The city and the far-right grassroots? Reactionary neighbourhoods, beyond 'left behind'

Santamarina and Ince's ‘Urban neighbourhoods and far-right spatial strategies: Displacement, infrastructure and civic life’ is a timely refocusing on the neighbourhood scale as a loci of political subjectivity, especially at a time when the far-right makes inroads into highly localised processes. The idea that the grassroots is sometimes reactionary, fragmented and oppositional is not necessarily new. What is especially novel about this intervention is a focus not only on the spatial strategies employed by the far-right today in contexts like England and Spain, but also the enticing proposal that the neighbourhood be re-centred from an anti-fascist perspective. It is here that more research is needed, in terms of mapping out practical pathways for filling the spaces taken up by the far-right with better alternatives. Santamarina and Ince suggest that over-focusing on languages of cohesion, or ‘left behind-ness’, are not always productive, because affluent, cohesive neighbourhoods also sometimes trend toward far-right outcomes.