The Impact of Class Identity on New Divides in Class Politics in Britain

过去，具有强烈工人阶级认同感的人持有相对左翼的态度，并强烈投票支持工党。现在，认同为工人阶级的选民更有可能持有反移民态度，许多人投票支持英国独立党和英国退欧。这种变化是如何以及为何发生的，有多少是由于人们对工党或其政策失去了信心，有多少是因为人们认为移民带来的经济或文化威胁越来越大，这在现代英国政治和社会以及美国和法国等其他国家都是一个令人着迷的谜题--在美国和法国等其他国家，类似的趋势已经出现，并导致右翼民粹主义抬头。这个项目将考察这些发展在多大程度上是基于客观的社会阶层和经济环境，以及它们在多大程度上是由于阶级认同的影响。有人声称，阶级对英国投票行为的影响正在下降。然而，尽管社会变革对我们的阶级制度产生了重大影响，但阶级认同仍然很强。现在，社会学家分配的客观社会阶层与个人自我报告的阶级认同之间的匹配较少。然而，对于这一鸿沟及其对现代英国投票行为的影响，以及它与相对威权的白人工人阶级和更自由的毕业中产阶级之间日益扩大的文化鸿沟之间的关系，缺乏研究，围绕英国退欧的辩论尤其突显了这一点。这个项目旨在通过探索主观社会阶层对投票行为的影响，以及这种影响如何与社会阶层的客观分类相关联来改变这一点。英国提供了一个特别有趣的案例来分析这一点，这既是因为最近的政治事态发展，也是因为可以获得丰富的历史数据。我将利用这一点来研究英国阶级政治中这些不断变化的分歧是如何受到政党在其呈现的社会和政治线索中的行动以及近年来重大政治事件的影响的，我将用单独的文章探索这种分歧是如何围绕苏格兰独立和欧盟成员国身份的公投产生的。如果在这些领域发现主观阶级和客观阶级的影响明显不同，这将对民意调查产生重大影响，我们对社会阶层如何影响现代英国政治的看法，并有助于关于身份在政治中的重要性的辩论。为了探索阶级政治中的这种新分歧，以及自我认同的社会阶层在其形成中所扮演的不同角色，本项目将包含五篇相关文章，探讨新的阶级政治分歧的不同方面，以及政党的行为和政治事件如何塑造新的阶级政治分歧。将这些文章综合在一起将是三个核心研究问题：1.阶级投票相对于客观和主观阶层以及与之密切相关的变量(如教育、收入和就业部门)是如何变化的？2.主观社会阶层如何影响英国的投票行为？3.主观社会阶层对英国投票行为的影响与职业定义的社会阶层的影响有何关系？

It used to be that people with strong working class identities held relatively left wing attitudes and voted strongly for the Labour Party. Now, voters who identify as working class are more likely to hold anti-immigrant attitudes and many voted for UKIP and Brexit. How and why this change has occurred, how much of it is due to a loss of faith in the Labour Party or its policies and how much is due to a rising perceived economic or cultural threat from immigration presents a fascinating puzzle in modern British politics and society - and in other countries such as the US and France where similar trends have occurred and led to a growth in right-wing populism. This project will examine how much these developments are based in objective social class and economic circumstances and how much they are due to the influence of class identities.It has been claimed that class is declining as an influence on voting behaviour in Britain. However class identities remain strong even though social change has had significant impacts on our class system. There is now less match-up between objective social class as assigned by sociologists and individuals' self-reported class identity. Yet there is a lack of research exploring this divide, its consequences for voting behaviour in modern Britain and how it relates to the rising cultural divide between a relatively authoritarian white working class and a more liberal graduate middle class which has been particularly highlighted by the debate around Brexit. This project aims to change that by exploring the effects of subjective social class on voting behaviour, and how this relates to objective classifications of social class. Britain presents a particularly interesting case in which to analyse this due both to recent political developments and the excellent rich historical data available. I will use this to look at how these changing divides in class politics in Britain are shaped by the actions of political parties in the social and political cues they present and by major political events in recent years, with individual articles exploring how this divide has played out around the referenda on Scottish independence and EU membership. If the effects of subjective class are found to be notably different to objective class in these areas this would have significant consequences for opinion polling, our perceptions of how social class influences modern British politics and contribute to the debate on the importance of identity in politics.In order to explore this new divide in class politics and the extent to which self-identified social class now plays a different role to objective class in its formation, this project will contain five related articles looking at different aspects of the new class politics divide and how it is shaped by the actions of political parties and by political events. Drawing together these articles will be three central research questions:1. How is class voting changing with respect to objective and subjective class and strongly related variables such as education, income and employment sector?2. How does subjective social class influence voting behaviour in the UK?3. How does the influence of subjective social class on voting behaviour in the UK relate to the influence of social class as defined by occupation?