shaped by the specific social and political history of the nation. Conversely, the European Union is not a state: it currently has no sovereign authority, apart from very limited prerogatives in specific areas such as immigration. And, while it has its own bureaucracy, its own staff and its own systems,12 its social policy is virtually non-existent. Its principal intervention, often with the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has been to demand reforms requiring ever greater flexibility on the part of European workers, particularly since the start of the crisis in 2008.
In fact, until now, there have been few studies of inequality that consider the issue in terms of class at the European level. Yet this is a frame of reference, and even of identification, that is increasingly important for the people of Europe. The existence of institutions that provide resources, of financial regulations, norms, regular electoral processes and recognised symbols (flags, anthem), mark it as a social and political space. Moreover, the European Union represents a huge market, within which the various member states maintain particularly strong economic relations: nearly two-thirds of the trade of EU countries is within the European Union.
On a more fundamental level, most of the contemporary socioeconomic changes are occurring at supranational level, from the managerial turn of states to political developments, from the transformation of cities to changes in the education system and the restructuring of industry.13 The circulation, localisation and specialisation of capital contribute to forming and shaping class relations in Europe as a whole: the French executive directors of Danone invest in land belonging to Polish farmers; German senior managers at vehicle manufacturer Audi employ and manage workers in factories in Belgium, Spain and Hungary; Romanian forestry workers come to work in French forests; Polish workers are seconded to subcontracting companies in the shipyards at Saint-Nazaire in France; and so on. Capitalism has become extensively Europeanised, and class relations along with it. National corporations remain important but there is a concentration process in the big economic and financial firms: according to foreign direct investment figures, European multinationals have greatly increased their foreign investment in the last two decades: from 10 per cent to 60 per cent of GDP in Europe.14 There are more and more firms operating across multiple European countries.
The economic strategies of large European companies thus play a major part in determining the morphology of social classes in different European countries. The acquisition of an MBA or a degree from a prestigious foreign university has now become an essential rite of passage for those aspiring to managerial posts within the economic elites; similarly, more and more company directors play up their professional experience in a multinational as a way of establishing their legitimacy.15 At the same time, the mobility of workers within the European Union has risen since the union was expanded to include countries from the former East.16 There are two particularly significant movements of labour: the first from Bulgaria and Romania to Spain and Italy, and the second from the countries of the former East to the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany. The substantial increase (over 45 per cent) in the number of posted workers in Europe between 2010 and 2014 is one illustration of this: today there are over two million of them in the European Union. In other words, class relations are experienced over the territory of Europe as a whole, not just at national level. Following the ‘no’ vote in the French and Dutch referendums of 2005, many interpreted the result as the revenge of the working class on the elite, in the context of a conflict that was now being played out on the European stage. The same was true of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom,17 even though, in some cases, the contribution of working-class voters to these great electoral jamborees was a refusal to participate.18 Behind what are often presented as oppositions between national identities lie political conflicts rooted in class divisions.
The few studies that exist of social class at the European level make little use of empirical data, and in the absence of statistical inquiry, ultimately make excessively abstract cases. One example is American sociologist Neil Fligstein, who, in his provocatively titled book Euro-Clash, argues that Europe can be split into three classes. At the top, he places a transnational elite of people who travel widely, speak several languages and identify themselves with the European project, from which they benefit both materially and culturally. In the middle there is a group of mainly middle-class citizens which is more sporadically connected with Europe, through either vacations, leisure (football, for example) or a professional occupation linked to the European economy. At the bottom there is a third, poorer group with a lower level of education, who speak only the language of their own country and do not consume cultural goods imported from other countries.19
Although it is only minimally based on the actual social position of individuals, Fligstein’s book thus invites us to think about class divisions at the European level. In fact, it is now possible to identify social groups precisely, using the large-scale European statistical surveys. The aim of the present study is to consider skilled manual workers, farmers or executives at the same level of detail over the whole of Europe. To what extent can similarity of social conditions outweigh the individual specificities of countries of residence? And, if national identity remains important, is it nevertheless possible to identify stronger European convergences between, for example, the elites in different countries than between the working and middle classes of any one country?
TRANSCENDING THE CLICHÉS OF NATIONAL DIFFERENCE
Arguing for an empirical sociology of social class in Europe means taking the opposite view from that disseminated by the European Commission, which remains anchored to a division along national boundaries. The commission, via Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), supervises the publication of data provided by national statistical bodies (rate of growth, percentage of national debt, etc.), and publishes data on the operation of job markets (levels of employment and unemployment) that tend to underscore national differences. For example, per capita income varies widely from one country to another: the highest, that of Luxembourg, is three times that of the lowest, Romania.20 But the lens through which the European Commission views these matters is often highly restrictive and distorting. It effectively serves to compare countries with one another, in order either to validate the idea that inequalities can only be described at national level, or to set states in competition with one another. Official sources sometimes use other criteria, such as levels of education, but this is usually for the purpose of contrasting the ‘good student’ countries with the ‘poor students’ of Europe. Reference to social class, on the other hand, or even to socio-economic groups, is never used as a marker. Who knows how many farmers, skilled manual workers, senior managers or CEOs there are in Europe? While state development in France and the United Kingdom is based on statistical accounting in terms of social groups,21 this frame of reference is totally absent at European level. The unemployment rate is a good example of this bias, with significant political import: by emphasising differences in unemployment rates between countries, the statistics published by European institutions highlight disparities in economic performance while masking inequality of exposure to unemployment between the working class and the dominant class.
During the crisis in the eurozone in the late 2000s, arguments that were centred on national differences, sometimes embellished with culturalist stereotypes, became increasingly powerful: on the one hand there were the countries stigmatised by the term PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) on the ground of their alleged inability to pay their national debt, suspected of being lazy, irresponsible and even corrupt; on the other were Germany and the countries
