The North/South divide in Italy and England: Discursive construction of regional inequality

Despite the entrenched and long-term nature of the Italian and English North/South divide, this has not always been considered a relevant scale at which to redress spatial inequalities. To explain this apparent conundrum, this paper has two interlinked aims: (1) to investigate why, how, for whom and when the North/South divide is held to be a relevant ‘policy geography’ and (2) to explain the accompanying debates about the internal geography of this North/South divide. To do this, the paper develops a cultural politics of scales approach that compares the discursive (re)construction of the North/South divide in Italy and England by focusing on key moments, particularly the Keynesian consensus after the Second World War and the more current turn to neoliberal policies. Two parallel trends are identified: that support for an interventionist state and regional subsidies to poorer regions has decreased and that the North/South divide as a dual national partition has been dissolved into a micro-diverse geography. The paper concludes that the North/South divide is a contested political geography interpreted in different ways and used as a ‘discursive device’ by different actors to fit wider political projects.