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Article
Mobility Interrupted: A New Framework for Understanding Anti-Left Sentiment Among Brazil’s “Once-Rising Poor”
Latin American Politics and Society
  • Benjamin Junge, SUNY New Paltz
  • Sean T. Mitchell, Rutgers University - Newark
  • Charles H. Klein, Portland State University
  • Matthew Spearly, Ohio State University - Main Campus
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2022
Subjects
  • Political movements -- Brazil,
  • Politics and government -- Brazil,
  • Social change -- Brazil
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.

Rights

© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the University of Miami


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.

DOI
10.1017/lap.2022.46
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39210
Citation Information
Junge, B., Mitchell, S. T., Klein, C. H., & Spearly, M. (2022). Mobility Interrupted: A New Framework for Understanding Anti-Left Sentiment Among Brazil’s “Once-Rising Poor”. Latin American Politics and Society, 1-30.