Experiences of deprivation in the world of work and perceptions of general politics in East Germany

This paper is based on a 3-year research project investigating local labor conflicts in Saxony and seeking for a better understanding of how local political culture is (trans-)formed. While our previous research and first insights from this project have shown that democratic experiences at the workplace foster democratic attitudes, here I am interested in how experiences of deprivation in the world of work – lack of recognition, low pay, struggles with supervisors, alienation in the work process – are connected to perceptions of politics. We argue that deprivation in the world of work should be considered one – and probably the most basic – facete of general deprivation strongly connected to experiences of social and political deprivation. In fact, in their daily experiences, workers’ struggles are mostly connected to the world of work and amount to feelings of powerlessness that are contrasted with the perception of superiors and generalized to self-conceptualizations of lower-class citizens. Fundamentally, the issue of low pay is experienced as a constant threat to ‘simply having a normal life’. Moreover, even during strike actions that supposedly build on grievances but as a result also offer agency, participants experience huge gaps between their own Lebenswelt and politics and even politicians sympathetic to their cause. In this, we argue, lies an important source for fatalism that spills over to perceptions of politics and democracy in general.