How Economic Inequality Fuels the Rise and Persistence of the Yellow Vest Movement

Our analysis explores the rise of the Yellow Vest movement as a collective response to perceptions of growing levels of economic inequality in France whereby collective action is triggered by the perceived illegitimacy of the growing gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. We highlight different psychological processes that might explain why concerns about economic inequality have become more salient. We focus on two dynamics in particular: (a) President Macron’s perceived alignment with the elites and disconnection from ordinary French people, and (b) historically dominant collective narratives that frame growing inequality as breaking with long-standing values and norms of equality. Both processes enhance ‘us’ (the victims) versus ‘them’ (the elite and those that are not true to national values of equality) categorizations along wealth lines whereby, ‘us’ becomes a broad category. To explain why the movement continues to go strong, we focus on ongoing intergroup processes (i.e., the police response, lack of support from intellectuals and the middle class) and intragroup processes (i.e., the movement brings together all those who self-categorise as victims of inequality, uniting those that may at other times be seen as ‘strange bedfellows’). We conclude that a proper understanding of the way in which economic inequality might divide society creating new intergroup dynamics is essential to understand the Yellow Vest movement.