Low-Skilled Workers’ Political Actions: From RRPP Vote to Protests ꟷ A Comparison between Italy, France and Spain

Starting from the 1980s low-skilled workers have remained long excluded from the European political sphere, partly because of declining industrial conflicts and partly because of increasing electoral abstention. In the last two decades however, we have witnessed a political re-incorporation of low-skilled workers fueled by two processes. On the one hand, hit by growing unemployment and temporary jobs intensified by the 2008 great recession, low-skilled workers have joined students, young people, and migrants in broad coalitions protesting on cross-cutting issues such as social exclusions, austerity measures, struggles challenging neo-liberal policies. On the other, extant research has observed the progressive increase in voting preferences by low-skilled workers towards radical right populist parties (RRPP). This paper aims to understand low-skilled workers’ changes in electoral and protest politics in the last two decades in three countries: Italy, France and Spain. Both France and Italy have experienced rising rates of RRPP, namely Front National (FN) now Rassemblement National (RN) in France, and Lega (once Northern Lega) in Italy. Both of such parties have low-skilled workers as major constituencies. In contrast, Spain has not witnessed the emerge of a strong RRPP. Indeed, a left-wing populist party, Podemos, has been largely successful since 2014 European elections. Podemos has enlisted low-skilled workers too. However, according to some study, most voters of Podemos have high educational levels. We will examine changes in electoral and protest patterns by using the cumulative European Social Survey (ESS) dataset (round 1 to round 8 covering the years from 2002 to 2016 therefore, the period before, during and after the 2008 economic crisis), a comparative cross-sectional survey undertaken every two years in more than 20 European countries. Despite for the Italian case only four waves are available (2002, 2004, 2012, and 2016), we keep this case as we still have the chance to analyse data before, during and after the economic crisis. We examine voting by considering the variable “party voted in last national election” and protest by considering “whether individuals have taken part in lawful public demonstration last 12 months” before the survey. As to our main independent variable we will consider the three different occupational classes that identify low-skilled workers (low-skilled manuals, low-skilled service and unskilled clerks). With this data, we also aim to explore the role of trade union membership. By this we aim to test the hypothesis advancing that differences in political actions by low-skilled workers depend on the role of social groups which sustain such actions. In particular, we aim to tackle how membership in trade unions moderates the relationship between social class and political actions by low-skilled workers.