Project description
Tackling ‘left-behindness’ in Europe through interdisciplinary and intersectional research
The EU-funded EXIT project aims to explore the manifestations, root causes and implications of socioeconomic inequalities within and between regions that are often referred to as left behind. The three-year project - involving seven universities and four civil society organizations from eight countries – will also propose ways to tackle such inequalities through a rigorous programme of cross-disciplinary and multi-actor research with communities on the ground. The project will explore, from an intersectional perspective, how inhabitants, institutions and organizations in these areas perceive, experience and counteract inequalities. The comprehensive programme of research and dissemination will enable knowledge sharing and best practice transfer between countries and communities in order to restrategise their sustainable development and enhance social inclusion.
Objective
The redrawing of social inequalities across Europe during the last few years includes both a retrenchment of longstanding inequalities among countries, and the emergence of new disadvantages, together with an erosion of the status and protections previously enjoyed by most citizens within them. This is particularly prominent from a geographical perspective as spatial inequality grows within regions. Despite overall country level economic growth, certain regions are experiencing long-term socioeconomic stagnation or decline. These areas have been often characterised as 'left-behind'. Yet, little is known of what drives ‘left-behindness’.
EXIT will provide an in-depth analysis of ‘left-behind’ as a concept used for characterising territorial inequalities faced by certain areas and, grounded on this, identify strategies to address it. This means not only building knowledge on the drivers of inequality in areas that are characterised as ‘left-behind’, but also on what drives political, media and academic characterisations of these areas as ‘left-behind’ and experiences and perceptions of being ‘left-behind’ among inhabitants of areas experiencing socioeconomic stagnation or decline.
To answer these questions, EXIT proposes a bottom-up, interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research with a community-based and intersectional approach from the analysis to the transferability of practices. Addressing how different axes of inequality intersect in perceptions and experiences of ‘left-behindness’ is crucial to understand the gap between the development of policies to redress territorial inequalities and their impact on the ground. In this regard, EXIT proposes to take a place-based approach to delineate the role of different forces, and how they interplay to produce uneven effects among communities.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
08007 Barcelona
Spain