People or Places that Don’t Matter? Individual and Contextual Determinants of the Geography of Discontent

The rise of a geography of political discontent in the EU documented in recent studies highlights a strong spatial association between antisystem voting, regional economic decline, and poor occupational opportunities, suggesting that economic disparities within the EU are the origin of some of the most recent and shocking political events like Brexit. This article reexamines this statement by disentangling the effect on individual and political discontent of different socioeconomic disadvantage conditions at the interregional, intraregional, and individual level. Making use of a large data set on the individual and political discontent perceived by EU citizens between 2013 and 2018, our analysis confirms that a geography of discontent exists across EU regions. Nevertheless, our findings also highlight that intraregional inequalities do matter for individual discontent, and individual socioeconomic disadvantage conditions amplify further this negative effect.