Injustice, Insecurity and Immigration Jörg Flecker (FORBA, Vienna) Friedrich Ebert Stiftung / Policy Network The other side of the challenge: Immigration, social cohesion and the right wing populist movements in Europe London, 22/23 February 2007

European Research Project: ‘Socio-economic change, individual reactions and the appeal of the extreme right’ (SIREN)  Working life and rise of right-wing populism  8 countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland)  Survey of 5,800 workers and 300 in-depth interviews

Socio-economic change and political orientations  Injured sense of justice: ‘I feel betrayed …’; ‘I feel punished …’; ‘We are too decent, too bloody honest!’  Insecurity and fear of déclassement: ‘You really start to hate them.’  Lack of representation and political powerlessness: ‘I can only count on myself.’  Individualism and competition: ‘Transformation means torturing oneself.’

Socio-economic change and political orientations  Authoritarian-exclusivist and democratic- solidarist reactions  Wide variety of attractions, losers’ and winners’ routes to right-wing populisms

IMMIGRATION  Immigration currently most important political issue of the extreme right  Prejudice against immigrants: strongest indicator of affinity to extreme right-wing party  Job conditions and family income impact on prejudice against immigrants

IMMIGRATION  Labour market, housing, schools – problems caused by immigration  Feelings of injustice, frustrations  ‘problem displacement’  Asylum seekers – right to work?  Immigrants symbolize ones déclassement and weakening social integration

CONCLUSIONS  Public recognition of problems; political interest in the workers’ world  Working conditions, pains of work, growing insecurity and inequality  Problems of representation and lack of democracy

REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS  European Commission, Socio-economic change, individual reactions and the appeal of the extreme right, EU research on Social Sciences and Humanities, Brussels 2006  Flecker, J. (ed.), Changing working life and the appeal of the extreme right, Ashgate, Aldershot 2007  Flecker, J., Kirschenhofer, S., Die populistische Lücke, edition sigma, Berlin 2006

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION! Project website: