Have to read them through more carefully when I have more time. Not many comments though? Would be nice to see some discussion here.

Actually I got the link to your blog from Homma forum

We are experiencing interesting times. Every other moment I feel quite disappointed in my nation and all the racism that exists. Every other moment I feel things are, dispite of Persut, going forward and towards a better direction, more acceptance of difference etc. Let’s see. I guess we just have to get more active each of us in this fight against intolerance and conservatism.

My point was that in the case of RRP supporters we see a strong reference to a “perceived precariousness” which may or may not overlap with effective precariousness. Take for instance the city dwellers in a rather well-off neighbourhood in a city with a migrant population who need not experience precariousness as an effect of globalization processes per se (temporary job contracts, unemployment, higher social costs, immigrant infractionality) but they may have “perceived” themselves as victims of precariousness and as such end up in the reassuring arms of RRP politicians.

And Jan, well this is the puzzling part I must admit. While sections of the proletariat do experience precariousness firsthand, the RRP parties gather votes also from those who see themselves threatened by a possible condition of precarity that may arise in the not so distant future. So perhaps you are right, insecurity is culturally loaded and politically exploited by these parties. I do research on the parties themselves, but at times I am surprised by the heterogeneity of those who vote for them.

What you hint at with ‘perceived precariousness’, it seems to me, is that insecurity has become and is mediated as a broader cultural experience. The ideas that articulate a sense of loss have appeal across classes or socio-economic backgrounds, not only to those who actually have lost out or face a material risk of doing so. Indeed, quite a few of the new populisms that I can think of, the various Europhobic movements in Britain or the new illiberal-liberal Islamophobia all across Europe, can draw on cross-class support and quite significant support among socio-economic and intellectual ‘elites’. So if the notion of precariousness can still play a role in explaining this stuff, wouldn’t it be necessary to look at how ideas of insecurity and decline really capture the imagination of various audiences, rather than just speaking to some populations that we define as particularly ‘vulnerable’ to those ideas? Looking at the relevant movements, wouldn’t this make more empirical sense? So I suppose this would mean paying attention to ideas and to the way insecurity and precariousness have become fairly pervasive cultural experiences, not matter what socio-economic position you look at.

I guess it depends on what it means, as to whether it helps describe the RRP’s voter base. I had always supposed that the precariat I see in Finland for example would be core Green voters.