The working and middle classes swapped sides on globalization and nationalism

Evidence

While social democrats classically had an industrial working class and middle class to work with, left populists could assume neither of these two groups. Instead, the deindustrialization and ensuing crisis of civil society of the 1980s opened a void between citizens and states, while radically decoupling Western elites from their own societies. Working-class people in particular stopped voting and abandoned political parties. These groups’ respective political attitudes also shifted significantly. While an internationally oriented working class had faced a nationalist middle class throughout the twentieth century, these categories had now switched sides: the working class became tied to national welfare states, while the middle class looked for the benefits in globalization. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 23

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: empirical evidence and timing for the claim that a formerly internationalist working class turned nationally welfare-bound while the middle class globalized.
• XREF: connects to: Labor and capital blamed immigrants from opposite class directions in a dividing society — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 293; Nationalism answers an existential belonging deficit that capitalism creates — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2047; The working and middle classes traded their internationalist-nationalist orientations during the twentieth century. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 23

Broader Connections

• Labor and capital blamed immigrants from opposite class directions in a dividing society #epitomizes (0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 293