Changing Working Life and the Appeal of the Extreme Right (Contemporary Employment Relations)

282 Pages·2007·0.89 MB·English

by  Jorg Flecker

CHANGING WORKING LIFE AND THE APPEAL
OF THE EXTREME RIGHT
Contemporary Employment Relations
Series Editor: Gregor Gall
Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Centre for Research
in Employment Studies, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
The aim of this series is to publish monographs and edited volumes on all aspects
of contemporary employment relations including human resource management,
employee branding, shared services, employment regulation, the political economy of
employment, and industrial relations. Topics such as mergers, corporate governance
and the EU – in the context of their affect upon employment relations – also fall
within the scope of the series. Aimed primarily at an academic readership this series
provides a global forum for the study of employment relations.
Other Titles in the Series
Human Resource Management in Russia
Edited by Michel E. Domsch and Tatjana Lidokhover
ISBN 978-0-7546-4876-5
Employment Contracts and Well-Being Among European Workers
Edited by Nele De Cuyper, Kerstin Isaksson and Hans De Witte
ISBN 978-0-7546-4575-7
Changing Working Life and the
Appeal of the Extreme Right
Edited by
JÖRG FLECKER
Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt (FORBA), Austria
© Jörg Flecker 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Jörg Flecker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the editor of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Changing working life and the appeal of the extreme right.
- (Contemporary employment relations series)
1. Working class - Europe - Political activity 2. Working
class - Europe 3. Right-wing extremists - Europe
4. Industrial relations - Europe
I. Flecker, Jorg, 1959-
322.2'094
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Changing working life and the appeal of the extreme right / edited by Jörg Flecker.
p. cm. -- (Contemporary employment relations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-4915-1
1. Working class--Europe--Attitudes. 2. Work environment--Europe. 3. Radicalism--
Europe. 4. Conservatism--Europe. 5. Populism--Europe. I. Flecker, Jörg, 1959-
HD8376.5.C48 2007
331.2094--dc22
2006031601
ISBN: 978-0-7546-4915-1
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction Changing Working Life and the Appeal of the Extreme Right:
A Variety of Approaches 1
Jörg Flecker
PART 1 CHANGING WORKING LIFE AND THE APPEAL
OF THE EXTREME RIGHT IN EUROPE
Chapter 1 Addressing the Link between Socio-Economic Change
and Right-Wing Populism and Extremism: A Critical Review
of the European Literature 9
Francesca Poglia Mileti and Fabrice Plomb
Chapter 2 Potentials of Political Subjectivity and the Various Approaches
to the Extreme Right: Findings of the Qualitative Research 35
Jörg Flecker, Gudrun Hentges and Gabrielle Balazs
Chapter 3 Perceived Socio-Economic Change and Right-Wing Extremism:
Results of the SIREN-Survey among European Workers 63
Yves De Weerdt, Patrizia Catellani, Hans De Witte
and Patrizia Milesi
PART 2 NATIONAL VARIETIES OF ATTRACTION
Chapter 4 Variants of Right-Wing Populist Attraction in Austria 87
Jörg Flecker, Sabine Kirschenhofer, Manfred Krenn
and Ulrike Papouschek
Chapter 5 Two Psychological Routes to Right-Wing Extremism:
How Italian Workers Cope with Change 105
Patrizia Catellani and Patrizia Milesi
vi Changing Working Life and the Appeal of the Extreme Right
Chapter 6 Public Safety – Private Right: The Public-Private Divide
and Receptiveness of Employees to Right-Wing Extremism
in Flanders (Belgium) 123
Yves De Weerdt and Hans De Witte
Chapter 7 The Welfare State Under Pressure: The Danish Case 149
Eva Thoft and Edvin Grinderslev
Chapter 8 Widespread Competition and Political Conversions 165
Gabrielle Balazs, Jean-Pierre Faguer and Pierre Rimbert
Chapter 9 Changes in the Work Environment and Germany’s
Extreme Right 189
Gudrun Hentges and Malte Meyer
Chapter 10 Different Roads to the Siren Songs of the Extreme Right
in Hungary 201
András Tóth and István Grajczjar
Chapter 11 Individual Expressions of Right-Wing Extremism –
Understanding the Affinity to Radical Populism in Observing
the Changes in the Work Field: The Case of Switzerland 217
Fabrice Plomb and Francesca Poglia Mileti
Chapter 12 Conclusions and Policy Implications 239
Jörg Flecker
References 249
Index 267
List of Figures
Figure 3.1 Overview of core concepts and main research questions 63
Figure 3.2 Path analytic model on the relationships between perceived
change in the job domain, social identity, receptiveness attitudes,
and right-wing party affinity 78
Figure 6.1 A public- and private-sector pathway to ERPA 145
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Number of interviews carried out in each country/
total number of interviews 37
Table 2.2 Number of interviewees according to political orientation 39
Table 3.1 Perceptions of socio-economic change during the previous five
years (percentage of respondents and mean perceived change
for each dimension) 66
Table 3.2 Association of background variables with receptiveness
and affinity (results of a regression analysis, standardized
regression coefficients) 72
Table 3.3 Association of receptiveness attitudes with extreme right-wing
party affinity, overall and per country (results of a regression
analysis, standardized regression coefficients) 75
Table 3.4 Do certain categories experience more (or less) socio-economic
change? 83
Table 6.1 Differences between public- and private-sector employees
on work change and work-life situation (LS means, analyses
of variance) 141
Table 6.2 Differences between public- and private-sector employees
in political orientations and receptiveness to the extreme
right-wing 142
Table 6.3 Bivariate correlations of work-related changes with elements
of extreme right-wing receptiveness (by sector) 143
Table 6.4 Results of a regression analysis on ERPA in both public
and private sector, controlled for gender, age and education 144
Table 6.5 Results of factor analyses, after varimax rotation 147
Table 6.6 Pearson correlations between four variables measuring extreme
right-wing receptiveness 148
Table 10.1 Sympathy with extreme right 215
Table 10.2 Chauvinism 215
Table 10.3 Powerlessness 215
Table 10.4 Final cluster centres (k-means cluster) 215
Table 11.1 Left-right self-identification in 2003 and 1998 in Switzerland 219
Notes on Contributors
Gabrielle BALAZS is a sociologist with the CNRS at Centre d’études de l’emploi
(CEE). From 1996 to 1999 she worked at the Centre de sociologie européenne du
Collège de France. She holds the Habilitation à diriger les recherches. She is a co-
author of La Misère du Monde (edited by Pierre Bourdieu, Seuil, Paris, 1993).
Patrizia CATELLANI is professor of Social Psychology of Politics at the
Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and since 1998 director of the Applied Social
Psychology Laboratory of the same university. She is co-editor of The Psychology
of Counterfactual Thinking (Routledge, 2005) and contributed to Extreme Right
Activists in Europe: Through the Magnifying Glass, edited by Bert Klandermans
and Nonna Mayer (Routledge, 2006).
Yves DE WEERDT is a senior research associate at the Higher Institute for Labour
Studies (HIVA) of the University of Leuven, Belgium. His main research topics are
social stratification, quality of work and socio-political attitudes of employees. His
research so far has mainly been commissioned by the Flemish Fund for Scientific
Research and the European Commission.
Hans DE WITTE is professor at the Department of Psychology of the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven (K.U. Leuven). He teaches Work and Organizational Psychology
and is member of the Research Group on Stress, Health and Well Being of his
Department. He is member of the Steering Committee of the European Values Study
and editor of Job Insecurity, Union Involvement and Union Activism (Ashgate,
2005).
Jean-Pierre FAGUER is a sociologist with the CNRS at Centre d’études de l’emploi
(CEE). He holds the Habilitation à diriger les recherches. He is a co-author of La
Misère du Monde (edited by Pierre Bourdieu, Seuil, Paris, 1993).
Jörg FLECKER is director of the Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt
(Working Life Research Centre – FORBA) in Vienna and external professor of
economic sociology at the University of Vienna. He was the co-ordinator of the
SIREN project. He co-edited Herausforderungen der Arbeitswelt. Beiträge zu neuen
Arbeitsformen, Geschlecht, Informationstechnik (Rainer Hampp, 2001) and is the
author of Die populistische Lücke (edition sigma, 2006).