Intergenerational social mobility and anti-system support: the journey matters

Seminal sociological works propose that a high level of social mobility within a society underpins democracy. The salience of this relationship is particularly poignant in contemporary politics. Fewer individuals are upwardly mobile and more downwardly mobile than in previous generations. There is now also a political outlet for dissatisfied voters, anti-system parties. I analyse the European Social Survey with diagonal reference models, which separate origin and destination effects from mobility effects. My findings show that one’s origins, measured by parental educational attainment, are an important predictor of anti-system right support. Mobile individuals with lower educated parents are more likely to vote for the anti-system right than their immobile counterparts. There is an additional mobility effect, upward social mobility reduces support for the anti-system right whereas downward mobility increases support. Contrastingly, anti-system left support derives from a wider cross-section of society, and there is no evidence that parental origin or social mobility is statistically significant. Finally, I show that origin effects are consistent across Western European countries

Doug Murray’s The ‘Nam: A Literary examination of the Traumatic Effects of War Told through Visual Literature

This thesis examines Marvel’s The ‘Nam comic series, written by Doug Murray, through the analytical lens of trauma studies. The paper looks at the early run of the comic series, and shows how the author of the comic book exposes the readers to the traumas of being a US Army infantry man serving in Vietnam. The third chapter explores how the draft and the young age of the soldiers played a role in their experience of trauma and how they reacted to it, while the fourth chapter explains how the traumas of war affected the soldiers during their time in war. The fifth chapter examines the use of the comic book as a medium and shows how the comic book was used to amerce the reader into the experiences of trauma that the young soldiers of the comic stories had to live through. Finally, the paper concludes with how comic books, specifically comics like The ‘Nam, can be used in education and as a tool to start a conversation about what it means to be a veteran of war

Intergenerational social mobility and the Brexit vote: how social origins and destinations divide Britain

To explain political divisions within British society, the current scholarship highlights the importance of the ‘winners’ and ‘left-behind’ of political economic transformations. Yet, the impact of widespread absolute intergenerational social mobility in the past half century, which resulted in socio-economic gains or losses for many, has not been systematically addressed. Our paper assesses how intergenerationally mobile voters’ position in the Brexit referendum differ from their non-mobile counterparts. We differentiate between the effects of social origins, social mobility, and destination position. To do so, we model data from Understanding Society with a Diagonal Reference Model. We show that origins are nearly as important as current socio-economic position for predicting the probability of voting to ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ in the Brexit referendum. We find that a first-generation graduate would be up to 10 percentage points less likely to vote ‘Remain’ than a graduate whose parents also went to university

Intergenerational social mobility and Brexit: one’s social origins are nearly as important as current socio-economic positions for predicting the probability of voting Leave or Remain

The political economic transformation of Britain has resulted in many individuals ‘winning’ through social mobility and others ‘missing out’. However, the effect of these gains and losses has not been assessed regarding voters’ position in the Brexit vote. Andrew McNeil and Charlotte Haberstroh show that the Brexit cleavage is influenced by both an individual’s social origin and destination position

Political implications of ‘green’ infrastructure in one’s ‘backyard’: the Green Party’s Catch 22?

A clean environment is a public good, with the benefits shared by all. While most individuals can agree on the need to implement green policies, we argue that the cost-benefit calculation is quite different depending on where one lives. Those individuals living in places where green infrastructure is infeasible, such as cities, can advocate for green technologies knowing that the chance of having to bear the cost of infrastructure in their ‘backyard’ is low. We test how the building of wind turbines and solar farms changes one’s political preferences in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. We use a difference-indifference design based on whether one’s area is designated for potential infrastructure in the future. We show that when the burden of ‘green’ infrastructure falls on voters, wind turbines or solar farms in one’s ‘backyard’, these local authorities vote less for the Green Party. Additionally, using individual level data from SOEP, we find that it is those individuals who previously voted Green who are the most likely to desert their party in the face of green infrastructure, rather than disincentivising potential ‘switchers’. We argue that this has profound implications for the move to ‘net zero’. Green parties face a Catch22 situation, the very policies that draw their support create a backlash when implemented

Improving Feedback In ASSISTments: Pedagogical Agents and Game-Like Elements

The ASSISTments system helps students learn by administering online assessments and assisting students in understanding the material. The feedback in the system can be improved by examining the mechanisms used in video games and interactive tutoring systems. With the use of game-like rewards, personalized textual feedback, and a pedagogical agent, ASSISTments can be made more engaging for students. This document outlines our iterative design process which we used to create a proposal for an improved student experience

Impact of Latency on The Player in Online Games

As online gaming grows in popularity, it becomes increasingly important to recognize and assess the impact of high latency on player performance and overall game satisfaction, as well as the efficacy of methods to deal with them. In this study, we created a system to test the impact of two popular latency compensation systems (time warp and prediction) at varying degrees of latency upon player performance and enjoyment of the game. It was found that both time warp and prediction improved player performance and that time warp was more effective than prediction

The long shadow of local decline: birthplace economic adversity and long-term individual outcomes in the UK

Does growing up in a high-economic adversity area matter for individual economic, cultural, and political views? Despite a significant focus upon the effect of birthplace on economic outcomes, there is less evidence on how local economic conditions at birth shape individual attitudes over the long-term. This paper links the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from English and Welsh respondents with historic localised information on unemployment, our measure of economic adversity. Our results, which control for composition effects, family background, and sorting of people across places, show that being born into a high-unemployment Local Authority has a significant, long-term impact on individuals. Birthplace matters beyond economic outcomes, as being born into a Local Authority of high unemployment makes individuals believe in more government intervention in jobs, less progressive on gender issues, and less likely to support the Conservative Party