national and European peers. Their concept of a regional development trap includes: formerly wealthy regions, which have experienced prolonged relative decline or stagnation, often related to deindustrialisation; regions with below average prosperity in 2001 which have undergone prolonged stagnation; and less developed regions characterised by persistent economic backwardness. Rodríguez-Pose et al. (2023) show that falling into such development traps fuels the rise of political discontent with such regions far more likely to support Eurosceptic political parties in elections.

This experience of economic decline and underperformance has been compounded by processes of austerity and state retrenchment since the global financial crisis of 2008 (Lobao et al., 2018; MacLeod & Jones, 2018; Rousseau et al., 2022). In general, austerity has tended to have socially and spatially uneven effects; funding cuts have had the most severe effects on disadvantaged areas where people are most dependent on public services and state support (Agnello et al., 2016; Beatty & Fothergill, 2016). Retrenchment and reductions in service provision have fostered a feeling of abandonment among residents of these disadvantaged areas (MacLeod & Jones, 2018; Rousseau et al., 2022), undermining the traditionally unifying effects of state support (King & Le Galès, 2017).

Amidst growing concerns about rising spatial inequality and political discontent, ‘left-behind’ regions have attracted increased policy interest in recent years. Place-based policies have been advocated by a number of researchers and commentators, based on locally designed initiatives involving collaboration between public authorities and residents (Béal et al., 2021; Kinossian, 2018; MacKinnon et al., 2022). Others favour a place-sensitive approach, based on the shared characteristics and mix of instruments needed to tackle the challenges facing different types or ‘clubs’ of underperforming regional economies in Europe (Iammarino et al., 2019). Focusing on the UK, Martin et al. (2021) argue that policies for ‘levelling up left-behind places’ require the revisioning of the economy, the setting of clear targets, the embedding of geographical impacts into national policymaking, far-reaching decentralisation, and an increased commitment of financial resources. More generally, new spatial policies to tackle regional inequality and support ‘left-behind’ places will need to reverse the sense of abandonment and discontent outlined above, as well as economic decline, requiring long-term political commitment and sustained community engagement, alongside the identification of new development opportunities and pathways.

3. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue provides a critical, cross-national examination of ‘left-behind’ places, seeking to go beyond this overarching label and the narratives of socio-spatial polarisation, decline and discontent that it evokes to bring out differentiated local conditions, experiences and practices, generating a new insights and research directions. Table 1 provides an overview of the articles included in this issue. The articles cover a range of national and regional contexts, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and Zambia, stretching the concept of ‘left-behind’ places beyond what might be termed its heartlands of struggling post-industrial and rural regions in Western Europe and the US. The articles focus on various aspects of ‘left-behindness’, reflecting the multidimensional scope of the concept (Pike et al., 2023, in this issue), while drawing upon a range of theoretical approaches, disciplinary backgrounds and research methods. In the remainder of this section, we discuss the contributions to the special issue in greater depth.

Table 1. Overview of the special issue papers.

Authors	Location	Main focus	Contribution	Approach and methods
Pike et al. (2023), ‘Left behind places’: a geographical etymology		Etymology	Assessment of term ‘left behind’ places	Theoretical review and contextualisation
Ek and Rauhut (2023), Regional development, power and topological reach	Gotland and Södermanland, Sweden	Power relations	Deployment of topological approach	Comparative case study: Documentary review Territorial cohesion development index
Tierney et al. (2023), Left-behind neighbourhoods in old industrial regions	Geelong, Australia, and Oshawa, Canada	Emergence	Examination of institutional arrangements and policy	Comparative case study: Documentary review Observation Interviews Statistical analysis
Hannemann et al. (2023), Regions, emotions and left-behindness	East Thuringia, Germany	Regional embitterment and resentment	Analysis of collective emotions	Case study: Interviews Statistical data and studies by third parties
Tups et al. (2023), Hope and path development in ‘left-behind’ places	Western Province, Zambia	Feelings of hope and path development	Conceptualisation of different modes of hope	Case study: Household survey Interviews
Tomaney et al. (2023), Social infrastructure and ‘left-behind places’	County Durham, England	Social infrastructure	Account of ‘left behind’ places as ‘moral communities’	Case study: Archival and oral history Focus groups Interviews Cartographic representations
Özatağan and Eraydin (2023), Political twists and turns in left-behind places	Zonguldak, Turkey	Political responses	Outlines effects of state accumulation strategies	Case study: Statistics Documentary review Workshop Focus groups Interviews

3.1. Origins and meaning of ‘left-behind’ places

In a conceptual contribution, Pike et al. (2023, in this issue) provide a geographical etymology of the term ‘left-behind’ places, uncovering its origins and meanings. It provides a new spatial imaginary of declining and struggling places that have been overlooked by city-centric discourses of agglomeration and innovation. They argue for a relational, multi-scalar and multidimensional conception, connecting to the other papers in the issue which, variously: connect specific ‘left-behind’ places to political and economic centres (Ek & Rauhut, 2023, in this issue; Özatağan & Eraydin, 2023, in this issue); apply the concept at different geographical scales (Hannemann et al., 2023, in this issue; Özatağan & Eraydin, 2023, in this issue; Ek & Rauhut, 2023, in this issue; Tierney et al., 2023, in this issue; Tomaney et al., 2023, in this issue; Tups et al., 2023, in this issue); and consider broader social, political and psychological dimensions of the ‘left-behind’ condition beyond economics (Hannemann et al., 2023, in this issue; Özatağan & Eraydin, 2023, in this issue; Tomaney et al., 2023, in this issue; Tups et al., 2023, in this issue).

3.2. Becoming left-behind: power relations and institutions

In the context of increasing regional inequalities in Sweden, Ek and Rauhut (2023, in this issue) examine two regions’ changing power relations with the Stockholm capital region: Gotland and Södermanland. Informed by Allen’s topological approach to the geographies of power and the regional planning concepts of borrowed size and agglomeration shadow, they show how Gotland managed to reconfigure power relations by reaching out to the growth pole of Stockholm, while the concomitant efforts of Södermanland were dismissed. As such, the paper demonstrates how regional inequalities are bound up with changing power relationships, enabling some regions to pull ahead, while others get left behind.

Tierney et al. (2023, in this issue) are concerned with the geographically uneven effects of industrial restructuring, focusing on the manufacturing cities of Geelong in Australia and Oshawa in Canada. In both cases, industrial restructuring led to increased intra-regional divergence. Yet discontent is more evident in Oshawa than Geelong, which the authors attribute to the mediating effects of institutional arrangements and policy frameworks. While Oshawa’s market-led transformation generated political disaffection and resentment, federal and state government interventions in Geelong fostered opportunities and assuaged discontent. As such, the paper indicates how policy interventions can play a significant role in preventing regions becoming ‘left-behind’, in the sense of being characterised by actual political discontent.

3.3. Feeling left-behind? Embitterment and hope

Based upon a similar association between ‘left-behind’ places and political discontent, Hannemann et al. (2023, in this issue) aim to better understand the collective emotions that underpin such discontent. Drawing on work from psychology, they focus on the notion of embitterment to capture the feeling of being ‘left-behind’, focusing on the case of East Thuringia in Germany. The authors go on to elaborate a four-stage model: pre-embitterment; emergence of embitterment; consolidation of embitterment; and chronification of embitterment and emotional lock-in. Emphasising the importance of emotions in regional development, this study draws out the historical roots of discontent and points to the need for early regional policy interventions to prevent embitterment.

By contrast, Tups et al. (2023, in this issue) are concerned with hope, arguing that regional ‘left-behindness’ should not be conflated with discontent and revenge, since a range of collective responses may be evident. Furthermore, the dominance of prominent Northern examples risks marginalising the experience of regions in the Global South. In response, the authors extend the spatial imaginary of ‘left-behind’ places (Pike et al., 2023, in this issue) and apply it to the Western Province of Zambia, a region that is severely ‘left-behind’. Tups et al. (2023, in this issue) develop a model of hope, with four possible outcomes: aspirational hope; wishful hope; grit; and victimisation. As such, the paper questions and broadens the concept of regional ‘left-behindness’ by highlighting its distinct expressions in different peripheries, whilst introducing notions of hope into a debate dominated by discontent and resentment.

3.4. Responding to left-behindness: place, agency and politics

The final two papers are more concerned with responses to ‘left-behindness’ by local residents and state institutions, moving beyond discontent to issues of agency, place attachment and political strategy. Overlapping with the above discussion of feeling ‘left-behind’, Tomaney et al. (2023, in this issue) examine the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure through a case study of a mining village in Northern England. Following Wuthnow (2019), the authors define ‘left-behind’ places as ‘moral communities’ with deep attachments to place. Industrial decline and closure was associated with the contraction of social infrastructure in their case, generating a sense of ‘root shock’ (Fullilove, 2016). In response, however, recent ‘bottom up’ efforts by residents to remake social infrastructure express a sense of ‘radical hope’ (Lear 2008). In this way, Tomaney et al. (2023, in this issue) draw out the affective dimension of life in ‘left-behind’ places in terms of place attachment, belonging and nostalgia.

By contrast, Özatağan and Eraydin (2023, in this issue) focus on ‘top-down’ national strategies to gain political support in ‘left-behind’ places. They argue that whether or not place-based grievances are translated into political discontent depends on the interactions between changing modes of state intervention and local political reactions. This argument is illustrated with reference to the former mining town of Zonguldak, Turkey, tracing political ‘twists and turns’ between the area’s traditional allegiance to the centre-left CHP (Republican People’s Party) and its increased but fluctuating support for the right-wing AKP (Justice and Development Party). This contribution highlights the range of political reactions that can be associated with ostensibly ‘left-behind’ places, crucially shaped by changing modes of state intervention designed to (re)gain and reward electoral support.

4. CONCLUSIONS

In summary, this collection of papers advances and enriches research on ‘left-behind’ places beyond the focus on decline and discontent that has characterised the academic literature thus far. It does so by drawing out the diversity of ‘left-behind’ places not only in terms of the different ways in which they are produced through broader processes, but also in relation to the feelings, actions and responses of local residents, overcoming simplistic conceptions of them as either passive or vengeful. Different forms of hope and practical action are evident in some of the cases, alongside elements of discontent and decline in others. Several of the contributions point to the importance of timely and effective policy interventions in improving local conditions and addressing disaffection and discontent. They underline the need for further research to provide a deeper understanding of the feelings and material conditions of ‘left-behindness’, particularly in terms of its multiple dimensions and characteristics, the identities, practices and aspirations of local residents, and the most suitable forms of policy intervention required to support long-term development and well-being.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2357927)