Comparing Social Inclusion Challenges in Rural Europe: Insights from Four RUSTIK Living Labs

Social and spatial inequalities increasingly shape rural development across Europe, yet their manifestations remain highly context-specific and often poorly captured by existing data. Rural regions face challenges such as demographic change, limited services, and uneven development opportunities (Eurofound, 2023; Woods, 2023). At the same time, perspectives of under-represented groups are often missing, highlighting the need for more participatory forms of knowledge production (Carrera & Levidow, 2024; Norström et al., 2020). This poster compares four Living Labs from the Horizon Europe project RUSTIK addressing different social inclusion challenges and explores how participatory approaches generate knowledge for policy and practice.