Precarity and political protest

How does precarity in the labour market affect political engagement? Considering the negative impact of unemployment and atypical employment on turnout, existing research suggests that precarity depresses political participation. However, participation through voting is dependent on supply-side factors and might be an insufficient indicator of engagement with politics. To improve our understanding of this matter, this article investigates the relationship between precarity and protest behaviour, as well as the moderating impact of individual and contextual factors on this relationship. The analysis relies on survey data from thirteen Western European democracies and on a novel operationalisation of precarity that, through the implementation of Bayesian inference techniques on EU-LFS data, allows the capturing of individuals' vulnerability in the labour market. The results reveal that precarity increases the propensity to protest, exposing the mobilisation potential of precarious workers and suggesting that the representation of this expanding social group might be beneficial for vote-maximizing parties.