A Regional Perspective on Social Exclusion in European Regions: Context, Trends and Policy Implications

Social exclusion has become a popular topic in the policy agendas of European governments, especially after the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 hit the continent as hard as it could. The existing literature highlights the presence of spatial patterns in social exclusion, although previous contributions consist of local or national level studies, lacking a broader continental perspective. This work resorts to regional data covering 20 EU countries and aims to characterise the nature of spatial patterns, distinguishing between spatial heterogeneity and pure spatial autocorrelation. Using the Spatial Markov Chain Matrix, we find that the strong clusterisation process unfolded by previous studies tends to become less intense if the role of socio-economic covariates is taken into account. Socio-economic factors represent in other words a containment cage that reduces the extent of neighbour influence. Net of the covariates, we identify clusters of regions in Southern Europe where high levels of social exclusion constitute a structural problem, calling for long-term public intervention. The policy implications of our findings are then outlined.