Mobility Interrupted: A New Framework for Understanding Anti-Left Sentiment Among Brazil’s “Once-Rising Poor”

• Published in: Latin American politics and society 2023-05, Vol.65 (2), p.1-30
• Main Authors: Junge, Benjamin, Mitchell, Sean T., Klein, Charles H., Spearly, Matthew
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attitudes; Beneficiaries; Economic crisis; Economic growth; Governance; Income distribution; Inequality; Left wing politics; Liberalism; Low income groups; Macroeconomics; Middle class; Mobility; Political crises; Politics; Poverty; Presidential elections; Public services; Rousseff, Dilma; Sequences; Social mobility; Working class
• ISSN: 1531-426X; 1548-2456
• DOI: 10.1017/lap.2022.46

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.