"Diese Sache ist ein Witz." Wie junge Angehörige der US-amerikanischen Arbeiterklasse Politik in Zeiten von Misstrauen und Isolation interpretieren; "This Thing Is a Joke": How Working-Class Young Americans Make Meaning out of Politics in an Era of Distrust and Isolation

In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie: KZfSS, Band 75, Heft S1, S. 259-281

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines how working-class young adults construct their political identities in the wake of the decline of mediating institutions such as stable work, unions, nuclear family structures, and religion. The transition to adulthood has become deinstitutionalized as leaving home, finishing school, finding a good job, and getting married and having children seem increasingly out of reach for contemporary young adults. In the absence of institutionalized rites of passage, respondents must create, within their constraints, the story or narrative in terms of which their lives make sense. Through in-depth interviews with young working-class residents of a declining coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania, I trace how young adults construct narratives that make connections between economic decline, emotional despair, and political realignment. While working-class young adults may inherit political beliefs from their parents, growing up in a time of economic precarity and social division has the potential to disrupt older allegiances and prompt the creation of new identities and social solidarities. I demonstrate how individual strategies for managing suffering organize the young working-class self in ways that justify disengagement from conventional politics and a turn toward self-help and conspiracy theories. I also explore differences within the sample by racial identity and gender identity, tracing how different histories of oppression and differing expectations of moral self-worth possibly contribute to the political realm.