The malaise of the squeezed middle: Challenging the narrative of the ‘left behind’ Brexiter

302

219

The rhetoric of both the Brexit and Trump campaigns was grounded in conceptions of the past as the basis for political claims in the present. Both established the past as constituted by nations that were represented as 'white' into which racialized others had insinuated themselves and gained disproportionate advantage. Hence, the resonant claim that was broadcast primarily to white audiences in each place 'to take our country back'. The politics of both campaigns was also echoed in those social scientific analyses that sought to focus on the 'legitimate' claims of the 'left behind' or those who had come to see themselves as 'strangers in their own land'. The skewing of white majority political action as the action of a more narrowly defined white working class served to legitimize analyses that might otherwise have been regarded as racist. In effect, I argue that a pervasive 'methodological whiteness' has distorted social scientific accounts of both Brexit and Trump's election victory and that this needs to be taken account of in our discussion of both phenomena.

Section: Brexit Trump and The Paucity Of Class Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brexit, Trump, and ‘methodological whiteness’: on the misrecognition of race and class

Bhambra

2017

302

219

“…There will be more future opportunities (1) or threats (2) today? The share of votes secured by right populist parties has increased substantially in the developed democracies over the past three decades, rising from less than 2 per cent of the vote in national elections in Europe in 1980 to over 12 per cent today (see Figure I); and support for right populism is notably strong at lower levels of the income and occupational hierarchies, especially a few rungs up from their bottom (Oesch 2008;Bornschier and Kriesi 2012;Antonucci, Horvath, Kutiyski and Krouwell 2017). Economic disadvantage is almost certainly an important driver of such support.…”

Section: A Status-based Theoretical Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right

Gidron

Hall

2017

362

This paper explores the factors that have recently increased support for candidates and causes of the populist right across the developed democracies, especially among a core group of working‐class men. In the context of debates about whether the key causal factors are economic or cultural, we contend that an effective analysis must rest on understanding how economic and cultural developments interact to generate support for populism. We suggest that one way to do so is to see status anxiety as a proximate factor inducing support for populism, and economic and cultural developments as factors that combine to precipitate such anxiety. Using cross‐national survey data from 20 developed democracies, we assess the viability of this approach. We show that lower levels of subjective social status are associated with support for right populist parties, identify a set of economic and cultural developments likely to have depressed the social status of men without a college education, and show that the relative social status of those men has declined since 1987 in many of the developed democracies. We conclude that status effects provide one pathway through which economic and cultural developments may combine to increase support for the populist right.

“…Indeed they argue that creating a clear statistical explanation has not been possible, particularly as the referendum was 'visceral'. Despite the attempts of many social researchers in trying to make sense of the referendum result into sharp and discreet demographic patterns and reason (Antonucci et al 2016). Too many social researchers have attempted to comprehend emotional elements of local and national political understanding by discreetly isolating a variable and thus failing to capture the longitudinal damage (which Booth noted as experience and circumstance) that class inequality causes in what Bourdieu (1977) argues as symbolic violence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The class politics of prejudice: Brexit and the land of no‐hope and glory

McKenzie¹

2017

The debates relating to social class and whether it is still a useful concept in describing a lived reality of the British population has never been far away from media, political and academic dispute. Thatcher's Britain throughout the 1980s attempted to dilute class meaning with what was called ‘a home owning democracy’ and thus end class collective politics through easily available credit for the working class while simultaneously attacking trade union organization, recruitment and political action.During the late 1990s and into the noughties a ‘New Labour’ administration attempted to exacerbate the end of class politics through an agenda of a ‘cultural distinction’ to class identity. Class struggle, class politics and class identity is embedded deep within the cultural norms practices, and history of British democracy. Consequently it is difficult if not impossible to prise class inequality in the UK away from and out of national, local and personal politics (Savage et al. 2015: 393–8). This paper focuses upon the sense that class politics, and cultural class distinction, within the UK had the biggest influence in determining a working‐class ‘Leave Vote’ in the 2016 referendum within the UK. This paper explores accounts and narratives from working‐class ‘leave’ voters though an ethnographic study of the political and social viewpoints of working‐class communities of East London, and of ex‐mining towns of Nottinghamshire. Framing into fuller context the anger and apathy of being ‘left out’, arguing that being ‘left out’ has been part of working‐class political narratives for over 30 years. Going beyond frustration and apathy, a significant part of the narrative of working people was of ‘not existing’, suggesting certain important linkages with ongoing debates about new ways of conceptualizing class differences and class structures.