Social Polarisation at the Local Level: A Four-Town Comparative Study on the Challenges of Politicising Inequality in Britain

Abstract

This article examines how intensifying inequality in the UK plays out at a local level, in order to bring out the varied ways polarisation takes place ‘on the ground’. It brings a community analysis buttressed by quantitative framing to the study of economic, spatial and relational polarisation in four towns in the UK. We distinguish differing dynamics of ‘elite-based’ polarisation (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and ‘poverty-based’ polarisation (in Margate and Oldham). Yet there are also common features. Across the towns, marginalised communities express a sense of local belonging. But tensions between social groups also remain strong and all towns are marked by a weak or ‘squeezed middle’. We argue that the weakness of intermediary institutions, including but not limited to the ‘missing middle’, and capable of bridging gaps between various social groups, provides a major insight into both the obstacles to, and potential solutions for, re-politicising inequality today.

Engineering the middle classes: State institutions and the aspirations of citizenship

“…Similarly, neoliberalising tendencies have in effect, in many places, shifted the terms of the state–citizen relation to one of provider–consumer (Anand, 2012) or facilitator–entrepreneur (Vicol, 2020). This ‘squeezed middle’ is then often described as the driving force of resurgent populism and nationalism, across the global North (Kalb, 2019; Koch et al, 2021) and increasingly also in the global South (for example in India and Brazil). Moreover, there is often a racial dimension to this aspect of class stratification, based on selective inclusion and exclusion, which remains underplayed or unacknowledged in official state policy, as in these cited examples (see also Bhambra, 2017; Krishna, 2015), and that presents a more complicated picture in some of the cases in this special issue, like in Bolivia, Mozambique and South Africa (Bolt, 2022; Schubert, 2022; Sheild Johansson, 2022 – all in this issue).…”

Dialectic of Fear: Centre-Liberal Media Discourse on Gender, LGBTQIA+ and Abortion in Contemporary Poland

“…The case of Trump's elections shows not only that the way discourse is shaped and reproduced affects our thinking, but also how discourse can be used (both deliberately and involuntarily) to deepen polarisation and radicalization within society. As many scholars have pointed out, we live in the age of major polarisation, especially in the wide sphere of politics (see Şen 2019;Koch et al 2020). Polarisation is rightfully pictured as something we should be afraid of as it divides people, bringing us back to the dialectic of fear.…”