Political isolation, economic hardship and chronic negligence of geographical areas have left districts and regions standing without allies and become places “that don’t matter” (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). Progressives in Europe and Northamerica share responsibility for this, as they have been struggling to improve infrastructures, to build bridges between regions and the global economy, and to ensure these local voices are heard and represented.
Consequently, this bears the danger of right-wing leaders and parties with populist economic agendas and nativist ideologies exploiting these topics successfully, as Trump, LePen and Johnson have shown. However, only if progressives on both sides of the Atlantic formulate ambitious answers and share best practices on social and economic policy-making, they can succeed at making these places matter and to restore trust in progress. This session will explore how the course of globalisation is changing and what that means for left-behind regions. What are progressive answers that successfully empower and enable alliances with and for those in society desperately waiting for (social and economic policy) solutions?