Paul COPELAND

Professor in Public Policy, Queen Mary University, London

The age of insecurity

Lorenza Antonucci
Insecurity Politics: How Unstable Lives Lead to Populist Support
Princeton University Press, 2026

I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, a former industrial city in the UK’s West Midlands. When Margaret Thatcher closed the coal mines in the 1980s, the fortunes and pride of the city plummeted further, as the pottery industry – once the ceramics capital of the world – was exposed to the aggressive forces of neoliberalism. Much of this decline continued under New Labour after 1997, while the austerity policies of the post 2010 period turned fear into a more enduring sense of hopelessness: that Stoke-on-Trent was both beyond saving and largely ignored by the mainstream parties.

Herein lies a potted history of why populist political movements, including the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU in which Stoke-on-Trent voted 69 per cent to leave, have been on the rise across much of Europe. A version of Stoke-on-Trent’s malaise can be found in countless places across the continent, including Montesilvano in Italy, where Lorenza Antonucci, author of Insecurity Politics: How Unstable Lives Lead to Populist Support, also spent the first 18 years of her life. The populist turn across Europe is often explained as a consequence of the dissatisfaction of the ‘left behind’ in places such as Stoke-on-Trent and Montesilvano. But the story, Antonucci convincingly argues, is more complex.

To fully comprehend growing support for populist parties, Antonucci suggests we must view the issue through the lens of insecurity. Crucially, this entails going beyond financial insecurity, on which much existing research focuses, to include work-related insecurity. The latter encompasses issues such as contract stability, employment protection, work-related stress, autonomy and prospects for career progression. Financial insecurity, meanwhile, includes deprivation in meeting basic needs, the ability to pay bills and unexpected expenses, and the capacity to save or repay debt. By integrating these two dimensions, Antonucci directs attention to the everyday lived realities of insecurity. The new politics of insecurity emerges at the intersection of these socio-economic factors, which are mutually reinforcing and readily exploited by populist movements.

Antonucci further divides Europe into five ‘security regimes’ broadly aligned with different welfare state typologies. While each regime has distinct configurations of work and financial security, all have been trending towards greater insecurity over the past four decades. To understand this shift, she points to transformations within the welfare state as a key driver. In particular, Antonucci draws on the concept of social investment, which seeks to equip individuals to be resilient and adaptable across economic cycles. This approach prioritises preparing and mobilising individuals through supply-side policies, most notably investment in education and training, alongside benefit conditionality and the liberalisation of employment protection. It is the epitome of individualism.

While such policies have contributed to rising employment levels across the EU, Antonucci argues that they have done so at the cost of security. They intensify competition between workers, placing downward pressure on job quality, wages, and employment stability. Systems of social protection have also become less generous in terms of income replacement. The overall result has been a generalised increase in both workplace and financial insecurity.

This critique of social investment is both timely and overdue. As Antonucci notes, the paradigm has become mainstream across major political institutions in Europe, including the EU itself. Paradoxically, policies designed to promote resilience and opportunity are contributing to instability and insecurity. Moreover, social investment risks trapping individuals in cycles of deprivation, even as overall welfare spending has increased. The hyper commodification of individuals appears to demand ever greater financial resources simply to maintain stability.

Importantly, growing insecurity is no longer confined to the most vulnerable groups such as the precariat, the working poor, or the unemployed, but increasingly affects the lower middle classes as well. Insecurity, then, is extending its tentacles. Antonucci supports this claim with substantial empirical evidence demonstrating that financial insecurity and insecure working conditions are among the strongest and most consistent predictors of populist attitudes and voting behaviour, with insecurity being exploited by populist parties across the continent. If these findings are not a wake-up call for Europe, it is difficult to know what would be.

To paraphrase Karl Polanyi, it may be time to move beyond our obsolete social investment mentality. Sometimes you read a book and wish you had written it. This is one of them. The book fits well with broader understandings of state transformation since the post-war golden age, as well as the dominant power of global finance. Some of the growing support for radical right political movements can also be attributed to social media. It would be easy to criticise Antonucci for this omission, but as a sociologist, it was never the book’s intention to go down these paths, and the analysis holds its own.