The Underestimated Political Potential of a New Working Class - Exploring Class Membership and Political Alignment of Migrants in Europe

Over the last century, most Western European countries have transformed towards immigration societies, creating diverse populations with many large diasporic communities. This development has been facilitated in multiple ways: Through specific official labour migration programs; movements from the structurally underdeveloped post-colonial periphery to the former colonial centre; influxes of refugees from emerging conflicts close to European borders; as well as enticing highly skilled migrants through lowered boundaries of residency and citizenship. Despite the multiple reasons for migration movements and factors of labour migration, migrants are particularly likely to become part of the production or service working class when entering the workforce in the country of arrival. A dynamic that has been well recorded, but has certainly increased in the last decades, succeeding the expansion of precarious work environments in the service sector. However, discussions of class structure and political alignment have largely ignored the presence of migrants in the workforce and their overrepresentation in the working classes, thereby underestimating potentials on the demand side of political class research. The emergence of radical right parties in Europe challenges left parties’ monopoly on the working class as their traditional electoral base, by appealing to workers through authoritarian positions on the socio-cultural dimension of political discourse. This is reinforced by a decreasing salience of the socio-economic dimension, through the overall rise of post-materialist values and issues. However, it is debateable whether this development holds for the migrant working class, since more prevalent economic hardship and scare opportunities for social-mobility should emphasise the importance of socio-economic issues in political opinion formation. Moreover, the strong opposition towards cultural diversity and anti-immigration positions of radical right parties drastically affects the place of migrant communities in the population and threatens their safety, therefor making support of those parties and positions increasingly unlikely. Consequently, class realignment dynamics examined in the overall working class might not be transferable to migrant workers as a sub-group. With the increasing share of migrants in the working class, this politically largely unattended group might embody a possibility for left parties in reengaging large parts of the working class for their cause and combat the surge of radical right parties. With this paper I want to shed light on the dynamics of migration, class and political alignment. Using data of Western European Countries from 10 waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) I will engage with two broader topics. Firstly, I will examine how the share of first- and second-generation migrants within the occupational classes defined by Oesch (2006) has developed over the last decades, drawing a structural overview of the changing face of class in the 21st century. Secondly, I will inspect the political behaviour of migrants by taking a look at whether and with whom they engage politically. Thereby, I will also investigate to what extend migrants are eligible to vote and whether there are differences between preference and choice. Goal of this paper is to highlight the underestimated political potential of migrants on the demand side of European politics.