Education has replaced wealth as the key determinant of class in European societies, and with it comes a new hierarchy. As a consequence, the lesser educated feel disenfranchised and less valued. This real change in our socioecology has led to education correlating with populism, nationalism and anti-immigration, as well as reinforcing withdrawal of the white working class with educational achievement. But if we understand the nuances, we can offer real solutions, writes Antony Manstead.

Politics and social class affect each other. It is no surprise that analysis of political attitudes over time shows that class can be very important. The classic left–right political dimension is associated with income, such that those with lower incomes are more in favor of redistribution and government intervention than are those with higher incomes.

However, since the 1990s a new political dimension has taken center stage, and this is associated with education rather than income: Lower educated people tend to support nationalist and anti-immigration parties, whereas higher educated people tend to support parties that emphasize ethnic tolerance and protection of the environment. With arecent parliamentary report in the UK highlighting the educational underachievement of the ‘white working class’, combined with much theorizing about the rise of populism and nationalism, we need a nuanced analysis of class and education more than ever.

Class is a construct with many different dimensions; by looking at just one, we are missing out on the real shifts occurring in our society.

Why are these two political dimensions related to different aspects of social class? As yet there is no definitive answer to this question, but we argue that changes in the socio-ecological context must have occurred in order for education to have taken on this role. Socio-ecology studies relationships between people and their environment, often the interdependence of people, collectives and institutions. Class is a construct with many different dimensions; by looking at just one, we are missing out on the real shifts occurring in our society.

The effects of education and income on social attitudes depend heavily on societal context. Both higher income and greater education usually result in higher social status: more educated people and richer people tend to place themselves higher on the social ladder. But in countries with highly educated populations, education determines social status independently of wealth - highly educated people consider themselves higher up the social ladder despite low incomes and less educated people feel stronger feelings of exclusion from society and less trust in their society’s institutions.

The US (the location for a lot of the psychological research on social class) has a relatively large proportion of highly educated people, but income and other factors tend to dominate social hierarchy, making education less important. In contrast, in European societies with a larger proportion of highly educated people, there is a stronger association between education and satisfaction with society, compared to societies with a lower proportion of higher educated people. In turn, satisfaction with society is strongly related to positive attitudes toward minorities and immigrants, and is negatively related to radical-right voting.

It seems that where education has become a dominant institution, lower educated people are more likely to be dissatisfied and to react with political extremism.