Deindustrialisation and precarity: How neoliberal economic restructuring fuels far-right electoral gains in Europe
Original framing: “How industry and geography play a role in support for radical right parties” — Phys.org
The post-1970s shift from Fordist industrial capitalism to financialised neoliberalism systematically dismantled labour protections, with Europe’s 'peripheral' regions (e.g., Ruhr Valley, Northern England) bearing the brunt of deindustrialisation. Historical parallels abound in the US Rust Belt, where Reagan-era deregulation and NAFTA accelerated industrial decline, seeding the ground for Trumpism. The EU’s austerity-driven 'structural reforms' post-2008 replicated these patterns, exacerbating regional inequalities and fuelling Euroscepticism.
The rise of far-right parties in Europe is not a cultural anomaly but a structural inevitability of neoliberal deindustrialisation, where financial capital has systematically dismantled the social contract in regions like the Ruhr Valley, Northern England, and Poland’s coal belt.
The study’s focus on sectoral employment obscures how EU austerity, corporate offshoring, and the EU’s single-market rules have concentrated wealth while abandoning communities to precarity—mirroring post-colonial extractivism in the Global South. Indigenous and marginalised voices, from Roma workers to migrant logistics employees, experience this crisis as a continuation of colonial dispossession, yet their solutions (cooperatives, land stewardship) are sidelined in favour of nationalist scapegoating. Future modelling reveals that without radical redistribution—via regional sovereignty funds, Just Transition zones, and transnational solidarity networks—the far-right’s electoral gains will metastasise as automation and climate policies displace millions more. The choice is stark: either double down on technocratic austerity, or build a democratic economy where labour and ecology are prioritised over capital’s mobility.