The working class: an entire class of people left behind

This concluding chapter addresses the issues of defining white working-class communities; the challenges of choosing a president; the importance of qualitative data and lived experiences in revealing a granular and detailed understanding of macro-changes in society; and the prospects of cross-racial coalition building. Looking ahead to the 2020 presidential elections and beyond, the chapter questions whether policymakers and researchers will learn from the messages of this research and others about the lived experiences of white working-class communities and their own sense of being left behind. The chapter then argues for a radical overhaul of the way in which white working-class communities are discussed, engaged with, and represented by policymakers and political organizations. Returning to the context of rising populism across the globe, white working-class communities cannot simply be ignored. Rather the white working class should be considered to be as diverse as any other group, an important legacy population, and a community that has a range of views shaped by location, politics, and culture. This opens up the prospect of exciting possibilities for research, policy, practice, and coalition building.

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Geopolitical Upheavals: Brexit and Trump

10.1093/oso/9780198827481.003.0013 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Mahesh K. Joshi ◽

J.R. Klein

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Living Standards ◽

Domestic Policy ◽

Economic Theories ◽

Left Behind ◽

Policy Choices ◽

External Forces ◽

The Impact ◽

The Voice

Over recent years, investments had been going down, living standards had deteriorated, and inequality had risen. The underlying disaffection was picked up by Brexit and the Trump campaigns. Although these problems were not the inevitable results of globalization, but rather of domestic policy choices influenced by flawed economic theories, these populist standard bearers exploited it by blaming those challenges on external forces, including globalization. The Brexit vote and the election of Trump can be considered as the voice of the economically “left behind,” a protest by working-class voters at the impact of globalization on their jobs and living standards.

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The Anger and Energy of Gary Mitchell

10.1093/oso/9780198791591.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Connal Parr

Keyword(s):

Northern Ireland ◽

Working Class ◽

Peace Process ◽

Labour Party ◽

Housing Estate ◽

Class Groups ◽

Labour Movement ◽

Left Behind ◽

White Working Class

Born and brought up on the overwhelmingly Protestant Rathcoole housing estate, Gary Mitchell explored the fragmentation of Ulster Loyalism during the era of the peace process in his key plays and continues to mine the disillusionment and travails of the Protestant working class across Northern Ireland. The Rathcoole focus highlights the dying embers of the Labour movement which carried on in Newtownabbey while the rest of the Northern Ireland Labour Party had faded away, a spirit embodied by the independent councillor Mark Langhammer. Though Mitchell was forced to leave Rathcoole in 2005, he continues to grapple with the strains of working-class Protestant communities in the form of policing tensions, identity questions, and a growing underclass (or ‘precariat’) which considers itself—like other white working-class groups—‘left behind’ by politicians and deindustrialization.

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Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Sociology ◽

10.1177/0038038520929540 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 54 (6) ◽

pp. 1159-1177

Author(s):

Gábor Scheiring

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Working Class ◽

Lived Experience ◽

Social Contract ◽

Thematic Analysis ◽

Narrative Identity ◽

Left Behind ◽

Cultural Political Economy ◽

Shared Narrative ◽

Dynamic Interplay

Nationalism is back with a renewed force. Hungary is a virulent example of the new nationalist ascendancy. As the country was a former liberal star pupil, Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn has been puzzling researchers for years. This study goes beyond the entrenched polarisations in the literature by highlighting the dynamic interplay between culture, structure and identity. It proposes to conceptualise Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn as a Polanyian countermovement against commodification, globalisation and deindustrialisation. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of 82 interviews with workers in four towns in Hungary’s rustbelt and highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers’ narrative identities. In the absence of a class-based shared narrative and lacking a viable political tool to control their fate, working-class neo-nationalism emerged as a new narrative identity to express workers’ anger and outrage.

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The Emotional Politics of Making America Great Again: Trump’s Working Class Appeals

Journal of Working-Class Studies ◽

10.13001/jwcs.v2i1.6039 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 5-22

Author(s):

Douglas Schrock ◽

Benjamin Dowd-Arrow ◽

Kristen Erichsen ◽

Haley Gentile ◽

Pierce Dignam

Keyword(s):

Real Estate ◽

Working Class ◽

Reality Tv ◽

Future Research ◽

Presidential Candidate ◽

Left Behind ◽

Real Estate Developer ◽

Emotional Politics ◽

Using Data ◽

The U.S

Real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the U.S. was a departure from politics as usual in many ways. Most notably, Trump received more white working-class support than any Republican presidential candidate since 1980. Using data from 44 Trump campaign rallies, we analyze Trump’s emotional messages encoded in his working class appeals. We find that Trump’s language (1) temporarily oriented audiences towards feeling shame or fear as a nation, (2) reoriented them towards feeling anger at the elites he blamed, and (3) ultimately promised they would feel safe and proud if he was elected. Trump’s emotional scripting seemed crafted to resonate with working class audiences feeling left behind from decades of bipartisan neoliberalism. We conclude by discussing limitations and potential avenues for future research.

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Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

Acta Sociologica ◽

10.1177/0001699319868524 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 63 (2) ◽

pp. 133-155 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bastian A Betthäuser

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Labour Market ◽

Social Mobility ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Birth Cohorts ◽

Left Behind ◽

The Social ◽

High Level ◽

Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

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Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

10.31235/osf.io/6vyr7 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Bastian Betthäuser

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Labour Market ◽

Social Mobility ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Birth Cohorts ◽

Left Behind ◽

The Social ◽

High Level ◽

Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between indi- viduals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

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