In what sense left behind by globalisation? Looking for a less reductionist geography of the populist surge in Europe

Brexit, the wider populist surge in Europe and Trumpism all seem to involve interesting geographies that have been taken as clues to the worrying puzzle facing a political/academic establishment about what’s driving the surge and how might it be abated. One major theme has been that of the places left behind economically by an opening up to competition from cheap (migrant or overseas) labour – counterpointed by the idea that specific types of people have been left behind culturally. This paper attempts a less reductive approach, starting with examination of oddities in the Brexit geography and then investigating how populist support across European regions is influenced by the interaction of economic/demographic change with varying cosmopolitan/localist influences