Milieus, Generations and Political Change: Transformations of Political Orientations in Neoliberalism

• Applicant: Dr. Florian Buchmayr
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572502144

Political change is usually attributed to shifts in the attitudes within certain social groups, or viewed as the result of generational change. However, while socio-structural approaches often overlook the fact that political attitudes tend to remain relatively stable after they have been formed in youth, generational theories overlook social inequalities within birth cohorts and prematurely assume the existence of coherent generations. Therefore, the proposed research project combines concepts of inequality research and generational theory, focusing on the political orientations of different milieu generations - i.e. certain cohorts of certain social milieus. This enables us to understand how social change is processed within different social groups and is reflected in certain political orientations. The analyses will focus on the paradigm shift towards neoliberalism in three social milieus that are affected very differently by this transformation: the industrial working class (people performing physical work in the manufacturing industry); the cultural middle class (people with a lot of cultural capital working in social or cultural professions) and the economic middle class (people with a lot of economic capital working in business-related professions). Group discussions with different cohorts within these groups will be used to investigate whether subsequent generations within their respective milieus differ from older cohorts of their milieus in their political orientations and their relationship to neoliberalisation processes due to different historical socialisation conditions. The planned research project will thus make an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between social and political change.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants