Intergenerational social mobility and anti-system support: the journey matters

Seminal sociological works propose that a high level of social mobility within a society underpins democracy. The salience of this relationship is particularly poignant in contemporary politics. Fewer individuals are upwardly mobile and more downwardly mobile than in previous generations. There is now also a political outlet for dissatisfied voters, anti-system parties. I analyse the European Social Survey with diagonal reference models, which separate origin and destination effects from mobility effects. My findings show that one’s origins, measured by parental educational attainment, are an important predictor of anti-system right support. Mobile individuals with lower educated parents are more likely to vote for the anti-system right than their immobile counterparts. There is an additional mobility effect, upward social mobility reduces support for the anti-system right whereas downward mobility increases support. Contrastingly, anti-system left support derives from a wider cross-section of society, and there is no evidence that parental origin or social mobility is statistically significant. Finally, I show that origin effects are consistent across Western European countries.