– some highly qualified and others less so – and those working in “protective services” (the police, the army, civil protection organizations, and the like). Even the wave of anti‐austerity protests have been interpreted as “middle class” phenomena. In fact, mobilizations have been presented by some observers as a manifestation of “a new middle‐class politics – democratic, environmentalist – whose global import is predicted to grow” (Yörük and Yüksel 2014, p. 103).
The awareness of the various components of the new middle class and the critical evaluation of their impact on political participation, alongside that of those belonging to the traditional classes (the old middle class and the working class), help to interpret more accurately the relationship between class condition and (new) forms of participation. Analysis of environmentalist militancy (Cotgrove and Duff 1980; Jamison, Eyerman, and Cramer 1990; Dalton 1994, Chapter 5; Diani 1995) noted that those filling the highest positions in groups engaged in this kind of activity were not only highly educated and – in the broadest sense – members of the middle class, but also brought specific competences to bear on the work of the group. Analyses of the link between individual class location and political behavior have certainly brought to light a series of relevant characteristics of new forms of political participation. They have, in particular, provided important information about old and new social movement activists and sympathizers. In doing so, however, they have postulated a direct link between the structural position of individuals and collective action that is by no means clear‐cut. In fact, while it is possible to look at classes as aggregates of subjects who occupy analogous positions in the system of social stratification, in terms of the resources they control, the prestige they enjoy, and their social opportunities, this is not necessarily an appropriate strategy when dealing with the problem of collective action.
Alternatively, it is advisable to analyze classes as collective actors with a specific identity and self‐awareness, linked to other social groups by relationships of a cooperative or conflicting nature. In this perspective, class exists only in circumstances where people mutually recognize and are recognized as part of a distinctive social group, if specific interests and solidarity between the occupants of particular social positions have been identified, and if, on this basis, specific forms of collective action are to be promoted (Thompson 1963; Tilly 1978; Touraine 1981).
Conditions favoring the return of various forms of status politics seem to have been reproduced. In these, the central role is taken by social groups brought together by certain levels of prestige and specific moral codes (Turner 1988; Eder 1993). Telling against the more structural version of the middle‐class thesis, the attention paid by the middle class to its own group identity and positioning is certainly not a characteristic exclusive to recent mobilizations (Calhoun 1993). As the historical experience of the anti‐alcohol movement reminds us (Gusfield 1963), the middle class has distinguished itself over time by its continual attention to moral codes, socially acceptable rules of conduct, and principles defining the “good life.”
Reasons for this attitude are to be found in the historically ambiguous positioning of the middle classes between the industrial bourgeoisie and the working class. Indeed, the petite bourgeoisie came to focus on symbolic production and on the defense of its own social status as a result of its uncertain place in the class system. For similar reasons, they may have felt the need to differentiate themselves from the principal social groups, and particularly from those – the industrial proletariat, throughout the twentieth century – that most closely threatened their prestige (Turner 1994; Calhoun 1993; Eder 1993, 1995). At the same time, there are reasons to argue that substantial differences separate many recent examples of lifestyle politics from the traditional version of status politics. As Featherstone (1987) noted, reference to values and lifestyles does not necessarily characterize distinctive groups with specific identities and long‐established structures. Actors involved in collective action may actually share little, apart from the common reference to a given set of values and preferences.
The relationship between new middle class and working class is not any clearer, nor has it been the subject of massive in‐depth investigation. In the case of the Netherlands study by Kriesi, it seems, for example, that even belonging to the working class could facilitate mobilization in new movements, particularly as far as younger people are concerned. Thus, there would appear to be at least a partial convergence in the new movements of those social groups which were already particularly active in “historical” opposition movements: there is a certain continuity, in other words, between “old” and “new” forms of class opposition. Also in the global justice movement, a heterogeneous social base has been highlighted as an innovative feature or an enhancement by comparison to movements of the past (Andretta et al. 2003).
In sum, there is no evidence that the material and redistributive dimension has lost all significance in conflicts in which contemporary, nonworking‐class movements are protagonists. For example, mobilizations for the development of collective services in urban areas and for urban renewal have certainly been determined by powerful concerns with collective and nonmaterial goods, such as those associated with the quality of life. However, they have also focused on the redistribution of material resources, placing the social groups most penalized by transformations in industrial activity and by processes of urban renewal in opposition to economic groups that were the protagonists and promoters of these processes (Castells 1977). These struggles have often seen the emergence of new alliances between working‐class and community groups (Brecher and Costello 1990). Furthermore, forms of collective action have emerged based on conditions of particular unease, concerned, for example, with the struggle against “new poverties.” Movements and mobilizations of homeless people have developed (Cress and Snow 1996); initiatives supporting the unemployed and marginal groups have sprung up everywhere, often in close collaboration with the voluntary sector (Bagguley 1991). In all these cases, the conflict has been concerned, once again, not only with a general notion of the quality of life, but with the allocation of material rewards among different social groups. Attention to social justice and material conditions (such as poverty) has become – as often mentioned – central in the recent wave of protest against neoliberal globalization.
2.4.3 Labor and Protest
Research on labor movements has also focused for long on its weakening, at least at the core of the capitalist world (see also Chapter 8). If the decline of strike activities could be interpreted as a sign of institutionalization of the industrial relations and depoliticization of the industrial conflicts, especially since the 1990s, the decline in union membership has been quoted as an indicator of an unavoidable crisis of the labor movement. Also in the service sector, a fragmented social base is hard to organize, especially with the growing flexibilization of the labor market and the connected increasing insecurity. And the more and more numerous unemployed and migrants were also difficult to mobilize.
At the beginning of the new millennium, however, conflict on labor issues again seems to be on the rise, although in new forms of anti‐austerity protests, as workers have organized in the South, where unions often increased their membership (Norris 2002, pp. 173 ff.) and grassroots networks linked workers transnationally (Moody 1997). New grassroots unions emerged (see below), and traditional unions started to invest more on the mobilization of the workers – for instance, the AFL‐CIO started to invest as much as 30% of their budget in organizing (as opposed to the usual 5%) (Fantasia and Stepan‐Norris 2004, p. 570). While labor demobilized in the private sector, in the public sector workers voiced their opposition to neoliberal reforms that cut social services (Eckstein 2001). As Piven and Cloward (2000) noticed, in the United States there has been a return to old forms of secondary action such as community boycotts, sympathy strikes, and general strikes. In France (but also in Italy and Spain) the turn of the millennium has been characterized by general strikes against pension reform, privatization of public services, cuts in public health and education. In these actions, the trade unions were joined by various movements, bridging labor issues with global justice, defense of the environment, peace, and gender equality. The claims voiced during anti‐austerity protests were oriented at the defense of those rights, which had developed in