Masculinity, Occupational Change, and Support for the Radical Right

This paper intends to bridge the gap in radical right literature between that which points significant support as emanating from particular occupations, and that which outlines the necessity of gender as an analytical lens in the field. While the former strand of work fails to incorporate gender beyond the use of binary variables in quantitative analyses, the latter shies away from socio-economic analysis. Both strands touch on interrelated aspects of declining 'social status' in explaining support for the radical right. As such, this paper outlines a 'social status framework' at the structural and individual level, considering occupational change as a source of change - integrating a gendered analysis to consider that post-industrial economic change has disproportionately impacted occupations that have historically employed white European men, and that although they remain in positions of hegemonic privilege, in relative terms, they have declined in the status structure. At the individual level, I contemplate that, whether changes are occurring ‘objectively’ to ‘male’ forms of work or not, it’s likely that men are more inclined to perceive ‘status threat’ in the first place - and to respond to this threat in politically distinct ways as a form of 'compensatory behaviour'. From here, I consider that it may not necessarily be negative economic change, or even fearing negative economic change that explains masculine support for the radical right - but that that the loss of relative economic status cuts to the core of one of the central tenets of masculine gender identity. This paper will use a Bourdieusian approach to constructing social 'space', which could be considered adjacent to our 'social status structure' in terms of class schema, performing multiple correspondence analysis and predicted probability modelling to investigate gender differentials in status perceptions and political behaviour at the structural and individual levels.