this perspective, the central question for the analysis of the relationship between structure and action is whether social changes have made it easier to develop such social relationships and feelings of solidarity and of collective belonging, to identify specific interests and to promote related mobilization. The move toward capitalism did not only create aggregates of individuals joined together by the fact that they possessed the means of production (the capitalists) or their own labor force (the proletariat); it also created systems of social relationships which facilitated the development of an internal solidarity in these aggregates and their transformation into collective actors.
The working class was a central actor in the conflicts of the industrial society not only because of its size or the relevance of its economic function, but also as a consequence of a wider range of structural factors. In the Fordist factory, a large number of workers performed similar tasks within large productive units, where labor mobility was limited. These factors certainly facilitated identification of a specific social actor and reinforced internal cohesion. The concentration of the proletariat in large productive units and in urban areas produced dense networks in which a specific class identity developed along with a capacity for collective mass action (Thompson 1963; Calhoun 1982; Fantasia 1989; Urry 1995).
The bases of the industrial conflict have been weakened by modifications affecting the conditions described above. Within industry, the ways in which work is organized have changed. Automated technologies and small work groups have replaced the Fordist conveyor‐belt approach and the related mass‐worker model. Collective solidarity derived from the carrying out of the same duties has been weakened as a result. Starting in the 1980s, production began to move from large factories to smaller ones as corporations shifted production offshore and began to rely on suppliers to produce component parts of their products, rather than producing them themselves. This brought about a significant decentralization of production processes within a geographical area and led to the growth of the hidden and informal economy. Also the physical closeness of the factory and the neighborhoods inhabited by the working classes, which once represented a source of solidarity, is now broken (Lash and Urry 1987).
The importance of some productive sectors changed as well, with a noticeable decline in industrial work in favor of administrative and service occupations. Highly qualified work in the tertiary sector has grown throughout the world, creating a professional new middle class, which is very different from traditional clerical workers in industry or public bureaucracies. The change has affected both the private sector, with a marked increase in “producer services,” and the public sector, with a strong expansion of “social services” related to education, health, and social care (Castells 1996, p. 208–220).
The new middle class is, however, far from a homogeneous group; indeed, there appear to be considerable differences in terms of social rewards within it. The status of the new professionals is not always comparable with that of the traditional middle‐class professionals (lawyers, doctors, and so on). In the new producer service sector (such as advertising, marketing, communications) precarious and low‐paid forms of work are fairly widespread and constitute marked discrepancies between the cultural capital which individuals have at their disposal, and the recognition – in terms of earnings as well as of social prestige – which is obtained from these.
Unemployment also increased in many countries, and came to be considered as a structural feature of capitalist economies. The relationship between the employed and the unemployed has also changed, in more general terms: entry into the labor market is delayed more and more, excessively prolonging a nonadult lifestyle; increasingly fewer sectors of the population can count on stable and protected forms of work. If it is difficult to determine effectively the level of unemployment, and its structural determinants, in developed countries, it is safe to state that the incidence of precarious and temporary work has risen enormously (della Porta, Andretta et al. 2016). Growing inequalities emerge not only between the North and the South (Franzini and Pianta 2017), but also within the North, even in the most modern global cities (see Sassen 2000).
Poverty is also more and more widespread. In general, socioeconomic indicators converge in pointing at the increasing misery. Research has stigmatized the extreme level of deprivation in recent times. In her book on Expulsions, Saskia Sassen has singled out an emergent systemic trend that allowed for extreme concentration of wealth and rapidly increasing inequalities, with the development of “predatory formations” as “a mix of elites and systemic capacities with finance a key enabler, that push toward acute concentration” (2014, p. 13). She points indeed at the exceptionally high profit‐making capacity of some service industries also through new technologies that facilitates hypermobility. The degrading of the welfare state project so brings about “a shrunken space with relatively fewer firms, fewer workers, and fewer consumer households, all indicators of a system gearing toward expelling what does not fit in its evolving logic” (Sassen 2014, p. 217). As Thomas Piketty (2014) recalled, today’s unequal distribution of wealth is similar to that of the end of the late nineteenth century, as the capital rate return is greater than the economic growth. This inequality in turns produces social and political instability with often dramatic existential effects of inequalities in terms of disruption of everyday life (Therborn 2013).
Together with wars and predation, demographic pressure have triggered significant migrations toward the stronger economies, promoting the expansion in Western societies but also in some area in the Global South of a subproletariat with a strong ethnic character (Castells 1996, Chapter 4, especially 233–234). While by no means a new phenomenon (Olzak 1992), the scale of migrations toward the end of the twentieth century has certainly increased the potential for racial conflicts within Western democracies and has been used for a resurgence of extreme right groups. Mobilization around migration have been influenced not only by sheer number but also by changing migrant groups, with growing concerns about the religious diversity:
These structural changes in the size and diversity of the immigrant population may have two consequences. On the one hand, they might increase the likelihood to observe the rise of migrants’ mobilizations, all other things being equal. On the other hand, they might also increase the likelihood that other actors—especially anti‐migrant ones—might mobilize, either verbally or physically.
(Eggert and Giugni 2015, p. 161)
Solidarity movements have in fact interacted with the collective mobilization of migrants themselves (della Porta 2018c).
Religion also assumes a public role. Challenging the vision of secularization as an unbroken trend, researcher pointed at de‐secularization (Berger 1999) or de‐privatization of religion (Casanova 2001) with the
reappearance of religion as a contentious issue in the public sphere and as a source of political protest and activism in many parts of the world in the last two decades of the twentieth century… … Empirically this religious revivalism has been associated with diverse phenomena ranging from the Iranian revolution to terrorism associated with al‐Qaeda, Pope John Paul II’s support to the Solidarity movement in Poland, Catholic liberation theology in Latin America, Protestant fundamentalism in the United States, and outbursts of violence within new religious movements.
(Lindekilde and Kuhle 2015, p. 173)
The influence of religious groups has increased face to the retrenchment of social services as “With the pressure on welfare states and the challenges posed by ethnic and religious diversity, states are likely to be more rather than less eager to engage religious communities in providing welfare and countering alleged threats to social cohesion caused by “radicalization” (Lindekilde and Kuhle 2015, p. 176). Face to globalization and migration, with experiences of loss of cultural identity, cultural religious views (such as Salafism or Christian Evangelicalism) have provided for oppositional
