The Socio-Representational Construction of Universal Basic Income in the French Context: Effects of Politico-Ideological Anchors

Open Access

Abstract

International audience ; As a new, complex and controversial object, we studied the Universal Basic Income (UBI) through the Theory of Social Representations (TSR). Our study aimed to explore the representational field spontaneously associated with the UBI in a French sample and how it was structured according to the participants' political and ideological anchors. Our results showed that the UBI was represented through analogies with the existing social minima, beliefs and values suggesting societal progress but also a fear of a weakening of the capitalist economic order. Moreover, splitting our sample based on the political orientation of the participants, we verified that they seemed to represent the UBI based on principles specific to their ideological traditions. The potentially polemical character of the socio-representational construction of the UBI and its potential implications in terms of maintaining or challenging the social order are therefore discussed.