Feeling overlooked: A rural–urban divide in recognition

Abstract

The farmers' protests sweeping across Europe during the early month of 2024 have highlighted the discontent felt by many residing in rural areas. Protests have been motivated by increasing input costs, falling prices of agricultural produce and more stringent regulations. In this paper, we go beyond the economic rationale for the protests and ask what broader sociological factors could be driving rural discontent. To this aim, we investigate political ‘recognition gaps’ between rural residents and their urban counterparts – that is, the differences in the degree to which people feel respected and recognised by their governments. Using data collected in the spring of 2022 across the 27 Member States of the European Union, we document that a sizeable proportion of the sample perceive a lack of fair treatment and respect from their governments. Notably, these gaps in perceived respect are significantly larger in rural compared to urban areas. The differences in perceived recognition between rural and urban areas hold even after controlling for a wide range of sociodemographic characteristics, showing that it is not just differences in the observable characteristics between rural and urban residents that are driving these different levels of perceived recognition.