The European Anti-Poverty Network Spain (EAPN-ES) is participating in the European EXIT project, which focuses on studying territorial inequalities in eight European countries.
The EXIT project takes an interdisciplinary and multi-site approach, combining territorial ethnographic methodologies with advanced quantitative analysis, in order to understand socio-economic inequalities and their implications. In its first stage, EXIT analyses the concept of “left-behind” places, a term that has gained visibility in international debates on territorial inequality following phenomena such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Through this concept, the project studies how discourses on territorial inequality are constructed in different national contexts and how they relate to public policies and EU funding frameworks.
In the case of Spain, the project examines both rural areas, commonly described as “depopulated” Spain, and post-industrial areas and urban peripheries, highlighting the diversity of territorial inequality beyond the rural-urban dichotomy. This approach seeks to offer a comprehensive analysis of territorial inequality and lay the foundations for the development of fairer and more effective policies.
The EXIT project is coordinated by Olga Jubany, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, and involves six universities and four civil society organizations, including EAPN-ES and the Regional Economic Analysis Laboratory at the University of Oviedo. The research is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.
Conference “Left-behindness contested: Place, power, and pathways for change”
The conference program will begin with an institutional welcome by Olga Jubany, project coordinator, and will continue with a keynote address by Professor Akhil Gupta of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a renowned sociocultural anthropologist internationally recognised for his ethnographic work on inequality, governance, and marginalization. In his speech, he will reflect on how conventional categories and indicators influence ways of understanding inequality.
This will be followed by Spotlight and Insight Forum sessions, in which international experts will present local research and experiences on indicators of inequality, depopulation processes, and strategies for territorial cohesion
The conference will also feature a space devoted to the integration of local knowledge into public policy, including the presentation of guidelines and the participation of policy makers, representatives of local communities, and European organizations. Finally, the conference will close with final reflections and closing remarks by the project coordinator.