Territorial attachment in the age of globalization: the case of Western Europe

The age of globalization has often been associated with de-/re-territorialization processes. The increasing integration of markets and the appearance of new modes of economic production and capital accumulation on the one hand, and the transformation of forms of political governance on the other, have led to the emergence of new territorial actors at the supra-national and sub-national scales. While these economic and political de-/re-territorialization processes have been studied at length, relatively little attention has been paid to the transformation of the territorial identities associated with these spaces. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, it aims to understand whether territorial identities are experiencing a similar re-scaling along with modes of economic production and forms of political governance. Second, it explores which factors today explain the attachment of people to their territories. A descriptive analysis of Eurobarometer survey data for Western Europe reveals no signs of a re-scaling of territorial identities, pointing to a sort of inertia of these identities in relation to the changing of political and economic structures. A statistical model on four scales of territorial attachment (local, regional, national and European) shows the complexity of its formation, as both personal compositional and regional contextual factors should be taken into account. © The Author(s) 2012.