Mobility Interrupted: A New Framework for Understanding Anti-Left Sentiment Among Brazil’s “Once-Rising Poor”

Abstract

How do sequences of upward and downward socioeconomic mobility influence political views among those who have “risen” or “fallen” during periods of leftist governance? While existing studies identify a range of factors, long-term mobility trajectories have been largely unexplored. The question has particular salience in contemporary Brazil, where, after a decade of extraordinary poverty reduction on the watch of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT), a subsequent period of economic and political crises intensified anti-PT sentiment. This article uses original data from the 2016 Brazil’s Once-Rising Poor (BORP) Survey, using a 3-city sample of 822 poor and working-class Brazilians to analyze the relationship between retrospective assessments of prior socioeconomic mobility and anti-PT sentiment. The study found that people who reported a “stalled” mobility sequence (upward mobility followed by static or downward mobility) were more likely to harbor anti-left sentiment than other groups, as measured by this study’s anti-PT index.

Placing the peripheries within Brazil’s rightward turn: Socio-spatial transformation and electoral realignment, 2002–2018

“…In any case strong antipetismo seems to have been a minor component of support for Bolsonaro among lower-income voters (Nicolau, 2020). On the other hand, in a large survey study, Junge et al (2022), found that upwardly mobility poor Brazilians whose mobility was stalled during the economic crisis were more likely to express anti-left sentiment than those who had not experienced any mobility. This suggests that frustrated expectations and a sense that the PT favoured only the very poor, in particular welfare beneficiaries, may have played a key role in growing rejection of the Party among the “previously poor”.…”