The DICES project has published a new report mapping the dimensions of social exclusion across nine case-study regions in Europe, offering one of the most granular territorial analyses of inequality to date. Authored by Jelena Jovičić, Franziska Görmar, and Pia Roosen of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, the Regional Profile Reports: Dimensions of Social Exclusion in the Selected Case Study Regions examines how exclusion is experienced on the ground — from medium-sized cities to rural and peripheral areas — and why national averages consistently fail to capture it.
Rather than reducing exclusion to income poverty, the report takes a multidimensional approach, examining socio-economic structures, demographic change, access to care and health services, housing, transport, governance, and opportunities for civic participation. The findings reveal how disadvantages accumulate and reinforce one another, and how spatial inequalities compound over time.
Central to the report is the concept of peripheralisation, a shift away from labelling regions as simply “left behind” towards understanding exclusion as an active process shaped by long-term economic restructuring, selective public investment, demographic decline, and institutional disconnection. In this framework, social exclusion is not an inevitable outcome of geography, but the result of political, economic, and governance choices.
The report serves as a foundational reference within the DICES project, providing the contextual baseline for subsequent research on social economy initiatives, inclusive care practices, and economic democracy. By clarifying the conditions in which social economy organisations operate, it helps explain why certain initiatives emerge, what constraints they face, and where their transformative potential lies.
The full report is available at this link.