Discontent and Disadvantage in Left‐Behind Places: Regional Effects on EU‐Trust and Status Attainment in Europe

ABSTRACT Debates on left‐behind places, rural resentment and spatial disadvantage posit that political discontent stems from perceived inequalities between regions and on the urban/rural interface. The popularity of this argument is fuelled by frequent mapping of electoral results, which very often demonstrates a spatial correspondence between increased Euroscepticism and Populism on the one hand, and rural peripherality, shrinkage, economic and health issues and other forms of social disadvantage on the other. This paper advances the debate by distinguishing between regional attitudinal effects and social mobility effects, proposing an explicitly multidimensional conceptualisation of regional left‐behindness and indicating that regional effects do not act uniformly across different countries. Using European Values Study data, the paper examines how intergenerational educational mobility and distrust of the EU are affected by regional left‐behindness across Europe, finding weak and non‐uniform effects. Whereas EU distrust is more strongly associated with regional growth, low educational mobility is more affected by the poor regional prosperity typical of rural areas. However, the effects vary considerably across individual countries.