Redrawing the Class Map : Stratification and Institutions in Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland

Have de-industrialization, expanding services and occupational upgrading put an end to class divisions? Drawing on extensive empirical research, this book adds new insights to the debate about the end of class and shows that Western European societies remain decidedly stratified with respect to material advantages and citizenship rights. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-8 Front Matter....Pages 9-9 Class Theorists and the Debate about the End of Class....Pages 11-26 Three Labour Market Trends and their Impact on the Employment Structure....Pages 27-39 Women, the Manual/Non-Manual Divide and the Working Class....Pages 40-50 Horizontal Divisions within the Middle Class....Pages 51-58 The Construction Logic of a New Class Schema....Pages 59-71 Front Matter....Pages 73-73 Operationalization of the New Class Schema....Pages 75-84 The Class Structure of Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland....Pages 85-93 The Distribution of Advantage within the Class Schema: Work Income and Promotion Prospects....Pages 94-106 Structural Divisions within the Class Schema: Firm Size, Public Sector Employment and Party Support....Pages 107-123 Collapsed Versions of the Detailed Class Schema....Pages 124-133 Front Matter....Pages 135-135 Introducing Institutions: the Concept of Institutional Embeddedness....Pages 137-143 Class Differences in Pension System Integration....Pages 144-159 Class Differences in Trade Union Membership....Pages 160-178 Class Differences in Political Citizenship and Electoral Participation....Pages 179-196 Cumulative Differences in Institutional Embeddedness....Pages 197-208 Concluding Summary....Pages 209-221 Back Matter....Pages 222-257 The question of how social stratification should be conceptualized in modern societies is a key question in sociology. The author shows that although Western European workforces remain decidedly stratified with respect to life chances, service sector expansion and occupational upgrading have profoundly altered the nature of stratification. Therefore, a new analytical framework is needed to grasp today's class structure. This is the aim of Redrawing the Class Map. It develops a novel class schema and presents a rich array of empirical findings about class differences in working conditions, gender relations, and party preferences. Moreover, the book offers new insight into class inequalities in the integration into institutions sucha as the welfare state, the trade union movement and the political system in contemporary Britain, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Written from a comparative perspective, the book makes a major contribution towards understanding employment stratification in Western Europe