Driven by a longstanding interest in understanding how ordinary people experience and perceive politics in daily life —especially how political life is shaped by everyday realities— Max Weber Fellow Paulus Wagner has been doing research on the rising support for populist, authoritarian, and xenophobic political movements among the working class.
A central puzzle emerged when asking himself: “Why do many working-class individuals, often not experiencing acute economic hardship, express strong support for these political forces? Is it simply a matter of cultural preference or racism, or are there deeper material concerns that populists address more effectively?”
To explore this, Paulus conducted nearly 150 biographical interviews, mainly in Germany and Austria, during his doctoral research at Sciences Po. He delved into people’s personal life courses, focusing on their experiences of the labour market, welfare systems, healthcare, unemployment, and pensions. “I used these individual life narratives as a window into how people interpret political structures and develop political attitudes, and from this I’ve built a whole research agenda,” he shares. The main outcome of this ethnography forms the basis of an ambitious film project, Walter L., in cooperation with film director and researcher Barbara Wolfram.
“From this qualitative foundation, I began building a broader research agenda. I started quantitative follow-ups to test whether the findings held more broadly. For instance, I’ve worked on survey experiments and quasi-experimental designs, such as studying reactions to retirement reforms that affect different groups in distinct ways,” Paulus explains. He mentions his ongoing projects as an EUI Max Weber Fellow, namely two upcoming collective publications.
The first one, co-edited with his mentor, EUI Professor Anton Hemerijck, explores how social policy feedback affects political attitudes. “We argue that punitive welfare systems—those that sanction or humiliate recipients—generate social conflict and alienation, while supportive policies foster social cohesion and recognition.”
The second project, with Professor Bruno Palier, brings together 20 researchers from across Europe to examine how workplace experiences influence political views, with the aim of inquiring how work has developed over time, the quality of jobs and workplaces, relationships inside companies, both in the public and private sector.
“One striking observation was that many working-class individuals in secure, well-paid jobs—such as industrial workers in Germany or Austria—still expressed deep dissatisfaction. Often, the root of this feeling lay in how workplace relationships had changed over time. Many described a decline in treatment by their supervisors and reduced autonomy. Previously, even those in lower-level roles felt respected and trusted. But in recent years, they reported increased micromanagement, higher pressure from management, and a general feeling of being reduced to a number.” This insight inspired the decision to feature a lorry driver as the main character of the short film Walter L., which has received the Jury’s special mention at the Diagonale Film Festival in Austria.
“Truck drivers, for instance, once enjoyed considerable freedom and social status. Today, they’re tightly controlled, monitored, and often undervalued.” Similarly, in public sector jobs like education and healthcare, workers spoke of bureaucratic pressures and institutional disrespect. Across sectors, individuals described returning home from work frustrated, not fulfilled—and this emotional undercurrent shapes their political worldviews.
“Barbara and I also found that modernisation processes, such as digital reforms in companies, often created tension between younger and older workers, skilled and unskilled labour, and natives and immigrants. Importantly, it wasn’t the technology itself that caused frustration, but the way it was introduced. When reforms were imposed top-down, many workers felt dismissed or blamed,” shares Paulus.
“This sense of alienation and loss of recognition is what many interviewees linked—either explicitly or implicitly—to their political preferences. These were the inductive findings from our fieldwork, and we’re now seeing similar research emerging across Europe,” he adds.
That’s the point where Paulus and Barbara’s paths crossed, generating a fruitful collaboration that blends social sciences and cinematography.
“Our collaboration started when the city of Vienna launched a funding call for joint artist-researcher projects,’’ Barbara explains. “We submitted a successful proposal through the University of Music and Performing Arts—home to the Vienna Film Academy—which granted us €150,000. This enabled us to develop and produce two short films, combining artistic storytelling with grounded sociological insight,’’ she states.
The film director brought her deep experience in biographical storytelling, character development, and gender representation. Together, Paulus and Barbara revisited all the interview transcripts, identifying characters and life stories that could resonate cinematically while challenging stereotypical portrayals of the so-called ‘working class’.
“During my PhD, I was concerned with the representation and presentation of male and female characters. I was coding over a thousand characters on how they were stereotyped,’’ explains Barbara. “So, it was very important for me to also find characters that challenge our view on how we see a lorry driver, on how we see a mother, on how we see a certain social class being presented on film. We then revisited the interviews with that lens in mind, and it was clear for us that we wanted to start with a character from the working class,” Barbara adds.
The short movie Walter L. focuses on a working-class father and his football-playing daughter, with special attention to character development and authenticity. “We were lucky to cast an actor who had himself worked as a lorry driver before becoming a performer, bringing lived experience to the role,” they smile.
The result is a film that resonates deeply with working-class audiences, who recognise their own stories, with all their everyday struggles, on the big screen.
This collaboration also had a methodological dimension: “The process was quite specific because there are procedures filmmakers use to develop a screenplay, and there are procedures social scientists use to write a paper, and we wanted to draw on both of them,” Paulus states.
“We had to bridge two professional languages: the analytical terminology of social science and the narrative tools of cinema. This dialogue wasn’t always easy, but it became a source of strength,” Paulus explains. He adds that Barbara’s artistic background in ‘autosociobiography’—inspired by authors like Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon—aligned closely with his work in political ethnography and sociology.
The Vienna Film Academy provided them with professional equipment and facilities, alongside a talented team of students. Over 30 people contributed to the production of the film, including a dynamic young producer and director of photography, whose documentary-style shooting gave the film a raw and intimate feel.
Walter L. had its national premiere in March 2025 at the Austrian film festival Diagonale, where it received an honorable mention by the Jury, and has featured at Vienna Shorts. Represented by Lemonade Films, it continues its tour to international film festivals. The EUI will host a pre-screening for the academic audience. Paulus shares enthusiastically about their future plans: “We’re also planning a screening at Sciences Po next year, where there’s growing interest in art-research collaborations. This fall, we are both aiming to head to Harvard: I’ll be working with Peter Hall on a follow-up to this project, and Barbara will be able to exchange with Michèle Lamont, whose work on social recognition resonates deeply with ours.”
“We’re also beginning work on a second short film, featuring a social worker who aims to help people but struggles with tensions from the side of institutions. This film will highlight characters one level up, in middle management, to explore class dynamics from another angle,” they reveal, always looking up at their sources of inspiration, such as Ken Loach, Stéphane Brizé, among others.
As a final note, a mutual belief:
“If social science allows us to go deep, film allows us to go broad—and reach the heart of the public.”
The pre-screening of the short film Walter L. by Barbara Wolfram (Film Academy Vienna) and Paulus Wagner (Max Weber Fellow at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences) is organised by the EUI Max Weber Programme and takes place at the EUI on the 11 June 2025. It will be followed by a discussion on the question: How to shoot a fiction film based on social research?