Because of technological, demographic, cultural, and global processes, work is undergoing transformations in forms and social meanings. There has been an increasing internal segmentation within the labor market, particularly in terms of differential access to contractual stability and, consequently, varying access to income continuity. Moreover, work not always seems able to guarantee protection from the risk of poverty (i.e poor work). In addition, technological innovations and processes of educational expansion are reshaping the distribution and the very content of professions. The increasing internal segmentation of the labor market and discontinuity in job careers are factors that contribute to individuals within the same occupational groups having varying social and economic conditions. Therefore, an increase in social fragmentation and a weakening of the pivotal role of work in the construction of social and individual identity is being under discussion.
The European Social Survey (ESS) stands as an invaluable database for empirically testing hypotheses concerning the decline of the centrality of work in shaping individuals' values, attitudes, and beliefs. Firstly, the ESS boasts an extensive repository of survey data with an extended temporal coverage that enables researchers to trace societal changes and trends over time. Secondly, the ESS encompasses a substantial number of countries allowing for comparative analyses. The inclusion of various cultural, economic, and political contexts enhances the robustness of findings and enables researchers to identify general patterns, including the role of different institutional arrangements. Consequently, the ESS's combination of longitudinal and cross-national perspectives makes it as the quintessential database for empirically scrutinizing hypotheses pertaining to the centrality of work in affecting individuals' attitudes and beliefs about societal issues such as, e.g. human values, social exclusion, welfare state, social inequality social trust and trust in institutions, authoritarianism.
The session aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the evolving relationship between work and values and attitudes over time and across different countries by inviting scholars to exploit the great potential of the knowledge basis provided by ESS data. The session especially welcomes contributions:
Adopting a comparative and/or longitudinal perspective.
Considering job position in the labor market encompassing its various aspects: employment form, status, and sector, occupation.
Merging ESS data with other datasets allowing multilevel analysis also including the impact of institutional arrangement. that consider the contribution of institutional arrangement.
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People Against the Demos? How Exit Options Shape Political Behaviour: The Case of Intra-EU Employment Opportunities
Barak Zur
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Do employment opportunities in the global economy shape political behaviour in migrant-sending countries, and if so, in what way? Labour mobility is a topic of heated debate in Europe. Yet, in fact, the movement of labour across EU borders involves only a small fraction of the working-age population. An arguably more prevalent phenomenon is the growing availability of labour mobility options. This shift, primarily driven by the EU's freedom of movement and the rapidly growing demand for skilled workers, significantly expands employment opportunities for many across the EU. However, the availability of economic avenues outside one's country, especially as they get more attractive, provides citizens with an 'exit option' and, therefore, may have unintended consequences on certain facets of democratic citizenship. An increasingly popular view holds that having an exit option may insulate citizens from domestic politics, for example, by weakening national identity (Matthijs and Merler 2020), diminishing the legitimacy of elected institutions (Merkel and Zürn 2019), and reducing citizens' incentives to participate in politics (Paskalev 2021; Sellars 2019). Yet a contrasting view holds that having an exit option may enhance democratic citizenship by providing an 'exit threat' that empowers citizens, leverages their bargaining power vis-à-vis national authorities, and possibly boost political participation (Clark et al. 2017;Hirchman 1993; Karadja and Prawitz 2019). To date, these two contrasting views have remained largely theoretical. The empirical evidence that exit options – particularly employment opportunities overseas– affect individuals' political behaviour is anecdotal or based on single case studies and has yielded mixed findings. This suggests that the current research on exit options is conceptually and operationally fragmented and, therefore, cannot provide validity outside a specific context. Consequently, we still lack a sense of the role which intra-EU employment opportunities play in shaping political behaviour across European member states. The question remains: In what way and to what extent do individuals' political behaviours change in response to the intra-EU employment opportunities they face? This study addresses this question empirically from a comparative perspective. Specifically, it aims to make two contributions. First, it conceptualises and then utilises the Eurostat Labour Force Survey micro-data to create a reliable and comparable occupational mobility index, reflecting the intra-EU employment opportunities available to citizens across different years and a range of European countries. Second, it combines this index with cross-national public opinion data from the European Social Survey, which contains various measures of citizens' political behavior. This study concentrates on national attachment, political participation, democratic understanding, and views on redistribution policies. Intrinsically linked, those items underscore different degrees of communitarian versus liberal facets of democracy (De-Wilde 2023). Therefore, they stand as prime candidates to be influenced by intra-EU employment opportunities that provide citizens with different degrees of alternative affiliations and memberships. Preliminary results indicate that citizens with access to a wider array of employment opportunities in other EU countries exhibit weaker national identity and a lower level of political engagement in their home countries. This provides some support for the claim that labour mobility options do make 'bad citizens.'
The Politics and Policy Attitudes of High Tech Workers
Gilad Be'ery1, Dmitry Epstein2, Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan3
1Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; 2Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; 3Federmann School of Public Policy and Governance, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
There is a growing interest in workers in information and communication technology occupations - the tech-workers - as an increasingly influential social group. On one hand, tech-workers are viewed as a distinct social group, dominated by young, educated, and affluent individuals, who are also mostly male. On the other hand, tech-workers are in a unique position of power. They are responsible for the design and maintenance of informational infrastructures of contemporary societies, and they increasingly leverage their position of affluence to influence the social, political, and economic aspects of both the communities they live in and the society at large. This paper will use the ESS data to shed light on this last point, striving to understand how political attitudes and policy preferences of tech-workers relate to those of other occupations.
Existing literature interrogating political attitudes and policy preferences of tech-workers tends to focus on the US and on specific, usually elite, subgroups within this occupation. A handful of projects have engaged with assessment of political orientations of tech-workers, characterising them as overall liberal, socially-critical, and anti-establishment. Even fewer projects engaged with assessing more focused policy preferences demonstrating liberal views on social issues, globalism and redistribution, while opposing government regulation. To the best of our knowledge, no literature so far has systematically engaged with the link between the value orientations of tech-workers and their political or policy preferences.
Using the ESS data, this project offers a tri-fold contribution to the literature. First, it ventures beyond the borders of the US and the Silicon Valley. Second, it examines tech-workers as a broad occupation group, not limited to elite subgroups of the industry. Finally, it interrogates the links between value orientations, political attitudes, and policy preferences using a unified theory of basic human values.
In our prior work, using the ESS data, we demonstrated how value orientations of tech-workers differ from those of the general population and other occupational elites, while recognizing the diversity of values among tech-workers. Building on this work we will further leverage the ESS strengths to engage with potential repercussions of our findings about values. First, the representative and geographically diverse dataset of five recent waves of the ESS (2012-2020), allows for a large-N analysis of a broad group of tech-workers. Second, detailed and standardised occupation data, allows comparisons both between tech workers and other occupational elites, as well as exploring heterogeneity within the group. Finally, the rich policy preferences data and the core module on values within the ESS enables investigating the link between the two. We plan on employing a set of hierarchical models as well a mediation analysis to interrogate those connections.
This work will engage with possible implications of political mobilisation of tech-workers for causes they support. Further, it will address potential “spillover” of politics into technology design and discuss the link between diversity in tech occupations and its social impact.
Trade union membership and stress at work
Daphne Nicolitsas
University of Crete, Greece
The decline in trade union membership in most European countries since the 1980s has been well-documented (see, inter alia, Vandaele, 2019; Visser, 2019). As for the reasons for the decline, the discussion usually puts the finger on aggregate developments (changes in the composition of economic activity, changes in the nature of the employment relationship, government policies etc).
The 1980s, the 1990s and the first half of the first decade of the 21st century were characterised, predominantly for the USA, but also for Europe from subdued macroeconomic volatility, the so-called Great Moderation (Hakkio, 2013). The decline in trade union membership during this period might thus not come as a big surprise. Since the most recent financial crisis, however, macroeconomic volatility has risen, income inequality is high, and the speed of technological developments is substantial. Furthermore, stress at work has increased; compare for example the percentage of employees who in the European Social Survey (ESS) report they agree strongly with the view that the job requires hard work in 2004 (16.1%) and in 2010 (20.4%) or those who report worrying very often about work issues when not at work in the same years (15.3% and 18.0% respectively).
Information on trade union membership is available in all rounds of the European Social Survey. We construct pseudo-panels by age, gender, and occupation within countries to investigate determinants of the change in membership. Furthermore, we use the two rounds (R2 and R5) for which more detailed information is available on the balance between work and family life to look at the association between stress at work and trade union membership. Is trade union membership low because stress is high and impossible to alter or is stress high because trade union membership is low? These issues are hard to tackle with a cross-sectional panel but through the information in the change in membership some light can be thrown to the matter.
References
- Hakkio, C.S. (2013). The Great Moderation 1982–2007. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-moderation
- Vandaele, K. (2019). Bleak prospects: mapping trade union membership in Europe since 2000. ETUI aisbl: Brussels
- Visser, J. (2019). “Can unions revitalize themselves?”, International Journal of Labour Research, 9 (1-2), 17-48.
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