JUSTice and Participation through LocAlised and Citizen-centred Engagement

Europe faces a paradox: while macroeconomic convergence between Member States appears to advance, inequalities within countries have deepened, widening income gaps and eroding civic trust. Yet these inequalities do not produce uniform outcomes: prosperous regions often channel discontent into support for radical-right parties, while disadvantaged territories foster alternative forms of mobilisation. Traditional explanations fail to capture these divergent trajectories, which depend not only on material conditions but also on perceptions of fairness, recognition, and political visibility.

JUSTPLACE investigates how multidimensional inequalities—material, spatial and symbolic—affect democratic resilience across territories. It examines the conditions under which inequality fosters apathy, distrust, or civic innovation, and develops new indicators to capture both objective and perceived disparities. By linking the experience of inequality to democratic capacity, the project seeks to advance understanding of territorial justice and generate place-sensitive frameworks for restoring trust and participation in European democracies.