THE ABANDONED WORKER SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE AND THE ATTRACTION OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM EUROPEAN SYNTHESIS REPORT ON QUALITATIVE FINDINGS Gudrun Hentges, Malte-Henning Meyer Seminar für Sozialwissenschaften, Abteilung für Politikwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln, Germany Jörg Flecker, Sabine Kirschenhofer Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt (FORBA), Austria Eva Thoft, Edvin Grinderslev Centre for Alternative Social Analysis (CASA), Denmark Gabrielle Balazs Centre d'Etudes de l'Emploi (CEE), CNRS, France Deliverable 3 for the project “Socio-Economic Change, Individual Reactions and the Appeal of the Extreme Right” (SIREN) Contract no: HPSE-CT-2001-00058 The project “Socio-Economic Change, Individual Reactions and the Appeal of the Extreme Right” (SIREN) is funded under the European Commission's “Improving Human Research Potential and the Socio- Economic Knowledge Base” Programme (Contract no: HPSE-CT-2001-00058). Additional funding is provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, and the Federal Office for Education and Science, Switzerland. The content of this report is the sole responsibility of its authors and in no way represents the opinion of the European Commission or its departments. No part of this report may be reproduced or used in any form by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage or retrieval system – without prior permission of the authors. Cologne and Vienna 2003 Layout: FORBA, Vienna Cover design: media3, Vienna Printed & bound: Riegelnik GmbH, Vienna ISBN 3-902296-00-3 Acknowledgements ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The report is based on qualitative interviews with people on their attitudes to changes in the workplace and society and how these changes influence their political views. The authors would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all of the many people who allowed us to interview them. Thanks to their hospitality we gained many new insights and learned a great deal about attitudes to work and society and politics. We would also like to thank all those who established contacts with interviewees and provided useful background information on different sectors and industries. Our special thanks, of course, is due to all SIREN partners, on whose national reports and interview reports this European Synthesis is based. These national reports were submitted to the European Commission as separate Deliverables; without them, it would have been impossible to compile the present report. In particular, we would like to thank the following researchers for their contributions as well as for their useful comments on earlier versions of this Deliverable: András Tóth and István Grajczjar Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest (Hungary) Jean-Pierre Faguer and Pierre Rimbert Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi (CEE), Noisy le Grand (France) Christoph Butterwegge, Cassandra Ellerbe-Dück and Alexander Häusler Seminar für Sozialwissenschaften, Abteilung für Politikwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln and Gerd Wiegel, Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany) Vera R. Martinelli, Patrizia Milesi and Patrizia Catellani Laboratorio di Psicologia Sociale Applicata, Catholic University of Milan (Italy) Manfred Krenn and Ulrike Papouschek Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt (FORBA), Vienna (Austria) Yves De Weerdt, Frederik Descheemaeker and Hans De Witte Hoger Instituut voor de Arbeid (HIVA), K.U. Leuven (Belgium) Fabrice Plomb, Francesca Poglia Mileti, Riccardo Tondolo and Franz Schultheis Institut de Sociologie, Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland) Further, we would like to thank Christel and Randall Converse, Washington D.C. and David Westacott, Vienna, for their tremendous help in editing and proof-reading the report, and Christine Wagner, the project officer at FORBA, for her invaluable support during the research and the writing of the report. Finally, we would also like to extend our thanks to Giulia Amaducci, the responsible scientific officer at the European Commission, for the support she has given to the project, especially during this crucial stage of the project. Contents CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..............................................................................................................................I EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..............................................................................................................................1 INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................................7 1. METHODICAL ASPECTS OF THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH .............................................. 11 1.1. Selection principles of the interviewees and description of the sample ..................................... 12 1.1.1. Socio-economic change ............................................................................................................................ 12 1.1.2. Political attitudes of the interviewees/affinity to right-wing extremism....................................................... 12 1.2. How did we get into contact with the interviewees?................................................................... 14 1.3. Difficulties, biases, achievements ..............................................................................................16 1.4. Structure of the interview guidelines .......................................................................................... 17 1.5. Methods of interpreting the interviews ....................................................................................... 18 2. FLEXIBLE REORGANISATION OF COMPANY AND WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS...................................................................................................................... 21 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 21 2.2. Economic and political preconditions......................................................................................... 22 2.2.1. Forces of neo-liberalism ............................................................................................................................ 22 2.2.2. Science and technology’s revolutionary impact on the production process .............................................. 23 2.2.3. Concentration of capital and restructuring................................................................................................. 25 2.2.4. Privatisation of public services .................................................................................................................. 25 2.3. Re-organisation at company level.............................................................................................. 27 2.3.1. De-centralisation, commodification and the emergence of company networks......................................... 28 2.3.2. Flexibility of production.............................................................................................................................. 28 2.4. Flexible employment.................................................................................................................. 29 2.4.1. Rationalisation........................................................................................................................................... 31 2.4.2. Weakening of workers’ representation and trade union influence............................................................. 31 I European Synthesis Report ___________________________________________________________________ 3. VIEWS ON WORK..................................................................................................................... 33 3.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 33 3.1.1. The basis of subjective perceptions and evaluations: world views, work ethics and identity .................... 33 3.2. Perceived changes in employment status and working conditions ............................................ 35 3.3. Perception of insecurity: calculable risk or complete loss of control .......................................... 44 3.4. Perception of injustice: feeling betrayed and humiliated ............................................................ 53 3.5. Regions in decline...................................................................................................................... 59 3.6. Summary.................................................................................................................................... 60 4. VIEWS ON POLITICS. POLITICAL ACTIVITIES AND ORIENTATIONS .................................. 63 4.1. The Rise of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism in the European debate ....................................................................................................................... 63 4.2. General country backgrounds.................................................................................................... 68 4.3. Acceptance of right-wing extremism and populism: various interpretation and coping patterns...................................................................................................................................... 73 4.3.1. Members of the middle class with right-wing conservative and nationalist mentality...............................