RETHINKING THE REGIONAL BOUNDS OF JUSTICE: A SCOPING REVIEW OF SPATIAL JUSTICE IN EU REGIONS

Bram van Vulpen ()
Additional contact information
Bram van Vulpen: University of Groningen, Campus Fryslân, The Netherlands

Romanian Journal of Regional Science, 2020, vol. 14, issue 2, 5-34

Abstract: This paper contributes to the debate on spatial justice in a geography of regional uneven development in the EU. The purpose of this study is to provide a philosophically grounded and empirically informed review of how regional inequality relates to spatial justice. This is done inventorying spatial injustices through a systematic literature review, unravelling the kind of injustices based on a philosophical principle and categorisation of (in)justice. The paper starts with a discussion of how spatial justice has been conceptualised, looking more particularly into Nancy Fraser’s egalitarian understanding of social justice. Her tripartite distinction of justice as (re)distribution, recognition, and representation allows us to re-examine regional inequality and to sharply formulate what is understood as just or unjust. Through a spatial reinterpretation of Fraser’s prism, we then re-examine 134 empirical papers carefully selected with a scoping review method. Our results reveal six manifestations of regional injustice in the EU, which not only encompass an unequally distributed regional development of economic wealth and access to services, but also signal a cultural hierarchy imprinting territorial stigmas and neglecting environmental issues, as well as a political geographical divide of deeply felt rural and regional misrepresentation.

Keywords: Spatial justice; social justice; regional inequality; left-behind regions; rural; resentment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R11 R12 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://rjrs.ase.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/V142/V1422.VanVulpen.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rrs:journl:v:14:y:2020:i:2:p:5-34

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Romanian Journal of Regional Science from Romanian Regional Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tibrea-Marcu Horatiu-Gabriel ().