A Right To Explain, A Qualitative Study On The Receptiveness Of Flemish Workers To The Extreme Right

Abstract

In this paper we will look at evidence from qualitative interviews with Flemish workers to explore possible links between experienced changes in their working environment and their receptiveness to (the ideas of) the extreme right. In doing so, we attempt to go beyond election research, which narrows down the concept of ‘receptiveness to the extreme right’ to voting behaviour only. We broaden this scope by looking at elements of how people become receptive to extreme right-wing ideas, possibly as a reaction to experienced adverse changes in their working life. For this purpose we interviewed people who feel threatened in their working life because of recent worldwide economic changes or people who have experienced an actual decline in their socio-economic and professional situation. We chose (the threat of) decline because we thought decline might evoke the ’clearest‘ reactions. We further interviewed both people who were receptive to the extreme right and people who were not. This design enabled us to look for possible schemes of interpretation that people use to make sense, socially and politically, of the changes they experience in their everyday working life. A right to explain A qualitative study on the receptiveness of Flemish workers to the extreme right