Inequality, Vulnerability, and Domination in ‘Left Behind’ Places.

Whilst controversial, the concept of ‘left behind places’ has become increasingly salient within political discourse over recent years as spatial inequalities have widened, and appeared more evident, in urban areas across many advanced capitalist economies. In particular, this concept has come to describe a shared sense of economic decline, and political discontent, found within many of the smaller, post-industrial cities of Northern England, the American ‘rustbelt’, Germany’s ‘Abgehängte Regionen’, or ‘La France périphérique’. Although the concept of ‘left behind places’ has previously been explored by various political scientists, economists, and geographers, it remains comparatively under-interrogated by normative political theorists. In this paper, I address this gap; developing a theoretically informed analysis of left behind places which explores the political significance of such stark socioeconomic inequalities within and between urban areas. In particular, I investigate how we can conceptualise the distinct injustice inflicted upon the communities that inhabit such left behind places; and how this injustice can be sufficiently rectified. Drawing inspiration from the contemporary republican tradition of political thought I show how the combination of precarity, material disadvantage, and marginalisation encountered by communities in these left behind places is incompatible with the value of freedom as non-domination. Indeed, as a result of their intense structural vulnerability, such communities are exposed to the arbitrary power of various public and private economic agents; compromising their capacity to enjoy a shared basis of freedom and equality with fellow citizens. For example, left behind places are disproportionately vulnerable to major local employers, who have the capacity to reduce investment, or withdraw it completely, at will and with impunity. In left behind places, economic harm can emerge unpredictably, at any time or not at all, with little capacity at the local level to resist, absorb, or counteract these negative impacts. Alleviating this injustice, I argue, requires us to address the fundamental disparities in power and control that establish vulnerability and perpetuate relationships of domination between ‘left behind’ urban communities and more powerful economic agents. I therefore conclude the paper by exploring the implications of this analysis for contemporary urban policymaking; arguing that interventions are now required to (re)build sufficient levels of ‘antipower’, or the institutionalised capacity to resist and repel domination, in left behind places. As such, this paper can be understood as a work of applied political theory; one which brings republican political theory back to the urban scale, and utilises this theoretical framework to clarify the relationship between freedom and equality in contemporary urban communities. Moreover, the paper builds upon a growing political theoretical literature concerned with the parallel urban phenomenon of gentrification, whilst also further emphasising the contribution that normative research can make to the study of politics at the urban scale.