Trends in structural polarization in attitudes towards immigration and the European Union in Germany: the role of occupational classes [post]

Stephan Dochow-Sondershaus, Céline Teney
2022 unpublished
Opinion polarization between groups with different social positions in societies' structures of inequality, i.e. structural polarization, is a likely precondition for social conflict. This is because it indicates the presence of antagonistic social spaces where political attitudes align with material circumstances and many practices of everyday life. In this study, we investigate structural polarization between occupational classes by analyzing trends in opinions towards immigration and
more » ... ts, and towards the European Union. These attitudes are main components of a potential globalization cleavage in European countries. Conceptually, we propose that we can only speak of structural polarization if there is both high within-class consensus and between-class dissimilarity. We propose a methodology based on three statistics that together allow a detailed description of structural polarization. In our empirical analysis, we pool data from three German high-quality surveys that include detailed information about individuals' occupational class position. We find that the trends in the response distributions of the majority of our selected items do not indicate increasing class dissimilarity. Furthermore, the working class is low in consensus regarding its positions towards immigration, which makes class mobilization difficult, whereas the upper classes' positions holds more homogenous positions. These findings do not support the idea of an encompassing class divide in general immigration or EU related attitudes.
doi:10.31235/osf.io/qm46p fatcat:mr4h66erbjhdlpoouwdn3mi6eu