Middle class' perceptions and evaluations of institutional incomplementarities in the employment system, labour market, social policy and firm-internal pay schemes

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Holger Lengfeld
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 261271965

Hereby I request an extension of an expiring project about the subjective status insecurity of the middle class. Its leading assumption is that the middle class reacts especially sensitive to objective threats to their status that are caused by institutional changes in the labour market, in social policy, and in firm-internal pay schemes. To test this thesis, we have conducted a computer-assisted web survey among 3.262 individuals that are part of the labour force. As part of this, we have developed three innovative measurement tools: an index for measuring subjective status insecurity, scenarios with indirect modelling of behavioural consequences, and a quasi-experimental vignette design to measure ideas about re-complementarisation. Our most important result is that members of the middle class react to the quasi-experimentally modelled threat to status with higher status insecurity than members of the upper and lower classes. These preliminary findings support the thesis of a particular sensitivity of the middle class. At the same time, we find clues that the respondents see the combination of an open labour market and high social security in the case of unemployment as functionally equivalent to the institutional status quo.During the extension phase, we want to deepen the analyses of the connection between an objective threat to status, subjective status insecurity, and social stratification. We particularly want to test how volatile or persistent status insecurity is over time and how changes in the institutional and household-specific context affect this. For this, we want to use data from a follow-up survey in which 73 percent of the respondents from the first wave participated. This second wave was not intended in the original project design. It is the result of a change in the mode of our survey from a telephone to an online survey due to methodological reasons. This follow-up survey offers us the major opportunity to examine the effect of changes in the employment context on feelings of insecurity.In addition, we want to analyse if the successful coping with a status-threatening event in the past can contribute to the development of resilience towards status insecurity in individuals. Finally, we want to determine in what way ideas about re-complementarisation in the field of labour market and social policy can be traced back to certain ideas of justice, and if the inclusion of an individual in social networks can reduce or even increase status insecurity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants