Thinking in rural gap: mobility and social inequalities

The impact of the global financial crisis and the economic recession on Southern European countries has threatened the rural welfare of many regions. The loss by emigration of the young population, austerity policies, and the territorial concentration of essential services have led many of rural areas into a spiral of decline. The growth of regional disparities, even among rural areas, is confirmed by the European official reports. Depopulation and rural decline are highly associated with remoteness. Accessibility is one key issue to mitigating this erosion of socio-territorial cohesion; another is mobility, which is the usual way to confront the scarce opportunities and limited services in deeply rural territories. This paper pays attention to socio-territorial inequalities and considers as working hypothesis that social rights are differentiated by the habitat structure; as a result, territory determines different degrees of citizenship. Traditional perspectives focused on the access to productive resources and material opportunities as the source of disadvantages, but we suggest that a more comprehensive approach is needed to address the rural gap: the difference between living conditions and living expectations in rural areas in contrast with urban ones. We address two main processes involved on it. On the one hand, there are strong interconnections between physical and social mobility, such as commuting to distant labor markets and educative centers, which could increase the social mobility of rural youth. On the other hand, the maps of the provision of services, infrastructures networks and investments not only reshape the territories but also their sociological morphologies. Accessibility and mobility are strongly linked with rural well-being and social sustainability. We explore and illustrate these questions with examples from the Spanish case. The text is structured into four issues regarding the rural gap: the territorial imbalance and social cohesion, the demographic imbalance and rural welfare as the product of the inter-generational equilibrium, the rural disparities in accessibility and the challenges of mobility transition. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the rural policies and governance required for achieving social and territorial balance.