Social Class in Europe. Étienne Penissat

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      Key: Darker grey countries indicate a proportion of the working class in work greater than the EU mean; lighter grey indicates a proportion less than the EU mean. On average the working class represents 43 per cent of employed people, aged twenty-five to sixty-five, in Europe, EU 27 (excluding Malta). Source: LFS 2014.

      In Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Portugal and particularly in Greece, a significant proportion of the working class works in agriculture, which remains low intensity. The basic type of farm is centred on the family unit and self-sufficiency: in Poland, these farms occupy 16 per cent of the cultivated land and employ 30 per cent of the agricultural workforce;¹³ the proportions are very similar in Romania. In Spain, the agricultural sector still employs a large workforce – smaller nevertheless than in the former socialist countries – but in very different circumstances: it is highly dependent on immigrant labour, working on large mixed farms. In addition, temporary employment agencies in Spain provide the services of contract workers from Latin America and North Africa to farmers operating in other European countries, such as France. These workers are in principle affiliated to the Spanish social-welfare system, but in practice have no access to healthcare, and the company deducts from their wages the cost of travel between Spain and the countries where they work.¹⁴

      In the countries of the former communist bloc, the transition to a market economy has often been brutal. It was accompanied by a rise in inequality throughout the 1990s and 2000s, to the advantage of a small minority usually concentrated in the capitals or the major cities. In some countries, such as the Czech Republic, the working class has, however, been relatively protected by the state during the transition from a planned economy to liberalism. Moreover, the Czech government encouraged the establishment of new industries, for example in the automotive sector where Škoda – the Soviet-era carmaker of Czechoslovakia – was bought by Volkswagen. This kind of change results in major disruption for suppliers: the parts manufacturer Valéo chose to end production in Spain because Volkswagen had relocated its Spanish plants to Slovakia, while at the same time the Czech Republic had supported the development of a network of subcontractors capable of collaborating closely with German constructors and parts manufacturers. However, the long-term unemployed and pensioners were less protected from the effects of the transition followed by the crisis.

      Elsewhere, in all of the countries of the southern and eastern periphery, the working class was particularly badly hit by the 2008 financial and economic crisis. In the South this resulted in a huge rise in unemployment, particularly among young people, and increasing job insecurity. The result has been a resurgence in undeclared work, the level of which is probably much higher than elsewhere in Europe.¹⁵ The former countries of the East and the Baltic states have also paid a heavy price for the crisis, which first took the form of a sharp increase in unemployment (except in the Czech Republic). Unemployment has fallen since 2011, although youth unemployment remains high in Poland, Romania and Slovakia. In the Baltic countries, many workers have had to combine two jobs, while in Poland and Slovenia the number of short-term contracts has risen sharply.¹⁶ However, in this region of Europe adjustment to the crisis has principally taken the form of powerful wage restraint, with levels of low pay, and hence of poverty among workers, that are the highest in Europe.

      Overall, this first group of countries of the southern and eastern periphery of Europe comprises, on one hand, the winners from liberalisation of the economy, who hold the monopoly on most of the economic, cultural and social resources, and, on the other, the large working class, who often survive by means of small underpaid jobs, meeting their daily needs through informal exchange networks of family and friends.

       The working class: destination for migrants

      The working class in Europe is also characterised by the high proportion of immigrants among its numbers: it absorbs many more foreigners than all other social groups (Table 2). Contrary to popular belief, this represents the continuation of an age-old process, originating in the Middle Ages and tightly bound up with the development of capitalism and the wage system.¹⁷

Table 2. Non-European Foreigners among the European Working Class

      Source: LFS 2014. Population: People in work aged between twenty-five and sixty-five, EU 27 (excluding Malta).

      Far from being confined to the richer countries, recourse to migrant workers is also common in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In Czech industry, for example, local employers called on foreign labour before the 2008 crisis, in order to meet labour shortages and particularly to counter the wage demands of workers in the large international firms such as Škoda (motor vehicles, Volkswagen group) and Foxconn (a Taiwanese electronics corporation). Usually working in unskilled sectors, immigrants are also more at risk of unemployment throughout Europe.

      These results shed a different light on the discourse among European leaders about the dangers of xenophobia emerging from the ‘lower levels’ of society: unlike the dominant class, which is so ready to promote transnational mobility and tolerance of others, the working class is in fact much more mixed and mingled than all other social groups. The increase in cross-national marriages in Spain in the last fifteen years confirms this: the least skilled workers are the Spanish people most likely to marry a non-European foreigner, usually from Latin America, or a migrant from Central or Eastern Europe.¹⁸

      In a period of crisis, this greater openness nevertheless manifests in competition on the labour market, leading to more powerful tensions СКАЧАТЬ