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Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies
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Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies
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Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies A Multidisciplinary Perspective
Edited by
Assaad E. Azzi, Xenia Chryssochoou, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
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This edition first published 2011 © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization © 2011 Assaad E. Azzi, Xenia Chryssochoou, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Assaad E. Azzi, Xenia Chryssochoou, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Identity and participation in culturally diverse societies: a multidisciplinary perspective / edited by Assaad E. Azzi … [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-9947-6 (hbk.: alk. paper) 1. Ethnicity. 2. Political participation. 3. Group identity. 4. Ethnic relations. I. Azzi, Assaad Elia. GN495.6.I34 2011 305—dc22 2010016186 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12pt Sabon by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Singapore 01
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Contents
About the Editors and Contributors Introduction Xenia Chryssochoou, Assaad E. Azzi, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon Part I
1
Development, (Re)Construction, and Expression of Collective Identities Xenia Chryssochoou
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1 The Role of Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Class in Shaping Greek American Identity, 1890–1927: A Historical Analysis Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos
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2 Religious Identity and Socio-Political Participation: Muslim Minorities in Western Europe Maykel Verkuyten 3 The Bicultural Identity Performance of Immigrants Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux 4 Perceptions of (In)compatibility between Identities and Participation in the National Polity of People belonging to Ethnic Minorities Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons Part II
Collective Identity and Political Participation Bernd Simon
5 Winners and Losers in the Europeanization of Public Policy Debates: Empowering the Already Powerful? Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham
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Contents New Ways of Understanding Migrant Integration in Europe P. R. Ireland
7 Collective Identity and Political Engagement Bernd Simon 8 Collective Identity, Political Participation, and the Making of the Social Self Stephen Reicher and John Drury Part III
Radicalization Bert Klandermans
9 Radicalization Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans
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10 Citizenship Regimes and Identity Strategies Among Young Muslims in Europe Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking
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11 Going All the Way: Politicization and Radicalization of the Hofstad Network in the Netherlands Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer
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12 Trajectories of Ideologies and Action in US Organized Racism Kathleen M. Blee
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13 No Radicalization without Identification: How Ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslim Web Forums Radicalize Over Time Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans
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Part IV
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Integration Assaad E. Azzi
14 Immigrant Acculturation: Psychological and Social Adaptations John W. Berry
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15 Ethnic Social Networks, Social Capital, and Political Participation of Immigrants Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie
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16 Naturalization as Boundary Crossing: Evidence from Labor Migrants in Germany Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm
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Contents 17 Confronting the Past to Create a Better Future: The Antecedents and Benefits of Intergroup Forgiveness Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin Conclusion: From Identity and Participation to Integration or Radicalization: A Critical Appraisal Assaad E. Azzi Name Index Subject Index
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About the Editors and Contributors
The following biographical details are given in chapter order.
Part I Xenia Chryssochoou is Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Panteion University (Athens, Greece). She is interested in the social psychological processes in multicultural societies and in particular in identity construction. Currently, she works on mobility, migration, and justice as well as on perceptions of globalization and political participation. She is the author of Cultural Diversity: Its Social Psychology published by Blackwell. Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos is a historian at the Department of History and Political Sciences, Panteion University, Greece. His research focuses on issues of ethnicity in the Ottoman empire, transatlantic migration, and the repercussions of the Eastern Question in the United States of America. Maykel Verkuyten is Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University and the academic director of the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) at the same university. His research interest is in ethnic, national, and religious identities, and in intergroup relations. Shaun Wiley is a Social-Personality Psychologist and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the College of New Jersey. His research interests include how people deal with discrimination and inequality and manage their multiple social identities across contexts. Kay Deaux is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a Research Affiliate in the Department
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About the Editors and Contributors
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of Psychology at New York University. Her recent book, To Be An Immigrant (2006), offers a broad-gauged social psychological perspective on the immigrant experience. Evanthia Lyons is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Centre for Research in Political Psychology, School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her research has focused on influences and understandings of ethnic, national, religious, and European identities and political participation.
Part II Bernd Simon is Professor of Social Psychology and Political Psychology, and one of the Directors of the Institute of Psychology at the Christian-AlbrechtsUniversity in Kiel (Germany). In his research, he investigates inter- and intragroup processes, with particular emphasis on minority–majority relations and issues of identity, politicization, power, and respect. He is the author of Identity in Modern Society: A Social Psychological Perspective published by Wiley-Blackwell. Ruud Koopmans is Director of the Migration, Integration, Transnationalization Department at the Science Center for Social Research (WZB) in Berlin, Germany, and Professor of Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research interests are social movements, immigration politics, European integration, and evolutionary sociology. He is the (co-)author of several books, including Democracy from Below (1995), New Social Movements in Western Europe (1995), and Contested Citizenship (2005). Paul Statham is Professor of Political Sociology and Director of EurPolCom, the International Research Network on European Political Communications, hosted by the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on European integration, media and political contention, and citizenship and migrants’ political mobilization in Europe. He is co-author of Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (2005) and editor (with Ruud Koopmans) of The Making of a European Public Sphere: Media Discourse and Political Contention (2010). P. R. Ireland is Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Social Sciences Department at the Illinois Institute of Technology; he was trained at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Texas, and Harvard University. His research interests include migration, migrant integration, and migrant health in Europe, North and sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States.
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About the Editors and Contributors
Stephen Reicher is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St. Andrews (UK). He is interested in the issues of group behavior and the individual–social relationship, crowd action, the construction of social categories through language and action, and political rhetoric and mass mobilization – especially around the issue of national identity. He is the author (with N. Hopkins) of Self and Nation (2001). John Drury is Senior Lecturer of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex (UK). His research deals with crowd behavior and dynamics, the psychology of emergency and mass evacuation, and the mediating role of social identity in cognitive, behavioral, and emotional reactions to situations of crowding.
Part III Bert Klandermans is Professor of Applied Social Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has published extensively on the social psychology of participation in social movements. He is the editor of Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, the book series of the University of Minnesota Press. He is the editor and co-author (with Conny Roggeband) of the Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines (2007). Jacquelien van Stekelenburg is a post-doctoral researcher at the Sociology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She studies the social psychological dynamics of moderate and radical protest participation with a special interest in group identification, emotions, and ideologies as motivators for action. Catarina Kinnvall is Associate Professor at the Department fo Political Science at Lund University. Her main research interests are centered on political psychology, globalization, religion, and nationalism with a particular focus on Muslim diaspora groups in the West and South Asian politics. Paul Nesbitt-Larking is Professor of Political Science at Huron University College in Canada. He is a scholar and teacher in the fields of Canadian politics, political identities, political communication, and political psychology. He is currently Vice-President of the International Society of Political Psychology. Martijn de Koning is an anthropologist and a researcher at the Department of Islam and Arab Studies at the Faculty of Religious Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Within the research program Salafism as a Transnational Movement, he focuses on the rise of the Salafi movement in Europe.
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About the Editors and Contributors
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Roel Meijer is lecturer in Middle East history at the Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands), and senior research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael. He is a specialist in Islamist movements in Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. He is editor of Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (2009). Kathleen M. Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and History and Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement and Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Dirk Oegema is a social psychologist and assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He studies the content of news and its effects on voting behavior, protest behavior, and reputation. He is exploring the possibilities of using Web forums as a proxy for the public response to media content.
Part IV Assaad E. Azzi is Professor of Psychology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium. He is director of the social psychology unit. His research focuses on identity, resource distribution, and the perception of justice and injustice in majority–minority relations. He is currently working on the perception of discrimination and participation in anti-discrimination actions in multicultural societies. John W. Berry is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Queen’s University, Canada. He has published over 30 books in the areas of cross-cultural, social, and cognitive psychology. His main research interests are in the areas of acculturation and intercultural relations, with an emphasis on applications to immigration, education, and health policy. Dirk Jacobs is Professor of Sociology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. His research focuses on migrant voting behavior, ethnic associational life, and political integration processes. Jean Tillie is Professor of Political Science at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and coordinator of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies. His research deals with networks of migrant organizations, political mobilization, and the institutional design of multicultural democracies. Claudia Diehl is Professor of Sociology at the Universität Göttingen, Germany. Her research interests include immigration and integration of ethnic minorities, especially issues of identity, participation, and belonging.
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xii About the Editors and Contributors Michael Blohm is a sociologist and a researcher in the Department of the ALLBUS Survey at the GESIS-Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences, Germany. He is mainly interested in migration studies and survey methodology, especially non-response and interviewer behavior. Nyla R. Branscombe is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on intergroup relations from the perspectives of both disadvantaged and privileged groups, with an emphasis on the role of group history and its implications for emotional reactions to grouprelevant outcomes in the present. She is co-editor of Collective Guilt: International Perspectives (2004) and Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination (2008). Tracey Cronin is a PhD candidate in social psychology at the University of Kansas. She received a Master’s degree from Claremont Graduate University, and a Bachelor’s degree from Sonoma State University. Her research interests include collective action, coping responses to discrimination experiences, perceptions of and reactions to injustice, prejudice toward single people, and intergroup reconciliation.
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Introduction Xenia Chryssochoou, Assaad E. Azzi, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon
There is no doubt that most societies and states are nowadays culturally diverse. This observation has recently produced much theoretical and empirical interest across several social science disciplines. This interest may on the surface seem to reflect a “fad,” judging by the number of articles and books written on the subject by scientists, policymakers, and journalists alike, and by the hot political and legal debates going on in most Western democracies. The debates revolve around, inter alia, Western democracies’ capacity to adapt to what is being described as a problematic increase in cultural diversity, threats to peaceful coexistence of culturally dissimilar communities within a single political entity with a supposedly superordinate collective identity, and the related inability to “integrate” these various communities into one common socio-political structure and identity. This book’s main objective is to demonstrate that the interest in the political fate of culturally diverse societies cannot simply be viewed as a fad, neither can it be considered to be comprehensible through the theoretical or methodological lenses of a single discipline. While we do not deny that the scientific focus and output on this subject in various social science disciplines provide separate in-depth and complex accounts of the processes or mechanisms that might explain the political and identity dynamics in culturally diverse societies, it is our aim to show that a significant dose of intellectual and scientific “integration” may be essential to produce, or at least to open the way for, a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of identity and political integration in culturally diverse societies. The underlying theme of the book is the relation between identity and political participation in diverse societies. It is divided into four parts: development of identities; political participation; radicalization; and political integration. In these parts, we provide a sample of theories and empirical research from adjacent yet separate disciplines (social psychology, sociology, history, political science) in a structure that asks four
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2
X. Chryssochoou, A. E. Azzi, B. Klandermans, and B. Simon
specific yet fundamental questions that have been investigated separately but, to our knowledge, have never been linked together. These questions are: 1 How are multiple identities constructed and developed, in relation to both migrants’ country of origin and their country of residence, how are these identities enacted, and how are group membership and citizenship redefined in diverse societies? These questions are discussed in the first part of the book entitled “Development, (Re)Construction, and Expression of Collective Identities.” This section deals with issues of multiple identities, compatibility of identities, and the construction of identities in relation to the politics of both receiving and sending societies. A main argument is that identities are constructed and performed in context and relate to societal projects. 2 Once we have understood the dynamics of changing collective identities in culturally diverse societies, the next step is to investigate the possibilities of, and routes to, integration. Our second set of questions focuses on political participation as one such possible route. We therefore ask: What is the context in which integration and political participation take place? How do macro-, meso-, and micro-level variables affect political participation, what role does collective identity play in linking these variables to political participation, and how, in turn, is identity shaped by political participation? These questions are dealt with in the second part of the book, entitled “Collective Identity and Political Participation.” An important argument in this section is that identity-driven political participation allows people to make their own history. 3 Our third set of questions deals with another path that collective identities may take in culturally diverse societies. Instead of allowing integration through political participation, might it lead to more militant politicization and radicalization? How and under what conditions? How exactly can radicalization be defined and conceptualized? For example, are policies regarding citizenship shaping the forms of actions that people might choose? Is it only migrants or ethnic minorities who radicalize, or do members of the receiving group tend to radicalize as well? These questions are the theme of Part III, entitled “Radicalization.” A main argument of this section is that radicalization is a collective process that evolves in the context of developing social movements and is shaped by processes of social influence. 4 Collective identities might, however, take a different path, away from radicalization, and produce significant changes in host and immigrant identities and societies alike. The last part of our book deals with the conditions under which cultural diversity produces individual and societal changes, and with the nature of these changes as well as their
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Introduction
3
consequences in terms of individual and collective identities. What are the consequences of immigrant choices to maintain their ethnic identity and tradition in the new society as well as the consequences of receiving populations’ choices? Is there a strategy that is most successful? Are ethnic networks an obstacle to the integration of immigrant populations or can they function as social capital? Do all ethnic groups in one society use opportunities for integration in the same way? What are the social psychological factors that can contribute to the peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups with a history of conflict within the same political entity? These questions are addressed in Part IV, entitled “Integration.” The main argument here is that maintaining immigrants’ ethnic identity and participation in ethnic networks, on the one hand, and granting them full citizenship, recognizing their right to maintain their identity, and construing history with reconciliation in mind, on the other, are important facilitators of integration and harmonious coexistence. In addressing these questions, we were careful to give equal weight to different disciplines and to the different parts of the book, to cover different levels of analysis, and to provide state-of-the-art reviews along with reports of new empirical findings. We are keen to integrate these different contributions with brief introductions to each part. In the concluding chapter, Assaad Azzi draws together the key ideas expressed in the book, making explicit the links between parts and highlighting possible answers to the questions outlined. He also points out directions for future research and scientific discourse. We would also like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the European Science Foundation (ESF), which enabled us to initiate the dialogue between disciplines on issues of identity and socio-political participation – issues that are undoubtedly of high import for Europe. This book, which brings together contributions from European and North American scholars, is an outgrowth of our ongoing dialogue. We certainly hope that this book will stimulate further discussions and debates on these issues among experienced scholars and newly interested students alike.
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Part I
Development, (Re)Construction, and Expression of Collective Identities Xenia Chryssochoou The chapters in Part I aim to address issues concerning the relationship between processes and patterns of identity at different interrelated levels of social inclusiveness (i.e., local, regional, ethnic, national, and European levels) in the context of multi-ethnic and multicultural societies. Cultural homogeneity within national borders is no longer the reality for many European nations and ceases to constitute the basis of the national project of “living together.” In addition, globalization trends constitute the frame within which collective identities at an ethnic, religious, national, and supra-national level are developed and expressed. These identities are enacted in the claim of rights and socio-political participation of ethnic minorities and in attitudes and behaviors (often xenophobic) of ethnic majorities aiming to secure their identities. The chapters included here discuss the power struggle for and by identity along with how different levels of identities are developed, reconstructed, and interrelated in a context where nation-states aim to continue being the guarantors of a unifying identity for their ethno-cultural majorities while trying to integrate denizens of different cultural and social backgrounds. Part I starts with a historical analysis of the development of Greek American identity. Yannis Papadopoulos analyzes historical documents of the early twentieth century when Greek migration to the United States expanded in order to unveil how this dual identity developed and with what political purposes. His work highlights the importance of the historical framework in which identities develop. Moreover, he shows how the meaning of an identity is constructed as a response to pressures of both the sending and the receiving societies and emphasizes the role of the elites, the “identity entrepreneurs,” in shaping the meaning of these identifications. The chapter shows that other memberships such as class and religion influence the way ethno-cultural identities are constructed and enacted.
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Xenia Chryssochoou
The important role of context is underlined in other chapters in this section. Chapter 2, by Maykel Verkuyten, brings us to the current context where Muslim identity is at the forefront of debates. The chapter deals with the relation between religious identity and political participation and presents the case of Muslim identity in Western Europe. It examines what it means to be Muslim in the current social context and how this meaning is constructed and performed. This identity consolidation is linked to different forms of mobilization. Verkuyten argues against the perceived homogeneity and essentialization of the Muslim identity. There are different meanings of Muslim identity that relate differently to intergroup experiences and sociopolitical participation. These meanings are constructed in interaction with others within the national polity and are expressions of the power struggles within this community as well as the global one. There are multiple audiences toward which identities are performed and this idea is further developed in Chapter 3 by Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux. The authors present and discuss literature on bicultural identity and propose another way of conceptualizing it. They emphasize the situated nature of bicultural identities and consider that the performance of these identities varies within individuals and across situations. A major point of their argument is that the compatibility between different memberships is not an individual difference factor but the outcome of the interaction between a person and his or her audience. Thus, the identity takes different forms both when its performance is threatened and in the absence of threat. Bicultural identities contain elements of self-categorization, importance, and meaning whose relation is different among individuals: for example, for some people certain aspects are blended whilst others are not depending on the context. The chapter offers an interesting and useful theorization of biculturalism and contributes to the discussions of this book on dual identities. The last chapter in Part I, by Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons, raises in particular the issue of the perceived incompatibility between identities that questions the possibility of biculturalism and is seen as a threat to social cohesion. The chapter argues that perceived incompatibility between national, ethnic, and religious identifications constitutes a political statement that is ideological in nature. The empirical evidence for this incompatibility is not conclusive and the research reported in the chapter highlights the importance of the social context in which identities are developed. Beliefs about the incompatibility between identities partially mediate the negative relationship between ethnic and national identities. The authors suggest that further research should be done in order to understand which factors produce a negative relationship, and to examine the role of beliefs about the incompatibility between identities in enabling or constraining identification with the national polity. Chryssochoou and Lyons argue for a thorough understanding of how minorities can identify with the national polity, not
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Part I: Introduction
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only because this identification is a marker of integration and insertion in the new society, but also because such identification, at a higher level, would allow minorities to fight for their rights, interests, and social justice. The chapter offers a theorization of minority identification with the national polity and opens the discussion of the next chapter by presenting the relation between identifications, beliefs about identity incompatibility, and political participation. The ideological and political nature of identity construction is a common theme in all of the chapters presented here. Each deals with the construction of identities, highlighting different moments in time and different levels of analysis. Chapter 1 by Papadopoulos looks at the past to offer a vision of the present. Chapter 2 by Verkuyten looks at the present and opens our vision toward the future. Deaux and Wiley in Chapter 3 highlight an interactive level of analysis, whereas in Chapter 4 Chryssochoou and Lyons emphasize ideological explanations. Each chapter implies in a different way that identities express projects. The first two chapters emphasize whose projects these identities are expressions of, while the two last chapters address the question of who and what these projects are aimed at. Thus, although Part I refers only to the construction and development of the identity of minorities, the fact that these identities are addressed to others and are constructed through the pressures of the context and the recognition of others, and since their presence and development impact on the (re)construction of national identities, the majority’s perspective is not ignored. The arguments developed in Part I run counter to five popular myths about identity that circulate in both academic and commonsense discourse. Myth 1, that national, ethnic, and religious identities are de facto competing; myth 2, that national, ethnic, religious, and class identities are of equivalent nature and have similar social psychological and political consequences; myth 3, that immigrants and ethnic minorities choose to enact mainly their ethnic or religious identity; myth 4, that these identifications are similar for majorities and minorities as if there are no power issues involved; and myth 5, that once constructed these identities are invariably performed. The arguments of the four contributions to this part introduce Part II concerning the relationship between collective identity and politicization.
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1
The Role of Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Class in Shaping Greek American Identity, 1890–1927 A Historical Analysis Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos
Massive emigration from Greece to the United States started in the 1890s. It was part of the “new immigration,” a term introduced in about 1880 to describe the wave of immigrants to the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the majority of whom came from Eastern and Southern Europe (Higham, 1967, p. 65). The arrival of these immigrants, who were considered as seditious and inassimilable by many, resulted in the adoption of the Quota Acts by Congress in 1921 and 1924 that set limits on immigration (Tichenor, 2002, pp. 143–145). The majority of Greek-speaking immigrants came from the provinces of the Greek kingdom. However, from the beginning of the twentieth century, large numbers of Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects started to settle in the United States.1 According to the Greek administration, an immigrant was defined as “a Greek citizen settling in countries outside Europe, beyond the Suez Canal and the straits of Gibraltar and traveling third class” (Metanasteusis, 1906, p. 29). From 1890 to 1924, 397,987 Greek subjects and 102,476 Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects migrated to the United States (Dillingham, 1911, p. 408, Thirteenth Population Census, 1910, vol. 3, pp. 216–217, cited in Kourtoumi-Hatzi, 1999, p. 53). The push factor for the majority of emigrants from the Greek kingdom was an economic crisis that hit the agricultural sector during this period, although the prospects for a better life should not be 1 For methodological reasons, I use the term “Greek Orthodox” for members of the Millet-i Rum, the ethno-religious community under the head of the patriarch of Constantinople, and “Greek” for the subjects of the Greek kingdom.
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10 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos underestimated (Papastergiadis, 2000, pp. 36–37, 47–48). As for immigrants from the Ottoman empire, according to, among others, the Greek consul in Trebizond (Trabzon), the most important reason for emigration of Greek Orthodox populations was the imposition of compulsory military service for Christian subjects of the Ottoman empire after the Revolution of Young Turks in 1908 (IAYE,2 F. B53, 2412, 10.12.1911; Gordon, 1932, p. 306). In both countries, sources stress the role of travel agents who roamed the provinces describing bright prospects awaiting immigrants to the United States (IAYE, F. B12.1/1902, 07567; 29.5.1902, A12.1/1888, 07945, 13.7.1888; Ellis Island Archive, MSS. AKRF-91, Euterpe Bouki-Doukakis’s testimony). Nevertheless, the conditions that immigrants encountered did not correspond to the image they had formed prior to their arrival in America. In the following chapter I aim to explain the procedures that led to the construction of Greek American ethnic identity in the first quarter of the twentieth century, focusing on the ideological formation of the leading immigrant groups and their activity in local and national organizations and taking into account both Greek irredentism and assimilationist pressures in the American society. The decision to deal with Greek associations in the United States results from the lack of first-hand testimonies from immigrants. The available sources – dispatches from Greek and Ottoman diplomats in the United States as well as Greek-language newspapers – express the views of the local elites and the interests of the states that wished to control immigrants. My argument is based on these archival sources and is bound to the limits they impose. We can therefore only guess at immigrants’ collective attitudes indirectly through the rare surviving letters and some interviews in the Ellis Island archive that do not necessarily deal with issues of collective identity. A closer look at the sources of the early twentieth century, the period when the Greek American community started taking shape, reveals that the conceptualization of this community was not simply a reiteration of previously existing tendencies but the result of a long process that was inevitably bound to the socio-political and cultural currents in Greece and the United States, that is, to the social status of the Greeks in the United States and their relation to their country of origin and country of residence. As Ioanna Laliotou (2004, p. 11), has pointed out, “migrants become migrants in the context of their encounter with cultural traditions, racial stereotypes, and technologies of social integration in the countries they come from as well as in the countries they arrive at.” It is more accurate to argue that a unified identity was the outcome of specific conditions inside the Greek American organizations AHEPA (American Hellenic Progressive Association) and GAPA (Greek American Progressive Association) and the Greek Orthodox 2
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IAYE is the abbreviation for the Historical Archive of the Greek Foreign Ministry.
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Archdiocese of America after World War I. While the Greek state had attempted to cultivate a pan-Hellenic identity among immigrants, not necessarily different from the ideological orientation of the Greek state, it was only after World War I that a Greek American ideology, and consequently a certain identity, was successfully framed. This identity, however, was not merely a reflection of the Greek national ideology, but was rather a construction along the lines of American nationalism. It was also supposed to serve as a bulwark against the xenophobic and racist climate prevalent in the United States during this period. Moreover, as Werner Sollors has pointed out, “the strengthening of ethnic consciousness often coincides with the rise of agitation against marginal men and disloyal group members” (Sollors, 1981, p. 274). The Greek American identity was primarily the outcome of a complicated process that has been little examined. Some researchers have remarked that immigrants, when they arrive in their host country, are initially integrated within networks that are reproduced through family, local, occupational, or patronage ties (relational mode of identification) (Brubaker, 2004, p. 41). In the process of integration in the “receiving society,” immigrants start to identify themselves through their incorporation in groups, organized by race, social class, ethnic or national affiliation, language, and nationality (categorical mode of identification). Gradually, although relational identifications do not disappear, categorical identifications become more important for immigrants (Brubaker, 2004, p. 42). These categorical identifications serve not only as ways to conceive the present, but also as efforts to determine the future, and as a result define the position of subjects in the present and the future (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 48). It is thus interesting to study through what processes, in order to achieve integration, a national categorical identification can be transformed into an ethnic one, by shifting the reference frame from homeland nationalism to host country nationalism. I will therefore try to define under what circumstances Orthodox Christian immigrants from Greece and the Ottoman empire adopted different categorical identifications, and how the content of “Hellenism” evolved first in a national and then in an ethnic frame. As diaspora scholars put it, in order to achieve their foreign policy goals, homelands often try to utilize immigrants’ attachment to their place of origin and their sense of duty (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003, p. 4). Migration therefore offers national states the chance to broaden their range by developing transnational economic, social, and political links with their citizens who live abroad (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003). Especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period when the nation-states of Europe were founded and a considerable part of their populations migrated to the United States, the strengthening of links with their citizens abroad became an important goal of state policy (Green & Weil, 2006, p. 11). The
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12 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos Greek state was mainly interested in ensuring the continuing flow of immigrant remittances, as well as motivating immigrants politically with the aim to advance national propaganda and counterbalance any adverse propaganda from enemy states. This obviously opens up the question of institutions seeking to mobilize to their political project individuals who have emigrated mainly for economic reasons. According to social scientists, the ability to convince a group of individuals to consider themselves as part of a given community is necessary in order to mobilize them to achieve an ideological goal. The entrepreneurs of identity define the content of categorical identifications and impose on a given group forms of mobilization for achieving an ideal future (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 49). These individuals seek to present themselves as expressing the voice of the nation and to promote a particular political project in order to obtain power, exert influence, and convince others to follow them (Chryssochoou, 2004, p. 110). Following the results of the studies cited above, I begin by defining how the putative leading immigrant groups may have substantiated and used the concept of “Hellenism” to mobilize immigrants and legitimize their influence. My study examines how their choices led to national or ethnic groupings and finally to the formation of a Greek American identity. This process consists of two stages. First, I examine how the leading immigrant groups and the organizations they created before World War I, independently or at the instigation of the Greek state, used national categories. Second, I analyze how, as a result of the rise of xenophobia as well as the change in the social structure of Greek communities after the end of World War I, new leading groups emerged that sought to describe a Greek American community as an integral part of the American nation. My main purpose is to examine “how, why, and in what contexts ethnic categories are used – or not used – to make sense of problems and predicaments, to articulate affinities and affiliations, to identify commonalities and connections, to frame stories and self understandings” (Brubaker, 2004, p. 25). To reply to these questions, it is essential to study the influence of the “two national centers of Hellenism,” Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in the construction, acceptance, and evolution of the leading groups, as well as the ideology of the political organizations that were founded in the United States in order to mobilize immigrants. Previous researchers have noted how the Greek government tried to exploit Greek organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, the creation of these organizations has not been studied as part of the process that led to the construction of Greek American ideology. It is important to stress the effort of the Greek state to advance its foreign policy goals on the one hand, and, on the other, the struggle of the leading groups in the Greek communities to establish, by means of nationalism and with the support of the Greek
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state, their power over immigrants. In order to study this process, we need to focus on the establishment of Greek organizations in the United States and the conflicts between immigrant elites and the foundation of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. To do this, we utilize the theoretical frame of categorical identification use by identity entrepreneurs. In what follows, I show how research questions are substantiated in the historical period under examination. However, it should be noted that the available sources (the Greek- and English-language press in the United States, Greek and Ottoman diplomatic dispatches) do not provide adequate or unbiased information about the popularity of the nationalist or ethnic organizations with immigrants. Therefore, my analysis focuses on the ideological content of the discourses expressed by these organizations and the leading groups.
Local and Religious Identifications and the Influence of Greek Nationalism As mentioned above in reference to the Greek communities and associations in the United States, we have to distinguish between immigrants from the Greek kingdom and those from the Ottoman empire. Although the two groups shared a common religion and in many cases a common language, they did not necessarily share common political visions. For emigrants from the Greek kingdom, the “manifest destiny” of the Greek nation was very strong, expressed by a messianic nationalism in the form of the “Great Idea” (Μεγα′λη Ιδε′α) that envisaged the restoration of the Byzantine empire with Constantinople (Istanbul) as its capital. Nevertheless, this nationalistic fervor was combined with contempt for King George I of Greece and the country’s political and military elites, who were considered corrupt and were held responsible for Greece’s defeat by the Ottomans in 1897 as well as for the economic crisis that had forced them to emigrate. On the other hand, emigrants from the Ottoman empire identified themselves with the ethno-religious group (millet) to which they belonged (namely, the Millet-i Rum, that is, the Orthodox community instituted officially in the Ottoman empire during the Tanzimat reforms under the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople) and with their hometown or county of origin, rather than with a political authority, that is, either the Ottoman or the Greek state. The Greek- or Turkish-speaking Orthodox emigrants from Asia Minor and Thrace did not necessarily identify themselves with the irredentist policy of the Greek state. Greek diplomats considered the immigration experience to be a way for immigrants to assimilate the dominant discourse of the “Great Idea” through social intercourse with Greeks
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14 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos from mainland Greece. As the Greek consul in Adrianople (Edirne), Leon S. Matlis, wrote to the Greek foreign ministry (IAYE, F. B/44/1910, 1812, 5.7.1910), “All, without exception, have Greek as a mother tongue and are Orthodox Christians; nevertheless, there is a great need for the benevolent impact of frequent social intercourse with other Greeks in America. Unfortunately, the Thracians’ national conscience, their patriotic feeling, is very little developed, and they need to be reborn by immersion in Matsukas’ patriotic baptistery.” For both Greek Orthodox and Greek groups, strong religious sentiments as well as close family and local ties were key elements of identification. This explains why Greek, Slav, Albanian, and Arab-speaking Orthodox Christian immigrants, irrespective of their ethnic origin, participated in the managing boards of the first Orthodox churches in the United States (Fitzgerald, 1995, p. 23; Kanoutas, 1918, p. 194). On the other hand, for most immigrants, ethnotopika somateia, that is, mutual help associations uniting immigrants from the same village or county, constituted the most powerful hub of social life and group identity. Usually, when in the host country, immigrants tended to settle in cities where people from their village or province of origin had settled previously (chains of emigration). Localism played an important role in social networks and, contrary to strong local patriotism and adherence to messianic nationalism, attachment to Greek state institutions and solidarity with Greeks from other provinces of Greece and the Ottoman empire were not self-evident. As the National Herald of New York newspaper noted as late as 1923, “The Greek shop owner not only would not hire American employees but even worse, if for example the owner hails from Sparta, he prefers to have Spartan employees, the Thessalian, Thessalians, the Thracian, Thracians and so on. The employees declare, ‘I don’t work in such a shop because the owner is from that province’ ” (Georges Papageorgiou, National Herald, 10.8.1923). For instance, in Chicago, localism led to the foundation of a second Orthodox church by immigrants from another province of the Greek kingdom (Holy Trinity Church, 1937, pp. 19–22; Kourvetaris, 1971, p. 50). As with other ethnic groups, it is therefore more accurate to state that immigrants from both Greece and the Ottoman empire were, at least in the first year of their stay in the United States, part of trans-local rather than transnational networks (Baines, 1991, pp. 28–31; Dicarlo, 2008, pp. 3–4; Gabaccia, 2000, pp. 3–6; Vecoli, 1964). This does not imply that the trans-local networks, and especially mutual help associations, did not diffuse a Greek nationalist discourse, but this was combined with distrust for centralized organizations, especially those under the control of the Greek state. As the Greek ambassador Lambros Koromilas pointed out, “they were thus thrown on narrow streets and into places of debauchery, working like helots, at the mercy of every villain; the only thing they understand from life in the United States is that
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they are relieved from Greek laws and the pressure of their lender; the only thing that sustains them is the memory of their village” (IAYE, F. B12/1908, 25.3.1908). Under these circumstances, the Greek state tried to fight localism among immigrants from the Greek kingdom on the one hand, and, on the other, to convince Greek Orthodox immigrants from the Ottoman empire, irrespective of their mother tongue, that, based on their affiliation with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, they belonged to the same “imaginary community” as Greeks from the Greek kingdom and therefore should make financial contributions and undergo military training in order to be drafted into the Greek army in the event of a Greco-Ottoman war. I will now examine in more detail the development of immigrants’ attitudes toward Greece and the process that led to the construction of Greek American identity.
The Emergence of a Greek American Discourse In 1890, the flow of immigrants from mainland Greece began. The first Greek communities were formed in New York and Chicago, and in 1894, the first major Greek-language national newspaper, Atlantis, was published in New York by Solon Vlastos. From about 1893, the Greek community in New York was divided into two factions, one patronized by merchants who had settled in the United States before 1850, and the other led by Solon Vlastos. The “Ralli faction,” which initially united the first merchants to settle in the United States after the Greek War of Independence, constituted the higher strata that were well integrated in the receiving country and did not highlight their ethnicity. Moreover, they felt that their social status was threatened by the massive arrival of poor Greek immigrants, as is evident from dispatches from the Greek consul in New York, Dimitrios Botassis (IAYE, F. A5/1894, 8.7.1894). On the other hand, Solon Vlastos gave voice through Atlantis to the newly arrived Greek immigrants, and later to the emerging lower middle class of the Greek communities.3 While the Ralli faction did not initially support Greek irredentism, Atlantis editor Vlastos expressed his nationalist ideas. This clash was, to a great extent, a product of the antagonism over the position of intermediary between the immigrants and the Greek and American state (IAYE, F. 115.1/1912, 12721, 16.5.1911; 3
Clashes of a similar kind erupted in other Greek diaspora communities. In Alexandria, the lower classes did not have the right to participate in the community, which was under the control of merchants. See IAYE, F. 92.1.3/1911, Greek consul in Alexandria Christos Mitsopoulos to Greek foreign ministry, 1295, March 21, 1911. In Brussels after World War II, the merchants who had settled in the city were annoyed by the massive presence of immigrant workers in the Greek Orthodox Church. See Venturas (1999), p. 118.
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16 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos Kanoutas, 1918, pp. 220–222). We should nevertheless point out that the term factions does not imply well-organized groups but rather loose social networks, and that the loyalty of their supporters and even the attitudes of their leaders toward Greek state politics shifted according to circumstances and particular interests. Solon Vlastos juxtaposed the cosmopolitan upper classes that made up the Ralli faction to immigrants, seen as bearers of Greek ideals. Until the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, he remained a staunch critic of the palace, corrupt Greek governments, and political forces that forced people to emigrate (IAYE, F. A.5.8/1894, 8.7.1894). As a supporter of progressive ideas, he castigated the corruption and machinations of Tammany Hall bosses and was critical of the Greek padrones (labor contractors) who exploited them in the United States (Contopoulos, 1992, p. 141). Nevertheless, the most interesting element in Vlastos’s discourse was the combination of Greek messianic nationalism and support for immigrants’ naturalization. Vlastos tried to introduce immigrants to US politics and was a staunch supporter of Theodore Roosevelt.4 In 1911, perhaps as a result of Vlastos’s influence, the majority of the 2,000 New York Greeks who had taken American citizenship supported the Republican Party and had even founded a Republican Political Club (Fairchild, 1911, p. 152). One may assume that Vlastos was the first to try to forge a Greek American identity by underlining the influence of ancient Greece on American institutions and culture while simultaneously resisting Greek state interference in Greek immigrants’ associations. At the same time, Vlastos fought against institutions under the control of the Greek state in the United States only when they threatened his own influence on Greek immigrants. The first national organization that tried to mobilize Greek immigrants in the United States, the Panhellenic Union, was founded initially in 1907 as a federation of the Greek societies and communities in the United States (Burgess, 1913, pp. 63–67, 88–89, 153, 159; Kanoutas, 1918, pp. 214–215, 221, 223; Saloutos, 1964, pp. 246–247). Its aims were to assist immigrants to adapt to the American environment and become American citizens while keeping their ties with Greece (Atlantis, 11, 15, 16, 19.10.1907). At the same time, the new organization aimed to combat Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Young Turk propaganda in the United States (Atlantis, 28.9.1907). Adding to the intervention of the Greek state after the arrival of Lambros Coromilas as Greek ambassador to the United States in 1908, its main purpose became to control immigrants and promote a unified nationalist ideology. The foundation of the 4 In a series of articles under the general title “United States Are Governed by Patriotism,” he presented the US Constitution (Atlantis, 4.5.1896, 22.10 and 19.11.1897, 26.9, 2 and 26.10.1900). He also wrote History of the United States of America in Greek.
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Panhellenic Union constitutes the first step in the process of construction of Greek Americans as an imaginary collective subject. The Greek state feared that immigrants might lose their “national character” through American cultural influence (Laliotou, 2004, p. 59; Metanasteusis, 1906, pp. 80, 99). Moreover, it was obvious for Greek politicians that the “seed of cosmopolitan ideas, inherent in the human soul, is not foreign to the Greek soul; the uneducated, peasants, shepherds, and the most humble are no exception, and it is especially them that we should indoctrinate in order for them to absorb the sentiment of nationalism” (Metanasteusis, 1906, p. 56). Thus the Panhellenic Union not only aimed to prevent the Americanization of Greek subjects in the United States, but also had to indoctrinate immigrants from both Greece and the Ottoman empire to ensure that they became or remained supporters of the Greek nationalist project. Furthermore, the Greek state wished to prove that it had become the sole center of Hellenism and controlled any tendencies that favored the autonomous development of Greek communities in the United States and the forging of any alternative discourse. Nevertheless, the effort to create, through the Panhellenic Union, a unified Greek community with a single identity under Greek state control and to suppress localism deepened preexisting divisions in Greek communities. The Panhellenic Union failed to combat localism and to develop a unified perception of Hellenism among immigrants. Arguably, it served instead as a site for conflicts between rival leading groups, that is, competing identity entrepreneurs. Lambros Coromilas underestimated the impact of local divisions and centers of power and most importantly the clash between the Ralli and the Vlasto factions mentioned above. He instigated a revision of the Panhellenic Union’s charter, and the organization subsequently evolved from a federation of Greek societies to an organization with a strong central board and individual membership. The council members of the board belonged to the Ralli faction and subsequently published Panhellenic, a newspaper expressing their views (IAYE, F. 115.1/1912, 8280, 5.4.1911). According to the Greek consul in Chicago, Nicolaos Salopoulos, Vlastos, who favored the previous federal system and feared that the new board would use the Greek state’s support to curb his influence on immigrants, started a war that divided the Greek communities on the grounds that the Panhellenic Union did not express immigrants’ desires (IAYE, F. 115.1/1912, 1190, 29.3.1911). He claimed that the local branches of the Union were exploiting them and tried to replace the associations of immigrants who came from the same region (Panhellenic, 18.4.1911). Vlastos thus tried to protect his network of influence by appealing to the immigrants’ strong local ties and the bitterness they felt toward the Greek state, which they viewed as a corrupt mechanism of control. Vlastos did not propose to sever immigrants’ ties with Greece. He stressed that since Panslavism had destroyed the Greek communities in
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18 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania, the Greeks in the United States were the only group outside Greece that could support Hellenism (Atlantis, 28.10.1908). Nevertheless, as an advocate of naturalization, he did not believe that immigrants should be under the control of the Greek state. He also criticized the proposal to ban immigration from Greece, in line with official US policy expressed by the American consul in Athens, George Horton, that favored the continuing flow of unskilled workers necessary for the US economy (Atlantis, 4, 5, 6.2.1909; Kourtoumi-Hatzi, 1999, pp. 110–111). The fact that Atlantis had the biggest circulation among Greek-language newspapers in the United States proved that Vlastos’s discourse – professing Greek nationalism but also declaring that by returning to the Greek state, with its inefficient administration and overtaxation, immigrants would jeopardize their prosperity – held an appeal for the emerging lower middle class in Greek communities. The board of the Panhellenic Union wrote to the Greek foreign minister, Lambros Coromilas (IAYE, F 93.1/1912, 27801, 11.12.1912): This contradicts the calculations and the interests of the anti-national newspaper (Atlantis), which … on the one hand untruthfully presents America as the “Promised Land where milk and honey flows” for Greeks in order to attract even more immigrants here and increase its sales, and on the other hand cultivates among immigrants aversion to their Fatherland, which it presents as the country of Hell and Gehenna, cursing for two decades now the King, Queen, Crown Prince, Princes and Princesses (even until two months ago) the Government and the Politicians, the Prime Ministers (even the current Great man), the ministers, the people, the country, everything – in order to prevent the return of the immigrants; in such a case it would lose its milk cow, what it terms the “thinking public.” (See also Laliotou, 2004, p. 151)
During the Balkan Wars, when the Panhellenic Union served as the unofficial recruiting office for the Greek army and organized the return of volunteers to Greece, Atlantis accused it of violating its charter by serving a foreign government (19.2.1913). By the beginning of World War I this immigrant lower middle class had a considerable presence in the sector of grocery stores, flower shops, restaurants, and pastry shops in the United States (Kitroeff, 2003, p. 326). At the same time, the presence of Greek industrialists who had made their fortune in the United States started to strengthen the tendency toward a distinct Greek American identity that, while not negating its cultural ties with Greece, proclaimed loyalty to the United States. Even the Panhellenic Union started to express its independence from the Greek state. After the Balkan Wars, the Union board refused permission to the Greek diplomatic envoy Stephanos Kiouzes Pezas to control its books, declaring that agents of a foreign government had no right to interfere with an American association
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(IAYE, F. 227 A.A.K. 1/1914, 1.3.1914). Nevertheless, the organization’s inefficiency in addressing immigrants’ needs and accusations of financial mismanagement were the main causes for its decline, and it continued to draw membership only in the northeastern cities. According to its critics, this was due to the pressure exercised on industrial workers and miners by “owners of gambling clubs, coffee shops, billiard halls, and labor contractors who served as the ‘directors’ and the ‘associate directors’ of the socalled ‘Panhellenic Union chapters’ ” (Atlantis, 17.9.1915). In January 1916, a new organization was formed at the instigation of Solon Vlastos called the Greek-American National Union, with a mixed board of Greeks and Americans. Its president was Euripides Kehagias, a tobacco merchant who made his fortune in the United States. The new organization accepted only those who were already naturalized as full members. It aimed to encourage immigrants to learn English, become acquainted with the US political system, and obtain American citizenship. At the same time, it offered social services to arriving immigrants and helped them secure employment (Atlantis, 23.1.1916). Contrary to the Panhellenic Union, which still professed that those immigrants should not assimilate and should return to Greece to contribute to its development, the Greek-American National Union declared its intention to encourage immigrants to take an active part in the political life of the United States (Atlantis, 25.1.1916). The Greek-American National Union did not manage to gain a large membership, probably because the public it wished to address was still not numerically considerable, but it was the first organization to express openly the idea that immigrants should shift their loyalty to the United States. Nevertheless, until the end of World War I, political developments in Greece had serious consequences for the development of Greek communities, and this was proved by the impact of the Greek National Schism, as explained below. In 1915, civil strife, known as the National Schism (Διχασμο′ς), erupted in Greece between pro-German King Constantine and the liberal prime minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, who favored Greek participation in the war on the side of Entente powers (Koliopoulos & Veremis, 2002, pp. 284–285). The National Schism stirred up great passions among Greek citizens that led to violent street clashes and attacks on political adversaries. In the United States the two rival factions, namely, the members and opponents of the Panhellenic Union, tried to use the political divisions in Greece to strengthen their legitimization. Ever since the formation of the first Greek communities in the United States, the rival leading groups had to seek legitimization either from the Greek government or from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Solon Vlastos received the honorary title of “exarch” from the patriarch of Constantinople, Joachim III. As noted by Professor Amilkas Alivizatios, Vlastos subsequently used this title to pose as the protector of the Orthodox
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20 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos religion and the Greek communities in the United States (IAYE, F. B35.4/1918, 9152, 11.7.1918). Also in 1916, King Constantine decorated Vlastos for his contribution to the war effort during the Balkan Wars. The Panhellenic Union board made the point that although Vlastos had previously been a stringent critic of the Greek dynasty, in subsequent years he became an ardent supporter of King Constantine and a leader of the royalist factions in Greek communities in the United States (IAYE, F. 93.1/1912, 27801, 11.12.1912). He boasted that “the honor made by the Greek King in the name of the Fatherland, following that by the Great Church of Christ through Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III, imposes on American Hellenism, and above all on Atlantis, to have as its common motto, ‘For Fatherland and Religion’” (Atlantis, 6.2.1916). This ideological shift was not only due to Vlastos’s ambition to be recognized as the representative of Greek Americans, but also followed the growth of royalist feeling among lower-middle-class Greeks and the majority of immigrants after the Balkan Wars. Many believed that King Constantine was meant to fulfill the messianic prophecies, that is, to conquer Constantinople (Istanbul) and restore the Byzantine empire. In order to counterbalance Vlastos’s influence on Greek immigrants, the Panhellenic Union board decided to publish a new newspaper, which, due to the tense political climate and the support of the Liberal Party in Greece, managed to gain the appeal that the declining Panhellenic Union could not achieve. The National Herald supported Venizelos’s policy favoring the alignment of Greece with the Western Powers. Since the diaspora merchants who controlled the Panhellenic Union depended on British capital, it was obvious that they would side with the Entente. In January 1916, representatives from the diaspora Greek communities in the countries of the Entente powers as well as Egypt participated in a congress in Paris to condemn the attitude of King Constantine and express their support for Greek participation in the war on the side of the Entente powers (IAYE, F.A52/1915, 86, 4.2.1916). Nevertheless, this position rescinded their opposition to the irredentist policy favored by the Greek lower middle class and civil servants in the Greek kingdom (Tsoukalas, 1977, p. 364). In the United States, the communities among which the Panhellenic Union had a strong presence decided to appoint a representative to the Paris congress. The list of these cities confirms the view expressed in Atlantis that the Panhellenic Union held ground only among the industrial workers of northeastern cities (National Herald, 27.1.1916). Still, it would be inaccurate to argue that only the social class of the supporters of each group explains the support for Prime Minister Venizelos by the Panhellenic Union and King Constanine by its opponents. Factors such as the translocal ties of immigrants to their village and the influence of local leaders in Greek communities played an important role. Moreover, since Greeks had one of the highest return rates, immigrants were interested in political
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developments in Greece. Owing to these factors, support for one or the other group could shift. Nonetheless, the National Schism led to the consolidation of two rival factions, the Liberals and the Royalists, who expressed themselves through the two national Greek-language newspapers, the National Herald and Atlantis. The reasons for the conflict predated the National Schism in Greece. As the Greek envoy in Chicago, Stephanos Kiouzes-Pezas, wrote to the Greek foreign minister, Nicolaos Politis (IAYE, F. B35.4/1918, 11961, 3/16.10.1918): From the beginning and in several circumstances I have underlined that our co-nationals in New York are deeply divided over personal and not political reasons. They are only to a lesser extent interested in political issues. Vlastos, the editor of Atlantis, is no more interested in the person of the ex-King than Tatanis, the editor of the National Herald, is in essence interested in Venizelism. These issues are, for them, merely pretexts used in order to satisfy their personal passions and this is proved by the following: the division of the Greeks in New York into Vlastos’s friends and enemies existed long before the current disagreement between the Prime Minister and the ex-King, as is shown by my detailed dispatch on the situation in New York that I submitted to the ministry in 1914.
The special envoy to the United States, Professor Andreas Andreadis, noted that the National Schism served as an ideological cover for the divisions between the two factions along which were aligned the local communities’ rival leaderships (IAYE, F. A/AAK13/1919, 3.9.1919). Subsequently, the conflict between Solon Vlastos and the Panhellenic Union, transformed into one between Royalists and Liberals, created a stir in Greek communities quite apart from its social and ideological background, because rival leading groups at the local level aligned with one or other faction in order to strengthen their position.
Greek American Middle-Class Identity after World War I Immigrants’ attachment to affairs in their homeland, as exemplified by the impact of the National Schism in Greek communities, strengthened xenophobic feelings in the United States during and after World War I. The American government and several pressure groups considered immigrants with “dual loyalty” as a potential danger for the United States. Especially after the American declaration of war on Germany, the US administration did not favor institutions under foreign state influence and discouraged the use of foreign languages in public, while some even advocated a ban on the foreign-language press. Both Atlantis and the National Herald participated in the Union of Foreign Language Press Publishers that was founded in
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22 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos 1919. Moreover, Atlantis reiterated its support for naturalization. In a series of articles in English, the paper underlined its contribution to familiarizing immigrants with US institutions and its exhortations to Greeks to contribute to the Salvation Army and to enroll their children in the scouts. The newspaper insisted that “one of the greatest Americanizing forces in the country, namely the Foreign Language American press, is called upon to play a most important part in fusing all the various racial elements of the land in a single national body” (Atlantis, 16.5.1919). At the same time, it suggested that the US authorities should simplify the naturalization procedure. The pressures on immigrants to assimilate created a sentiment of uneasiness among Greeks in the United States. However, improved working conditions, the institution of the 8-hour workday, and wage increases during the war raised the living standard of immigrants. On the other hand, the drafting of approximately 60,000 immigrants into the US army boosted the number of naturalizations. After the war, workers who were hired to replace those who had been drafted were fired. Despite this, as Professor Andreas Andreadis noted, they had accumulated a considerable capital, which they invested in small-scale businesses, hotels, and pastry and flower shops (IAYE, F. A/AAK13/1919, 3.9.1919). Although the majority of Greek immigrants were still blue-collar workers, the lower middle class was strengthened (Scourby, 1991, p. 49). At the same time, the number of Greek industrialists, wholesale merchants, and scientists who composed the upper middle class increased considerably. The appearance of a Greek American middle class was pivotal for the assimilation of Greeks after the end of World War I in American society. Many immigrants returned to Greece after the war but did not stay permanently because of the conditions there and the attitude of locals who treated them as “Americans.” As the Greek consul in Seattle, Christos Liliopoulos, noted (IAYE, F. 48.4/1921, 1/14.10.1920), “Unfortunately the Greek who returns from America feels, however unfair this may seem, in his fatherland and in his contacts with the Greek public as foreign as he feels in this country. He is the ‘American’ in the towns and even in his village, while in America he is ‘Greek.’ The Greeks in Greece, except his relatives of course, treat him always with hesitation, as if he were a total stranger, and in some cases treat him even with contempt.” Vlastos had already warned that “Those who return to Greece resemble someone who leaves a blooming garden for a barren field full of thorns” (Atlantis, 11.7.1919). The diffusion of returnees’ negative impressions strengthened the belief that Greeks in the United States were henceforth a distinct part of “Hellenism.” Nevertheless, many men married during their stay in Greece and brought their wives back with them, thus ending the previous disproportion between men and women in Greek communities. The increasing number of families in Greek communities proved that large numbers of immigrants considered their stay in the United States to be permanent (Saloutos, 1964, p. 236).
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From this it can be deduced that after World War I social conditions favored immigrants’ assimilation. This was achieved through the new ethnic organizations that were formed after the war and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. As with other ethnic groups, a new identity was constructed in this period. This ethnic identity gradually supplanted local immigrant identifications and introduced a common symbolic system by reinterpreting elements of the preexisting immigrant culture (Conzen, Gerber, Morawska, Pozzetta, & Vecoli, 1992, p. 23). After the war, American government pressures led even the Panhellenic Union to declare that henceforth it aimed to make “the Greek immigrant capable of obtaining American citizenship, absorbing the ideals, the customs, and the moral principles of Americans … of understanding what Americanism means” (National Herald, 2.7.1919). On the other hand, it still insisted that “our hope to exist in the future as a nation obliges us to think in a Panhellenic rather than in a local way” (National Herald, 23.9.1919). The Panhellenic Union board continued to underestimate the impact of a long stay in the United States, where immigrants were receivers of a systematic propaganda campaign calling on them to absorb and internalize American national symbols and to assimilate to the native culture. On the other hand, the Greek state did not have the means to cultivate and impose on immigrants its unified vision of Panhellenism since immigrants “escape the power of the nation state to inform their sense of collective identity” (Kearney, 1991, p. 59). Thus, although immigrants were eager to send money to Greece in cases of emergency, they were unwilling to accept any form of indirect taxation by the Greek state and showed distrust toward the Greek government and its officials (IAYE, F. B35.4/1918, 9152, 11.7.1918; see also Bodnar, 1985, p. 128). Moreover, after the end of the Balkan Wars, the number of those who could not return to Greece because they did not wish to serve in the army grew. Agamemnon Schlieman, Greek ambassador in Washington at the time, wrote to the Greek foreign ministry that “It is normal that they feel tired and as a result express aversion toward wars, because of their bitter experiences, although they returned not long ago to general acclaim and admiration” (IAYE, F.B.46/1915, 40397, 5.11.1914). These factors contributed to the cultivation of a separate form of selfhood among Greeks in the United States. As the Greek ambassador in Washington, Georges Roussos, wrote to the Greek foreign minister, Nicolaos Politis, “American Hellenism should not be considered as colonial Hellenism, since it has achieved its self-sufficiency and self-existence” (IAYE, F.41.2.1/19263964, 10.11.1918). On the other hand, the strengthening of the Ku Klux Klan during the interwar period was perceived as a visible menace to Greek immigrants. The Ku Klux Klan proclaimed an embargo on all businesses that did not have native clerks or a mixed clientele (Schaefer, 1971, p. 148). Ethnic seclusion,
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24 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos the inability to communicate in English, the high crime rate, and frequent clashes within Greek ethnic enclaves enhanced the negative image Greek immigrants presented to natives. Greeks were not perceived as a priori belonging to the “White” race (Georges Petrinos, National Herald, 19.7.1923; see Anagnostou, 2009). As the National Herald noted, “we have lost any appreciation and sympathy from American public opinion and we are considered as inferior to the Turks and even the Chinese.” Even the concentration of Greeks in big northeastern cities was interpreted as a reaction to racism in the Midwest and Southern states (Kitroeff, 2003, p. 354; Saloutos, 1964, p. 248). Many believed that immigrants’ seclusion contributed to racism and suggested that “Greeks should demolish the China wall that they have built to separate themselves from natives and should act as Americans and not as Greeks” (Serapheim Canoutas, National Herald, 4.4.1923). The Greek ambassador in Washington, Georges Roussos, pointed out that “ever since America entered the Great War, it aims at the Americanization of Greek and other immigrants through moral pressure and other means. Unfortunately there are Greeks who have bent to this pressure because of their material interests and not only openly display their Americanism but also induce others to the Americanizing crucible, beginning with naturalization that America pursues systematically” (IAYE, F. 41.2.1/1926, 3964, 10.11.1918). Members of the emerging middle class after World War I hoped that by abandoning external Greek cultural characteristics, they would distance themselves from the prevalent negative stereotypes about Greek immigrants. This tendency appeared during the previous decade and found expression in the Greek-American National Union, but the prevalent xenophobic and racist climate in the 1920s further strengthened it. The need to convince natives that members of the Greek middle class deserved to be considered as White and therefore as first-class citizens led to the foundation of the American Hellenic Progressive Association (AHEPA). AHEPA was founded in 1922 by two traveling salesmen who understood the danger posed by the Ku Klux Klan to Greeks in Southern states (Malafouris, 1948, p. 206; Marketos, 2006, p. 131; Saloutos, 1964, p. 249). The aim of the new organization was to “cultivate genuine Americanism, devotion to US political institutions, and enhance solidarity among Greeks in the United States” (Malafouris, 1948, p. 206). Prospective members had be American citizens or fulfill the criteria to become so, belong to the White race, and believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ (Saloutos, 1964, p. 249). AHEPA thus guaranteed members Whiteness, religiosity, and loyalty in trying to achieve acceptance within the American middle class (see Anagnostou, 2004). At the same time, the organization decided that its working language would be English and thus tried to dissociate itself from the practices and customs criticized by Americans and to constitute itself as the leading group
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of the Greek American community (Malafouris, 1948, p. 209; Saloutos, 1964, p. 253). Some priests proposed that AHEPA constitute the secular branch of archdioceses, an Orthodox equivalent of the Knights of Columbus (Saloutos, 1964, p. 251). Notwithstanding this, because of the increasing number of Greek conversions to Protestant churches, AHEPA distinguished Hellenism from Orthodox Christianity, thus recognizing the multiple identifications of Greeks in the United States, and adopted ancient Greek heritage as a general identifier. AHEPA declared that “The fanatical cry of the old Panhellenists, ‘Pas Hellen Prepei na Einai Orthodoxos,’ is outdated. We are Greeks, but we did not inherit our present religion from our ancestors, the ancient Greeks, as we did our blood and traits. … There are thousands of true-blooded Greeks who are members of other churches. Must we deny their race owing to that? Finally the AHEPA is not a doctrinaire cult” (Archon, I, 8.1927: 4–5; Saloutos, 1964, p. 254). Its founders hoped that Greeks would achieve acceptance within the leading group of White citizens by discarding modern Greek cultural characteristics and emphasizing their ancestry from ancient Greece, since the dominant discourse considered classical Greece as having furnished the cultural background of American identity (Anagnostou, 2004, p. 26). Therefore, AHEPA claimed Greek Americans’ distinctiveness “as being a national ethnic subject with reference to nationalism in the United States” (Laliotou, 2004, p. 121). Many Americans contested modern Greeks’ descent from ancient Greeks and did not accept that immigrants were the inheritors of classical civilization (Anagnostou, 2003, p. 298). Nonetheless, the use of the classical past constituted the only way for the aspiring Greek American middle class, which AHEPA represented, to gain acceptance as White Americans (Kitroeff, 2003, p. 355; Marketos, 2006, p. 134). The discomfort of some at AHEPA’s urge to Americanize and use English in public spaces led to the founding of GAPA (Greek American Progressive Association) in 1923, an organization that advocated maintaining Greek cultural characteristics and the Orthodox faith while pledging loyalty to American political values (Marketos, 2006, p. 136; Saloutos, 1964, p. 255). The insistence on retaining Greek cultural characteristics resulted from the fact that GAPA’s members came from the lower immigrant strata (Kitroeff, 2003, p. 355). Although the National Herald initially praised the foundation of AHEPA, it later shifted its allegiance to GAPA (Marketos, 2006, p. 137). Its editor, Fr. Demetrius Callimachos, stressed that the “Greek community in the United States had the historical responsibility to retrieve these particular aspects, which [Callimachos] referred to as ‘Hellenism,’ to make them central elements of modern Greek culture, and thus to prove the organic relation between Hellenism and Americanism” (Laliotou, 2004, p. 153). By mid-1923, even the Panhellenic Union tried to rebrand itself as the “union of American citizens of Greek origins that would not mingle with
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26 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos political clashes in our homeland (Greece),” but it had already been superseded in this function by AHEPA and GAPA (National Herald, 9.5.1923). The dissolution of the Panhellenic Union after 1924 was a result of immigrants’ emancipation and marks a shift in relations of Greek American leading groups with the Greek state. Although AHEPA and GAPA held different positions on assimilation and integration, both pledged allegiance to the United States. Contrary to the Panhellenic Union, they thus served as an intermediary mechanism in the process of immigrants’ classification, surveillance, and discipline by the American authorities (see Foucault, 1995, p. 164). In this context, the assimilation of immigrants did not require the dissolution of ethnic organizations but their transformation into institutions that would reinterpret ethnic background in order to render it compatible with American nationalism and middle-class social values. Ethnic organizations showcased the core values, thus shaping a collective body defined by mostly middle-class ethnic elites. That is, they expressed the acceptable limits of collective difference in the host society and were, in their turn, supervised by state institutions (see Foucault, 1995, p. 177). Central authorities transferred the function of supervising possibly seditious foreigners to social networks encompassing ethnic groups. The system of Greek American values therefore enhanced putative members’ group solidarity and mobilized the ethnic group still under construction to defend its “traditional values” and its cultural capital, but also to advance its wish for the recognition of its members’ status (Anagnostou, 2004, p. 50; Conzen et al., 1992, p. 6). State power and efforts at ethnic cohesion, however, were not able to prevent the creation of social movements and alternative networks that proposed alternative group identifications (Brubaker, 2004, p. 43). Immigrants in the United States often contested official ethnic identifications in the frame of social movements that were based on class conscience expressing a counterhegemonic discourse. During World War I the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) started to approach immigrant workers. Contrary to the official discourse, the IWW interpreted “Americanism” not as the adoption of middle-class values but as the claim for “quality of life,” that is, an 8-hour workday, salary increases, and improved work conditions (Anagnostou, 2004, p. 51; Barrett, 1992, p. 1009). After the October Revolution in Russia more radical Greek socialists participated in the US Labor Party and published the newspaper Workers’ Voice (Karpozilos, 2004, p. 28). The big strike wave during 1919 caused panic among the leading groups of Greek communities. The Union of Foreign Language Press condemned “any form of Bolshevism.” The National Herald published anti-communist propaganda almost daily and proclaimed its readiness to denounce any subversive activities to the authorities, stressing that “it is everyone’s duty to inform on agitators and underminers of the regime, pointing out what common sense indicates” (National Herald, 21.10.1919). The newspaper also expressed its
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opposition to collective wage bargaining and even to the idea of strikes. Moreover, it blamed strikers for the “unbearable needs of life since … in the past workers were happy with their wages and their life conditions […] workers strike, not because they are not paid enough, but because others are better paid and work less” (National Herald, 13.4, 4.11.1919). These views were held not only by a few newspapers. Nicolas Kassavetis, the semi-official representative of Greek propaganda in the United States, warned that “even Bulgarian agents work in order to poison their feelings and present them to the American authorities as seditious, anarchists, and a menace to order” and justified authorities who deported striking workers, stressing that “America rightfully will strike any foreign elements that undermine social peace” (National Herald, 12.2.1919). Furthermore, he exhorted immigrants to adopt “American liberal values” and to keep their distance from those who hid behind the mask of “protecting their interests.” Thus he stressed that Americanization consisted not just in assimilation but also in rejecting communism. Communism for Kassavetis constituted a negation of both Greek culture and American ideals. On the contrary, Solon Vlastos, under the influence of progressivism, acknowledged that the labor movement was a product of industrial societies and believed that Greek industrial workers should participate along with their American colleagues as long as they did not adopt “extreme socialist, bolshevist, and anarchist ideas” (Atlantis, 23.6.1919). Vlastos therefore, unlike his liberal adversaries, considered labor unions as a means of assimilation and advocated the need for “harmonious collaboration between capitalists and workers.” Nevertheless, this attitude might also have been affected by the fact that socialists in Greece collaborated with the anti-Venizelist coalition. While stressing the importance of ethnic organizations and social networks, the role of the Orthodox Church in framing Greek American identity should not be underestimated. The establishment of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was the result both of the Greek state’s desire to keep immigrants under its influence and of the pressures for Americanization. The delayed appointment of a bishop for Greek churches in America was connected to the xenophobic climate in the United States during World War I, and the obstacles that the American government started to place in the functioning of immigrant nationalist organizations and schools. The Greek ambassador in Washington, Georges Roussos, wrote that “associations with a national character will not have in the future the necessary freedom of action” (IAYE, F. B35.4/1918, 9152, 11.7.1918), stressing that “the need to use the church and only the church becomes imperative due to the assimilationist efforts that are accelerating. Every means is used to achieve the Americanization of strangers, naturalization is facilitated, the authorities and even private citizens exert pressures on immigrants whenever this is possible” (IAYE, F. B 35.4/19183964, 24.11.1917).
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28 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos The appointment of a locum tenens in America by Archbishop Meletios of Athens during his visit there was a turning point for the construction of the Greek American ethnic group, since it was the first time an institution that envisaged uniting the Orthodox Greeks in the United States had been organized. Contrary to Venizelos’s hopes, the organization of the Archdiocese contributed to Greek immigrants’ disengagement from Greece as well as to their Americanization. In 1922, when Meletios became patriarch of Constantinople, he revoked the decision of 1908 and instituted the Autonomous Archdiocese of North and South America under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. Theodore Saloutos believed that Greek Americans’ dependence on the Patriarchate of Constantinople and not on the Church of Greece signified their dissociation from Greek nationalism (Saloutos, 1964, p. 107). Moreover, he considered that the Patriarchate’s ecumenicity allowed the Archdiocese of America to describe an Americanized version of Orthodoxy, compatible with the Greek American identity that had been under construction in this period (Saloutos, 1964, p. 110). Although in 1931 the Patriarchate revoked the autonomy of the Archdiocese at the Greek state’s instigation, this did not suspend the process of church Americanization (Manolis, 2003, pp. 246–292). Thus for the majority of immigrants, the Archdiocese constituted the most important tool in the process of their ethnicization. In conclusion, Greek American identity, as it was framed after World War I, was an expression of an aspiring middle class within the Greek communities. Unlike the elites that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century who used different versions of Greek nationalism legitimized by the Greek state and the Constantinople Patriarchate, those that appeared after World War I constructed a Greek American identity compatible with middle-class values and tried to distinguish themselves from lower-class immigrants whose attitudes strengthened xenophobic sentiments. For this reason, they reinterpreted the attributes of “Hellenism” and defined the limits of Greek American community in a dialectic relation with dominant culture and the other ethnic groups in the United States. The new elites endeavored thus to diminish reactions of the dominant ethnic culture (ethno-culture) agents by underlining “the sidestream ethnic culture’s compatibility with American values and ideals” (Conzen et al., 1992, p. 6). Acceptance by the American middle class presupposed the “negation of barbarous cultural traits,” that is, elements that referred to Balkan Greece and adopted ancient Greek heritage as the sole cultural background. Nevertheless, this discourse excluded lower-class Greek immigrants who had not achieved economic success, were not naturalized, or could not even communicate in English. The Archdiocese unified Greek immigrants around a common identifier, religion, acceptable to both the majority of immigrants and the American government. Ethnic
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national associations and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese became the main institutions that contributed to the development of Greek American identity during the interwar years since ethnic elites held an ambivalent position toward Greek nationalism in order to stress their loyalty to the United States. However, the elements that defined Greek American identity were renegotiated with the arrival of immigrant waves from Greece after World War II, and especially after 1965, and the change in Greek Americans’ social status in the United States. The new wave of immigration from Greece contributed to the strengthening of immigrants’ relations with their ethnic roots. Besides financial success, it reinforced Greek Americans’ “ethnic pride” and their claim for visibility in American society as successful ethnics. Greek Americans are considered today as an example of a well-integrated ethnic group. Nonetheless, until World War II many social scientists in the United States maintained that their “siege mentality,” combined with their “backwardness,” would obstruct their integration into American society. In the century that has elapsed since the beginning of their immigration from Greece, they have become an interesting example of both the diversification and adaptation process of an ethnic group with a cultural background considered as alien in the host society and of the evolution of host society attitudes toward immigrants. A question that remains valid for Greek Americans is whether ethnicity will retain its importance without the influx of new immigrants, or whether the Orthodox religion will eventually become the main reference for future generations (Manolis, 2007). In this chapter I have tried to demonstrate the processes that led to the construction of Greek American identity and the role of elites as a functioning intermediary between immigrants on the one hand, and the Greek and the US administration on the other. Although historical processes are not repeated, older migration experiences might serve as an insight to trends among current immigrants in contemporary Western societies.
References Anagnostou, Y. (2003, March). Model Americans, quintessential Greeks: Ethnic success and assimilation in diaspora. Diaspora, 12, 279–327. Anagnostou, Y. (2004). Forget the past, remember the ancestors! Modernity, “Whiteness,” American Hellenism, and the politics of memory in early Greek America. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 22, 25–71. Anagnostou, Y. (2009). Contours of White ethnicity, popular ethnography and the making of usable pasts in Greek America. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Baines, D. (1991). Emigration from Europe 1815–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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30 Yannis G. S. Papadopoulos Barrett, J. R. (1992). Americanization from the bottom up: Immigration and the remaking of the working class in the United States, 1880–1930. Journal of American History, 79(3, special issue), 996–1020. Bodnar, J. (1985). The transplanted: A history of immigrants in urban America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burgess, T. (1913). Greeks in America. Boston: Sherman, French. Chryssochoou, X. (2004). Cultural diversity: Its social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. Contopoulos, M. (1992). The Greek community of New York City: Early years to 1910. New York: A. D. Caratzas. Conzen, K. N., Gerber, D. A., Morawska, E., Pozzetta, G. E., & Vecoli, R. J. (1992). The invention of ethnicity: Perspective from the USA. Journal of American Ethnic History, 12, 3–41. Dicarlo, L. (2008). Migrating to America: Transnational social networks and regional identity among Turkish immigrants. New York: Tauris Academic Studies. Fairchild, H. P. (1911). Greek immigration to the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fitzgerald, T. E. (1995). The Orthodox Church. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage. Gabaccia, D. R. (2000). Italy’s many diasporas. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Gordon, L. J. (1932). American relations with Turkey 1830–1930: An economic interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Green, N. L., & Weil, F. (2006). Citoyenneté et émigration: Les politiques du départ. Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Higham, J. (1967). Strangers in the land: Patterns of American nativism 1860–1925. New York: Atheneum. Holy Trinity Church. (1937). Forty years of Greek life in Chicago, 1897–1937. Chicago. Kanoutas, S. (1918). O Ellhnismo¢ V en Amerikh¢ . New York: Cosmos. Karpozilos, K. (2004). Pre-communist Greek immigrant radicalism in the United States. Journal of Hellenic Diaspora, 30(2), 7–56. Kearney, M. (1991). Borders and boundaries of state and self at the end of empire. Journal of Historical Sociology, 4(1), 52–74. Kitroeff, A. (2003). “Οι ´Ελληνες στις ΗΠΑ 1909–1922.” Istori¢a tou Ne¢ou Ellhnismou¢ , 1770–2000, vol. 7. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. Koliopoulos, J. S., & Veremis, T. M. (2002). Greece, the modern sequel: From 1821 to the present. London: Hurst. Kourtoumi-Hadzi, T. (1999). H Ellhnikh¢ Metana¢ steush proV tiV Hnwme¢neV Politei¢ eV kai h Politikh¢ thV Ella¢ daV (1890–1924). Unpublished PhD thesis, Aristotelean University of Thessalonica. Kourvetaris, G. A. (1971). First and second generation Greeks in Chicago. Athens. Laliotou, I. (2004). Transatlantic subjects: Acts of migration and cultures of transnationalism between Greece and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Malafouris, B. (1948). ´EllhneV thV Amerikh¢V 1528–1948. New York.
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Manolis, P. G. (Ed.). (2003). The history of the Greek Church of America, in acts and documents, 3 vols. Berkeley, CA: Ampelos Press. Manolis, P. (2007). “Ορθο′δοξος Εκκλησι′α και Ελληνισμο′ς της Αμερικη′ς.” Parnasso¢V. Marketos, B. I. (2006). Oi Ellhnoamerikanoi¢ , Istori¢ a thV ellhnikh¢V omoge¢ neiaV stiV HPA. Athens: Papazisis. Metanasteusis. (1906). H ex Ella¢ doV Metana¢ steusiV, h ´EkqesiV thV Epitroph¢V thV Boulh¢V kai h Scetikh¢ Pro¢ tasiV No¢ mou. Athens. Østergaard-Nielsen, E. (2003). International migration and sending countries: Perceptions, policies and transnational relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Papastergiadis, N. (2000). The turbulence of migration, globalization, deterritorialization and hybridity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Reicher, S. & Hopkins, N. (2001). Self and the nation: Categorization, contestation and mobilization. London: Sage. Saloutos, T. (1964). The Greeks in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schaefer, R. T. (1971). The Ku Klux Klan: Continuity and change. Phylon, 32(2), 143–157. Scourby, A. (1991). Mobility and ethnicity: The case of Greek-Americans. In Michael D’Innocenzo and Josef P. Sirefman (Eds.), Immigration and ethnicity: American society – “melting pot” or “salad bowl”?. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Sollors, W. (1981). Theory of American ethnicity, or: “? S Ethnic?/Ti and American/ Ti, De or United (W) States SSI and Theor?” American Quarterly, 33, 257–283. Tichenor, D. J. (2002). Dividing lines: The politics of immigration control in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tsoukalas, C. (1977). Exa¢ rthsh kai Anaparagwg h¢. O koinwniko¢ V Ro¢ loV twn Ekpaideutikw¢n Mhcanismw¢n sthn Ella¢ da (1830–1922). Athens: Themelio. Vecoli, R. J. (1964). Contadini in Chicago. Journal of American History, 51, 404–417. Ventouras, L. (1999). ´EllhneV Metana¢ steV sto Be¢ lgio. Athens: Nefeli.
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Religious Identity and Socio-Political Participation Muslim Minorities in Western Europe Maykel Verkuyten In 1989, in France, the “headscarf affair of Creil” attracted a lot of media attention and led to a political controversy involving the then minister of education, Lionel Jospin, as well as the Supreme Court. The nationwide commotion concerned the wearing of a headscarf (hijab) in public schools by Muslim girls. It all started in September at the start of a new year at a public school when two Moroccan French girls and one Tunisian French girl, living in the city of Creil, refused to take off their headscarves during lessons. The head of the school saw the wearing of the headscarves as an example of excessive religious expression that could not be tolerated in a state school. On September 21, after the parents refused to comply with the head’s demands, the three girls were barred from school. Two weeks later, a compromise was reached: the girls were allowed to wear their scarves at school but not during lessons. Another two weeks later, after the involvement of the National Federation of Muslims in France (Federation nationale des musulmans de France), the girls again refused to take off their scarves during lessons. They were sent to the school library, and the school wrote to the minister of education asking for a clear judgment on the case, which by then had become a national issue. Those who supported the wearing of headscarves in the classroom argued that public schools symbolize the equality of all ethno-religious groups and propagate freedom of expression. Pupils should not be forbidden to show their religious affiliation because this would contravene these core national principles. Moreover, wearing a headscarf was seen to symbolize the identity and rights of Muslims and the acceptance of minority groups in society. The acceptance of the headscarf was considered as a recognition of minority group identities, which was seen as a necessary step for their integration. Discussions about multiculturalism and group rights often subsume the question of religion under that of cultural diversity or explicitly exclude religion from the politics of recognition (Taylor, 1994). Questions of diversity, however, are increasingly questions of religious diversity. In particular,
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Islam has emerged as the focus of immigration and diversity debates in Europe (Zolberg & Long, 1999) and forms a “bright boundary” separating immigrants from host societies (Alba, 2005). This is illustrated by the headscarf controversy in France, but also by the debate about the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the national debates about Islamic schools and the place of other Islamic institutions, practices, and claims within the deeply embedded secularism of most liberal democracies. It is clear that Islam has moved to the center of debates and politics in European countries and is at the heart of what is perceived as a “crisis of multiculturalism” (Modood & Ahmad, 2007). In this chapter I take a social psychological approach and focus on Muslim identity in the context of Western Europe, and the Netherlands in particular. This context is important because not only is the situation of Muslims in Europe quite different from that of, for example, American Muslims (Pew Research Center, 2007), but there are also clear differences within Europe. For instance, whereas most Muslims in Western Europe came as immigrants, some Eastern and Southeastern European countries are home to significant numbers of non-immigrant Muslims. Furthermore, different national approaches toward labor immigration and diverging colonial histories have led to an ethnically diverse Muslim population in Western Europe. Whereas former colonial ties resulted in the settlement of Muslims in France, Britain, and Spain, the Muslim population in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands is the result of these countries’ recruitment policies for manual labor. In addition, there is variation not only in ethnic-national backgrounds but also in the religious beliefs and practices of Sunni, Shi’ite, and Alevite Muslims in Western Europe (Buijs & Rath, 2002). The large diversity makes it problematic to speak of an Islamic “community” in Europe or in one particular European country. The social psychological approach of this chapter implies that a social identity perspective is used to examine religious identity among Muslim immigrants in relation to socio-political participation (Herriot, 2007). I will draw on theoretical and empirical work in social psychology, leaving aside the extensive research on Muslim populations in sociology, political science, history, and studies of religion. I will first discuss religious identity and in particular the different dimensions and contents of Muslim identity. Subsequently, I will address the question of the relationship between Muslim identity and identity performance with a special focus on identity consolidation and mobilization. Then I will consider the issue of Muslim orthodoxy and whether the emphasis on a “pure” Islam is related to the endorsement of Muslims’ rights to express their religion, to the attitude toward the political organization of Muslims, and to political intolerance. The last section discusses the relationship between Muslim identity and identification with the host society.
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34 Maykel Verkuyten
Religious Identity Questions of multiculturalism and group rights require an understanding of the nature of religious identity. Unfortunately, social psychology has not paid much attention to this identity but has tended to treat it as just another example of common identity processes. Religion, however, is often of profound importance to people’s lives and religious groups are among the more salient buttresses of identity. As argued by Seul (1999, p. 553), religions “supply cosmologies, moral frameworks, institutions, rituals, traditions, and other identity-supporting content that answers to individuals’ needs for psychological stability in the form of a predictable world, a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and even self-actualization.” In short, religion can meet quite diverse and important needs and can fulfill various functions. Recent social psychological studies and reviews have identified and validated several dimensions of group identification, such as “importance,” “regard,” “satisfaction,” and “belonging” (e.g., Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2004; Leach et al., 2008; Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous, 1998). There is little agreement, however, regarding the number and nature of the dimensions and it is not always clear whether terms such as identity “dimensions,” “elements,” “components,” and “aspects” refer to the same things. Centrality, importance, and evaluation are dimensional (attitude-like) properties that are relatively easy to assess and that have been studied extensively. However, these dimensions are not always very informative and there is much less attention to aspects that refer to content and meaning. However, in order to understand what it means to be a Muslim, researchers should examine the related norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Research in the United States has shown individual differences in Muslim identity importance and private regard (Sirin & Fine, 2008). The same has been found in the Netherlands among Alevi Muslims who tend to interpret Islam and the Qur’an in a spiritual, mystical, and humanistic way rather than in terms of strict rules and regulations (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2009). It is estimated, however, that 90 percent of Western European Muslims are Sunnites (Buijs & Rath, 2002), and several studies in the Netherlands have found that for this group Muslim identification on dimensions like “importance” and “private regard” is mostly very high. For example, among a representative sample from the city of Rotterdam, Phalet and Güngör (2004) found that Islam was considered “very meaningful and important” in one’s life by 87 percent of the Turkish Dutch and 96 percent of the Moroccan Dutch population. In addition, around two-thirds of the groups had a very strong Muslim identity. Furthermore, research on Turkish Dutch Muslims has found a mode of 7 on six-item scales (range 1–7) measuring the
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dimensions of private regard and importance, with around 60 percent of the participants having this maximum score (Verkuyten, 2007; Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007; see also Dagevos, Gijsberts, & van Praag, 2003). Further, around 45 percent had the highest possible score on statements such as “the fact that I am a Muslim is the most important thing in my life,” and “being a Muslim is the only thing that really matters in my life.” This very strong Muslim identification of Sunnites is related to global and national developments. The increased global tensions and divergences between the Western and Islamic world also force Dutch Muslims to a position of having to defend and stress their religion. In addition, the Muslim minority in the Netherlands face high levels of religious identity threat. Public opinion surveys since the late 1990s have shown clear resistance to the presence of Muslims in Dutch society, which has become widespread in most recent surveys (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007; Velasco González, Verkuyten, Weesie, & Poppe, 2008). Muslims are singled out by critics of multiculturalism as prototypical outsiders and Islam is presented as incompatible with Dutch norms and values, and as a barrier to socio-cultural integration in Dutch society. According to some commentators, there is an ongoing “Dutch–Muslim cultural war” (Scroggins, 2005). Furthermore, research has shown that Dutch Muslims indicate that discrimination of Muslims has increased in the Netherlands and perceived discrimination is positively associated with Muslim identification (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). Hence, the perceived acceptance and treatment by the Dutch majority appear to have an impact on the religious group identification of Dutch Muslims. However, the (quasi-)total religious group identification is probably also related to the nature of monotheistic religions in general, and Sunni Islam in particular. Very strong Muslim identification among West European immigrants was also found in the 1990s when intergroup tensions were much less strong (e.g., Modood et al., 1997). In addition, being a Sunni Muslim seems to imply a normative group commitment that is related to Islamic religion. For many Muslims, the declaration of faith symbolizes one’s belief and commitment to Islam: one either is a believer or one is not. Religion is about convictions and divine truths, and for most observant believers the core of their religious identity is non-negotiable, making the idea of religious conversions or adaptations an oxymoron. Yet, this does not mean that there is only one acceptable interpretation. The individual difference question appears to be not whether one does or does not selfidentify as a Muslim or how important it is to be a Muslim, but rather the ways in which one should and can be a Muslim in Western Europe (De Koning, 2008). Behind the very strong claims on Muslim identity that research finds, there can be various forms of attachment to Islam. Collective identities do not tend to have single valid interpretations but rather various contents and meanings.
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36 Maykel Verkuyten There are many ways of being a Muslim in Western Europe and some scholars argue that there is an emerging trend toward individualization and privatization of Islam. In contrast, others argue that Islam continues to be regulated by collective practices (e.g., visiting mosques, Ramadan) and a community of believers (see Lewis, 2007; Roy, 2006, 2007). Research among Dutch Muslims has shown an increase in individualist interpretations of what it means to be a Muslim, alongside an interpretation in which a commitment to fellow Muslims and conformity to Islam as an ethics of public practices and rules are emphasized (Phalet, Gijsberts, & Hagendoorn, 2008). For many Dutch Muslims, religious identity is about finding a way between individual meaning making and conformist rule following. In addition, there is a strong debate within Western European Muslim communities about the ideological meaning of Islam. In this complex debate about beliefs there are more orthodox interpretations that emphasize that Islam is about fundamental, essential, and inerrant truths that should not be interpreted to fit in with the Western world. And there are more liberal or modern interpretations that focus on the development of a European Islam and prefer a belief that is adaptable to modern society (see Buijs, Demant, & Hamdy, 2006; Lewis, 2007; Mirza, Senthilkumaran, & Ja’far, 2007).
Identity Performance For most social psychologists, collective identities have to do with people’s sense of their group memberships. The emphasis is on the subjective aspects that are conceptualized in terms of, for example, cognitive centrality, importance, and private regard. However, collective identities are not like private beliefs or convictions that, in principle, can be sustained without expression and social recognition. Anthropologists, sociologists, and discourse analysts have convincingly shown that collective identities depend crucially on acknowledgment and acceptance by others (see Verkuyten, 2005). A Moroccan French Muslim identity, in any real sense, implies, for example, that one is able to claim desired images, positions, and selfunderstandings in a variety of contexts and especially in public spaces. And being a Muslim is often a more “problematic” or accountable issue in public than in private life. The wearing of a headscarf is loaded with all kinds of symbolic, and highly contested, meanings. Different ethnic and religious groups demand that their own identity can be expressed and is acknowledged, and identity expression typically has instrumental and political meanings. People are engaged in actions that mark and enact their religious identity. They perform behaviors relevant to the norms and values that are conventionally
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associated with their religion and this identity performance can serve to consolidate one’s religious identity and to mobilize others (Klein, Spears, & Reicher, 2007). Identity performance can take a variety of forms and serve different purposes. Following Scheepers and colleagues (2003) who distinguish between two functions of in-group bias, a distinction between an identity consolidation function and an instrumental function can be made (Klein et al., 2007). First, “doing religion” confirms one’s religious identity by expressing the value of the group symbolically. Religious practices communicate one’s distinctive identity: they tell others who you are, to which religious group you belong, and what this group membership means to you. The wearing, or not wearing, of a headscarf communicates what kind of Muslim you consider yourself to be and how you want to be seen and recognized by others. Furthermore, the specific style of wearing a headscarf expresses subtle differences in meanings. Thus, identity performance can serve to value or affirm the group symbolically and thereby contributes to people’s need for a distinctive and positive social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). The instrumental function refers to the achievement of collective goals related to the preservation or improvement of the standing of one’s group. As argued by self-categorization theory (Turner & Reynolds, 2001), group behavior can promote group success by mobilizing members for collective actions. The wearing of a headscarf or a beard can become a political statement and the basis for group coordination and organization. It can be used to claim group rights and to enhance the standing of the Muslim community in Western Europe. Obviously, the same behavior may sometimes serve both functions and identity consolidation is not entirely separate from practical outcomes. However, there can be a difference between the possibilities that groups have to publicly express and thereby consolidate their identity and the organization and mobilization of these groups for specific group projects.
Identity Consolidation and Mobilization Group identification is a basic social psychological process underlying social movement support and the mobilization for political action (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). It possesses a unique mobilizing power over and above cost-benefit considerations. A sense of inner obligation to enact one’s group identity as well as a feeling of uncertainty about the possession of a particular identity have been found to underlie the mobilizing power of group identification (Simon, Trötschel, & Dähne, 2008). Western European Muslims can be expected to engage in attempts to express their identity and to change the status quo. Their low status leads to
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38 Maykel Verkuyten the desire to affirm and consolidate their sense of Muslim identity and their rather marginal position in society requires organization and collective action to facilitate social change. A very small minority of Muslims might want to use illegal or radical means with enormous repercussions for many. But the great majority will seek means and ends that are normatively acceptable in the larger polity (Phalet et al., 2008; Simon & Ruhs, 2008). The willingness to endorse acceptable group practices can be expected to depend on the meaning of the Muslim identity. In one of our studies among Dutch Sunnite Muslims (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010a), we investigated religious identity consolidation in terms of the endorsement of the rights of Dutch Muslims to publicly express their identity (e.g., “Muslims have the right to show and express their religion in public life,” “Dutch TV should broadcast more programs by and for Muslims”), and identity mobilization in terms of the attitude toward acceptable forms of political organization (e.g., “It is important for Muslims that an Islamic political party is established in the Netherlands,” “Islam must have a voice in political issues, just like other religions”). Identity consolidation and mobilization were examined as a function of the content of Muslim identity whereby a distinction was made between an individualized and a communal interpretation of what it means to be a Muslim. The individualized interpretation implies that Islam is understood as having a personalized meaning and that one’s religion can provide personal certainty. Such an interpretation involves the belief that Islam is a private matter between the believer and God and that one should be religious in one’s own personal way. This interpretation also involves a search for personal religiosity that can result in self-confidence about being a Muslim but also in uncertainty about oneself (Lewis, 2007; Phinney, 1989). Personal interpretation (“Islam is a personal matter between the believer and God”) and personal certainty (“Islam gives me confidence about myself”) do not imply a commitment to the societal position of fellow Muslims and therefore were not expected to be related to the attitude toward the political organization of Dutch Muslims. The findings showed that there were indeed no significant associations. However, exclusion and a lack of recognition in society make it difficult to affirm and give a positive and secure interpretation to what it means to be a Muslim. The freedom to affirm one’s religion in one’s own personal way is limited when in everyday life the symbolic expression of Muslim identity is not accepted, such as with the wearing of a headscarf. Furthermore, expressions and experiences that are supportive of one’s religious identity lead people to be less uncertain about themselves (e.g., Hogg, 2000), and about their religious group membership in particular (Simon et al., 2008). Thus, we expected that a personal emphasis on being a Muslim and personal certainty derived from Islam are both related to a
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higher endorsement of the rights and opportunities of Muslims to publicly express and consolidate their religious identity. It turned out that this was indeed the case. This result indicates that the trend toward individualization and privatization of Islam among Dutch Muslims does not imply that they will refrain from claiming opportunities and rights that acknowledge and value their religious identity in public life. In a communal interpretation of what it means to be a Muslim, the emphasis is on the sense of inner obligation and behavioral commitment to the community of believers. Solidarity with other Muslims (“ummah,” “Muslims are dependent on each other and have to be strong as a group”) and rule following (“orthopraxis,” visiting a mosque, daily prayer) are central. Psychological and behavioral commitment are an investment of the self to the religious in-group which makes religious group-based activities of both identity mobilization and consolidation more likely (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). We expected both aspects to be positively associated with the attitude toward political organization of Dutch Muslims and also with the endorsement of the rights and opportunities for expressing Muslim identity. An additional reason for the latter relationship is that these rights and opportunities probably will have not only a symbolic, identity-consolidating function but also a political one. Political organization and expressive rights are both about the interests of Muslims as a relatively homogeneous group. The findings were as expected. Group interdependence and behavioral involvement as communal components of Muslim identity were positively and independently associated with the attitude toward political organization, and group interdependence also with the endorsement of Muslim expressive opportunities and rights.
Orthodoxy and Identity Consolidation and Mobilization Muslim fundamentalism in combination with the growing number of Muslims in Western countries has triggered an interest in the prevalence and meaning of religion among Muslim immigrants and minorities (Emerson & Hartman, 2006). In Europe, processes of religious revival, political Islam, and radicalism have become topics of study (e.g., Buis et al., 2006; Herriot, 2007; Roy, 2006). There are indications that an increasing number of Muslims rediscover Islam and publicly express their religious identity in clothing and behavior (Buis et al., 2006; De Koning, 2008). There is a tendency to return to a “pure” Islam and to use the Qur’an as the central guideline for one’s life. As one Dutch Muslim says, “Yes, I am a fundamentalist.… In the sense that I try to follow the fundamentals of Islam. Every Muslim should do that.
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40 Maykel Verkuyten In principle, every Muslim should be a fundamentalist. We all need to return to the foundations of Islam” (“Tegenlicht: Insjallah, als God het wil,” VPRO, March 30, 2009). Orthodox belief implies the acceptance of the teachings of Islam and the belief that Islam contains the inerrant and unchanging truths about humanity and deity. Among Dutch Sunnite Muslims this ideological dimension has been found to be an important aspect of their Muslim identity (Kemper, 1996; Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010a). Orthodox belief can form a steppingstone toward radicalism and extremism (Appleby, 2000). However, for the great majority, this ideological position probably does not lead to an antagonistic or radical attitude toward, for example, Dutch society. Rather, there is much appreciation of the freedoms and rights that Muslims in the Netherlands have (Buijs et al., 2006; De Koning, 2008; Kemper, 1996). Furthermore, the majority of Dutch Muslims are born in the Netherlands and consider it to be the country where their future lies. In addition, a liberal democracy offers the opportunities to practice one’s religion and to organize politically along religious lines. Yet, a focus on the foundations of Islam is seen as problematic for the integration of Muslim immigrants in Western countries. Islamic values are often considered incompatible with Western values and Muslim immigrants have been labeled as the “indigestible” minority (Huntington, 2004, p. 188). In particular, there is the fear that leaning toward a “pure” Islam goes hand in hand with self-segregation and a lack of commitment to the host society. In addition, the emphasis on a “pure” and orthodox Islam is often seen as threatening liberal democratic values. In one study we examined religious orthodoxy as an important ideological belief of Muslim identity (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010a). Participants who more strongly accepted the teachings of Islam as the inerrant and unchanging truth about life and humanity were more strongly in favor of the rights and opportunities for Muslims to express their identity and for the political organization of Dutch Muslims within the larger polity. These findings suggest that an orthodox interpretation of Islam can foster normative acceptable forms of political action. In addition, it turned out that participants with dual citizenship more strongly endorsed the political organization of Muslims compared to participants with only a passport of their country of origin. This effect was found when controlling statistically for the different measures of Muslim identity. Hence, dual citizenship seems to play a unique role in the attitude toward normative political organization. Simon and Ruhs (2008) focused on dual identity and found a similar result among Turkish migrants in Germany. In their study, dual identification as both Turkish and German was positively related to normative political engagement and not to support for Muslim organizations with a radical agenda or a tendency to violent protest.
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Orthodoxy and Political Tolerance Another way to examine the relationship between Muslim orthodoxy and political engagement is by looking at political tolerance. Tolerance for dissenting beliefs and practices is a key condition for citizenship and democracy (Sullivan & Transue, 1999). For a well-functioning democracy people should at least accept that members of a disliked group, for example, make a public speech, hold public rallies, or teach in public schools. Historically, the concept of tolerance evolved from efforts to deal with the harmful and violent effects of religious conflicts (Walzer, 1997). The presence of a great number of Muslims in Western European countries has given a renewed urgency to the idea of tolerance as a mechanism for dealing with religious diversity. Commentators and politicians often argue that freedoms and rights characterize Western democratic societies and are of minimal concern to Muslims, or even contradictory to Islam. It is suggested and claimed that the rights-based morality of Western societies differs from the duty-based morality of Islam (see Turiel, 2002). This difference would be symbolized by the debates mentioned earlier, such as those on the headscarf, the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and other controversial issues. Citizenship implies that democratic rules and rights are consistently applied to issues or groups one disapproves of. Religion might be a reason for Muslims to apply democratic rules and rights selectively, for instance when religious issues are at stake. Yet, among Dutch Muslims and using an experimental questionnaire design, Phalet and Güngör (2004) found no evidence for religion being a specific reason for not supporting tolerant values (see also Eisenstein, 2006; Norris & Inglehart, 2004). However, they did not examine the role of religious orthodoxy. Following Phalet and Güngör, we used four political tolerance experiments (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010b). In these experiments, Dutch Sunnite Muslims were asked their opinion about cases in which Islam was or was not involved. For example, the endorsement of free speech was examined by presenting the participants with either a religious or a non-religious issue (“Should a magazine be allowed to use drawings and words to ridicule God and religion?” versus “Should racist groups be allowed to express their views in the media?”). The endorsement of the right to demonstrate and protest was examined with these two conditions: “A Muslim group wants to hold a demonstration against anti-Muslim feelings in the Netherlands. Is it okay to burn the Dutch flag during the demonstration?” versus “An extreme right-wing group wants to hold a demonstration against the presence of Turkish Muslims in the Netherlands. Is it okay to burn the Turkish flag during the demonstration?” The other two cases involved the freedom to found separate and exclusive primary schools
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42 Maykel Verkuyten (Islamic versus Christian) and the freedom to reject females for important administrative functions in strict Islamic (versus Christian) organizations. The results show that the great majority (> 92 percent) did not support the freedoms and rights in three of the four cases. They found it unacceptable to publicly express offensive views, to burn a national flag at a demonstration, and to reject female administrators. Importantly, however, the lack of support did not differ between the experimental conditions. Thus, democratic rights were not applied selectively to Muslims. Furthermore, religious orthodoxy was not related to political (in)tolerance in the three cases. For the founding of separate and exclusive primary schools, there was more difference of opinion (54 percent said no). Yet, here also there was no difference in tolerance of strict Islamic or Christian schools. In addition, stronger religious orthodoxy was related to higher endorsement of religious schools, but independently of denomination. This pattern of results suggests that there is no religiously motivated form of political (in)tolerance in which the freedoms and rights of Muslims are evaluated differently than those of other religions. Furthermore, Dutch Muslims who more strongly endorse a “pure” Islam did not tend to apply democratic rules and rights selectively. Rather, they expressed a consistent political position on these controversial issues. These and other findings (Phalet & Güngör, 2004; but see Verkuyten & Slooter, 2008) are in agreement with Norris and Inglehart (2004, p. 155) who, in their cross-national research, concluded that “The most basic cultural fault line between the West and Islam does not concern democracy – it involves issues of gender equality and sexual liberalization.”
Commitment to the Host Society In social psychology, there is increasing interest in the fact that most individuals are simultaneously members of multiple social groups. For studying dual and hyphenated identities, the nature of the groups is important. Language and culture, for example, differ from religion in that one can master more than one language and internalize more than one culture, whereas religious identity is exclusive (Zolberg & Long, 1999). Cross-cutting memberships and dual identities are possible as among bilinguals and biculturals, but it is something else to be a “Christian Muslim” or a “Hindu Jew.” It is possible, however, to examine religious identification in relation to national group identification. In Western countries it is often thought that Muslim identification implies low identification, or even disidentification, with the host society. Muslim identity is thought to be contradictory to national identification because of incompatible values, beliefs, and loyalties. We examined this issue in various studies in the Netherlands (Verkuyten, 2007; Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007, 2010b). For identity importance the results show a negative
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association between Muslim and Dutch identification. However, the association is not very strong (around r = −.30) and the findings indicate that a (quasi-) total Muslim identification does not necessarily imply low Dutch identification. Thus, the fact that a large number of participants have a very strong Muslim identity does not imply that all of these immigrants are not interested in developing a sense of commitment to the nation. In one study we also examined religious orthodoxy in relation to Dutch identification and a similar negative association was found (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010b). Thus, a stronger emphasis on a “pure” Islam goes together with more distancing from the secular and materialistic Dutch society. However, both measures shared only 6 percent of their variance, which indicates that religious orthodoxy does not intrinsically imply a distancing from the Netherlands. Similar findings have been found in the context of the United States. Sirin and colleagues (2008), for example, report that many young people find a way of combining their Muslim and American identities and that only a small minority experienced identity conflict. In two studies we also focused on national disidentification. Low group identification does not have to imply disidentification. With disidentification, Muslim minorities actively resist or reject the host society, making it more difficult to create or sustain a sense of solidarity across subordinate group lines. Studies among racial and ethnic minority groups have described the development of an oppositional or reactive identity in which people actively separate their identity from the culture and defining aspects of the dominant group (Portes & Zhou, 1993; Ogbu, 1993). Furthermore, studies in organizational contexts have shown that disidentification is a different psychological state than identification (e.g., Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004). In one of our studies, national disidentification was somewhat higher among Dutch Sunnite Muslims, who attach great importance to their religious identity and have higher behavioral involvement (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). However, the associations were not very strong and in a second study there was no significant relationship between religious orthodoxy and national disidentification (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010b). Thus, there was no evidence that emphasis on a “pure” Islam implies psychological separation and opposition to Dutch society.
Conclusions The question of whether and how Muslim identity is related to the support for opportunities of Muslims to publicly express their identity and to political organization and democratic attitudes is much debated and increasingly important in Europe. Social psychologists have argued and shown that collective identities are important antecedents of attitudes, social practices, and forms of collective action. The study of Muslim identity makes a contribution to our thinking about the processes of group identification and
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44 Maykel Verkuyten the different aspects or dimensions that can be distinguished. It is commonly argued that group identification is a multidimensional construct and that different dimensions might be related differently to perceptions and behaviors. Hence, various dimensions of group identity have been identified, such as importance, evaluation, and satisfaction (see Ashmore et al., 2004; Leach et al., 2008). These attitude-like dimensions are relatively easy to assess and most research focuses on individual differences in, for example, identity centrality and private regard. But these dimensions do not take the nature of the group and the content of the group identity into account. For many Muslims in Western Europe, religious identity is about individual meaning making and conformist rule following, and about the right interpretation of Islam. There is a trend toward individualization and privatization of Islam, but Islam also implies conformity to precise rules and commands and a commitment to the community of fellow believers (e.g., Phalet et al., 2008; Roy, 2006, 2007). A distinction can be made between individualized and communal understandings of what it means to be a Muslim, in addition to orthodox beliefs (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2010a). Many European Muslims are struggling with finding a balance between individual meaning making, conformist rule following, and orthodox understandings of Islam (Phalet et al., 2008). This chapter has argued that it is important to focus on these different meanings of being a Muslim living in the Western world, and on the ways that these meanings are related to intergroup experiences and socio-political participation. This argument is similar to the underground approach of ethnic and racial identity that emphasizes the particular meanings attached to these identities (Sellers et al., 1998). These approaches try to describe the cultural and structural experiences associated with, for example, African Americans and the ways in which these experiences translate into racial ideology and political mobilization. The support for regular socio-political actions emanating from the different understandings of Muslim identity has implications for the way in which intergroup relations in European societies will develop. Many majority group members in Western Europe reject the public recognition of Islam and consider an emphasis on a “pure” Islam as unbearable and threatening (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007), whereas (orthodox) Muslims want to publicly express and affirm their religious identity. Increased group tensions might be the result. This is not so much because Muslims reject the society in which they live or want to keep aloof from it, but rather because they make public claims and organize themselves along religious lines. This raises questions about power relations and the nature of the imagined national community. Muslims are in the process of developing political engagements and commitments to the Western European societies in which they live. The different
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ways of “being a Muslim” shape and direct this development and a strong or “pure” Muslim identity does not have to obstruct this process. Rather, Islam can provide a basis for socio-political participation and for a desired society constituted in a democratic way. It is important to note, however, that there is much diversity within the group of Muslims. Some orthodox Muslims do distance themselves from the hedonistic and decadent culture of the West and find spiritual faith and security in a pure and apolitical Islam. A few others reject democratic rights and freedoms and favor politicalreligious radicalism and violent actions, with severe repercussions for societies (Buijs et al., 2006). These Muslims are difficult to reach and also have an influence on the religious identity and identity negotiations of Muslims who are involved in finding a normative place within European societies. Normative socio-political actions will also further shape Muslim identity (Klein et al., 2007). The idea that social identities are maintained by others’ acknowledgment implies that the reactions from others to one’s identity expression can fuel changes in self-understandings. Furthermore, it is important to consider both in-group and out-group others. The sense of Muslim identity is enabled or constrained by the way Muslims are defined and treated in the broader society. Many European Muslims are citizens as well as minority group members, which makes the dominant majority an important “other” for religious identity consolidation and mobilization. In addition, however, Muslim identity is fundamentally shaped by interactions with religious in-group members and leaders and by discourses about religious sincerity and purity (Buijs et al., 2006; De Koning, 2008; Roy, 2006). Muslim identity and identity expression involve critical issues of in-group acceptance and support as well as in-group obligations and pressures. Thus, identity-affirming behavior is oriented not only to the majority group but also to Muslim in-group members. Questions of religious identity are critically shaped by the ongoing debates and changes within different subgroups and generations of European Muslims. These debates are not only about subgroup differences and local and national issues, but also about international developments and global tensions. There are many routes to being a Muslim in Western Europe and there are many influences and resources that give direction and justification to one’s private experiences and understandings, as well as one’s public claims and affirmations.
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Pew Research Center. (2007). Muslim Americans: Middle class and mostly mainstream. Retrieved May 8, 2009, from http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483/ MuslimAmericans. Phalet, K., Gijsberts, M., & Hagendoorn, L. (2008). Migration and religion: Testing the limits of secularisation among Turkish and Moroccan Muslims in the Netherlands 1998–2005. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 48, 412–436. Phalet, K., & Güngör, D. (2004). Moslim in Nederland: Religieuze dimensies, etnische relaties en burgerschap. The Hague: SCP. Phinney, J. (1989). Stages in ethnic identity development in minority group adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 9, 34–49. Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 53, 74–97. Roy, O. (2006). Globalized Islam: The search for a new ummah. New York: Columbia University Press. Roy, O. (2007). Secularism confronts Islam. New York: Columbia University Press. Scheepers, D., Spears, R., Doosje, B., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2003). Two functions of verbal intergroup discrimination: Identity and instrumental motives as a result of group identification and threat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 568–577. Scroggins, D. (2005, June 27). The Dutch–Muslim cultural war. The Nation, pp. 21–25. Sellers, R. M., Smith, M. A., Shelton, J. N., Rowley, S. A. J., & Chavous, T. M. (1998). Multidimensional model of racial identity: A re-conceptualization of African American racial identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 18–39. Seul, J. R. (1999). “Ours is the way of God”: Religion, identity, and intergroup conflict. Journal of Peace Research, 36, 553–569. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56, 319–331. Simon, B., & Ruhs, D. (2008). Identity and politicization among Turkish migrants in Germany: The role of dual identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1354–1366. Simon, B., Trötschel, R., & Dähne, D. (2008). Identity affirmation and social movement support. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 935–946. Sirin, S. R., Bikmen, N., Mir, M., Fine, M., Zaal, M., & Katsiaficas, D. (2008). Exploring dual identification among Muslim-American emerging adults: A mixed methods study. Journal of Adolescence, 31, 259–279. Sirin, S. R., & Fine, M. (2008). Muslim American youth: Understanding hyphenated identities through multiple methods. New York: New York University Press. Sniderman, P., & Hagendoorn, L. (2007). When ways of life collide: Multiculturalism and its discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sullivan, J. L., & Transue, J. E. (1999). The psychological underpinnings of democracy: A selective review of research on political tolerance, interpersonal trust, and social capital. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 625–650.
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48 Maykel Verkuyten Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. In A. Gutmann (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (pp. 25–73). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Turiel, E. (2002). The culture of morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, J. C., & Reynolds, K. J. (2001). The social identity perspective in intergroup relations: Theories, themes and controversies. In R. Brown & S. Gaertner (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology: Intergroup processes (Vol. 4, pp. 133–152). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Velasco González, K., Verkuyten, M., Weesie, J., & Poppe, E. (2008). Prejudice towards Muslims in the Netherlands: Testing integrated threat theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 667–685. Verkuyten, M. (2005). The social psychology of ethnic identity. Hove: Psychology Press. Verkuyten, M. (2007). Religious group identification and intergroup relations: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10, 341–357. Verkuyten, M., & Slooter, L. (2008). Muslim and non-Muslim adolescents’ reasoning about freedom of speech and minority rights. Child Development, 79, 514–528. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2007). National (dis)identification and ethnic and religious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1448–1462. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2009). Muslim immigrants and religious group feelings: Self-identification and attitudes among Sunni and Alevy Turkish-Dutch. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32, 1121–1142. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2010a). Religious identity consolidation and mobilisation among Turkish Dutch Muslims. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 436–447. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2010b). Orthodoxie en integratie van Turks Nederlandse moslims. Mens & Maatschappij, 85, 5–26. Walzer, M. (1997). On toleration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Zolberg, A. R., & Long, L. W. (1999). Why Islam is like Spanish: Cultural incorporation in Europe and the United States. Politics and Society, 27, 5–38.
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3
The Bicultural Identity Performance of Immigrants Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, immigration to the United States rose steadily such that in 1920, 13 percent of its residents were foreign born (Gibson & Lennon, 1999). Influenced by this demographic phenomenon and reflecting on the experience of people who lived in multiple cultural contexts, sociologist Robert Park wrote: there appeared a new type of personality, namely, a cultural hybrid, a man living and sharing intimately in the cultural life and traditions of two distinct peoples; never quite willing to break, even if he were permitted to do so, with his past and his traditions, and not quite accepted, because of racial prejudice, in the new society in which he now sought to find a place. He was a man on the margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and fused. (Park, 1928, p. 892)
Nearly 100 years later, in the midst of another great wave of global migration, Hong and her colleagues (2000) also addressed the psychological realities of multicultural experience: Bicultural individuals are typically described as people who have internalized two cultures to the extent that both cultures are alive inside of them. Many bicultural individuals report that the two internalized cultures take turns in guiding their thoughts and feelings. (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez, 2000, p. 710)
Separated by more than seven decades, these two quotes both raise a question that we address in this chapter: How do people who live between and within cultural groups, commonly termed biculturals, perform their collective identities across contexts? We thank Demis Glansford, Sarah Martiny, and Rachel Verni for their helpful suggestions on this chapter.
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Compatibility and Conflict in Bicultural Identification Early notions of biculturalism as a unidimensional process by which an immigrant would typically move away from the culture of origin and toward the culture of entry over time have been largely discarded as too simplistic (Berry, 1990). More recently, researchers have recognized that immigrants maintain attachments to multiple cultural groups and that their identities are composed of different elements, take multiple forms, and vary in their performance across situations. For example, LaFramboise, Coleman, and Gerton (1993) outline different domains in which people can establish bicultural competence. A person can internalize the norms and values of both cultures and believe that they can live effectively in both, but still have social networks that are grounded more in one group than the other. Phinney and Devich-Navarro’s (1997) study of biculturalism describes its multiple forms. Alternating biculturals have the strongest situational contingencies, endorsing both ethnic and national identities but believing that there are distinct social settings in which one or the other identity is more prominent. Blended biculturals construe their two identities as compatible and overlapping. They often make reference to general cultural and historical aspects of ethnic identity, as opposed to personal experience. The concept of bicultural identity integration (BII) also acknowledges different forms of biculturalism and their situational contingencies (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). BII refers to the degree to which “biculturals perceive their mainstream and ethnic cultural identities as compatible and integrated vs. oppositional and difficult to integrate” (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005, p. 1019). The construct is further articulated in terms of two orthogonal domains, one referring to conflict and the other to the perceived distance or degree of dissimilarity experienced between the two cultures (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). The former appears to be related to “affective aspects of the bicultural experience,” whereas the latter captures the more cognitive and behavioral indicants of distinctiveness and compartmentalization (Roccas & Brewer, 2002). Chinese Americans who scored high versus low on BII were responsive to both Chinese and American cues, but in different directions: High BII individuals behaved in culturally congruent ways to the external stimuli, while Low BII individuals reacted to Chinese cues with American attribution styles and vice versa (Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002). Any model of bicultural identity performance must include an interactive framework that incorporates elements of the individual, the situation, and the dynamic interactions that characterize their intersection. By drawing on insights from social identity theory, we extend this contribution, emphasizing the multiple components and functions of people’s collective identities and one critical aspect of the social environment – other people.
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Bicultural Identity Performance: Defining the Parameters Identity performance involves “the purposeful expression (or suppression) of behaviors relevant to those norms conventionally associated with a salient social identity” (Klein, Spears, & Reicher, 2007, p. 30). People living between cultural groups develop thoughts and feelings about their group memberships that shape self-definition, that is, their collective identities (Amiot, de la Sablonnière, Terry, & Smith, 2007). Bicultural identities include one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors not only about each constituent group, but also about both groups together and the perceived relationship between them. Collective identities are expressed differently depending on the opportunities afforded (and denied) by a given context, including the meanings and boundaries of collective identities, status and power asymmetries, and other people’s evaluations, expectations, and behaviors. Bicultural individuals perform their identities in front of audiences who share one, both, or neither group memberships and who may be more or less willing to accept their self-categorization. They are not simply passive reactors to cultural cues; rather, they exert agency in their identity presentation in response to their categorization and treatment by others, behaving in ways designed to elicit recognition or confirmation of their important identities. Just as people perform singular identities differently for in-group and out-group audiences to satisfy strategic needs, bicultural individuals also enact the relationship between their dual identities differently depending on the reactions of others in a given context and their specific goals. In the interactive framework offered in Figure 3.1, we show how the structure and function of immigrants’ identities interact with the ways in which those identities are seen by others to give rise to new, “hybrid” identity forms.
Elements of Bicultural Identity Structure One aspect of bicultural identity performance involves an analysis of the elements and structures of the identities themselves, as they represent the thoughts and feelings about group membership that the individual brings to any encounter. Recent analyses of collective identification are in agreement that the concept is multidimensional (Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlinVolpe, 2004; Leach et al., 2008; Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, Halevy, & Eidelson, 2008). Relying here primarily on the framework offered by Ashmore et al. (2004), we focus on four aspects of collective identity that seem particularly relevant to the study of bicultural identity: self-categorization, importance,
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52 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux INDIVIDUAL ORIENTATIONS
AUDIENCE FEATURES
• Motivations to present identities and choose audiences • Elements of identification • Self-categorization • Importance • Meaning • Social embeddedness
• Willingness to accept, question, or recognize group membership • Membership criteria • Status conflicts
VISIBILITY TO AUDIENCES
BICULTURAL IDENTITY PERFORMANCE
Figure 3.1
A model of bicultural identity performance.
meaning, and social embeddedness. Each of these elements, originally defined in terms of a single collective identity, is considered here with respect to the more complex case of bicultural identification. Self-categorization. As the most basic component of a collective identity, self-categorization is a necessary precondition to any more elaborated aspect of the identity structure. In referring to oneself as a member of a social category, a person denotes a position in the social system and associates the self in some way with others who share attributes of the category. Within this framework, there are at least two (perhaps oversimplified) ways to conceptualize biculturalism. One possibility is that a person has two clearly defined categories (for example, one as a Korean and one as an American) and that each category has a distinct set of elements associated with it. Alternatively, biculturalism could be understood as a unitary category that has emerged subsequent to immigration and that is seen as distinct from either of the original categories. We should note here that we are viewing biculturalism from the perspective of the individual immigrant, that is, categorization is based on a subjective definition of membership. Potential discrepancies between these self-categorizations and the categorical assumptions of other
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people in one’s environment are a key aspect of bicultural identity performance, as we will show later. Importance. Another fundamental characteristic of collective identities is importance, defined as the degree to which a collective identity is important to one’s overall sense of self (Ashmore et al., 2004), which in turn is related to one’s motivation to express that identity in behavior. When a bicultural identity is conceptualized as two distinct categories, the two focal identities may have equivalent importance; alternatively, one may be given priority over the other. Alternatively, when the bicultural identity is a single category, then we would theorize only a single importance factor. Meaning. The meanings associated with a particular collective identity, including trait attributes, ideological beliefs, and narrative histories (Ashmore et al., 2004), are particularly important for the analysis of bicultural identity. Considerations of meaning are key to the analysis of compatibility and conflict in bicultural identity, as is the exploration of the degree to which biculturalism generates an emergent set of meanings that cannot be predicted from knowledge of each contributing identity. Social embeddedness. The inclusion of social embeddedness as a key component of collective identity pays respect to a sociological literature that views identities as inherent to and inseparable from social and relational networks (Deaux & Martin, 2003; Stets & Burke, 2000; Stryker & Serpe, 1994). In a sense, these social networks represent the instantiation and incorporation of past identity expression and performance into current self-definitions. The nature of the bicultural person’s networks will vary, depending on how biculturalism is subjectively represented. A separatist strategy might be reflected in sharp distinctions between a network that defines one’s ethnic heritage (e.g., family, neighborhood, or church) and another that represents the “American” identity (e.g., some school and work settings). Alternatively, a person who blends her two identities might be socially embedded in a network of other people who also define themselves in an integrated fashion. Each of these elements of collective identification is relevant to an analysis of bicultural identity performance, defining a set of parameters within which a person is able and is motivated to act. In itself, however, this elaboration of bicultural identity structure is only part of the story and needs to be considered in conjunction with aspects of the audience for which identity performance takes place.
The Significance of Audience Audience is an important aspect of the expression of collective identities, as these identities incorporate the reactions (both actual and anticipated) of others (Klein et al., 2007; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). In other words,
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54 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux the expression of a collective identity reflects not only how people see themselves or their group, but also how they would like others to see them. Issues of audience are particularly complex for immigrants with their multiple identity possibilities. They may share one, both, or neither identity with a given audience, making it difficult to draw a sharp distinction between in-group and out-group (Roccas & Brewer, 2002). They can also experience a conflict between whether they categorize an audience as an in-group and whether the audience shares their view. When analyzing the presentation of bicultural identities, three aspects of audience are particularly relevant: (1) visibility of the identity to an in-group or out-group; (2) audience criteria for acknowledging a membership; and (3) status differentials between audience and the bicultural individual. Visibility. Visibility occupies a central position in existing theories of strategic identity performance (Klein et al., 2007; Reicher et al., 1995). When visible to an in-group audience, people perform their identities in ways that signal their support for one another and facilitate collective action. When visible to an out-group audience, performing an in-group identity can invite retribution (Reicher, Levine, & Gordijn, 1998). As a result, people may choose strategically to highlight their identity when in-groups are watching and minimize it under the gaze of a powerful out-group. In the context of biculturalism, we must consider the implications of whether biculturals’ identity performance is visible to one audience at a time or to multiple audiences simultaneously. When in-groups are relatively segregated from one another, individuals are able to perform their constituent identities differently in different contexts. When groups are visible to one another, identity performance is typically more challenging and performance choices more difficult, as individuals need to respond to the potentially conflicting expectations of both groups (Cronin & Reicher, 2006; Emler & Reicher, 1995). In these situations, immigrants must find creative ways to justify the dual nature of their group membership that recognize potential conflict between their groups while at the same time highlighting similarities and higher-level categorizations to reconcile them. Biculturals may also be visible to audiences who themselves are composed of other bicultural individuals. In this case, the normative expectation may be to perform both identities simultaneously in some blended fashion, and alternating between the two constituent identities may raise questions about one’s status in the hybrid group. Membership criteria. A second aspect of audience related to bicultural identity performance concerns membership criteria or “the extent to which an audience is likely to question a respondent’s identity” (Barreto, Spears, Ellemers, & Shahinper, 2003, p. 300). Groups with strict or exclusive criteria are more likely to question the legitimacy of bicultural identities than are groups whose boundaries are more permeable. Strict membership criteria can push bicultural individuals to the periphery of important in-groups. When
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people have characteristics or beliefs that do not match those of a prototypical group member, they often find that their membership is questioned. In other cases exclusive membership criteria can result in a failure to recognize one’s other group memberships, as when immigrants are expected to relinquish country-of-origin identities to assimilate to a national in-group. In the case of immigration, membership in a national group is commonly defined in ways that either completely exclude other identities that immigrants may have or that fail to give them adequate recognition. Brubaker (1992) has shown how the German legal tradition of ius sanguinis,1 or “blood”-based citizenship, when compared to the French policy of ius solis, in which citizenship is defined by territory, have produced very different boundaries of national identity. The German tradition denies immigrants the ability to acquire a new national identity, whereas the French tradition fails to recognize immigrants’ cultural or country-of-origin identities. Neither allows for the existence of a bicultural identity. However, the two policies are likely to provoke different responses from immigrants, given their opposing emphases. The boundaries of group membership are frequently drawn along racial lines. Being American, for example, is often seen as synonymous with being White, particularly among White and Asian respondents (Devos & Banaji, 2005). Itzigsohn (2009) also finds that second-generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic (who are typically dark-skinned) use the word American to refer to White people, even though they themselves are American born. For immigrants of color, full acceptance in the American group is often met with resistance. As one Dominican immigrant interviewed by Itzigsohn (2009) said, “I never say I’m American just because people are not going to believe you are American when you have this whole Spanish look” (p. 133). Similarly, Asian Americans report being asked where they are “really from” (Cheryan & Monin, 2005). When national identities are rooted in essentialist ethnic definitions, they are linked to anti-immigrant prejudice (Pehrson, Brown, & Zagefka, 2009). Group membership is also defined by norms and values. In some cases, the norms and values supported by the different audiences will overlap, and a person will be able to perform both of his or her identities by engaging in a single activity. In other cases, certain activities may be completely rejected by one of the constituent groups. At a macro level, religion offers an excellent example. In the United States, where a majority of the host society is religious, practicing Islam is likely to be seen as consistent with and supportive of both American and Muslim identities. In Europe, in contrast, where host societies are largely secular, performing a Muslim identity is 1
In 2004 Germany revised this policy to offer pathways to citizenship for foreign-born residents.
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56 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux more likely to be seen as antithetical to national identity (Foner & Alba, 2008; Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). Status. Finally, identity performance can be influenced by the relative status of one’s audiences. In most cases people with multiple cultural identities belong to groups that have different levels of status. Immigrants, particularly if they are members of visible minority groups, are typically afforded lower status than are people who belong to the White-dominant national US group. When societies are marked by group-based hierarchies, members of devalued ethnic groups are more likely to see ethnic and national identification as incompatible (Sinclair, Sidanius, & Levin, 1998). Immigrants may be caught between their higher-status in-group’s desire to preserve their privileged position and their lower-status in-group’s desire to ameliorate their disadvantage (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Saguy, 2009). Their higher-status in-group may expect them to perform their ethnic identity in ways that are consistent with assimilation, either by denying their ethnic identity altogether (Verkuyten, 2005) or by emphasizing its similarities with their national group (Saguy, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2008). In contrast, their lower-status group may view assimilation as rejection of ethnic identity (Verkuyten & Brug, 2004) and may expect members to address issues of power in cross-group interactions (Saguy et al., 2008). As a result, higherstatus group members are likely to view immigrants as representing their ethnic group’s interests over those of the country at large. Lower-status group members, in contrast, are likely to view immigrants as “sell-outs” when they perform multiple identities in the context of unequal power relations. For example, Mexican Americans and African Americans report criticism from members of their ethnic in-groups for “talk[ing] White” or failing to speak more Spanish, to listen to … Spanish music” (Phinney & DevichNavarro, 1997, p. 27). Very little research has considered exclusion from those in the immigrant community.
Bicultural Identity Performance Bicultural identity performance is exemplified by the individual immigrant who brings specifically defined ethnic and national identities to a setting in which one or more audiences are likely to assess and react to that identity presentation. On the immigrant side of this interchange are a variety of dispositional and motivational characteristics. Each immigrant claims certain categories of collective identification, accords varying degrees of importance to them, and imbues them with meanings that may or may not overlap with one another. For identity performance to occur, people must identify with the social category in question (Klein et al., 2007). For instance, a person must consider her- or himself German before she or he can perform a
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German identity. Others who encounter the person may or may not see Germanness implicated in the person’s behavior, depending on their stereotypes and their attentiveness to the presentation. But for the individual who does not self-categorize as German, that identity is not a motivating factor and any behavior that is prototypical of the group is merely coincidental (or perhaps the result of socialization practices) rather than an identity performance per se. From our perspective, behavior can only be considered identity performance if it is purposefully (though not necessarily consciously) motivated by relevant identities.2 In the case of bicultural identity performance, a person must selfcategorize as belonging to both groups or to some “fused” combination of the two. This presents the bicultural with a much more complex choice matrix. Not only must biculturals decide whether to perform an identity, as may be the case for someone with a single cultural identity, but they also must choose which identity to display and/or when to display both simultaneously. Once the general condition of self-categorization is met for a bicultural person, other individual-level factors, such as identity importance and meaning, take on increased importance for how the identity will be performed. Further, the immigrant chooses how and where to express her or his identities. Immigrants are differentially embedded in one or more social networks and they encounter, by choice or by circumstances, other audiences to which they must present some version of self. These audiences play an important role in bicultural identity performance, acknowledging and accepting the proffered identity presentation or rejecting or ignoring the goals of the individual performer. For identity performance to occur, one must be visible to a (psychologically) present audience. Like actors on a stage, people only perform their identities when they believe that someone else is or will be watching. With respect to visibility, bicultural identity performance differs from general identity performance in two key ways. Compared to people who are not bicultural, biculturals are more often visible to multiple audiences at the same time. Thus, they face competing pressures as to when to perform which identity. Even when the audiences agree on which identity should be performed, biculturals often face different expectations for how to perform that identity. As a consequence, visibility means that biculturals must balance their accountability to different audiences. These features are not 2 Cultural frame switching (Hong et al., 2000) can be seen as identity performance in this light. Making attributions (Zou, Morris, & Benet-Martínez, 2008) or expressing personality traits in line with a cultural group (Mok & Morris, 2009) may be motivated by the desire to be seen in a specific way, even if the action is not consciously selected and the person is not aware that he or she is doing it.
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58 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux unique to bicultural identity performance (see Cronin & Reicher, 2006, for an example in a different context), but they are more common – and thus more important – in the bicultural experience. Other models of social identity also assume that people’s behavioral expressions of identities result from the interaction of their previous relationship with the group and others’ responses (Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). When an audience presents no threat to identity, people who are strongly identified with the group affirm a positive, distinct identity, whereas those who do not identify are uninvolved. When an audience questions an individual’s group membership, those who have low commitment avoid categorization, whereas those with high commitment try to consolidate their identity. When an audience threatens a group’s value, low identifiers try to leave the group, physically or psychologically, whereas high identifiers are motivated to affirm the group’s value through loyalty and collective action. A similar analysis can be applied to the case of biculturalism, for which the form and level of group identification can vary across the constituent in-groups (national, ethnic, and “hybrid”) and for which multiple in-groups and out-groups can accept or question one’s position in each group. In the section that follows, we undertake such an analysis. Although we acknowledge that different audiences can also question the value of each identity, constituting a group-directed threat, consideration of this topic is beyond the scope of this chapter. We focus on the acceptance or rejection of individual biculturals’ group memberships because having one’s identity questioned as a result of membership in another group or having one identity assumed while another is not recognized are common, perhaps even defining, experiences for biculturals.
Bicultural identity performance without identity threat When bicultural identities are not threatened, the person’s performance is motivated by a concern with expression or distinctiveness (Ellemers et al., 2002). Individuals can refer to the unique cultural and historical aspects of their identity without making reference to the contingent experience of particular situations in which an audience may react to or question their identity. This type of circumstance fits well with Phinney and Devich-Navarro’s (1997) description of blended biculturals, as well as our own interviews with Dominican American and Mexican American immigrants. When audience contingencies were not a concern, participants emphasized how good it felt to be bicultural, the value of syncretism, and the unique lens through which they could view both groups (Wiley, 2005). On these occasions the performance of the identity may depend on individual elements. People who don’t speak Spanish are unlikely to express
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biculturalism through language. Someone whose Mexican identity is relatively more important, for example, may emphasize the unique experience of Mexicans who live in the United States with reference to other Mexicans, whereas someone whose American identity is relatively more important may focus on the unique experience of Americans of Mexican descent. Further, the meanings of identities can change depending on relevant comparison groups and specific histories. Identity performance is also contingent on the relevant audience, such that one may emphasize distinctiveness among other biculturals versus group value with those who don’t share both memberships, but concerns are not about repositioning one’s identity with respect to that audience, but rather about expressing feelings about the group.
Bicultural identity performance when group membership is questioned Based on issues like exclusive membership criteria and unequal group status, audiences can fail to accept an immigrant’s multiple identities. Rejection by one group is often a result of the person’s perceived membership in another (Cheryan & Monin, 2005; Wiley & Deaux, 2009). Alternatively, an audience may accept an immigrant’s in-group membership, but at the same time overemphasize the person’s membership in another group. As one example, Chinese Canadian biculturals believe that both other Canadians and other Chinese see them as much more Chinese (and less Canadian) than they see themselves (Noels, Leavitt, & Clément, in press). In both cases, the conflict between immigrants’ own identifications and their categorization by others may prevent them from participating fully and drawing on the whole support of their multiple in-groups. When confronted with a lack of acceptance, people who identify strongly with their group will attempt to maintain the impression that they are valued members of their constituent in-groups, sometimes exaggerating their credentials as a group member (Ellemers et al., 2002; Klein et al., 2007). People who are less identified may resist categorization, distancing themselves from the group. In one study, Asian American participants were either asked by a White experimenter whether they spoke English or were told that only Americans could participate in a study (Cheryan & Monin, 2005). Faced with the implied assumptions about their ethnic identity that both of these comments instigate, Asian Americans demonstrated more cultural knowledge (by listing more 1980s US television shows) and emphasized more “American” identity practices than did participants in a control condition. Interestingly, they did not report greater pride in being American, nor did they distance themselves from their Chinese identity. Differences were reported only on behaviors related to the identity for which they sought
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60 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux acceptance. These results support the view that their actions were a strategic presentation to have their American identity accepted, rather than any fundamental shift in identity evaluation. We observed a comparable pattern in our research with Latino immigrants (Wiley & Deaux, 2009). How these immigrants expressed the norms of an American identity in relation to perceiving that other Americans would not accept them because they were “too” Latino depended on the importance they attached to being American. Low identifiers endorsed an “unAmerican” identity: disidentifying with the group, favoring ethnic values over American ones, and rejecting normative ideologies of fairness by making attributions of discrimination. In contrast to the Asian Americans in Cheryan and Monin’s (2005) studies, low identifiers did not express their identities in ways that would elicit acceptance, but distanced themselves from the norms and values associated with being American. These data suggest that bicultural identity performance is constrained by a person’s perceptions that an audience will accept the performance and the desired attachment to that group. Sometimes rejection from a national in-group is based on the immigrant’s racial profile. Although West Indian Americans generally define themselves in terms of their country of origin or a pan-ethnic label, they recognize that others see them as African American (Waters, 1999). Dominican Americans confront similar experiences. Although they tend to identify themselves in terms of the myriad intermediary racial categories in the Dominican Republic, Dominican immigrants also know that most Americans see them as Black (Bailey, 2001; Itzigsohn, 2009; Itzigsohn, Giorguli, & Vazquez, 2005). Immigrants can choose to confront race-based rejection by emphasizing their ethnic distinctiveness, to the extent that is possible. Dominican Americans who speak Spanish, for example, use that language to perform their Dominican identity and differentiate themselves from other groups in the United States (Toribio, 2000). West Indians sometimes use cultural markers to highlight their distinctiveness and resist categorization based on Black–White dichotomies. Accent is an effective tool by which many AfroCaribbeans can present themselves as different from African Americans; other examples that Waters (1999) cites include wearing lapel pins with the flag of one’s country of origin or putting flag decals on one’s car. These examples show that immigrants’ options in identity performance depend not only on their individual orientations to their groups, but also on their individual competencies and cultural knowledge. In addition to having their group membership accepted, people who identify with multiple cultural groups try to ensure that important in-groups recognize both of their memberships. As described earlier, Turkish immigrants to the Netherlands adopt this performance strategy to express their biculturalism to Dutch audiences who see membership in the two groups as
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incompatible (Barreto et al., 2003). This strategy may be particularly evident when an immigrant’s ethnic group occupies a low status relative to the national in-group. As opposed to higher-status groups, groups with low status are more interested in having both subgroup and superordinate group memberships recognized (Dovidio et al., 2009). When this is not possible, some may emphasize the incompatibility of the different groups (Zou et al., 2008). Bicultural identity performance in the face of lack of recognition for one’s other group memberships depends on the individual orientations of the immigrant. As discussed above, immigrants’ social embeddedness in national and ethnic cultures likely lays the groundwork for their ability to perform different identities across situations, either by emphasizing cultural norms that others will recognize or by engaging in culturally specific behaviors such as language usage. In addition, the degree to which immigrants identify with one or both of their identities across situations, as well as which one they choose, depends on their personal views of the relationship between the groups. People who see their identities as compatible conform to the norms of the audience that is present (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002) or present both identities across situations regardless of audience (Phinney & DevichNavarro, 1997). Conversely, those who see group memberships as incompatible contrast identity-relevant behavior from the cultural cues that are presented to them (Benet-Martínez et al., 2002). Seen through the lens of the bicultural identity performance framework, these findings can be interpreted as strategic presentation. These examples emphasize the national in-group; however, biculturals face lack of acceptance and recognition from multiple in-group audiences. Immigrants perform questioned identities differently for each audience. Research with Turkish immigrants to the Netherlands supports this claim. Whereas these immigrants preferred to maintain their Turkish culture in private domains, that is, places where the Turkish in-group was the primary audience, they maintained Turkish culture and adapted to Dutch culture when in public domains (Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2003). The presence of a “native” Dutch audience in these contexts likely makes multiple identity functions salient. Immigrants gain recognition for their ethnic identity in the eyes of the higher-status out-group; at the same time, they must ingratiate themselves to gain access to the resources and opportunities that these out-groups control. How do immigrants respond to being rejected by their own ethnic groups because of their national group membership? Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is a widespread phenomenon: Ethnophaulisms such as “banana” and “oreo” are common ways to deride Asian and African Americans, respectively, as being “White on the inside.” Chinese immigrants in Canada were found to associate discrimination from their Chinese community with
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62 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux being perceived as less Chinese and more Canadian (Noels et al., in press). Although few psychological studies have explored how immigrants respond to such rejection, research with Portuguese migrants to the Netherlands represents one exception. This work by Barreto and her colleagues (2003) shows that immigrants’ identity performance is sensitive to whether their (frequently lower-status) ethnic in-group audiences will accept them. When immigrants were identifiable as individuals to a Portuguese audience – and thus when the audience was in a position to question whether they were prototypical group members – they reduced the strength of their identity presentation. When they were not identifiable – that is, when an audience could not assess whether they were as Portuguese as they claimed to be – the migrants expressed stronger group identification. Immigrants restrained their identity claims when visible so as not to have their authenticity challenged. This work suggests that immigrants may understate their ethnic identity when they feel an ethnic audience will question it. Other research shows that individual orientations to a group also influence how people present their identities to ethnic in-group audiences. Chinese American biculturals who disidentified with Chinese culture, for instance, made more individualistic attributions when exposed to Chinese primes, thus contrasting from group norms, than did those who were not disidentified (Zou et al., 2008). In our own research (Wiley & Deaux, 2009), we found that the attachment of Latino immigrants to their ethnic group was related to how they respond to being rejected by Latinos for being too American. Low identifiers’ perceptions of rejection from their ethnic in-group are tied to endorsing meritocracy, a core American ideology, whereas high identifiers show no such pattern. Because meritocracy is so closely tied to the “American Dream,” a founding myth of the United States (Hochschild, 1995), to endorse this ideology is to perform an American identity. These results underscore that perceived audience reactions to one’s bicultural identity and one’s own attachments to each group interact in their relationship with identity performance. The existing research addresses the question of when audiences become psychologically salient on separate occasions. It shows that immigrants are likely to perform alternating or separated identities when they feel their membership is not accepted by important in-groups and a blended identity when they believe that one of their identities is not recognized. Immigrants, however, are sometimes visible to two audiences (and potentially more) simultaneously: the ethnic immigrant group and a host country national group. When these two audiences have mutually exclusive views of group membership, identity performance in the service of acceptance can be quite difficult. Exaggerating one identity can come at the cost of raising questions about one’s membership in the other group. Wearing a headscarf in France, for instance, may help a woman to consolidate her Muslim identity while at the same time pushing her to the periphery of French identity. Immigrants in
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the United States who mobilize politically on the basis of their Mexican identity, carrying Mexican flags and symbols in marches, are met with accusations that they are “un-American.” What is to be done in these cases? One option is to engage in “dog-whistle politics” (Crosby & Howard, 2005; Fear, 2007), using symbols that can be interpreted by one group but not the other. The 2008 presidential election in the United States was a case study in these processes. Barack Obama, the first mixed-race candidate for president in the United States, was faced with the challenge of performing his identity for multiple audiences. In a televised speech discussing criticism from Hillary Clinton, he mimed casually brushing dirt off his shoulders. For many in the United States, the gesture represented an attitude of casual defiance but was not related to a particular identity. For the African American community and those familiar with youth popular culture, in contrast, the gesture was also a reference to Jay-Z, a popular US hip-hop artist. By alluding to this important figure, Obama indicated not only his attitude toward Clinton’s criticism, but also his familiarity with and his membership in two key constituencies. This example illustrates how, even when multiple audiences see the same identity performance, they may not read it the same way, making the behavior functionally invisible as identity performance to one of the groups. We suspect that this type of performance is a consequence of immigrants’ visibility to multiple audiences at the same time, as they emphasize subtle and non-threatening forms of their identity that are less likely to elicit rejection from one of their in-groups and increase the probability of their acceptance by both groups. A second possibility is to develop highly elaborated blended identities that selectively emphasize aspects of both groups that are mutually acceptable. In such cases, the more powerful group may have a greater say in which aspects of the less powerful identity get performed because of their greater ability to sanction identity performance. For example, in March through May of 2006, immigrants in the United States rallied against HR 4437 (also known as the Sensenbrenner Bill), which included elements they saw as antiimmigrant. As with most demonstrations, flags, symbols, and signs were abundant. Because immigration opponents had critiqued earlier marches when foreign flags were displayed, organizers encouraged marchers in the 2006 demonstrations to carry US flags in order to avoid negative reactions and thus to increase their potential influence (Gorman, 2006).
Concluding Comments We have outlined a framework of bicultural identity performance that builds on previous models of biculturalism in several ways. First, in contrast to theories that primarily emphasize individual identity development (Amiot et al., 2007), cognitive categorization (Roccas & Brewer, 2002), or stable individual
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64 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux differences (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005; Benet-Martínez et al., 2002; LaFramboise et al., 1993; Phinney & Devich-Navarro, 1997), our framework emphasizes the situated nature of bicultural identities. The performance of bicultural identities varies within individuals and across situations, depending on visibility to different audiences and personal orientation toward membership groups. From this perspective, we are in a position to reinterpret some of the literature on bicultural identities. The “blended” bicultural identities of Phinney and Devich-Navarro’s framework, for example, can be seen as the identity performance in the absence of threat, in which people are motivated to express the positive and distinct aspects of being bicultural. “Alternating” identities, as defined in the cultural frame switching literature (Hong et al., 2000), can be seen as responses to situational contingencies. In addition to viewing the compatibility of bicultural identities as an individual difference, we see it as an interaction between the person and his or her audience. When self-identified biculturals’ membership in one or both of their groups is questioned, they assimilate to group norms in order to gain acceptance. When an audience fails to recognize an identity (or overemphasizes it), they likely react against this by emphasizing the other (or both) identities. Bicultural identity integration, as a measure of identity motives, taps into these processes. Our contribution to this literature is to highlight the importance of audience reactions in helping to define identity motives. Second, building on the work of previous theorists of biculturalism (BenetMartínez & Haritatos, 2005; LaFramboise et al., 1993) and of collective identity more generally (Ashmore et al., 2004; Leach et al., 2008; Roccas et al., 2008), we have emphasized how bicultural identities contain multiple elements including self-categorization, importance, and meaning. One can be bicultural on some of these elements, but not on others, blended on some elements, but separated on others. A full understanding of bicultural identity performance will require systematic investigation of the various careful identity elements. As the number of immigrants around the world increases, many of whom identify with both the country of origin and the country of residence, an accounting of political behavior requires an analysis of bicultural identification. Bicultural identification has already been linked to immigrants’ engagement in their “host” societies. When immigrants perform bicultural identities they are more likely to be involved in political life in the country of origin (Klandermans, van der Toorn, & van Stekelenburg, 2008; Simon & Ruhs, 2008). Furthermore, when other groups in society respect immigrants’ multiple identities, immigrants are more likely to view them favorably and to engage with political institutions (Huo & Molina, 2006). In this chapter, we have focused on the psychological antecedents of such group engagement, contributing to our understanding of the role of collective identity in the politics of diverse societies.
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66 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux Fear, J. (2007). Under the radar: Dog-whistle politics in Australia discussion (TAI discussion paper 96). Manucka, Australia: The Australia Institute. Foner, N., & Alba, R. (2008). Immigrant religion in the US and Western Europe: Bridge or barrier to inclusion? International Migration Review, 42, 360–392. Gibson, C. J., & Lennon, E. (1999). Historical census statistics of the foreignborn population of the United States: 1850–1990 (Population Division Working Paper No. 29). Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, Population Division. Gorman, A. (2006, March 29). Flag’s meaning in the eye of the beholder. Los Angeles Times, p. A11. Hochschild, J. L. (1995). Facing up to the American dream. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hong, Y., Morris, M., Chiu, C., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2000). Multicultural minds: A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. American Psychologist, 55, 709–720. Huo, Y. J., & Molina, L. E. (2006). Is pluralism a viable model of diversity? The benefits and limits of subgroup respect. Group Process and Intergroup Relations, 9, 359–376. Itzigsohn, J. (2009). Encountering American faultlines: Race, class, and the Dominican experience in Providence. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Itzigsohn, J., Giorguli, S., & Vazquez, O. (2005). Immigrant incorporation and racial identity: Racial self-identification among Dominican immigrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28, 50–78. Klandermans, B., van der Toorn, J., & van Stekelenburg, J. (2008). Embeddedness and identity: How immigrants turn grievances into action. American Sociological Review, 73, 992–1012. Klein, O., Spears, R., & Reicher, S. (2007). Social identity performance: Extending the strategic side of SIDE. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 1–18. LaFramboise, T., Coleman, H. L. K., & Gerton, J. (1993). Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 395–412. Leach, C. W., van Zomeren, M., Zebel, S., Vliek, M. L. W., Pennekamp, S. F., Doosje, B., Ouwerkerk, J. W., & Spears, R. (2008). Group-level self-definition and selfinvestment: A hierarchical (multicomponent) model of in-group identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 144–165. Mok, A., & Morris, M. W. (2009). Cultural chameleons and iconoclasts: Assimilation and reactance to cultural cues in biculturals’ expressed personalities as a function of identity conflict. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 884–889. Noels, K. A., Leavitt, P. A., & Clément, R. (in press). “To see ourselves as others see us”: On the implications of reflected appraisals for ethnic identity and discrimination. Journal of Social Issues. Park, R. E. (1928). Human migration and the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881–893. Pehrson, S., Brown, R., & Zagefka, H. (2009). When does national identification lead to the rejection of immigrants? Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence
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for the role of essentialist in-group definitions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 61–76. Phinney, J. S., & Devich-Navarro, M. (1997). Variations in bicultural identification among African American and Mexican American adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 7, 3–32. Reicher, S. D., Levine, M., & Gordijn, E. (1998). More on deindividuation, power relations between groups and the expression of social identity: Three studies on the effects of visibility to the in-group. British Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 15–40. Reicher, S. D., Spears, R., & Postmes, T. (1995). A social identity model of deindividuation phenomena. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 161–198). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Roccas, S., & Brewer, M. B. (2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 88–107. Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S., Halevy, N., & Eidelson, R. (2008). Toward a unifying model of identification with groups: Integrating theoretical perspectives. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12, 280–306. Saguy, T., Dovidio, J. F., & Pratto, F. (2008). Beyond contact: Intergroup contact in the context of power relations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 432–445. Simon, B., & Ruhs, D. (2008). Identity and politicization among Turkish migrants in Germany: The role of dual identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1354–1366. Sinclair, S., Sidanius, J., & Levin, S. (1998). The interface between ethnic and social system attachment: The differential effects of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating environments. Journal of Social Issues, 54, 741–757. Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2000). Identity theory and social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63, 224–237. Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1994). Identity salience and psychological centrality: Equivalent, overlapping, or complementary concepts? Social Psychology Quarterly, 57, 16–35. Toribio, J. (2000). Language variation and the linguistic enactment of identity among Dominicans. Linguistics, 38, 1133–1159. Verkuyten, M. (2005). Ethnic group identification and group evaluation among minority and majority groups: Testing the multiculturalism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 121–138. Verkuyten, M., & Brug, P. (2004). Multiculturalism and group status: The role of ethnic identification, group essentialism and Protestant ethic. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 647–661. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2007). National (dis)identification and ethnic and religious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1448–1462. Waters, M. (1999). Black identities: West Indian immigrant dreams and American realities. Cambridge, MA and New York: Harvard University Press and Russell Sage Foundation.
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68 Shaun Wiley and Kay Deaux Wiley, S. (2005). “Proving yourself in both worlds”: A study of bicultural identification with Mexican and Dominican immigrants. Unpublished manuscript, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Wiley, S., & Deaux, K. (2009). Unpublished data. Zou, X., Morris, M. W., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2008). Identity motives and cultural priming: Cultural (dis)identification in assimilative and contrastive responses. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1151–1159.
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4
Perceptions of (In)compatibility between Identities and Participation in the National Polity of People belonging to Ethnic Minorities Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons Politicians and the media often claim, or challenge members of ethnic minorities to refute, that national and ethnic identities of members of ethnic minorities are incompatible. Such claims are also often argued to be the “reasonable” conclusions drawn from socio-political events. For instance, the civil conflicts that emerged after the dismantling of the “iron curtain” and the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to have been facilitated by the employment of religious and ethnic categories that functioned to differentiate camps. The Yugoslavian conflict that wounded Europe has led to the rekindling of the old idea that people of different religious backgrounds cannot coexist peacefully. The events of 9/11 have been presented as an example of religion acting as a divider between peoples and have led to an increase in anti-Islamic attitudes, not only in the United States but in many European states as well. The unresolved Palestinian conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also presented as evidence confirming theories about a clash of civilizations (Huntington, 1993). Such claims of incompatibility between national and ethnic and/or religious identities are particularly important in the increasingly multicultural and multi-faith European states. They are often associated with European societies feeling threatened by the presence of people who do not share common kinship and history, and as a result they will often accuse inhabitants from other backgrounds of divided loyalties. International conflicts became intra-national ones that oppose ethnic majorities and minorities on both material and symbolic grounds. Identities are therefore constructed and reconstructed and their salience and possible incompatibility are debated at
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70 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons the societal, community, and individual levels. How these identity struggles are made sense of by both majorities and minorities has implications for intergroup relations. In this chapter, we engage with a number of questions that arise from considering how we conceptualize the relationship between national, religious, and ethnic identities. First, we consider some of the evidence that speaks to the question of how compatible national, religious, and ethnic identities are. We argue that researchers need to be extremely cautious in arguing that these identities are incompatible, for two main reasons. The way we theorize identities and nations may lead us to exaggerate both differences between identities and the perceived rigidity of the boundaries of national, religious, and ethnic groups. In addition, methodological issues concerning what is measured when we measure national identification and how we measure identities may also mislead us into believing that the target identities are perceived as incompatible. Empirical evidence on perceptions of incompatibility between national, ethnic, and religious identities amongst members of minority ethnic groups suggests that this is a more complex phenomenon than is often assumed by both theorists and the political elite. The perceived relationship between these identities can only be studied and understood by taking into account the specific sociopolitical context in which these identities and their relationship are debated and practiced. Second, we discuss the role that perceived incompatibility between national, ethnic, and religious identities plays in the processes involved in identification with the national polity. Our discussion leads us again to suggest that beliefs about the incompatibility of these identities are political stances that serve to promote specific societal projects, and therefore that these processes can only be understood by taking into account the contextual power and ideological struggles within which these beliefs are constructed and contested. Third, we turn our attention to the notion of identification with the nation amongst members of minority ethnic groups. We argue that careful theorization of the multidimensional nature of this process is necessary in order to understand how members of minorities respond to demands to declare their relative loyalty and identification with the nation by majorities in multicultural societies. Fourth, we examine the relationship between perceived incompatibility of national, ethnic, and religious identities and willingness to participate in the national polity. Unlike Chapter 3 in this book by Wiley and Deaux, which examines how individuals deal with the different identities accessible to them and whether biculturalism is possible, we focus our discussion on how the belief held by both citizens and denizens about (in)compatibility between identities influences the accessibility of national identity for
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denizens and thus their inclusion within the national polity. In addition, we offer a theorization of what identification with the nation means and discuss whether beliefs about (in)compatibility between identities impact on willingness to participate in collective claims for minority rights.
Incompatibility between Ethnic, Religious, and National Identities: What is the Evidence? According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), people engage in intergroup behavior to enhance the position and value of their group and to protect their group membership. Over the years social psychologists have gathered evidence that corroborate this statement (Abrams & Hogg, 1999; Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). However, in their attempt to isolate the social psychological conditions under which ingroup favoritism and out-group derogation take place, social psychologists may have given emphasis to a situation where only two possible groups with mutually exclusive membership exist. Although the original theorization stressed that there are more than two opposing categories of belonging and despite the fact that self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) emphasizes the context-dependent and flexible nature of self-categories, empirical evidence was gathered and theories developed that led implicitly to a more essentialized vision of group membership, in particular for identities that relate to race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. In our legitimate attempt to reduce prejudice and discrimination, we as social psychologists somehow forgot that group memberships are part of a web of social relations, and that social categories are the “objectifications” of these relations and of wider theories about the social world (Moscovici, 2000, 2001). Thus, we involuntarily produced an idea of the world where two opposing groups fight for power and where membership in these groups is mutually exclusive. This vision was “helped” by the fact that – as Billig (1995) has argued – we live in a “world of nations.” In this world, nations have specific, formal criteria of membership and, despite their historical foundation, their founding myths often refer to essentialized ideas about their origins. Several beliefs emerged in this context. For example: (1) that national groups have discrete boundaries that include or exclude people; (2) that they are natural categories; (3) that national groups have stable characteristics over time; (4) that people belonging to them have necessary characteristics; and (5) that national membership is exclusive. On closer examination, one realizes that these characteristics of discreteness, naturalness, stability, necessity, and exclusivity are dimensions of essentialization (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000). This essentialized perception
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72 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons of the nation, combined with socio-historical and power-related dimensions, contributed to the idea that only certain ethnicities were compatible with the national membership and that, if people did not share the ethnicity of the majority, they would be in conflict, unable to show loyalty to both national and ethnic groups, and would have to choose which membership to cherish. The implication was that if conflict occurred between two memberships, people would be keener to choose the ethnic membership over the national one, as if ethnicity were a kind of natural, primary identification. This perception is oblivious to power relations and to the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between social groups, as well as to the strategic use of the meaning that identities have (Reicher, 2004). It sustains an assumption that people will protect and try to enhance their ethnic membership because it is important to “who they are.” However, people fight in the name of an identity when they perceive this membership as an obstacle to their development and social success, when they feel humiliated and are discriminated against because of this membership, and when other possibilities for social mobility are restricted (Chryssochoou, 2004). Moreover, in the current socio-political context, at least in European societies, there is a debate about the status of people who do not share the majority’s ethno-cultural characteristics, either because they originate from former colonies or because they arrived as refugees or economic migrants. In some European Union (EU) states, people who are born in the country automatically acquire citizenship, while in other countries they do not, and the criteria for naturalization are not homogeneous across countries even in the EU (Triandafyllidou & Gropas, 2007). Moreover, even when people from different ethno-cultural backgrounds from the majority acquire citizenship, there is still debate as to whether they can be “true” members of this group. After the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the events of 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the subsequent attacks in Europe (Madrid and London), religion came to the forefront of concerns and the national loyalty of citizens of Islamic faith was questioned. Thus, beliefs about the exclusivity and (in)compatibility of ethnic, religious, and national identities became salient. The question still remains: What is the evidence for this (in)compatibility? The empirical evidence is not conclusive. There is research reporting negative correlations between minority ethnic identification and national identification (Abu-Rayya & Abu-Rayya, 2009; Verkuyten & Yildiz 2007). Others suggest, however, that separate measures are needed to look at identification with the national majority and identification with the larger national society (Gong 2007). Thus, measures might mislead as to the relationship between different identities. Beyond these methodological concerns, however, the studies that report negative correlations are often those
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that refer to identifications with membership in groups that are in conflict. For example, the study by Abu-Rayya and Abu-Rayya (2009) investigated the identities of Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin and found negative correlations between these two identities. The Verkuyten and Yildiz (2007) study looked at Muslims in the Netherlands in a period when Muslims were targeted as potential terrorists and when the murder in 2004 of film director Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Moroccan Muslim made these concerns salient, ostracizing the Muslim minority from the Dutch national polity. In another study, with young people of Dutch and Turkish ethnic origins in the Netherlands, Verkuyten and Thijs (2002) observed that for Turkish adolescents, cultural maintenance was not contradictory to adaptation, whereas Dutch adolescents were more in favor of adaptation than their Turkish peers and saw both options as mutually exclusive. Moreover, while for Turkish adolescents ethnic identification was unrelated to adaptation and positively related to cultural maintenance, for young Dutch people, on the contrary, ethnic identification was positively related to adaptation and negatively to cultural maintenance. Thus, for the minority group, the fact that their ethnic identification was unrelated to adaptation might indicate that they did not perceive any incompatibility between holding a national and an ethnic identification, whereas for the Dutch majority the findings might indicate that the two identities were perceived as incompatible. The factor that made these identifications incompatible for the Turkish group was perception of discrimination. In an unpublished study of 100 Albanian migrants in Greece (Chryssochoou & Dede, in preparation), we also found that cultural maintenance and adaptation were not related and neither attitude correlated with ethnic identification. In France, Sabatier (2008) investigated the relationship between two orientations of identity (ethnic and national) among 365 second-generation adolescents from five ethnic groups and their parents. She found that ethnic and national identity affirmations were independent and that three factors explained the highest amount of national identity variance: youngsters’ perception of their relationship with their parents, parental enculturation, and perceived discrimination. Once again, ethnic and national identities were not seen by immigrants as incompatible. The process of their acculturation is multifaceted and complex, and perceived discrimination seems to play an important role. In another study involving ethnic Malays, Chinese, and Indians in Singapore and Malaysia (Liu, Lawrence, Ward, & Abraham 2002), it was found that, although levels of identifications differed between ethnic groups and across different national contexts, ethnic and national identifications were positively correlated and these correlations were positively associated with hegemonic and consensual representations of history, especially regarding relations between the national and ethnic groups involved.
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74 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons From all these studies conducted in different contexts and with different national and ethnic groups, we cannot form conclusions about the type of relationship that exists between national and ethnic identity. Moreover, from studies on biculturalism (see Chapter 3 by Wiley and Deaux for a review and discussion), we understand that a person can be an agent of two cultural identities that can be enacted in different contexts, situations, and circumstances, either separately or blended. What we get from the literature is an indication that beliefs about the incompatibility between identities are stronger among ethnic majorities and that power relations and discrimination influence the same beliefs for ethnic minorities. Bond (2006) researched the development of Scottish identity and concluded that the majority’s conceptions of national identity excluded or included “others” from possible identification with this identity. Moreover, Devos and Banaji (2005) found that although egalitarian concerns might counteract such conceptions at an explicit level, associations such as White = American, if investigated with implicit measures, can be present in the responses of the dominant White group and shared by some ethnic minorities (Asian Americans) though not by others (African Americans). These findings are informative of the relations between ethnic groups in the United States and their ideologies. Thus, we claim that investigating the relationship between national and ethnic identities outside a specific context may not be fruitful. This relationship might be informative for understanding a particular context but could be misleading if it is used for generating universal laws, especially as it might feed commonsense beliefs about the incompatibility between identities. Our question is to understand whether these beliefs undermine identification with the national in-group and participation in the national polity. Incompatibility between identities can be used strategically by majorities to thwart identification with the national polity by different groups, and thus prevent them from claiming rights and resources in this context. Thus, it is important to examine whether these perceptions, from the point of view of minority members, influence either their identification with national identity or their political participation and claiming of rights. To respond to these questions, we draw on our own research, and in particular on a recent study involving different minority groups.1
1 The data referred to come from an INTAS-funded international study directed by Evanthia Lyons investigating political trust and political participation amongst young people from ethnic minorities in Ajerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, Russia, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. We acknowledge the valuable contribution of our collaborators in the project: Rauf Garagozov, Giorgi Kipiani, Tatiana Riazanova, Valentyna Pavlenko, Jose Valencia, Maykel Verkuyten, and Vladimir Slivanov. The data are still being analyzed and only a few results from this vast research project are presented here.
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Perceived Incompatibility between Identities and Strength of National Identification amongst Members of Minority Groups A negative correlation between national and ethnic or religious identities is usually considered to be an indicator of their difficult coexistence since it means that the more a person identifies with one in-group, the less he or she is likely to identify with the other. In the large data set described earlier (see note 1), the relationship between national and ethnic or religious identity was negative only for three minority groups: Basque people in Spain, Muslims in Spain, and Muslims in the Netherlands.2 In addition, there was a negative correlation between religious and national identification for Muslims in Spain. The same relationship was non-significant for Dutch Muslims. It is no surprise that all three groups are minority groups in more or less overt conflict with ethnic majorities in their respective societies. For these three groups we looked at the relationship between strength of national identification and beliefs about the (in)compatibility between different identifications.3 Is perceived incompatibility related to national identification? The findings were different for each group. For young Basque people in Spain, national identification correlated positively with their belief that being Spanish is compatible with being Basque, whereas ethnic identification (i.e., Basque) was negatively related to the belief about the compatibility of the two identities. Thus, the more a person felt that there was a compatibility between the two identities, the more he or she identified with Spaniards and less with Basque people. In other words, the feeling of compatibility between the two identities was related to an increase of identification with the national in-group and a decrease of identification with the ethnic one. For people belonging to a group that historically claims autonomy and independence from Spain, the more people believe that it is compatible to be both Basque and Spanish, the stronger their identification with the Spanish group. Identities relate to particular 2
Statistical tests and results are omitted for space reasons but are available from the authors on request. 3 The following questions measured beliefs about (in)compatibility between identities from the respondent’s point of view and from the point of view of the majority of people in the country: (1) To what extent do you feel that being a member of the (national in-group) is compatible with being a member of your (ethnic or religious) group? (2) To what extent do you think that (the majority of people in [country] feel that) being a member of a (national ingroup) is compatible with being a member of your (ethnic or religious) group? (3) To what extent do you think that (the majority of people in [country] feel that it) is necessary for a person of your own ethnic group also to be a member of your religious group? (4) To what extent is it necessary (do you think/the majority of people in [country] feel that it is necessary) for a (national in-group) person to be Christian?
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76 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons projects that are part of a wider social representation of how people see the world (Chryssochoou, 2003; Reicher, 2004). Therefore, perceived compatibility between Basque and Spanish identity may be an indicator of people’s ideological positioning in relation to these projects and this position is reflected in their identifications. For Spanish Muslims, beliefs about (in)compatibility were also related to the strength of national identification. The more they felt that being Spanish is compatible with being a member of their own ethnic group and the more they believed that the majority of people in Spain acknowledged that being Spanish was compatible with being a member of their ethnic and religious group, the more they identified with the national group. It is noteworthy that for Muslims in Spain, not only did their own beliefs about the congruence between ethnic majority and ethnic minority identities play a role in their identification with the national group, but so did the agreement of the majority on this question. It could be hypothesized, therefore, that perceptions about acceptance by the majority are important for their identification with the national in-group. For Dutch Muslims, however, it was not their own beliefs about compatibility but their beliefs about how the majority of Dutch people felt that related to identification. Moreover, these beliefs did not relate to strength of national identification but to their ethnic and religious identifications. Indeed, the more they felt that the majority of people in the Netherlands considered being Dutch as compatible with being a member of their own ethnic group, the more they identified with their ethnic and religious in-groups. However, it is important to note that national identification related to whether they felt that it is necessary for a person of their ethnicity also to be Muslim. The less they felt that way, the more they identified with Dutch identity. Furthermore, the more they believed it was necessary for their ethnic group to be Muslim, the more they identified with their ethnicity and with their religious in-group. This indicates that Dutch Muslims’ representation of the relationship between their ethnicity and their religion is the critical factor for their strength of identification with the Dutch group. In these three cases where a negative correlation between ethnic and national identity was observed, beliefs about the (in)compatibility of the two identities related differently to the strength of identification with the national identity. In Spain, for both the Basque and the Muslim minority, feelings of compatibility related to identification with the national identity. In addition, Muslims cared about the majority’s beliefs concerning compatibility between their ethnic and religious groups. This perhaps indicates that in order to be able to identify, one needs to feel accepted. For the Muslim minority in the Netherlands, feelings of compatibility between ethnic and national identity did not relate to the strength of identification
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with national identity but to identification with ethnic and religious identities. The more they felt that other Dutch people saw these identities as compatible, the more they declared identification with the minority identity, as if the acceptance of others either prevents them from denying this identity or makes them proud to be part of this group. However, the more they see their ethnicity as intrinsically linked with religion, the less they identify with Dutch identity and the more they identify with the ethnic and religious one. If beliefs about incompatibility between identities are not necessarily related to strength of identification with national identity, to what extent is national identification predicted by these beliefs about (in)compatibility when other factors are taken into account, such as the strength of ethnic identification and perceptions of the receiving society as just, as offering opportunities, and as having trustworthy institutions? A series of regressions was performed that operationalized the strength of identification with the national identity as an outcome variable, and ethnic and religious identifications, beliefs of (in)compatibility between identities, perceptions of the national society as just in general, perceptions of the national society as fair toward the respondent’s ethnic group, and trust in national institutions as predictors. The last three factors were introduced to see whether perceptions of the receiving society as one that allows mobility and gives opportunities to all were related to national identification. The predictors were introduced progressively in the analysis, even though only the final model is discussed here. For the Basque respondents, although ethnic identity was negatively related to national identity and this relationship was still significant when participants’ own perceptions of compatibility were added, in the final model only the general perception of Spain as a just country was a factor that was close to being significant. For Muslim youth in Spain, although in earlier stages of the analysis own perceptions of compatibility between ethnic and national identifications were found to positively predict strength of national identification, in the last model when perceptions of justice and trust were introduced, only two factors become important: Religious identity negatively predicted strength of national identification, whereas trust in national institutions predicted this identification positively. Thus, the stronger Muslim identification was, the less they defined themselves as Spanish, and the more they trusted Spanish institutions, the more they identified with the national polity. The Dutch Muslims displayed a different pattern. In the last model when general perceptions of justice and trust in institutions were added, only three factors predicted positive identification with the national group: (1) the belief that it was necessary for a person of their ethnicity to be Muslim; (2) general perceptions of justice in the Netherlands; and
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78 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons (3) trust in institutions. We can only speculate that these young Dutch Muslims identified with the national group to the extent that they had a representation of their ethnicity and religion as intrinsically linked and to the extent that they felt that the Netherlands was a just society with trustworthy institutions. These findings are in line with those in the literature described earlier and indicate the difficulty of generalizing about the relationship between ethnic and national identities. Even groups with similar ethno-religious characteristics (Muslims) do not show the same pattern of relationships in different contexts. In some cases Muslims in Spain display similar identity patterns with the Basque people and in other cases with Dutch Muslims. Identities do not have inflexible meanings (Reicher, 2004). Groups strategically construct the content of an identity in relation to their objectives, and these constructions are significantly framed by the context. Research has shown that Muslim identity in the same constituency can be constructed differently in order to promote different ways of perceiving collective interests and of acting as a group (Hopkins & Kahani-Hopkins, 2004a, 2004b; Hopkins, Reicher, & Kahani-Hopkins, 2003). The discussion above and the findings presented indicate that identifying with the national polity may not be a direct function of ethnic identification. We claim that beliefs about incompatibility are political stances promoting particular societal projects. It has been argued and verified with a Scottish sample (Sindic & Reicher, 2009) that political attitudes toward superordinate group membership are not a direct function of subgroup identification but are moderated by a feeling that one’s identity is being undermined, which entails the belief that one cannot realize one’s subgroup identity within the superordinate group (because of incompatibility) and/or that this ability will be compromised by the power of others. Sindic and Reicher (2009) suggest that such processes of identity undermining mediate the relationship between the two identifications. We tested this assumption in our Basque sample, for whom ethnic identification negatively predicted national identification. As markers of identity undermining we used “own perceptions of (in)compatibility between ethnic and national identities” (in one model) and “perceptions of Spain as a just society toward Basque people” (in a second model). The relationship of ethnic identification with incompatibility beliefs and with perceptions of justice was significantly negative, indicating that the more people identified with the Basque group, the less they saw belonging to both the Basque and Spanish groups as compatible and the less they thought that Basque people were treated fairly in Spain. When we regressed each factor (in separated models) with ethnic identification on national identification, both factors acted as partial mediators, reducing the effect of
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ethnic identification on national identification.4 Thus it seems that, in the case of Basque people, the negative relationship between ethnic and national identification is partially due to their beliefs about the incompatibility between the two memberships and their feeling that Basque people are not treated fairly in Spain. Further research should investigate which other factors explain this negative relationship. Instead of assuming that ethnic and national identities are negatively related to each other, research should try to focus on the particular factors that contribute to making this relationship a negative one. Overall, our findings suggest that perceptions of the societal context, the possibilities it offers and one’s position in it, beliefs about the (in)compatibility between memberships and perceptions of the majority’s beliefs about this (in)compatibility, along with strength of identification with the ethnic or religious group, in some cases play an important role in the strength of identification with the national group. Some of these beliefs partially explain the negative relationship between ethnic and national identifications. Our argument is that we cannot study the relationship between ethnic, national, and religious identities outside particular contexts. However, we should be able to conceptualize identification with the national polity for ethnic minorities as a construct in a way that takes context and how this context is internalized into account. This could be achieved by looking at the different ways people represent the relationship between identities for themselves, the ideological beliefs they have, and psychological distance from the superordinate group.
Ethnic Minority Identification with the National Polity in Multicultural Societies It has been argued that identities could be conceived as particular forms of social representations, that is, collective elaborations of knowledge about the self in a social context (Chryssochoou, 2009), and result from processes of socialization, social influence, and communication. Identity, as a social representation, is a threefold concept including self-knowledge (developed through socialization), claims (expressed through communication), and recognition (debated through social influence) (Chryssochoou, 2003). This concept comprises what one knows about the self, what one claims about the self, and what aspects of this knowledge and claims people induce others 4
Both mediators were positively related to national identification (beliefs about (in)compatibility and fair treatment of Basque people). When compatibility was entered as a predictor with ethnic identification, the effect of the latter was reduced. Similarly, when fair treatment was the mediator, the effect of ethnic identification on national identification was reduced.
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80 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons to recognize. We argue that this conceptualization of identity is useful for helping us understand what it means for ethnic minorities in multicultural societies to identify with the nation. In multicultural societies, majorities ask minorities to make claims about their ethnic and national self. By refusing to recognize them as full members of the national group, they consolidate their own power (as gatekeepers and recipients of national material and symbolic resources) and their status within the national group. Although minorities may feel that the game is biased, they are obliged to take a position and to make this position public: They are asked to disclose whether they identify with the national group or not. Thus, we claim that if we want to understand minority identification with the national polity, it would be useful to investigate the construction of the first aspect of identity: self-knowledge. What follows is an attempt to theorize what self-knowledge as a member of the national polity is for ethnic minorities. Taking a social representational approach to identity, we could assume that self-knowledge as a member of the national group is anchored to other memberships (e.g., ethnic, religious, gender, or class), to different ideological beliefs, including beliefs about the relationship between identities, about the national society (justice, trust in institutions), and about one’s own position in the society, and to a psychological inclusion of the national in-group in the self. To look at the anchoring of nationality to other memberships in terms of identification, we could investigate the way people represent the relationship between their different identities. This representation is not the same as their beliefs about incompatibility. Whilst the latter is part of a person’s ideological stance about these memberships, the anchoring of the national group to other memberships consists of the way people perceive their own identity (as dual or separate). Finally, psychological inclusion of the group in the self is important in the case of ethnic minority members since they are asked to include a new group membership in the way they see themselves. The movement is to include what the national group represents to the self and not to include the self in the group. Following this line of thought, we could assume that identification with the national polity can be predicted by (1) subjective representation of one’s multiple identities, (2) ideological consciousness of belonging to this group, and (3) psychological identification with this group. Subjective representation of the self as belonging to the ethnic minority and the ethnic majority groups can follow the identity complexity models described by Roccas and Brewer (2002) as: (1) intersection (a single ingroup identity defined by the intersection of multiple group memberships), (2) dominance (the adoption of only one group membership as a primary one), (3) compartmentalization (identities coexist but are differentiated and separated and become salient separately), and (4) merger (identity is the
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combination of the multiple memberships; the outcome of a merger is a new inclusive identity). For the authors, intersection corresponds to hyphenated identities, dominance to assimilation or separation, compartmentalization to cultural ambidextrousness, and merger to integrated biculturalism. Ideological consciousness of belonging might correspond to beliefs about the (in)compatibility of belonging to the two groups simultaneously, and to the position that one has within the national group. The concept of identity undermining/enhancing previously presented (Sindic & Reicher, 2009) can be considered as part of ideological consciousness. This consciousness requires minority members to answer the question: “Why should I identify with the national group?” This question is not about belongingness in terms of rights and benefits derived from national membership in a concrete way. The question is whether minority members feel that being part of the national group enables them to achieve what they want in their lives without necessarily denying who they already are. Ideological consciousness concerns the feeling that one is part of a group where one’s other identities are accepted, a group with laws and principles, with just and trustworthy institutions and rules, that treats people like oneself fairly and where one’s status and position are not handicaps to achieving success. Ideological consciousness is about feeling that one is part of the project that this particular identity promotes. It concerns the consciousness and strategic aspect that identification with the psychological social group has. The third aspect of self-knowledge concerns psychological identification with the national group and could be defined in terms of inclusion of the in-group in the self (Tropp & Wright, 2001). This identification is usually measured with the IOS scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992), which pictorially asks people to represent the relation of the self with the group. This parameter is important because it provides the way in which people include others, here members of the national group, in their self. In a way, psychological identification in terms of inclusion of others in the self is the opposite aspect of recognition by others: It is the recognition of others as part of the self. In a study involving Armenian children attending an Armenian school in Athens (Kiourktzian & Chryssochoou, in preparation), we aimed to predict solidarity and identification with Greece presented as the homeland through the following factors: subjective representation of ethnic and national identities, ideological consciousness, and psychological identification with Greeks. In a regression we included as predictors: inclusion of the Greeks in the self, five questions describing the four models of identity complexity (two for dominance: Armenian-dominant and Greek-dominant), perceptions of one’s family’s economic position in relation to other families in Greece, and perceptions of Greece as a just society providing opportunities for everyone. The analysis showed that only three parameters predicted
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82 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons identification with Greece as a homeland: (1) inclusion of Greeks in the self, (2) identity complexity as intersection, and (3) subjective evaluation of family’s economic position in relation to other families in Greece. In other words, the more people include Greeks in their construction of the self, declare that they feel as much Greek as Armenian, and consider their family as better off economically than other families in Greece, the more they consider Greece as their homeland. These findings suggest that the three aspects proposed as part of selfknowledge predict levels of identification with the higher-level, national group. Psychological inclusion of the group in the self seems to be the more important factor, followed by identity complexity and subjective evaluation of family’s economic position in comparison with others in Greece (people might feel more part of the group if their own position is equal or better than others’ within this group). It can be argued that there might be a particular representation of the relations between identities (intersection) that predicts identification with the superordinate group. There is evidence for the importance of a hyphenated (Sirin & Fine 2008) or a dual identity (Simon & Ruhs, 2008; see also Chapter 7 in this book by Bernd Simon) for the inclusion and participation of minority members in the national group. In addition, acculturation research considers integration as the most successful strategy of acculturation (Berry 2001; see also Chapter 14 in this book by John Berry). This strategy promotes keeping aspects of both the receiving society’s culture and the culture of origin. Further research, however, should investigate what are the factors that promote a dual identity and the inclusion of national group members in the self. In our presentation so far, we have argued that the relationship between different identities is political and that beliefs about the (in)compatibility between identities might be created and sustained in order to promote different societal projects. We have provided evidence derived from the literature that incompatibility between ethnic, religious, and national identities is not necessarily the rule, and we have proposed through our findings that beliefs about incompatibility of identities relate to this negative relationship and predict identification with the nation. Finally, we have offered a suggestion as to how awareness that one is a member of the nation might be theorized. The question we need to ask, however, is why identification with the nation is important.
Identification with the National Polity and Political Participation It might be claimed that our concern about ethnic minorities’ and immigrants’ identification with the national group is ideologically driven and expresses a need for their assimilation to prevent potential intergroup
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conflicts. The literature in social psychology suggests that superordinate identities reduce prejudice and discrimination toward former out-group members (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000, 2005; Wagner, Tropp, Finchilescu, & Tredoux, 2008) and that people are kinder to in-group members. Thus, one might assume that if people identify with the nation, intergroup conflict would be prevented. However, this assumption is true only if we presume that the groups included in the superordinate group are of equal status (Allport, 1954), which is often not the case for ethnic minorities and immigrants compared to ethnic majorities. Why, therefore, should members of minorities identify with the national group? In their analysis of power, Simon and Oakes (2006) suggest that “the shared higher-level identity is the basic pre-requisite for the lower level (i.e. the intergroup level) conflict” (p. 116). It is only if people feel psychologically part of the superordinate group that they would claim rights and resources to redress status inequality and to achieve power. Thus, identifying with the national group constitutes an important factor for collectively attempting to redress inequality and achieve material and symbolic resources. In another study conducted with immigrants in Greece (Diakolambrianou, 2007), it was found that actual political participation was predicted by perceived efficacy of union actions, perceived discrimination, identification with Greece as a homeland, and feelings of being and/or being considered a foreigner in Greece. Thus, the more people perceived that union actions were an efficient way to protest, the more they felt (individually or as a group) discriminated against, the more they considered Greece as their homeland and the more they perceived themselves as foreigners in Greece, the more they had participated in political protest in Greece. Interestingly, strength of ethnic identification, which was entered as a predictor in the same regression, did not display significant effects. It is not the feeling of belonging to a different ethnicity and the attachment to this group that predicts participation but the feeling of being an outsider, a foreigner, that influences it. These findings corroborate the idea that in order to participate in collective action, people should develop a politicized collective identity (Simon & Klandermans, 2001; see also Chapter 7 by Simon in this book), which involves identification with the category that has a grievance (here foreigners), shared grievances (discrimination), and identification with the larger polity (here Greece as homeland). It seems that, in addition to the strength of ethnic identification, these factors are likely to play an influential role in immigrant and native struggles to redress inequalities. However, in the INTAS study presented earlier, ethnic identification of Muslims in Spain positively predicted intention to participate in peaceful protest to claim minority rights, thus indicating that the more people identified with their ethnic group, the more they were willing to participate.
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84 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons Noticeably, neither national nor religious identification was a significant predictor. Four compatibility beliefs predicted likelihood to participate in these activities: (1) perception of whether the majority of people in Spain felt that it was compatible to be Spanish and a member of the participant’s own ethnicity; (2) own perception of compatibility between being Spanish and being a member of own religion; (3) perception of whether the majority of people in Spain felt that it was compatible to be Spanish and a member of the participant’s own religion; and (4) perception of whether the majority of people in Spain felt that it was necessary for a Spanish person to be Christian. Thus, the more people felt that their ethnicity was accepted in Spain as part of the national group and the less they felt that their religion was excluded, the greater was the likelihood of participation in peaceful protest for minority rights. More than their own beliefs about compatibility of memberships, it was the opinion of the national majority that mattered. In addition, the less people trusted national institutions, the more they were willing to participate in activities for minority rights. Muslims in the Netherlands, however, presented a slightly different pattern. None of their identifications predicted participation in protests for minority rights. Three factors were important: (1) perceptions of whether the majority in the Netherlands felt that it was necessary for a person with the participant’s ethnicity to also be a member of the participant’s religious group; (2) perception of whether the majority of people in the Netherlands felt that it was necessary for a Dutch person to be Christian; and (3) trust in national institutions. The less Dutch Muslims felt that Dutch society had an essentialized vision of them (necessary for people like them to also have a particular religion), the less they thought that Dutch society prevented people of their own religion from being part of the national group, and the more they trusted the national institutions, the more they participated. Even if young Muslims in Spain and in the Netherlands did not display similar patterns, these findings are not contradictory. In both cases perceptions of being included despite ethnic/religious difference promoted willingness to be political agents. That said, it is important to embed these findings within the socio-political context of each society to explain, for example, why in Spain not trusting national institutions leads to more participation whereas in the Netherlands it is trust in national institutions that promotes participation. Consequently, we should see identities in context.
Concluding Remarks In this chapter we discussed the belief that ethnic, religious, and national identities of ethnic/religious minorities are incompatible in contemporary European nations. However, this belief is problematic. On the one hand,
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although it appears often to be uncontested in scientific and lay thinking, it is not unequivocally supported by the evidence. On the other hand, considering ethnic and national identities as incompatible reinforces the fear that conflicts between ethnic minorities and majorities arise and that these conflicts are due primarily to a psychological factor: incompatibility between identities. We discussed findings from three different minority groups for whom there is a negative correlation between strength of identification with the ethnic group and the national group. These findings suggest a relation between perceived incompatibility between memberships and identification with the national group. However, we need to emphasize that these are beliefs and not psychological mechanisms. Incompatibility beliefs can be strategically used to promote different identity projects and therefore they are also political. Further research should investigate what creates beliefs about the (in) compatibility between memberships. It is possible that perceived incompatibility is the outcome of particular intergroup relations and not the predictor of these relationships. Ostensibly, attitudes toward acculturation, contrary to what is thought (Bourhis, Moise, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997; Zagefka & Brown, 2002), can be seen as the outcome of intergroup relations and not their predictor. Beliefs about (in)compatibility between identities might legitimize the existing power asymmetries between groups and thus could be sustained by ethnic majorities in order to maintain their position. Moreover, minority groups that are engaged in conflict might want to maintain and uphold beliefs that increase identification with the ethnic group in order to fight collectively to reduce these inequalities. To do so, however, they should feel included and should identify with a higher-level group: the national group. It is within the context of the national framework that claims can be made and struggles can be fought. Beliefs about identity incompatibility, sustained either by majorities or by minorities themselves, prevent this inclusion and the recognition of others as interlocutors within a larger polity where different ideas and interests can be opposed. In order to contribute to the debate about the development of national identification for ethnic minorities, we suggested a theorization of selfknowledge that included three aspects: (1) subjective representation of the relation between different memberships, (2) ideological consciousness of belonging, and (3) psychological inclusion of the group in the self. We presented evidence that these factors are important in predicting identification with the national group and that ideological consciousness (measured as beliefs about the incompatibility between memberships and subjective position within the group) partially mediated the negative relation between ethnic and national identifications. Further research should be done to be
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86 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons able to generalize these findings to other contexts. For the moment, one should beware of generalizations since socio-political context seems to play an important role in the relations between identities, thus strengthening the argument that these relations reflect intergroup relations and ingroup ideologies. Finally, following the central theme of this book, we related identities and beliefs about their incompatibility with political participation. The findings presented suggest that identification with the larger national polity influences political participation. Moreover, perceiving the larger group as fair and having trustworthy institutions influences political participation among members of ethnic minorities. Beliefs about incompatibility between identities also play a role in characterizing the framework about where claims and protest can be made. Further research should investigate whether these beliefs promote political action as markers of inclusion or can be themselves the object of influence and contestation. The issue in this chapter was to contest the idea that national and ethnic identities are incompatible. We claimed that they are incompatible for political reasons, with important social psychological and political consequences.
References Abrams, D., & Hogg, M. A. (Eds.). (1999). Social identity and social cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Abu-Rayya, H. M., & Abu-Rayya, M. H. (2009). Acculturation, religious identity, and psychological well-being among Palestinians in Israel. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33(4), 325–331. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596–612. Berry, J. W. (2001). A psychology of immigration. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 615–631. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Bond, R. (2006). Belonging and becoming: National identity and exclusion. Sociology, 40(4), 609–626. Bourhis, R., Moise, C., Perreault, S., & Senecal, S. (1997). Towards an interactive acculturation model: A social psychological approach. International Journal of Psychology, 32, 369–386. Chryssochoou, X. (2003). Studying identity in social psychology: Some thoughts on the definition of identity and its relation to action. Journal of Language and Politics, 2(2), 225–242. Chryssochoou, X. (2004). Cultural diversity: Its social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Chryssochoou, X. (2009). Identity projects in multicultural nation-states. In I. Jasinskaja-Lahti & T. A. Mahonen (Eds.), Identities, intergroup relations and acculturation: The cornerstones of intercultural encounters. Helsinki: Gaudeamus Helsinki University Press. Chryssochoou, X., & Dede, E. (in preparation). Identity, strategies of social mobility, and attitudes towards acculturation of Albanians in Greece: A social psychological contribution. Unpublished manuscript. Devos, T., & Banaji, M. R. (2005). American = White? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 447–466. Diakolambrianou, E. (2007). Political participation of immigrants in Greece. Final year dissertation, Department of Psychology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece. Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (1999). Social identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing intergroup bias: The common ingroup identity model. Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2005). Categorization, recategorization and intergroup bias. In J. F. Dovidio, P. Glick, & L. A. Rudmann (Eds.), On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport (pp. 71–89). Oxford: Blackwell. Gong, L. (2007). Ethnic identity and identification with the majority group: Relations with national identity and self-esteem. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 31(4), 503–523. Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113–127. Hopkins, N., & Kahani-Hopkins, V. (2004a). Identity construction and British Muslims’ political activity: Beyond rational actor theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43(3), 339–356. Hopkins, N., & Kahani-Hopkins, V. (2004b). The antecedents of identification: A rhetorical analysis of British Muslim activists’ constructions of community and identity. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43(1), 41–57. Hopkins, N., Reicher, S., & Kahani-Hopkins, V. (2003). Citizenship, participation and identity construction: Political mobilization amongst British Muslims. Psychologica Belgica, 43, 33–54. Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72. Kiourktzian, M., & Chryssochoou, X. (in preparation). Growing up in Greece: Identifications of young people of Armenian descent. Unpublished manuscript. Liu, J. H., Lawrence, B., Ward, C., & Abraham, S. (2002). Social representations of history in Malaysia and Singapore: On the relationship between national and ethnic identity. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 5(1), 3–20. Moscovici, S. (2000). Society and theory in social psychology. In G. Duveen (Ed.), Social representations: Explorations in social psychology (pp. 78–119). Cambridge: Polity Press. Moscovici, S. (2001). Why a theory of social representations? In K. Deaux & G. Philogene (Eds.), Representations of the social (pp. 8–35). Oxford: Blackwell. Reicher, S. (2004). The context of social identity: Domination, resistance, and change. Political Psychology, 25(6), 921–945.
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88 Xenia Chryssochoou and Evanthia Lyons Roccas, S., & Brewer, M. (2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 88–106. Sabatier, C. (2008). Ethnic and national identity among second-generation immigrant adolescents in France: The role of social context and family. Journal of Adolescence, 31(2), 185–205. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56, 319–331. Simon, B., & Oakes, P. (2006). Beyond dependence: An identity approach to social power and domination. Human Relations, 59(1), 105–139. Simon, B., & Ruhs, D. (2008). Identity and politicization among Turkish migrants in Germany: The role of dual identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1354–1366. Sindic, D., & Reicher, S. D. (2009). “Our way of life is worth defending”: Testing a model of attitudes towards superordinate group membership through a study of Scots’ attitudes towards Britain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 114–129. Sirin, S., & Fine, M. (2008). Muslim American youth: Understanding hyphenated identities through multiple methods. New York: New York University Press. Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behavior. Social Science Information, 13, 65–93. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In S. Worschel (Ed.), Psychology of intergroup relations. Chicago: Nelson Hall. Triandafyllidou, A., & Gropas, R. (Eds). (2007). European immigration: A sourcebook, Aldershot: Asghate. Tropp, L. R., & Wright, S. C. (2001). Ingroup identification as the inclusion of ingroup in the self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(5), 585–600. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Verkuyten, M., & Thijs, J. (2002). Multiculturalism among minority and majority adolescents in the Netherlands. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26, 91–108. Verkuyten, M., & Yildiz, A. A. (2007). National (dis)identification and ethnic and religious identity: A study among Turkish-Dutch Muslims. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(10), 1448–1462. Wagner, U., Tropp, L. R., Finchilescu, G., & Tredoux, C. (Eds). (2008). Improving intergroup relations: Building on the legacy of Thomas F. Pettigrew. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Zagefka, H., & Brown, R. (2002). The relationship between acculturation strategies and relative fit and intergroup relations: Immigrant–majority relations in Germany. European Journal of Social Psychology, 32, 171–188.
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Part II
Collective Identity and Political Participation Bernd Simon
The ensemble of chapters in Part II illustrates the theoretical and methodological richness as well as important areas of contact and emerging convergence in the social sciences heralding an advanced and integrative understanding of the conditions, processes, and consequences of (socio-) political participation in various national and supranational contexts. This part of the book contains both critical reviews of “the state of the art” in the different social scientific disciplines engaged in participation research, including sociology, political science, and social psychology, and first-hand reports on innovative, cutting-edge, empirical research programs with important social and political implications. Acknowledging the increasing significance of Europe as a supranational context of political participation, Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham address in their chapter the Europeanization of public spheres. Guided by the premise that it is the publicly visible claims that count politically, they examine the Europeanization of public policy debates as it becomes visible in the print media in Europe. The picture that emerges from their analysis covering different forms of Europeanization, a variety of European countries, different newspapers, and different years is remarkably clear and points to a qualitative deficit of political participation at the European level. The voice of civil society actors is alarmingly weak here relative to that of political elites such as heads of state and government or central banks. European integration thus appears to be primarily a project by, and beneficial to, political elites. In the next chapter, Patrick Ireland turns to the more specific process of migrant integration and participation in European countries. He reviews the ways in which scholars have attempted to understand this contentious process and identifies a number of key deficits. In particular, he criticizes imprecision in the definition and measurement of integration and the failure to pay sufficient attention to welfare state restructuring, the relationship between social capital and social control, and local-level
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90 Bernd Simon developments. Drawing on a careful comparison of both national and local European cases, Ireland demonstrates that, if adequately defined, measured, and localized, migrant integration and participation, including of Muslim minorities, have not always and everywhere gone amiss. Rooted in the perspectives of sociology and political science, the chapter by Koopmans and Statham and that by Ireland lay particular emphasis on top-down influences emanating from macro- and meso-level structures outside the individual. The next two chapters complement these perspectives with analyses of social psychological processes within and between individuals or groups of individuals, making explicit the role of collective identity in political participation. Bernd Simon discusses collective identity as a mesolevel social psychological concept that connects the individual and the social and thus enables micro–macro articulation. Drawing on recent social movement research, he stresses collective identification as a distinct social psychological pathway to political participation that operates in addition to, and largely independent of, people’s calculation of costs and benefits. Simon then takes the collective identity approach one step further and elaborates the notion of politicized collective identity. He applies this notion to the empirical study of political engagement of migrants and demonstrates that, for migrants, politicized collective identity takes the form of a dual identity involving identification with both the aggrieved minority in-group and the society of residence. Finally, he explores the role of collective identification processes in the transition from participation in normatively acceptable political action to participation in normatively unacceptable, radical action. Stephen Reicher and John Drury also examine the interrelation of collective (or social) identity and political participation, but place greater emphasis on the reverse sequence from participation to identity. Guided by the insight that collective identity can be as much a product as a precursor of political participation, they analyze how such participation affects the strength and depth as well as the content and meaning of collective identification. They do so through the study of crowd behavior, arguing that crowds provide a particularly clear and direct glimpse into the intergroup dynamics of human sociality. Reicher and Drury criticize classic crowd psychology and rectify its problematic notion of the crowd by elaborating the cognitive, relational, and affective transformations that people undergo when they become members of a psychological crowd and thus adopt a new collective identity. The authors illustrate these dynamics through a longitudinal study of an environmental campaign which leads them to a distinct view of collective identities as moral projects with an irreducible historical dimension. To summarize, although the two contributions from sociology and political science “naturally” start from analyses of macro-level, social structural factors, their interest in emerging public spheres (Koopmans and Statham) or local-level factors (Ireland) paves the way for transdisciplinary exchange
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and cross-fertilization with social psychological approaches to identity and intergroup relations. The contributions from sociology and political science thus mesh well with the two social psychological contributions that elaborate on collective identity as a crucial meso-level variable mediating between macro-level sociological and political factors, on the one hand, and microlevel psychological processes, including emotions, cognitions, and actions, on the other hand. More specifically, the social psychological analysis of how collective identity shapes political participation (Simon) and political participation in turn shapes collective identity (Reicher and Drury) elucidates the recursive process whereby people turn into self-conscious collective actors that are able to shape social structure. Together, the four contributions thus provide us with a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of when and how people make their own history.
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5
Winners and Losers in the Europeanization of Public Policy Debates Empowering the Already Powerful? Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham Introduction The European Union (EU) is the world’s most advanced institutional cooperation across borders and political levels and has resulted in a close regional interpenetration of societies, markets, and governments. Its multileveled political architecture is historically unprecedented and the EU’s power has grown beyond recognition over the last 50 years. However, this substantial advancement of European integration has been driven by political elites and, for the “permissive consensus” (Lindberg & Scheingold, 1970) era, largely out of the public eye. Over the last decade the political channels from the executive to citizens have been increasingly seen as problematic, leading to prominent debates about the EU’s perceived democratic “deficits.” The watershed moment came in the rejection of Europe’s constitutional efforts by the French and Dutch peoples in the 2005 referendums against the expressed wishes of all main political parties and all mainstream mass media. The fallout from the 2005 referendums made it clear that further advances in European integration will be possible only if its proponents succeed in mobilizing the citizenry’s support and gaining legitimacy in the public domain. It dealt a fatal blow to an idea that was already in decline: that political elites could simply proceed by building Europe in the absence of Europeans. In a book focusing on identity and participation, a quick solution to Europe’s perceived “deficit” might be sought in an increasing self-identification of This chapter draws partly from Koopmans (2007) and from perspectives developed within the Europub.com collaboration (http://europub.wzb.eu/) funded by the European Union’s Fifth Framework program (HPSE-CT2000-00046). The key project findings appear in Koopmans and Statham (2010).
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94 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham European citizens with the European Union. However, it is well documented that although policy decisions are increasingly taken in supranational and intergovernmental arenas, nation-states remain the primary focus for citizens’ collective identification processes and political mobilization. The prospects for “Europeans” evolving in the “culturally thick” sense en masse are slim, while Europe remains a secondary form of identification, an “identity-lite” (Risse, 2003). Nonetheless, change is occurring. Fligstein (2008) demonstrates that the expansion of markets and economic growth have produced Europe-wide economic, social, and political fields that he argues have led to an increasing density of social interaction and willingness of people to sometimes identify themselves as Europeans. But he concedes that self-identification with “Europe” is still for most people secondary and that a gap remains between structural change and public perceptions: “What has struck me most about the creation of a European society is the degree to which people in Europe are unaware of it” (Fligstein, 2008, p. 2). Within this context, questions about Europe’s missing public have turned to the conditions for a European public sphere of communication carried by the mass media. In Calhoun’s words, “if Europe is not only a place but a space in which distinctively European relations are forged and European visions of the future enacted, then it depends on communication in public, as much as on a distinctively European culture, or political institution, or economy, or social networks” (2003, p. 43). The possibility for a European public sphere has come to the forefront of social scientific debates about European integration.1 In this perspective, the opportunities for people to see, be included in, and be able to form opinions about the European level of decision-making are strongly dependent on their visibility in public discourses carried by the mass media. As Habermas (2006) puts it, “the democratic deficit can only be redressed by the simultaneous emergence of a European political public sphere in which the democratic process is embedded. In complex societies, democratic legitimacy results from the interplay of institutionalised consultation and decision-making processes, on the one hand, and informal public processes of communication in which opinions are formed via the mass media, on the other” (p. 102). Communication flows between European-level decision-makers and the public depend strongly on the performance of the mass media, which fulfills four vital roles for the European policy process. First, European actors, issues, and policies need to be made publicly visible to be able to gain legitimacy (legitimation). Media coverage supplies this visibility to European decision-making. 1
For a critical review of the European public sphere research field, see Meyer (2007). For studies that, like ours, attempt to provide answers to general trends by recourse to large-scale cross-national data, see research by the Peters group (Peters, Sifft, Wimmel, Brüggemann, & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2005; Peters, Wessler, Sifft, Brüggemann, & Kleinen-von Königslöw, 2009; Sifft, Brüggemann, Kleinen-von Königslöw, Peters, & Wimmel, 2007) and by Trenz (2004, 2005).
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Second, European decision-makers depend on media coverage for information about the concerns of the citizenry (responsiveness). Third, the general public who in most cases have insufficient direct experience to form opinions about European institutions and policies rely strongly on media representations to be able to evaluate European-level governance (accountability). Fourth, most citizens’ efforts to participate in decision-making through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civic initiatives have their potential strongly enhanced by achieving visibility for their demands in the media discourse (participation). At the European level, this is especially the case for civil society organizations, except for the small number of well-resourced lobby groups that have direct access to policymakers. Here we address the “democratic deficit” by examining the empirical contents of Europeanized public debates in order to assess an important aspect of their democratic quality, their inclusiveness. Our main question asks how European integration has affected the opportunities for different collective actors to intervene in public debates and to achieve public visibility. We are especially interested in comparing the inclusiveness within Europeanized political debates of three actor categories: government/executive actors; legislative and party actors; and civil society actors. A corollary question is whether the extent to which actors are able to gain access to this Europeanized field of communication relates to their evaluations of European integration and the EU. From a political opportunity perspective, we hypothesise that actors with limited access to Europeanized public debates will be critical of European integration and institutions, whereas those who are most prominent in debates on European issues will be favorable. In short: who wins and loses in the transformation of politics beyond the nation-state, does this shape their positions on European integration and the EU, and what does this tell us about the relationship between discursive power and influence in policy decision-making? To analyze mass-mediated public policy discourses, we use a large data set on public “claim making” (Koopmans & Statham, 1999) drawn from newspaper sources. The sample covers seven issue fields – monetary, agriculture, immigration, troop deployment, pensions, education, and the metaissue of European integration – across seven European countries – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland – for the period 1990–2002. Before providing more details on method, we turn to our theoretical approach on the Europeanization of public debates.
Theoretical Framework If one looks for a genuinely supranational public sphere on the European level, there is not much to be found (Schlesinger, 1999). When looking for a mass-mediated public sphere, one arrives naturally at a “Europeanization”
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96 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham approach (Green Cowles, Caporaso, & Risse, 2001; Hix & Goetz, 2000), focusing on the domestic impacts of European integration. This means examining the ways in which European integration affects public debates that are carried by national news media (Gerhards, 2000). Imig and Tarrow (2001) have also shown that social movement mobilization on European issues seldom takes the form of European-wide campaigns. More often European protest is “domesticated,” whereby national social movements make claims within their national public sphere by referring to European institutions, norms, or legislation. Regarding the possibility for a Europeanization of public debates, we assume – not least because of language limitations – that nationally based media are here to stay, but that their coverage may increasingly include European actors and issues. There are two basic forms in which this may occur. First, actors and institutions from the European level, for example, EU commissioners or the European Parliament, may become more prominent as speakers in public debates carried by national news media. We refer to this as a supranational Europeanization of public debates. Second, claims made by national actors in national media may increasingly refer to European institutions, issues, norms, and identities. We call this a vertical Europeanization of public debates. However, several authors argue that a Europeanization of public debates can occur without any direct reference to European-level actors or policies (Risse, 2002). Many EU policies and forms of European integration have an intergovernmental rather than a supranational basis, for example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The advance of intergovernmental forms of integration may lead to increased media attention for actors from a European country outside the country of the reporting news media. We refer to this as horizontal Europeanization. In an intergovernmental polity, other member states can no longer be treated as foreign countries whose internal politics are not relevant for one’s own. This tendency is reinforced by the interdependence created by common market policies and the freedom of movement within the EU. For instance, if Germany liberalizes its naturalization policies, this is immediately relevant for other member states, because once naturalized, German immigrants can freely travel to, and take up work in, another EU country. We distinguish three forms of Europeanization of public debates: 1 Supranational Europeanization: an increased role for actors and institutions from the European level in public debates in national news media. 2 Vertical Europeanization: when national actors address or refer to European institutions, issues, legal frameworks, norms, and identities. 3 Horizontal Europeanization: increased attention for actors and institutions from other European countries in national news media.
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These definitions do not hold a priori assumptions about the qualitative nature of Europeanized public communication. Thus we do not assume that Europeanization of debates entails increasing consensus or convergence across countries. Our notion of Europeanization also extends beyond a narrow conception of “EU-ization,” which includes only references to EU institutions, policies, and member states (Vink, 2002). In line with a wider conception of Europeanization, our analysis includes media from a non-EU member state (Switzerland) alongside six EU members. Also our operationalization of supranational, vertical, and horizontal Europeanization includes claims by, and references to, European-level institutions outside the EU, and claims by actors from European countries outside the EU. In other parts of the Europub.com project, we investigated these three types of Europeanization from a quantitative perspective, focusing on the shares of Europeanized claims compared to purely national claim making, and to what extent there is a trend of increased Europeanized claim making over the period 1990–2002 (Koopmans & Erbe, 2004; Koopmans, Erbe, & Meyer, 2010). These analyses reveal that the share of Europeanized claims diverges strongly across issue fields. In issue fields where European competencies are strong (e.g., monetary and agricultural politics), public debates are strongly Europeanized, which means that European-level actors and actors from other European countries appear frequently as speakers or as addressees of claims, and issues are frequently discussed in a European frame of reference. In four other issue fields (immigration, troop deployment, pensions, education), Europeanization tendencies are much less strong. We consider this to be due to the fact that most decision-making competencies in these four fields have remained largely national. These findings show that if there is a public sphere dimension to Europe’s “democratic deficit,” then it is not primarily of a quantitative nature, namely, a lack of visibility for European actors and issues in the mass media. However, there may be qualitative aspects of Europeanized political communication that are deficient from a normative viewpoint of democratic legitimacy. In this chapter, we address an important dimension of the quality of European public debates, by addressing to what extent, and to whose benefit, Europeanization trends affect the inclusiveness of public debates for different types of collective actors. Our approach follows those from social movement research who emphasize the role of “political opportunity structures” for explaining patterns of mobilization (Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1995; Tarrow, 1994). Tarrow (1994) defines political opportunity structures as “consistent – but not necessarily formal or permanent – dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations for success and failure” (p. 85). Hix and Goetz (2000) refer to the transformation of political opportunities through Europeanization, arguing that “a new
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98 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham institutional arena at the European level impacts on domestic political systems by providing a new ‘structure of opportunities’ for domestic actors’ (p. 12). Importantly, the transfer of competencies from national to intergovernmental and supranational European arenas opens up opportunities and makes resources available for some actors, but not – or not to the same extent – for others. Also, an erosion of national sovereignty may improve the opportunities of some actors, but negatively affect those of actors who had established access to national resources and opportunity structures. European integration unavoidably implies a redistribution of power, not just institutionally, but also regarding public debates and political mobilization (Statham, 2007), and the power relationships between collective actors (Marks & McAdam, 1999). While most agree that European integration affects the relative opportunities for different actors, it is disputed in which direction such changes go. In one view, the weakness of democratic access on the European level and the bureaucratic and arcane nature of the European decision-making process lead one to expect a European public sphere that is inhabited by bureaucrats, statesman, and a few other resourceful actors. However, the European Union and other European institutions are also often depicted as counterweights to entrenched national power that offer new opportunities for influence for interest groups, NGOs, and other civil society actors (Eder, 2000; Soysal, 1994). In this vein, Hix and Goetz (2000) comment on how European integration may benefit resourceful elite actors, but also actors who are relatively weak in the domestic arena, to arrive at the optimistic conclusion that “the openness of the EU policy process and the pursuit of neo-pluralist strategies by the Commission (such as subsidising underrepresented groups) ensure that both diffuse and concentrated interests tend to be able to pursue exit and veto opportunities and have access to key information” (p. 14). Here we investigate the empirical merits of these different views, by examining the consequences of Europeanization for the inclusiveness of public debates. First, we ask who participates in Europeanized public debates of the three types (supranational, vertical, and horizontal), comparing this to debates that remain “purely” national. Analyzing which actors are relatively over- and underrepresented in Europeanized claim making indicates who benefits most from this aspect of Europeanization. Second, we turn to actors’ evaluations and their stances on European institutions and the European integration process. This gives us an idea of the relative extent to which actors consider European institutions as their allies and see European integration as congruent with their interests. Drawing from the political opportunity literature, which shows that closed political institutional settings tend to provoke confrontational challenges and open ones more consensual and cooperative strategies from collective actors
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(Kriesi et al., 1995, pp. 44–51), we hypothesize that there is a correspondence between the degree to which actors are able to gain access to Europeanized public debates and the direction of their evaluations of European institutions and integration.
Data and Methodology For data collection we use claim-making analysis (Koopmans & Statham, 1999), which takes individual instances of claim making by public actors as the unit of analysis. This approach differs from conventional newspaper content analyses, which take the article as the unit of analysis and which often investigate how journalists frame the news. However, conventional approaches tell us little about the relations between actors, their roles in public debates, or the positions they advocate with regard to policy issues, which is important information for answering questions about the Europeanization of public spheres. A claim-making act (shorthand: a claim) consists of a purposive and public articulation of political demands, including calls to action, proposals, and criticisms, which, actually or potentially, affect the interests or integrity of the claimants and/or other collective actors. For each claim, we code the actor who makes it, the addressee at whom it is (critically, affirmatively, or neutrally) directed, the policy issues raised, and the ways in which these issues are framed referring to specific legal, normative, institutional, and spatial contexts. This provides the information about “claims” that we need to answer our research question: whether an actor making a claim is from the same country as the newspaper reporting it, or from another European country, or from the European level; whether a claim refers only to national normative, institutional, and spatial contexts, or includes references to other European countries, or the European level; and finally, whether a claim maker expresses support, opposition, or a neutral attitude toward European institutions and the European integration process. We include claims regardless of who makes them and where they are made, which means the data include claims by a wide range of different types of collective actor. For Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Britain, Spain, and Switzerland, we coded a sample from four newspapers covering the years 1990, 1995, and 2000–2002. The resultant data set is drawn from more than 2,500 editions of 28 different European newspapers and includes more than 20,000 individual claims. More detailed systematic information on methods, approach, codebooks, reliability tests, and results is available from our project website (http://europub.wzb.eu/) and elaborated in Koopmans and Statham (2010).
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58.5 34.4 2.1 2.4 19.6 6.2 35.3 4.6 6.7 2.0 2.1 0.3 0.7 11.9 3.8 3.2 100% 4,446
Total N=
National
All state and party Government/executive Central banks Judiciary Legislative and parties Media All civil society Employers and firms Unions and employees Economists and financial experts Farmers Consumers Immigrants Students/education professionals Science, research, and other professions Other civil society organizations
Supranational 100% 4,233
96.7 65.9 14.4 0.7 15.6 0.2 3.1 0.3 0.4 0.7 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.6 0.6
Monetary 100% 1,232
96.6 45.0 47.6 – 4.0 0.2 3.2 0.4 0.1 2.0 – 0.2 – – 0.2 0.4
Agriculture 100% 522
95.4 86.2 – 0.4 8.8 – 4.6 – – – 2.1 – – – 2.1 0.4
Immigration 100% 164
94.5 74.4 – 1.8 18.3 – 5.5 0.6 – – – – 0.6 – 1.8 2.4
100% 118
99.2 88.1 – – 11.0 – 0.8 – 0.8 – – – – – – –
Troop deployment
Supranational Europeanized claim making, by actor type and issue field, compared to national domestic claim making
100% 49
87.8 77.6 4.1 2.0 4.1 – 12.2 4.1 – 6.1 – – – – – 2.0
Pensions
Table 5.1
100% 19
84.2 63.2 5.3 – 15.8 – 15.8 – – – – – – 15.8 – –
Education
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100% 2,129
97.5 71.0 1.0 1.2 24.3 0.3 2.2 0.1 0.6 0.1 0.0 – – 0.0 0.5 0.7
European integration
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Who Participates in Europeanized Public Debates? Here we address to what extent the Europeanization of public debates alleviates, or exacerbates, the discursive power differentials between actors. To assess whether specific actor types are underrepresented or overrepresented in Europeanized claim making, it is important to establish a standard of comparison. For this, we take the share of actor types in claim making within public debates that remain nationally confined. These purely “national” domestic public debates consist of claims by actors from the same country as the newspaper that reports them and make no reference at all to other European countries, or to European-level actors, issues, or norms. Table 5.1 examines the strongest form of Europeanization, supranational claim making, the participation of supranational and intergovernmental actors from the European level in public debates. For example, a motion passed by the European Parliament urging the Commission to undertake institutional reforms. We distinguish three main categories of actors: state and party actors, media, and civil society actors. Among state and party actors, we make the common distinction between government/executive, judiciary, and legislative actors. Central banks are a separate category because of their importance in monetary politics. Although we include them in the state and party actor category, we acknowledge that political parties occupy an intermediary position between state and civil society. Legislative and party actors also merit special treatment in discussion of the results because they are directly elected by and responsible to the public. The category of media actors consists of explicit claims made by journalists in reports, as well as quotations of comments and editorials from other newspapers. The subcategories of civil society actors are self-explanatory. Table 5.1 shows the share of the different types of collective actors in public debates. The first column shows claim making that remains purely “national,” which is included for purposes of comparison, whereas the second column shows actors’ shares in all supranational Europeanized claim making. The remaining seven columns show the shares of actors in supranational debates within seven selected issue fields.2 Table 5.1 leaves no doubt about which actors from the European level are most effective in making their mark on public debates: government/executive actors. Although executive actors are already the most prominent category in national debates (34 percent), their share in supranational debates almost doubles and they account for two-thirds of claim making (66 percent). 2
This means, for example, that the government/executive category in the “national” column refers to national actors, such as the prime minister, or a cabinet minister, where in the “supranational” column and those for the issue fields it refers to European institutions such as the European Commission, or the various EU Councils of Ministers.
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58.5 34.4 2.1 2.4 19.6 6.2 35.3 4.6 6.7 2.0 2.1 0.3 0.7 11.9 3.8 3.2 100% 4,446
Total N=
National
All state and party Government/executive Central banks Judiciary Legislative and parties Media All civil society Employers and firms Unions and employees Economists and financial experts Farmers Consumers Immigrants Students/education professionals Science, research, and other professionals Other civil society organizations
Vertical 100% 5,316
59.7 38.9 2.7 0.6 17.4 19.1 21.2 4.6 1.7 5.2 2.4 0.5 0.2 0.8 2.8 3.4
Monetary 100% 1,610
46.9 28.0 8.5 0.2 10.1 20.2 32.9 9.8 1.7 14.2 0.1 1.1 – 0.4 2.2 4.4
Agriculture 100% 589
59.3 48.0 – 1.4 9.8 10.2 30.5 2.0 2.0 0.2 20.2 1.5 – 0.2 1.7 3.7
Immigration 100% 280
69.3 46.4 – 3.2 19.6 17.4 13.3 1.4 2.1 0.4 – – 2.1 2.5 2.5 2.1
Troop deployment 100% 97
74.2 48.5 – 3.1 22.7 21.6 4.2 – – – – – – – 2.1 2.1
100% 59
49.2 39.0 1.7 3.4 5.1 5.1 45.7 13.6 10.2 11.9 – – – 3.4 1.7 5.1
Pensions
Table 5.2 Vertical Europeanized claim making, by actor type and issue field, compared to national domestic claim making
100% 53
49.1 32.1 – 1.9 15.1 7.5 43.4 5.7 5.7 – – – – 22.6 5.7 3.8
Education
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100% 2,628
66.4 42.4 0.2 0.4 23.5 20.9 12.7 2.2 1.3 1.3 0.2 – 0.1 0.6 3.4 3.6
European integration
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This discursive dominance holds across policy fields, where EU executive actors have a between 63 to 86 percent share of the debate, with the partial exception of monetary politics, where European central banks (48 percent) dominate alongside the European institutions (45 percent). Within this government/executive dominance of supranational claim making from the European level, the European Commission is by far the most cited actor, accounting for more than half of all executive claims, followed at a distance by the various European Councils. Commission President Romano Prodi alone makes claims 333 times in our sample, more than any national politician, and two and a half times more than all European-level civil society actors taken together (131 claims). Also, the European executive (66 percent) dominates over its legislative (16 percent), at a ratio of about 4:1, whereas the discrepancy is much lower, nationally, at about 1.75:1. The European Parliament is most present in discussions on European integration, but even there its share (24 percent) is only a third of the European executive (71 percent). That European-level media do not play a significant role is not surprising, but that European-level civil society actors command a share of only 3 percent of claims by European-level actors is suggestive evidence of a severe democratic deficit. This acute lack of public visibility must have some impact on the bargaining power of civil society groups within the European decision-making process. Turning to the “vertical” variant of Europeanization, here national actors address European institutions or frame issues with reference to European identities, interests, norms, and legal frameworks. For example, a migrant organization brings a case before the European Court of Justice, or German Foreign Minister Fischer demands that the European Parliament be strengthened in the next Treaty revision. National actors operating in their own national public arena face the strategic choice of whether or not to refer in their claims to European dimensions or to remain fully within a national frame of reference. Discursive framing is a matter of choice under conditions of limited resources and opportunities. We assume that actors frame issues in ways that they think (or have learned from past experience) increase their chances of influencing public debates and policy decisions. Table 5.2 shows actors’ shares in vertical Europeanized claim making, using the same categories as Table 5.1, and again the first column displays shares in “national” debates for comparative purposes. Again the findings underline a dominance of government/executive actors in vertical Europeanized claim making (39 percent vertical compared to 34 percent national), but the difference is much less pronounced than for supranational claim making. Also executive actors (39 percent) are more likely to make claims with a Europeanized reference than legislative actors (17 percent), and slightly more so than at the national level. In addition, the share of civil
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58.5 34.4 2.1 2.4 19.6 6.2 35.3 4.6 6.7 2.0 2.1 0.3 0.7 11.9 3.8 3.2 100% 4,446
Total N=
National
All state and party Government/executive Central banks Judiciary Legislative and parties Media All civil society Employers and firms Unions and employees Economists and financial experts Farmers Consumers Immigrants Students/education professionals Science, research, and other professionals Other civil society organizations
Horizontal 100% 4,722
79.9 63.3 4.3 0.6 11.6 7.9 12.2 1.9 0.6 2.4 0.8 0.1 0.4 1.0 2.2 2.8
Monetary 100% 1,028
74.3 47.8 19.1 – 7.5 7.9 17.9 3.7 0.1 9.4 – 0.4 – 0.2 1.6 2.3
Agriculture 100% 340
76.8 71.2 – 1.5 4.1 5.3 18.0 1.2 0.9 – 8.8 0.9 – 1.2 3.5 1.5
Immigration 100% 396
80.1 65.1 – 3.3 12.3 6.6 13.3 1.0 – 0.5 – – 3.8 0.8 1.5 5.8 100% 396
86.1 78.0 – 0.3 7.8 10.6 3.3 – 0.8 – – – 0.3 – 0.8 1.5
Troop deployment
100% 73
58.9 43.8 – 2.7 12.3 2.7 38.4 9.6 12.3 6.8 – – – 1.4 8.2 –
100% 129
57.4 43.4 – 3.9 10.1 3.9 38.7 1.6 3.9 – – – 0.8 24.0 3.1 5.4
European integration 100% 2,360
83.5 68.0 0.3 0.3 15.0 8.4 8.1 1.6 0.2 0.3 0.4 – – 0.3 2.3 2.9
Horizontal Europeanized claim making, by actor type and issue field, compared to national domestic claim making
Pensions
Table 5.3
Education
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society actors (21 percent) is again lower than among purely national claims (35 percent). This holds across issue fields with the exception of pensions, but even there a closer inspection shows that the civil society actors who increase their share in pensions claims with a Europeanized frame are employers (14 percent vertical compared to 8 percent national) and financial experts (12 percent vertical compared to 3 percent national). Pensioners’ organizations are completely absent among Europeanized claim makers. Overall, the findings support the general trend that Europeanized claim making correlates with institutional power. Finally, what about horizontally Europeanized public debates, claim making by actors from other European countries? For example, when the British government criticizes the French government’s handling of the BSE epidemic. Table 5.3, using the now familiar categories and national comparator, shows us which actors gain access to, and benefit from, transnational flows of political communication. Here the tendencies are similar to those which characterize supranational claim making, but less pronounced. Executive actors play an important role in horizontally Europeanized claim making, ranging from 43 percent in education to 78 percent in troop deployment debates, which compares to 34 percent in national claims. Legislative and party actors fare much worse (between 4 percent in agriculture and 15 percent in European integration) and command in every issue field a smaller share than national claims (average 20 percent). Likewise, most civil society actors are underrepresented among horizontally Europeanized claims when compared to the claims with a purely national frame of reference. For the media the story is different. In most issue fields, claims made by foreign European news media are represented to a similar extent as are national media. However, the main conclusion remains that the actors that manage to cross the boundaries of national public spheres are overwhelmingly core executive actors including heads of government and cabinet ministers. Like supranational Europeanization, the transnational flow of public communication offers additional opportunities for those actors who are already dominant on the national level, and exacerbates rather than compensates for the weak position of civil society actors. Combining the three types of Europeanization, the results are clear cut. The only actors who are systematically overrepresented in supranationally, horizontally, and vertically Europeanized claim making are government and executive actors. This indicates an empowerment of those actors who are already powerful nationally. Averaged over all issue fields, they are responsible for 34 percent of all purely national claims, but across the three forms of Europeanized claim making their share rises to 56 percent (average computed across tables). Media actors are, interestingly, the only other actor type that is more prominently represented in Europeanized claim making (6 percent national claims compared to 9 percent in Europeanized). Also
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106 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham Europeanization does not strengthen the hand of legislative and party actors, whose share is 20 percent in national and 15 percent across all forms of Europeanized claim making. That may not seem a large difference, but to appreciate its importance one must look at the relative influence of legislative versus executive actors. Among national claims, the executive outnumbers legislative and party actors two to one, but among Europeanized claims the proportion is almost four to one. Civil society actors, finally, are clearly the least able to profit from the opening up of Europeanized discursive spaces. Among national claims, they command a reasonable 35 percent of claims, but among Europeanized claims, they account for only 12 percent of claims. Civil society actors are better considered in the context of the specific issue fields of their operation. In almost all cases, this type of issue-specific perspective reveals a considerable decline in discursive influence for civil society actors in Europeanized claim making. For example, farmers make 22 percent of national claims on agriculture, but only 11 percent of Europeanized claims. In monetary politics, employers make 16 percent of national claims, but only 5 percent of Europeanized ones. Likewise, labor unions have less influence in Europeanized debates in their primary issue fields. The only example of a civil society actor who does better in Europeanized claim making is employers’ organizations in the pensions field, whose share among Europeanized (9 percent) is slightly higher than among national claims (8 percent). Finally, we checked for cross-national variation, by conducting all analyses for each country separately, and found our main conclusions to be highly consistent across countries. In each country-specific analysis, government and executive actors as well as the news media were overrepresented among Europeanized claims, and in each case civil society actors were strongly underrepresented.
Who Supports and Opposes Europe? Having established which actors populate the Europeanized public sphere, we now ask what positions these actors take with regard to European institutions and European integration. Our guiding hypothesis, drawn from a political opportunity perspective (e.g., Kriesi et al., 1995), is that collective actors’ evaluations of Europe reflect the degree to which they profit in gaining access to decision-making from the Europeanization of public debates. Thus we expect that government and executive actors will be more favorable toward European integration and European institutions than legislative and party actors, and we expect both to be more supportive of Europe than civil society actors.
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To assess actors’ evaluations of European institutions and the integration process, we limit the analysis to claims that have a European dimension (we exclude purely national claims and horizontal claims that refer only to the national policies of foreign European countries). We begin by looking at claims that directly address European actors and institutions, either by appealing to them to fulfill certain demands, or by expressing criticism or support. We computed a mean score for each category of actors indicating how positively or negatively they viewed the European institutions. The score is computed by assigning a +1 when European addressees are supported by a claim, −1 when they are the target of criticism, and 0 if the claim is neutral or ambivalent. The resultant mean score on a range between +1 and −1 indicates to what extent on aggregate a specific type of collective actor evaluates European institutions positively or negatively. A general finding is that the evaluation of European institutions across all actors is negative (−0.12). At first sight this seems to confirm the common notion that public discourse with regard to European institutions is overwhelmingly negative. However, political discourse generally tends to be negative, because in a competitive discursive environment political actors have fewer incentives to publicly support than to criticize others. So a better basis for judging whether public discourse on European institutions is overly negative is whether European institutions are viewed more negatively than their national counterparts. From this viewpoint, the picture looks better for European institutions: they are evaluated less negatively than national ones (−0.21). Turning to differences between actors, in accordance with our expectations, state and party actors (−0.06) evaluate European institutions much more positively (or better: less negatively) than civil society actors (−0.30). However, there are important variations within both categories. As expected, government and executive actors (−0.02) as well as central banks (+0.04) and the judiciary (+0.14) are relatively more positive about European institutions, whereas legislative and party actors are much more critical (−0.25). Among civil society actors, consumers’ groups (−0.75), farmers (−0.5), financial experts (−0.34), students and educational professionals (−0.33), labor unions (−0.31), and employers and businesses (−0.15) all fit the thesis by displaying on aggregate a below-average support for European institutions. The finding that employers and businesses are the least negative also fits our hypothesis, because they were better represented in Europeanized public debates than most other civil society actors. However, it is worth noting a civil society actor who deviates from this pattern. Science, research, and other professionals are slightly less negative about European institutions (−0.09) than the overall mean. We speculate that this group’s relatively supportive stance compared to most of civil society most likely results from its transnational “habitus.” This allows
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108 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham academics to profit disproportionately highly from the opportunities provided by the EU’s sponsorship of internal freedom of movement, crossnational scientific exchanges, and research funding. In addition, we examined actors’ aggregate support for, or opposition to, the European integration process. We coded actors’ general evaluations of the European integration process in a similar way as for European addressees. A score of +1 was given if a claim expressed support for the European integration process, or if the claim implied an extension (or a rejection of restrictions) in the rights and prerogatives of European institutions. A score of −1 indicates opposition to the integration process, or implies a claim that restricts (or opposes the extension of) European institutions’ rights. A score of 0 indicates positions that are neutral or ambivalent toward the integration process. Overall evaluations of the integration process (+0.24) are much more positive than those of European institutions (−0.12). While almost all actors were critical of European institutions, with the single (and slight) exception of farmers (−0.02), no actor type is on average opposed to European integration. Regarding differences between actors, the results confirm earlier findings. State and party actors (+0.27) are more supportive of European integration than civil society actors (+0.14), and within the former category, Euro-enthusiasm is clearly more limited among legislative and party actors (+0.13) than among government and executive actors (+0.32). Again, most civil society actors display below-average levels of support for European integration, with employers and businesses (+0.18) comparatively more favorable to European integration. Science, research, and other professionals (+0.30) are again exceptional in their strong support for European integration. Generally, our hypothesis that the degree to which actors profit or stand to lose from the Europeanization of public debates is reflected in their support for European integration receives considerable support.3 Of course, a possible caveat is that the causal direction may work the other way round, that is, the critical attitude of some actors toward the EU may be the reason they do not mobilize on the European level and do not frame issues within a European context. However, we do not find this alternative reading convincing. There is no reason why actors who are opposed to European policies and institutions would refrain from mobilizing claims. Europeanized public debates are, after all, a contested discourse 3
These results are highly consistent across the seven countries. The aggregated stances of government and executive actors are without exception more favorable toward European institutions and the European integration process. Everywhere, legislative and party actors are more critical, and in all seven countries civil society actors show the lowest levels of support. For detailed multivariate analyses on actors’ evaluations whose findings substantiate this picture further, see Koopmans et al. (2010).
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in which – just as in national public debates – opponents have as much reason to make their voices heard as supporters.
Conclusion Other findings from this project show that the main problem with the Europeanization of media discourse and political contention is not a quantitative one of the lack of visibility of the European level (Koopmans & Statham, 2010). In policy fields where Europe matters, European actors and actors from other member states are frequently reported by the media, and collective actors, including the media themselves, often refer to European dimensions (Koopmans et al., 2010). However, this still leaves open the possibility of a qualitative deficit within Europeanized political debates, regarding who is able to make their voice heard. This matters because political discourse carried by the mass media is even more important for gaining access to Europeanized policy debates than for national ones. Here we have examined who wins and loses in response to the redistribution of discursive opportunities and resources available to actors for influencing public debates that result from advancing European integration. The findings clearly demonstrate that European integration remains a project by political elites, and as far as discursive influence is concerned, that it also benefits political elites. Core state actors including heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, and central banks are the most important beneficiaries of the Europeanization of public debates, in all the possible forms this can take. First, legislative and party actors – those who are directly accountable to the electorate – are much less well represented in Europeanized public debates, in an absolute sense, and even more so relatively to government and executive actors. Taken at face value, such an erosion of the contribution of national parliaments and political parties to Europeanized public debates seems problematic from the normative view of democratic legitimacy and accountability, not least when a weak and relatively invisible European Parliament does little to redress this imbalance. Second, the extremely weak representation of civil society actors in Europeanized public debates is also problematic. This deficit is even more acute for the less resourceful civil society interests, including consumers’, environmental, and pensioners’ groups, who are more strongly underrepresented in Europeanized public debates, compared to powerful civil society actors, including those representing the interests of labor and business. These deficiencies in the democratic quality of Europeanized public debates hold across the three forms. The strongest supranational form of Europeanization, the participation of European-level actors in public debates,
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110 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham is also by far the most exclusive. Civil society actors are almost completely absent from the voices that come down from the European level. Transnational communication flows across member states’ boundaries are less exclusive, but this horizontal form of Europeanized political communication also remains largely a platform for statesmen and a few other powerful actors. The only form of Europeanized communication in which the role of civil society actors approaches the level of purely national debates is the vertical variant, where national actors make claims within a European frame of reference, or address them directly to European institutions, or demand that their national authorities do something by referring to European identities and norms. But even here most civil society actors remain relatively weaker. Also, we have shown that these shifts in discursive influence are closely related to patterns of support for, and opposition to, European institutions and the European integration process. As a general rule, actors who are less influential in Europeanized public debates tend to be more critical of European institutions and less supportive of European integration than actors whose voices are more prominent. This supports a political opportunity structure interpretation. Basically, those who lose access to decisionmaking power as a result of European integration are critical of Europe, whereas those who see themselves gaining in influence are supportive. Tellingly, government and executive actors are the most favorable of all to the EU integration process and among the least critical of EU institutions. Contrary to the popular perception that national governments claim all the good news for themselves and blame the European level for all the bad, national executives are among the EU’s prime public cheerleaders. However, a notable exception to the high degree of correspondence between discursive influence and actors’ expressed attitudes and evaluations of the EU and integration process is the academic research community, who are more supportive of European integration on average, even though they are underrepresented in Europeanized public debates. This indicates that the impact of European integration on actors’ discursive influence is not the only factor shaping their stances over European integration; in the case of academics, group-specific factors including their transnational “habitus” play a role. The high degree of correspondence between discursive and policymaking power most likely occurs in at least two ways. First, power and prominence are important news values that structure the way in which the media select a few newsworthy claims for coverage and discard many others. Journalists’ knowledge of who is important and influential in European policy circles will structure their news selection, with a resulting tendency for convergence between discursive and policymaking power. Second, influence in the public debate may translate into policymaking power. Successful mobilization of media attention directly influences policymakers, and has the potential of
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influencing the attitudes of attentive and general publics. This in turn may affect policymakers’ decisions and influence the relative standing and power of actors in the policy process. Whatever the relative weight of this combination of mechanisms, it is clear that collective actors’ influence in public debates is only semi-autonomous from their influence in the policy process. However, the same holds the other way around too. This is especially the case in societies where politics is increasingly “mediatized.” To summarize: the imbalances we find on the inclusiveness of Europeanized public debates are problematic from the viewpoint of their democratic quality. Europe’s public sphere deficit is one of gaining access. The onset of Europeanization has clearly enhanced executive discursive power, but without adequately including non-state actors and especially civil society actors. So far, it seems that Europeanization has led to an empowerment of the already powerful executive actors, which partly results from, but is also strongly reinforced by, the visible mass-mediated presence of an elitedominated European public politics.
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112 Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham Koopmans, R., Erbe, J., & Meyer, M. F. (2010). The Europeanisation of public spheres: Comparisons across issues, time and countries. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (1999). Political claims analysis: Integrating protest event and political discourse approaches. Mobilization, 4, 40–51. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (Eds.). (2010). The making of a European public sphere: Media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, H., Koopmans, R., Duyvendak, J. W., & Giugni, M. G. (1995). New social movements in Western Europe: A comparative analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lindberg, L., & Scheingold, S. (1970). Europe’s would-be polity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Marks, G., & McAdam, D. (1999). On the relationship of political opportunities to the form of collective action: The case of the European Union. In D. della Porta, H. Kriesi, & D. Rucht (Eds.), Social movements in a globalizing world (pp. 97–111). London: Macmillan. Meyer, C. O. (2007). The constitutional treaty debates as revelatory mechanisms: Insights for public sphere research and re-launch attempts. Recon-Online Working Paper, 2007/6. Retrieved from http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/Publications.html. Peters, B., Sifft, S., Wimmel, A., Brüggemann, M., & Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2005). National and transnational public spheres: The case of the EU. European Review, 13, 139–160. Peters, B., Wessler, H., Sifft, S., Brüggemann, M., & Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2009). Transnationalization of public spheres. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Risse, T. (2002). Zur Debatte um die (Nicht-) Existenz einer europäischen Öffentlichkeit. Berliner Debatte Initial 13(5/6), 15–23. Risse, T. (2003, March). An emerging European public sphere? Theoretical clarifications and empirical indicators. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA), Nashville, TN. Schlesinger, P. R. (1999). Changing spaces of political communication: The case of the European Union. Political Communication, 16, 263–279. Sifft, S., Brüggemann, M., Kleinen-von Königslöw, K., Peters, B., & Wimmel, A. (2007). Segmented Europeanization: Exploring the legitimacy of the European Union from a public discourse perspective. Journal of Common Market Studies, 45, 127–155. Soysal, Y. (1994). Limits of citizenship: Migrants and postnational membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Statham, P. (2007). Political communication, European integration and the transformation of national public spheres: A comparison of Britain and France. In J. E. Fossum & P. Schlesinger (Eds.), The European Union and the public sphere: A communicative space in the making? (pp. 110–134). London: Routledge.
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6
New Ways of Understanding Migrant Integration in Europe P. R. Ireland
Introduction Managing diversity poses a multifaceted challenge that goes to the very heart of the European project today: the process of integrating migrants – especially Muslims from North Africa, Turkey, and elsewhere – has set off fierce arguments over identity, social order, crime, security, and the use of public resources. What started in the main as the active recruitment of presumably temporary foreign laborers during the postwar economic boom has metamorphosed into a phenomenon rattling the foundations of the European polity. Intermittent rioting in France’s deprived suburbs and elsewhere across Europe has elicited typical reactions to such disturbances across the continent: official meae culpae for and opposition recriminations over failed integration policies, media fixation on instances of conflict, and the reduction of complex events to purely religious (that is, Islamic) or economic (that is, unemployment-related) causes. Such responses rest on debatable definitions of integration and insufficiently nuanced analysis. The weaknesses of existing research will be sketched here: useful common definitions and measures of integration have been lacking; and the relationship between welfare state transformation, social capital, and social control and developments at the subnational level have not received the kind of systematic comparative study that they merit. Drawing on a range of most-similar national cases – Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands – and eight most-similar local cases in those countries, this chapter argues that integration has not always and everywhere gone amiss. Success depends upon how integration is defined, at what level, whether its socio-economic or political and cultural dimensions are stressed, and how each handles ethno-religious identities. Not all protests by migrant-origin
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Muslims refer to Islam, and the dilemma that the faith creates for Europeans is as much organizational as doctrinal. In the final analysis, the nature of the integration challenge can best be grasped through observation of day-to-day realities in Europe’s (sub)urban neighborhoods.
The State of Integration Research It has now been over three decades since Europeans awoke to the effectively permanent presence of their postwar migrant-origin residents. After a slow start, researchers have paid far more heed in recent years to how migrantorigin residents plug into host-country social and political life. This scholarship has paralleled the evolutionary track of social science in general and, like it, has echoed socio-political reality. At first, research on European migrants focused on the macroeconomic, labor market, and demographic effects of migration. That was not surprising, given the dominance at the time of the Marxist and liberal paradigms. The former produced an influential body of work on “guest workers,” while the latter stressed the workings of push and pull in integrating markets and the demographic composition and evolution of migration flows into European countries (see Bauböck, 2005). During the economic turbulence of the early 1970s, new migrant labor recruitment ended. Scholars turned their attention to the impact of migrantorigin residents on receiving societies in the areas of housing, education and job training, social welfare, and cultural and political life. Many of the theoretical tools utilized were derived from the classic Chicago School of urban sociology. Its members maintained that at least three generations were required for migrants to become fully assimilated Americans in the years before World War II. More recently, such a gradual, linear “melting” has appeared less and less realistic. Gaining ground has been the notion of segmented assimilation, whereby migrants and other minority groups in the United States are described as undergoing steady intergenerational socio-economic improvement and movement toward “parity of life chances” with the native-born population, along with the possible and deliberate preservation of cultural membership and values and continued economic attachment to ethnic communities (Alba, 2005). This view has won adherents in Europe, despite a general reluctance to embrace America’s historically laissez-faire posture toward migrant settlement. European policy responses to the durable migrant presence initially flowed from the existing emphases and traditions characterizing each country’s historical approach to nation building and minority absorption: “race” in
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116 P. R. Ireland Britain, “the republic” in France, social welfare incorporation in Germany, “pillarization” in the Netherlands, and so on. While these long-established perspectives have continued to color reactions, recent decades have seen them decline, as social learning, policy borrowing, and the subnational and supra-national levels have gained in importance.
Missing Elements The literature on migrant integration presents three major areas of weakness or gaps. In addition to (1) difficulties associated with defining and measuring integration, there are problems with (2) the manner in which the relationship between the welfare state, social capital, and social control has been examined and (3) the level of analysis at which most research has been conducted.
Defining and measuring integration The dependent variable in the studies discussed here relates to how migrants and their progeny fit into various sectors of a given host society – what has normally been referred to as “integration.” This slippery, contentious term has signified different things to different people in different places at different times. Sometimes, integration has been a broad rubric covering any and all aspects of migrant settlement; at others, it has been equated with assimilation and opposed to multiculturalism. Imprecision over the term’s meaning has led to suggestions over the years that labels such as “acculturation,” “incorporation,” “insertion,” and the like serve as replacements. The Chicago School dealt extensively with migration-related issues in the service of elites concerned with them as a “social problem” (Favell, 2001a). Much of the European work on migrants in the 1970s and 1980s was commissioned by local, national, and European Community/Union officials. Such policy-relevant research put a premium on “hard” data, which translated into a search for quantitative indicators and a predilection for applied, discrete investigations. Notwithstanding some fine municipal and regional examples, comparable survey data and other statistics were largely missing. Most of the data sets were classified in terms that reflected nationally or even locally specific ways of referring to migrants, ethnic minorities, and integration. The problem remained largely academic as long as most studies were context specific, commissioned for social engineering purposes, and not intended for comparative analysis. Even when more objective scholarship and comparative studies began to emerge, however, little consensus developed over what integration entailed. It has been assessed in any number of ways – for instance, with respect to several national groups in a single host society
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(Davegos, 2001), one age cohort in a single host society (Simon, 2003), several national groups in one or more policy sectors in a number of countries (Crul & Vermeulen, 2003), and so on. A favorite activity has been the construction of integration index scores of host societies on their “success” in one or more policy sectors or overall (Çinar, Davy, & Waldrauch, 1999). Such rankings can rely on the coding of legal rights or quantitative integration indicators of un- and underemployment, educational achievement levels, housing conditions, and other “structural” factors but, increasingly, of participation and conditions in the cultural and political realms as well. Integration has normally continued to be gauged according to the status of the migrant population compared to the native-stock population. Mikael Hjerm, for example, argues that successful integration “can be defined by ‘equality’ in terms of living standards (in a broad sense) between groups of people regardless of where they were born” (Hjerm, 2005, p. 121). Any deviance risks being construed as a negative result. The general obsession with quantitative indicators and absolute benchmarks derives from the view of integration as an end – an outcome – instead of as a process. The selection of integration indicators and the choice of analytical techniques have varied with the scholars involved, the types of data available, and the interests of those funding the research. The definition of the target migrant (or migrant-origin) population itself has responded to national, ideological, and practical imperatives. The entire exercise has been highly subjective, offering more the illusion than the reality of scientific measurement. What often seems to be at issue in the debates over integration is not so much the discrepancy between migrant- and native-stock residents as the conflict that it is feared to feed.
Policy devolution and level of analysis The bulk of migrant integration studies have implicitly or explicitly taken the nation-state for granted. Appearing when social scientists were revisiting the state, the first major comparative studies of migrant integration to surpass the descriptive and prescriptive levels posited national models rooted in resilient traditions of citizenship and nationhood. Comparative analyses have since set out categories of states by virtue of the mix of policies and practices they pursue with respect to migrant settlement, even if such a mix does not add up to a systematic, coherent approach (Freeman, 2004). The underlying assumption has been that there is an integrated and bounded host society to which migrants can or must adapt. This tendency reflects in part the extent to which states have been able to define, control, and structure migratory processes: “the consequences of migration provided new raw material for nation-state-centred actors to re-assert their relevance and their jurisdiction over processes that are forever slipping beyond their control” (Favell, 2001b, p. 117).
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118 P. R. Ireland Despite the popularity of neo-institutional arguments in the social sciences, scholarship has largely downplayed the relationship between migrant integration and the critical bundle of institutions that comprise Europe’s national welfare states. When migrants figure into studies of those states, what has predominated is a cost-benefit analysis of their fiscal contributions for the political economy of social policies in a rapidly aging Europe. They can also appear as passive victims both of nativist anger over cutbacks and alleged migrant welfare dependency and of the fallout from market-oriented economic reforms (Messina, 1996). The effects of social policies on migrant integration, conversely, have not won much notice. Welfare states are “powerful institutional forces embodying ideas and practices associated with inclusion, exclusion, membership, belonging, entitlement, and identity” (Geddes, 2003, p. 152). Their evolution should thus be expected to affect how migrants fit into European societies and polities. The restructuring of social policies in recent years has meant not only program cutbacks but also the decentralization of policy formulation as well as implementation to subnational levels of governance. In a federal system like Germany’s, for example, integration policies have long been marked by institutional diversity, and it has only increased in recent years. Even in a strong welfare state like the Netherlands’, where centrally coordinated national policies have predominated, decentralization has changed the logic of integration policymaking. In fact, “European cities have formulated … explicit and pro-active integration policies … using their own instruments and resources and thereby making pressure for such national policies” (Penninx, Garcés-Mascareñas, & Scholten, 2005, p. 6). The local level is just as critical for methodological reasons. Only at that level is it possible to hold intervening variables constant and test hypothesized cause-and-effect relationships. Cities – and, by extension, neighborhoods – provide opportunities for both “contextual specificity and structural comparison, allowing for the fact that migrant incorporation might be influenced simultaneously by local, national, and transnational factors” (Favell, 2001a, p. 390). It is not as true as it once was that scholarship overlooks local developments. Several studies in the mid-1990s engaged in comparisons of migrant political integration across countries and cities (Bousetta, 1997; Ireland, 1994). Consistent with the general turn in mainstream social science toward disaggregating the state, they underscored the determining influence of political opportunity structures (POS) – the legal and institutional mix that establishes and protects rights, allocates privileges, and creates a mix of incentives and disincentives. A subsequent burst of interest in discourse led to talk of “framing strategies” (Koopmans & Statham, 2000) and “philosophies of integration” (Favell, 2000) in some essentially POS arguments.
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However, studies at the subnational level have frequently dealt with only one city, and comparative analyses have remained largely unsystematic and rather marginalized. If anything, greater attention has been devoted to the delegation of authority to supra-national enforcement agents in Brussels. The European Union (EU) has been playing a real but still far from decisive role in shaping member states’ policies toward migrants. EU sponsorship has tended to reproduce the dysfunctional aspects of national-level research in its self-legitimizing, normative biases and has not amounted to much to date (Ireland, 2006). Too often, the rich interplay of local, national, and European factors has been lost in a sterile debate between proponents of national models and believers in Europeanization.
Policy delegation, social capital, and social control Alongside territorial devolution, welfare state restructuring has also involved the delegation of key aspects of policy formulation and implementation to the private sector and non-profit associations. This trend has coincided with social scientists’ rediscovery of civil society. Scholars of European migration, accordingly, have begun connecting dissimilarities in migrant sociopolitical participation to differences in their social and ethnic capital (Jacobs & Tillie, 2004). This work has rarely been related in an explicit way to welfare state delegation and its implications for social control. Welfare benefits are, among other things, a means of exercising authority. Many rights operate through premises of conditionality: one has the right to A (benefit) only if one fulfills condition B (participation) (Morris, 2002). Moreover, welfare states help structure, instigate, and defuse ethnic and other identities. When they tinker with social policies, therefore, European policymakers alter the social control calculus. Even though the implications for migrant integration and social and ethnic relations are likely considerable, they have attracted little attention. Does transferring responsibilities to non-profit organizations, including migrant associations, enhance or threaten social cohesion? As the state retreats in certain areas, will stronger social capital and networks prove sufficient replacements?
Minding the Gaps To respond to the identified weaknesses of migrant integration scholarship, it becomes necessary to adopt a process-oriented approach that compares developments at multiple levels. While not able to provide a true test, a most-similar-case comparison here between carefully selected countries and cities serves as a starting point. The techniques employed in this
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120 P. R. Ireland research were both quantitative (analysis of existing statistics) and qualitative (content analysis of local and national newspapers and officials’ plans, reports, policies, and speeches; in-depth interviews; participant observation; and historical research). Although no exact measures were devised, the weight of the evidence indicated the direction of changes over time. Such an examination illustrates that integration is a complicated, multifaceted process, the many aspects of which do not always move in tandem. Neither unemployment nor Islam, the two most commonly fingered “culprits” in the literature, can account in and of itself for the challenges associated with migrant integration. The institutions and policies of the welfare state help shape ethnic, religious, and other identities at the national and local levels and influence whether they loosen social control and spark conflict. The national cases here – Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands – are all continental welfare states with consensus-oriented policymaking systems that have followed similar migratory trajectories since World War II. Nonetheless, they adopted integration policies and broader “caring strategies” toward migrants between 1975 and the early 2000s that diverged widely in major respects. The impact of contrasting policies is even more visible at the local level, where it is easier to control for economic, political, ethnic, and other demographic variables. Within substantial constraints, German, Belgian, and Dutch municipal officials managed to affect integration policies in important ways. Local-level comparison has been constructed between four German cities and city-states (Berlin, Bremen, Essen, and Nuremberg) and two cities each in Belgium (Ghent in Flanders and Liège in Wallonia) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam and The Hague). Most of these urban centers are mid-sized, between 450,000 and 750,000, although smaller Ghent and larger Berlin were included to take into account the unequal scale of urban centers in Germany and in its Low Country neighbors. During the period of study, a moderate share of the total population in each city – from around 8 to 18 percent – was composed of non-nationals, which many European observers have tagged as a facilitating factor for migrant integration (Bals, 1991).1 Each city had become home to large numbers of migrants from similar socio-economic and cultural backgrounds in North Africa (above all Morocco) and Turkey, in addition to sometimes dissimilar constellations of residents of European and other origins (see Table 6.1). Historically, all of the cities had provided strong electoral support for mainstream left-wing political parties, and each city had
1
Estimates of the non-national population represent the only relatively reliable statistic that can be compared cross-nationally.
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Understanding Migrant Integration in Europe Table 6.1
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Country and city cases Non-national share (mid-1990s)
Population (mid-1990s)
Major migrant source areas
Berlin Bremen Essen Nuremberg GERMANY Ghent (Flanders)
12.2 13.6 9.0 16.9 8.5 7.8
3,500,000 550,000 610,000 500,000 81,000,000 250,000
Turkey Former Yugoslavia Greece, Italy, Spain Morocco
Liège (Wallonia)
18.3
500,000
Country/City
BELGIUM Rotterdam The Hague NETHERLANDS
9.0 10.7 10.8 4.5 (10.6 including naturalized migrants)
10,000,000 590,000 450,000 15,000,000
Turkey Morocco Greece, Italy, Spain Italy Morocco Spain Turkey Surinam (nationals) Turkey Morocco West Indies/Aruba Former Yugoslavia Cape Verde (Rotterdam)
earned a reputation among scholars and migrant activists for forwardthinking, interventionist approaches to social problems. Analysis of the three national and eight local cases makes apparent the seriousness of the gaps identified in existing integration studies. Across the cases the definition and emphases of integration and integration policy, as well as the level at which they played out, evolved over time. Cities and neighborhoods became loci of attention. This swing “downward” was both provoked by and conceived as a response to heightened interest in social capital and a growing obsession with social cohesion. In no small measure such concern was owing to the relaxation of social control associated with changes in the welfare state.
Shifting conceptions of integration In the Netherlands in the 1980s and, a decade later, in Belgian Flanders, consociational welfare states accepted collective ethnic identities and targeted them in policies that stressed the political-cultural aspects of integration (formal and informal modes of participation, naturalization rates,
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122 P. R. Ireland cultural inclusion, and associational life). Belgian Wallonia stressed integration’s structural aspects (labor markets, education and training, housing, and social services) with policies that viewed migrants as individual members of the working class. The same was true in Germany. Yet by delegating social work with migrants to large, quasi-public non-profit associations – Catholic Caritas, Evangelical Diakonisches Werk, and Social Democratic Arbeiterwohlfahrt – along ethno-religious lines, the German state simultaneously stoked ethnic identities and the potential for ethnic mobilization and conflict. And in the final analysis, it was conflict, not any specific structural or political-cultural indicator(s) per se, that authorities at all levels equated with inadequate integration. Across the case countries and cities, policymakers began to put more stress than before on the structural dimension of integration after the turn of the millennium. This trend was clear in cities like Bremen, Essen, Liège, and Nuremberg that had always emphasized migrants’ access to labor and housing markets and the educational and job training systems (Deputation für Soziales, Jugend, Senioren und Ausländerintegration [DSJSA], 2005; Integrationsbeirat der Stadt Essen [IBSE], 2005; Secrétariat du Fonds d’Impulsion à la Politique des Immigrés, 2006; Städtische Koordinierungsgruppe Integration [SKI], 2004). Reprioritizing was also detectable in cities like Berlin, Ghent, and Rotterdam that had usually put the accent on the political-cultural sphere (De Regge, 2005; Gemeente Rotterdam, 2005; Leuschner, 2005). National authorities in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands were questioning the assumption that the integration burden rested solely on migrants’ shoulders. In the eight case cities, integration won recognition as a two-way process and not as a particular outcome. To quote Berlin’s State Secretary for Health, Social Affairs, and Consumer Protection, Dr. Petra Leuschner, it was “a dynamic, long-term, differentiated process of manysided communication and contrast” (Leuschner, 2005, p. 10). “[Integration] demands adjustment,” municipal officials in Nuremberg argued, “from everyone living in the city” (Kommission für Integration, 2004). For their counterparts in The Hague, integration meant “mixing, which results in a different ‘whole’ ” (Lindner, 2002, p. 19). In Rotterdam the governing coalition between 2002 and 2006 included Livable Rotterdam, the party founded by Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated gay social-commentator-turnedpolitician who had won enthusiastic support by calling for stringent restrictions on Muslim migration. Even there, the administration remarked that a good illustration of how integration was still too much of a “one-way process” was “the way that the native population has been deserting the city center” (Projectbureau Sociale Integratie, 2005, p. 18). As will be seen below, social control and social cohesion had become local officials’ primary concerns.
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Policy devolution to the local and neighborhood levels Much of the pressure for change came from below. What integration meant in practice could best be captured through observation of everyday events in the neighborhoods. The residential concentration of migrants within urban agglomerations had come to resemble the pattern found in host societies at large, and local social policy was decentralized further to the level of the district or neighborhood. For decades, certain ones had been targeted for integration projects in Berlin (Wedding), Bremen (Tenever), Essen (Katernberg, Beisen), Nuremberg (Gostenhof, Langwasser), The Hague (Schilderswijk, Transvaal), Rotterdam (Delfshaven, Feijenoord), Ghent (St. Amandsberg, Rabot), and Liège (Droixhe-Bressoux). From the 1990s onward (even earlier in some locales), those pilot projects were joined by new ones, broadened to other areas, and made permanent. In Germany many of these initiatives helped inspire and paralleled a program launched by the federal government and the states in 1999 to deal with marginalization and social division called the Socially Integrated City (Beauftragte für Integration und Migration [BIM], 2005; Riesling-Schärfe, 2005; SKI, 2006). Pushing the idea further, a consortium led by the Schader Foundation and the German Association of Cities developed a highly influential project, Migrants in the City, which spread across the country (Farwick, 2004). Similarly, in Belgium and the Netherlands, federal/national plans for larger cities both fed and were fed by earlier neighborhood-level work in The Hague, Rotterdam, Ghent, and Liège (see De Regge, 2005; Heijnen, 2006). In the last-named city, the focus remained on French-style Priority Action Zones and steadfast refusal to acknowledge ethnic identities openly (Baillergeau, Duyvendak, van der Graaf, & Veldboer, 2005). The downward drift of policymaking was unmistakable in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Policy delegation, social capital, and concerns over social control That shift went hand in hand with encouragement of self-help organization and empowerment – in other words, with greater participation and involvement on the part of residents, those of migrant origin included. Even in Liège, integration came to be viewed as a process of “insertion” that encompassed participation in social, cultural, and political life and the acquisition of resources necessary for the exercise of individual autonomy (Pourtois & Barras, 2002). While overall levels of public funding for integration-related policies were maintained or increased everywhere, the projects that were being concocted were now more likely to be narrowly defined, “client” oriented, and designed
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124 P. R. Ireland to proceed in planned steps that could each be evaluated in turn. The sources of funding were also diversifying. Neighborhood-level initiatives received support from national, state/provincial, and European agencies and from foundations and non-profit organizations. Local inhabitants were now sitting on many of the committees that distributed monies to groups active in structural and, especially, political-cultural integration (see Ville de Liège, 2004, pp. 10–14; and Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin, 2006). In Germany, as well as in the Netherlands and Flanders, the decentralization and delegation of social policy to subnational levels and voluntary associations released pent-up ethnic energies. The potential for conflict, not disproportionately high migrant unemployment rates or distaste for certain cultural or religious practices in their own right, drove policy responses. When ethnic conflict flared (more so in the Netherlands than in structurally inclined Germany), it provoked a pullback from ethnically targeted policies. Belgian Walloon officialdom, by contrast, accentuated universal structural policies. As in France, a suburban “crisis” soon threatened in disadvantaged areas, and ethnicity eventually won back-door recognition in the form of policies that targeted neighborhoods with many migrant-origin residents. By the start of the new millennium, officials everywhere were seeking to strike a balance between individual and collective rights and obligations, between structural and political-cultural integration. Placid cities like Nuremberg and Essen were those that sooner or later underplayed ethnic identities in their approaches to migrant integration, except in the area of education. Despite its location in conservative Bavaria, Nuremberg was a pioneer in Germany in according political and cultural access to migrants and in encouraging their ethnic mobilization. It blanched at the resultant tensions, however modest, and turned in the mid-1990s to general policies that backed away from ethnic-based organizing. In Essen working-class and neighborhood identities that took the edge off ethnic distinctions were promoted through general policies that aimed first and foremost at structural integration. Conflict was never a major threat, but migrants’ detachment from local institutional life substituted for it as a source of upset. Walloon Liège avoided ethnic turbulence by rejecting ethnic identities even more insistently, only to experience a higher crime rate and multiethnic disturbances by poor youths. The Socialist-controlled administration adopted French-style urban and educational policies to fight social exclusion that were rooted in territorially delineated zones. Social policy and social work under such schemes did more to maintain top-down control than to build capacity and self-reliance from the bottom up. Urban centers known for being discordant, such as Berlin and Rotterdam, were those where higher crime rates had become associated with specific
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national groups. Those two cities and Ghent were characterized by their predilection for political-cultural integration and an acceptance of ethnic identities and civil society involvement. These retained their cachet in Flemish Ghent. The political successes of the far right there lent the false impression of a fractious and closed city, yet bureaucratic bottlenecks kept them in check. Federal German structural policies dampened ethnic tensions in Berlin. It and, to a lesser extent, Rotterdam were playing up structural integration and playing down ethnic differences by century’s end. The Dutch city’s commitment to the new path firmed after the 2002 triumph of Pim Fortuyn’s movement. The German two-city state of Bremen and the Dutch capital of The Hague, lastly, blended firm backing for ethnic-based self-help organizing with equal insistence on structural integration and central management. Policymakers generated and resolved interethnic conflicts through their choice of interlocutors and dispersal of subsidies. The stronger flow of central state monies and non-nationals’ more extensive political rights made it easier to perform the balancing act in the Dutch city. Caught in a relentless budget crisis, Bremen’s efforts to integrate its migrant-origin minorities stalled. Hague officials were able to pursue their policy mix, on the other hand, and even managed to withstand the Fortuyn bandwagon that rolled to victory in Rotterdam. When ethnicity was discounted, the outcome trended toward relative neglect of migrants’ special needs. When service delivery was based on ethnicity, the result was frequently the reification of culturally based definitions of needs that could worsen marginalization. Sequence had important implications for ethnic relations: starting with policies in the political-cultural dimension that highlighted ethnic boundaries brought more friction along those lines. Favoring structural integration did little to bring forth politicalcultural convergence, yet it reduced the likelihood of ethnic tensions and conflict (Ireland, 2004). It was not lost on officialdom that social control could weaken as the integration issue and social policy in general experienced diversification in funding, decentralization to the neighborhood level, and delegation to nonprofit associations and migrant groups. Policymakers across the cases soon made it clear that acceptance of different cultural traditions and celebration of self-reliance did not mean that “fundamental values” could be violated. Sometimes, those values were defined in terms of what was unacceptable, as when Berlin made reference to forced marriages and polygamy (Leuschner, 2005, p. 10). Rotterdam formulated a Citizenship Code: “We Rotterdammers take responsibility for our city and for everyone and do not discriminate, use Dutch as our common language, accept no radicalism or extremism, teach our children to become full citizens, treat women the same as men and with respect, treat homosexuals the same as heterosexuals and with respect;
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126 P. R. Ireland treat (other) believers and non-believers the same and with respect” (College van Burgmeester en Wethouders [CBW], 2006). The Hague had explicitly distanced itself from a Rotterdam-style approach – which it feared would come across to migrants as “authoritarian, tactless, and unfair” – and embraced instead “a multicultural society, based on dialogue and respect.” Yet even The Hague’s government situated that ideal within the context of a “democratic order wherein emancipation, individualism, separation of church and state, and the prohibition against discrimination are basic values and the uncontestable rules of the game for daily life in local society” (Gemeente Den Haag, 2005, pp. 3–4). Instruction in the language of the host society became a common policy priority. Another way for officials to ensure control was to put a premium on bundling the various initiatives being inaugurated under their purview. New or improved “integration commissions” appeared to coordinate and direct government efforts. A key aspect of that steering involved the promotion of activities intended to build up social capital. This task went by different monikers: “activating neighborliness” in Berlin (Leuschner, 2005), “stabilizing social relationships in the neighborhoods” (Landtag NordrheinWestfalen, 2004) and “enhancing civic engagement, social integration, and identification of residents with ‘their’ neighborhood” in Essen (Strohmeier & Häussermann, 2003), “improving interaction and mutual awareness between different communities” in Liège (Pourtois & Barras, 2002), and so on. Rotterdam went so far as to launch a campaign to improve politeness – “street etiquette” – in the city (Uitermark & Duyvendak, 2005). Social cohesion became a watchword in each case city and country. Building up networks and interpersonal and intergroup contacts was designed to substitute for the decreasing integrative power of labor markets and to ensure that the hoped-for mobilization of residents did not run amok. The inclusion and participation of migrants and their families were prized. There was also recognition of persisting tensions at the grassroots level, and relations between native- and migrant-stock residents were a perennial cause of unease. “We need to understand why current services have not managed to generate participation and reduce the potential for conflict,” Berlin’s Councilor for Integration and Migration acknowledged (Leuschner, 2005, pp. 8–9). Arguments were heard in places like Rotterdam, where an anti-migrant political movement was a potent force, that there were “irreconcilable differences between civil liberties in making residential and educational choices and the desire to combat the erosion of the cohesion of Dutch society” (Karsten, Ledoux, Roeleveld, Felix, & Elshof, 2003, p. 472). Ghent’s municipal government, on the other hand, maintained that its goal was a “ ‘social unity’ that is girded by equal rights and the greatest possible freedom of choice and solidarity within diversity” (De Regge, 2005, p. 149).
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Central to such debates was differentiation between the various forms of social capital. Before the 2006 elections removed Livable Rotterdam from the governing coalition, Rotterdam’s municipal council had underscored the importance of participation “outside of one’s own circle” (CBW, 2005). Its opposite number in The Hague voiced support for bonding social capital (relationships of trust and cooperation between socially similar network members), binding social capital (such relationships between network members who are socially dissimilar but similar in status and power), and linking/bridging social capital (such relationships between network members who are dissimilar in status and power). At the same time, Hague officials joined the national government in worrying that too much of the first type might detract from growth in the last two types (Heijnen, 2005). The Municipal Advisory Council on the Multicultural City, an appointed body of migrant- and native-stock members that monitored ethnic relations, noted, “There are ethnic groups that are so tied to their traditional ways that it never comes to ‘bridging’ ” (al-Ghazi, 2004, p. 5). In keeping with such deliberations was the push across Germany and the Low Countries to find or create reliable representatives within migrantorigin communities. European policymaking was customarily a consensual process in which peak associations and social partners played a critical role. Attempts to develop similar spokespersons among migrants at the national level had always met with limited success. At the local level, several cities had coaxed a peak migrant association into existence. Essen had its Union of Immigrant Associations, founded in 2000 as the “municipal government’s partner” and seen as a “forum within which immigrant associations could foster intercultural dialogue and – while looking after their own culture, religion, and language – contribute on the way toward integration to peaceful coexistence in the city” (Stadt Essen, 2005). Consisting of elected migrants, state secretaries, district representatives, associations, trade union leaders, and other non-governmental organizations, Berlin’s Council for Integration and Migration Questions constituted a permanent “Round Table” dedicated to implementing the state Senate’s 2005 Integration Concept (BIM, 2005). In Ghent, the Forum, composed of representatives named by various migrant associations, was the official advisory body for ethnic-cultural policy in Ghent until mid-2004. Thereafter, AGORA – “a permanent open partnership in which various interested organizations and individuals are able in an informal, flexible way to think, work, and give form to diverse forms of participation and co-determination and to exert influence” (De Regge, 2005, p. 197) – took over the Forum’s consultative role. Rotterdam had long had umbrella organizations for Muslims and key national groups as well as an appointed Municipal Advisory Council on the Multicultural City. The body by that same name in The Hague on which it had been modeled was dissolved by the city government in 2004, and anxiety over the
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128 P. R. Ireland ramifications on local ethnic relations was widespread thereafter (Andriol, 2004). When the Umbrella Federation of Immigrant Cultural Associations in Bremen (Dachverband der Ausländer-Kulturvereine in Bremen, DAB) disappeared that same year, the two-city-state rushed to institute the partially elected Bremen Council for Integration as a way to “compensate for the weaknesses and eventual insolvency of the DAB” (DSJSA, 2005). Nuremberg had nothing similar, although its consultative foreigners’ council did persevere in the face of declining turnout among migrants (down to 11.7 percent in 2003) to elect its membership (Ausländerbeirat der Stadt Nürnberg, 2006). Liège’s Consultative Immigrant Council had been dormant since the mid-1990s. Officials were inclined to deal directly with migration associational leaders whenever problems arose (Lambert, 1999). Local German, Belgian, and Dutch integration policymaking, therefore, clearly reflected officials’ perceptions of conditions on the ground. Surveys showed that these elites regarded ethnic conflicts as a threat to a greater degree than did residents (see Leuschner, 2005). Such conflicts were apt to be sporadic and driven by local events in real time, be it a dispute over the establishment of a neighborhood mosque, an altercation between local youths and the police, or similar incident. Whereas tensions could run high, the streets more often than not remained calm. When conflict did not escalate into violence, the attendant “noise” could prove useful. It signaled to policymakers and the society at large that tensions were building and which policies seemed to be generating, inflaming, or neutralizing them. In this sense, silence could be deceptive or even dangerous. Prosaic concerns were at the heart of the integration challenge. When asked, residents often expressed the most concern about small, concrete matters: lighting in public spaces, opportunities to meet neighbors, and playgrounds for children. In cities where such interests were understood and acted upon, a new dynamic could emerge in a neighborhood, creating the expectation that even more improvements could result. “Bedrock” social policies may be critical to “efforts to decrease social polarization and manage diversity,” yet “social inclusion also depends on the quality of the countless interactions that occur among the kaleidoscope of individuals, social groups, and institutions that exist in a city” (Ray, 2005, p. 6).
Islam Nowhere did the issues of social cohesion, local context, and social capital grow in significance more than with respect to Islam. In the case countries and cities, Muslims and their organizations bore out the contradictions of official responses to them. It was easier for Islam to loom as an apparent obstacle to migrant integration in Rotterdam and Flanders, where
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policies had embraced ethnicity and religion and related mostly to the political-cultural dimension, than in places where structural integration and universal policies held sway. Muslims could be treated like any other ethnic group, members of a monolithic religious tradition, members of their respective national or subnational groups, individual residents, and/ or a threat to domestic security – depending on the timeframe and where they settled. In the eight case cities, as in many other European conurbations, policymakers and residents of all backgrounds hammered out compromises and managed to resolve many misunderstandings over ritual slaughtering, halal butchers, and Muslim burial practices. Ghent’s government, for instance, established contacts with 13 local mosques to foster communication, organized ritual slaughtering for the annual Eid al-Adha in the wholesale marketplace (consisting of a floor with professional butchers and a “do-it-yourself” floor), drafted a working document on Islamic cemeteries, and held events to advance inter-faith dialogue between Christians and Muslims (Bultheel, 2005). The Essen police force appointed a Muslim councilor (Beauftragten), the by-product of teamwork with the mosque in the Katernberg neighborhood that had started with actions to improve traffic safety and then spread to other areas. After “Arab youths” threw rocks at the Old Synagogue museum, the city set in motion the Fostering Intercultural and Inter-Religious Dialogue project, an idea borrowed from a campaign against anti-Semitism developed in eastern Germany (IBSE, 2005). Awareness grew of the ethnic and cultural differences within Muslim communities, which included people with backgrounds in Turkey, the Arab world, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Pakistan, Surinam, and Indonesia, in addition to European converts. Berlin officials discovered through opinion surveys that Islam represented a binding element even for Muslims who did not see themselves as religious. Through institutionalized dialogue and joint schemes to shape public opinion, the Berlin Senate backed initiatives of the district governments and neighborhoods to respond to the demands of religious communities and to fight discrimination and Islamic radicalism. The clearer it became to migrants that their stay in Germany would be permanent, the city-state reasoned, the more the need grew to move beyond provisory prayer rooms. The rising number of mosques was in that regard a sign of integration (BIM, 2005, pp. 60–63). In fact, practicing Muslims were seen in all of the case cities as offering much to enrich mainstream European society, including a strong sense of community and family responsibility, a deep tradition of hospitality, and respect for the elderly. On the other hand, Muslims frequently held views on sexuality, legalized prostitution, public nudity, and, especially, gender and family relations that ran against those of a vast majority of their native-stock neighbors. Honor killings, the mistreatment of “liberated”
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130 P. R. Ireland daughters, endogamy, polygamy, female circumcision, and intolerance of homosexuality were presented as particularly knotty barriers to broader acceptance of Islam. Officials insisted that the inclusion of Muslims, like other migrants, into European host societies had to begin with the recognition of the latter’s fundamental values. In Berlin and Essen, Muslim leaders issued public statements in which they pledged their adherence to liberal democracy and dedicated themselves to work for an open, plural society and against violence and the rejection of certain lifestyles. Marco Pastors, Rotterdam’s city councilor responsible for physical infrastructure and local leader of Livable Rotterdam, argued in 2005 that “to be here means to join in, and that starts by speaking our language, going to work, not hitting your wife, not hitting your husband, recognizing Christians and homosexuals, and sticking with the program. All in all, [that’s] not so difficult for people of good will” (Pastors, 2005, p. 21).2 The local government organized a series of meetings between experts and local residents, internal debates within national Muslim groups, and public discussions over the place of Islam in Rotterdam society (Projectbureau Sociale Integratie, 2005). More and more young people with Muslim backgrounds have been choosing a secular lifestyle across Europe, and there is evidence to suggest that secularization has advanced farther among second-generation migrants of certain national backgrounds (Moroccans) than others (Turks) (Crul & Doomernik, 2003). Islamist ideologies have gained a following only among certain observant youths. A veritable cottage industry has formed to try to determine which youngsters fall into which camp, in the hopes of limiting radical tendencies and preventing a rejection of Western values and a retreat into “parallel societies” (Cyrus & Vogel, 2005). A typical approach when studying Islam in Europe has been to interview or focus on Muslim religious, associational, professional, and/or political elites (see Fetzer & Soper, 2005; and Klausen, 2005). Still, there is a difference between gradual movement in the direction of the “numerical equality” of migrant representation and “more complex issues such as political power and influence” (Solomos & Back, 2000, p. 152). Even though it is important to know what Muslim elites think and do, “we also need to know what happens in ordinary and everyday conversations” (Grillo, 2004, p. 868). A considerable number of Muslims, however, strive “to keep their religious space immune from public concern” (Bousetta, 2000, p. 136). Complicating matters is the custom of al Taqiyya – concealing or disguising one’s beliefs when expedient – followed by Shia Muslims and many Sunni Muslims living as minorities in Europe. 2
Pastors was removed from the municipal council later that year, after making declarations deemed unacceptable by his Christian Democratic Appeal allies.
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Widely noted has been the fragmentation of Muslim communities and their low levels of binding and bridging social capital, not to mention the paucity of representative organizations to speak with authority for them in the host societies. They would offer a means of engaging Muslims and could be held responsible for their actions (Penninx & Schrover, 2001). It has been frustrating, even alarming, to European policymakers that, even less than other migrants, Muslims have failed to produce such “agents.” Not surprisingly, then, officials at all levels have expended great energy searching for Muslim spokespersons. Failing to find them in sufficient numbers, they have endeavored to anoint leaders and fashion European-style peak associations and executive Islamic councils. None of these attempts have borne much fruit. The governments of the sending countries have tried to enforce unity among “their” Muslims, too, supporting voluntary associations and laboring to control their activities. The Turkish and Moroccan states have exercised influence over their nationals through their official mosque organizations. Some commentators have attributed Muslim disunity in Europe to the decentralized structure of the Islamic faith, or at least that of the Sunni branch that predominates among Muslim migrants (Grillo, 2004). Yet it has been the very nonexistence of an overarching ideology, doctrine, or central authority that has rendered Sunni Islam adaptable and vulnerable to manipulation and domination by political forces over the centuries. The same European authorities who bemoan the lack of cohesiveness among Muslims normally fail to acknowledge that their own contradictory behavior has aggravated the perceived “problem.” Of the eight case cities, only Rotterdam became home to (rival) local-level Muslim peak associations. Some municipal governments adopted a proactive tack in order to alter the status quo. At the end of 2005, an Islam Forum arrived on the scene in Berlin, bringing together high-level representatives of the Senate, Muslims, and other groups to engage in off-the-record discussions of critical and sensitive issues (BIM, 2005, p. 64). Ironically, what undercut most seriously the struggle of national and local German, Dutch, and Belgian policymakers to bring order out of the chaos were the effects of the policies that they themselves had implemented: immigration and citizenship laws, naturalization procedures, the emphases of direct and indirect integration policies, and church–state relations helped split Muslims in ways specific to each host society along lines of nationality, ethnic origin, legal status, gender, and generation. The degree and kind of homeland-government influence varied, too, affected decisively by the support or resistance offered by officials in the receiving countries. Welfare state restructuring had weakened traditional mechanisms of social control, which fed angst over any and all threats to social cohesion. Islam was more liable to become a source of upset in a given
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132 P. R. Ireland country or city when policies spotlighted the political-cultural aspects of integration and targeted ethno-religious groups. Conflict was less likely when policies concentrated on individual structural integration and downplayed cultural differences.
Conclusions Long playing second fiddle to issues of border control, the integration of Muslim and other migrant-origin Europeans has moved to the forefront of official preoccupations. The new post-9/11 security focus has intensified the debate. The subsequent “backlash against diversity” has combined “disenchantment with multiculturalism, concerns about social cohesion, and, not least, about Islam” (Grillo, 2005, p. 38). European policymakers have been counterpoising acceptance of cultural diversity and insistence on a basic set of core values, a common local language, and cultivation of bridging social capital. The tacking and jibing have been visible in EU policymaking circles and in the mandate of Belgium’s new consultative Commission for the Intercultural Dialogue, the Netherlands’ “new integration policy,” and Germany’s Law for Managing and Containing Immigration and for the Regulation of the Residence and Integration of EU Citizens and Foreigners (Cyrus & Vogel, 2005; Penninx et al., 2005). The integration phenomenon is multifaceted and dynamic, posing highly complex challenges both of governance and of analysis. This study has not explicitly tested any hypotheses. Yet developments in a set of countries and cities similar in key respects have made it clear that integration “success” depends on how it is defined. And increasingly, it is defined as a process designed to promote social cohesion and avert conflict. This balancing act plays out in Europe’s cities and neighborhoods, affected as they have been by the devolution and delegation of social policy associated with the restructuring of national welfare states. Only by recognizing integration as an ongoing, multi-level process of social learning can scholars and policymakers alike comprehend the messy, localized, complex realities of an ever more diverse Europe.
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7
Collective Identity and Political Engagement Bernd Simon
Introduction Struggles for or against social change in society are typically political power struggles between social groups. In these struggles people engage primarily as group members and not as individuals. That is, their political engagement is guided not by their identities as separate individuals, but rather by their collective identities based on shared (in-)group memberships (e.g., as workers, women, gays and lesbians) and shared opposition to out-groups (e.g., exploitative employers, sexist and heterosexist groups). Guided by the social identity and self-categorization approach to group behavior and intergroup relations (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), social psychologists have long acknowledged the pivotal role of collective identity in social perception and behavior. For example, they have shown that collective identity underlies stereotyped perceptions of self and others, discrimination against out-groups in favor of in-groups and greater acceptance of influence from in-group sources than from out-group sources (for reviews, see Brown & Gaertner, 2001). Closer to the political realm, collective identity also influences people’s justice concerns (Tyler, 2001; Wenzel, 2004) and their willingness to engage in social protest (Simon, 2004; Simon et al., 1998). Inspired by Tajfel’s (1978, p. 86) seminal insight that collective identity functions as an “intervening causal mechanism in situations of ‘objective’ social change,” I move in this chapter further into the political realm and focus explicitly on the role of collective identity in political engagement. This expedition is guided by an integrative conception of collective identity
The research reported in this chapter was made possible by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to Bernd Simon.
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138 Bernd Simon which is informed by both sociological and social psychological approaches to collective identity. The respective conception is laid out in detail after this introduction. Thus equipped, I then turn to the relationship between collective identity and political engagement. My starting point is social movement research, and in particular the more recent contribution of social psychology to a deeper understanding of the role of collective identity in the mobilization for and participation in social movement activities. I highlight the unique mobilizing power of collective identity during struggles for (or against) social change and explicate the more comprehensive role of collective identity as a mediator between macro- and micro-level determinants of social movement participation. Subsequently, I take the collective identity analysis of mobilization and participation one step further and elaborate the notion of politicized collective identity (PCI). Acknowledging the acute and undoubtedly continuing importance of processes of globalization and mass migration for most, if not all, modern societies, I then apply the notion of PCI to the analysis of politicization among migrants and illuminate the character of PCI as a dual identity combining lower- and higher-level identities. In the closing section of the chapter, I discuss the wider implications of collective identification and politicization processes for social integration. I suggest a perspective that distinguishes politicization from radicalization and that helps to contrast the potential social-integrative function of politicization with the social-disruptive potential of radicalization. From this perspective, collective identification processes play a crucial mediating role in the transition from politicization to radicalization, and PCI understood as dual identity as both citizen and member of a particularistic (less inclusive) social group emerges as a promising, albeit hitherto underresearched, avenue to social integration. In this sense, I suggest that the development of PCI among migrants – as well as among members of other societal groups – should be greeted by plural society as an offer it cannot (afford to) refuse.
Collective Identity: Connecting the Individual and the Social As active meaning seekers, humans engage in self-interpretation, which refers to the social-cognitive process whereby people give coherence and meaning to their experiences, including the interactions and relations with their social environment. Through self-interpretation, people achieve an understanding of themselves, or in other words an identity, which in turn influences their subsequent perception and behavior (Simon, 2004). There is wide agreement among social scientific disciplines, including social psychology, about the social nature of identity. Identities are relational in that they reflect people’s differentiated social positions vis-à-vis each other, and
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people typically have multiple identities reflecting the multiplicity of differentiated social positions and roles available especially in modern society. Also, identities are socially constructed and thus dynamic in that they have socially shared meanings which are constantly (re)negotiated during social interaction, and identities are socially structured reflecting the structured social context of interaction between people as well as groups of people. Moreover, identities have social consequences. They are a source of motivation, direct behavior, and thus shape social interaction. The distinctive feature of collective identity is that it derives from selfinterpretation centered on a socially shared self-aspect, typically a social category or group membership. Collective identity thus goes beyond the narrow self-interpretation or self-definition as a unique or independent single individual (i.e., individual identity). At this point I need to emphasize that the notion of collective identity is used in this chapter as a (social) psychological concept, not as a sociological concept in a Durkheimian sense (Durkheim, 1895/1976; Rucht, 1995). Although based on shared group membership, collective identity in the present sense is still the identity of a person, not that of a group or collective as such (i.e., not that of a group as an entity sui generis). Accordingly, the individual person, not the group as a whole, serves as the basic unit of analysis. In this sense, the research presented in the chapter is firmly rooted in the tradition of psychology with its emphasis on the individual person and on micro-level processes such as perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and motivations. However, although it is the individual person who perceives, feels, thinks, has motivations and so forth, higher-level social factors and processes are always implicated in these psychological processes and the ensuing behavior. This insight calls for an articulation of the psychological or micro level of analysis with the macro level of analysis, the latter being the traditional domain of sociology with its focus on society and social structure. It is the basic premise underlying the analysis developed in this chapter that the notion of identity, and especially the notion of collective identity, allows such micro–macro articulation, or in other words, mediation. Reflecting both objective membership in social categories or groups and (the degree of) subjective acceptance of such membership, collective identity mediates the top-down impact of social structure on the individual (e.g., by way of systemic group-based discrimination) as well as the bottom-up participation of the individual in society (e.g., by way of participation in collective protest). In short, collective identity connects the individual and the social. It is thus a truly social psychological concept. By the same token, collective identity is also a meso-level concept. People do not experience or act on society directly, but in or through socially structured situations of social interaction (Pettigrew, 1996). It is in such meso-level interaction situations (e.g., hierarchically structured intergroup encounters) that collective identity takes
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140 Bernd Simon shape as a joint function of psychological and social processes and in turn mediates the relationship between the individual and the social.
The Role of Collective Identity in Social Movement Participation: It Moves! Social movement research conducted over the last 25 years or so is an instructive example of how the articulation of a sociologically oriented macro-level analysis with a psychologically oriented micro-level analysis can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of a complex social phenomenon (Klandermans, 1997). More importantly, the recent development in the field illustrates the crucial contribution of the social psychological concept of collective identity to this successful articulation. My interest in social movement research is therefore twofold. For one, I am interested in research on social movement participation because such participation constitutes an instructive example of political engagement. And second, I consider the incorporation of collective identification processes into social movement research a paradigmatic innovation which should also pave the way for research on the role of collective identity in other forms of political engagement outside traditional social movement contexts. Social movements have been defined as “collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities” (Tarrow, 1995, pp. 3–4; also Klandermans, 1997, p. 2). Tajfel (1981, p. 244) suggested a similar definition, but explicitly emphasized the importance of psychological group formation and the respective intergroup relations. Specifying an earlier definition by Toch (1965), he suggested viewing social movements as “efforts by large numbers of people, who define themselves and are also often defined by others as a group, to solve collectively a problem they feel they have in common, and which is perceived to arise from their relations with other groups.” Indeed, the classical social movements, such as the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the civil rights movement, were initiated and supported by people who by virtue of their membership in some social category or group (e.g., workers, women, African Americans) found themselves in a disadvantaged segment within the wider social context. From the social psychological point of view, social movements are collective strategies of social change (or resistance to unwanted social change) as opposed to individual strategies of social mobility (or escape). The latter rest on the belief that one’s own situation can be improved by moving from one social position to another as an individual and thus involve leaving a disadvantaged group physically or at least psychologically. Conversely, collective strategies are adopted if a person believes that “the only way for him to
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change these [disadvantageous] conditions … is together with his group as a whole” (Tajfel, 1981, p. 247). Collective strategies can involve confrontational or even violent actions such as revolts and strikes, but also more moderate forms such as signing a petition or attending a group meeting. Social psychological research indicates that individual social mobility strategies are often preferred over collective social change strategies, especially when group boundaries are (or seem to be) permeable at least to some degree (Ellemers, van Knippenberg, & Wilke, 1990; Lalonde & Silverman, 1994; Wright, 2001). However, although particular social movements may come and go, social movement formation and participation as such seems to be a persistent phenomenon testifying to the continuing social relevance of collective social change strategies (Klandermans, 1997; Roth & Rucht, 2008). Still, for a better understanding of the phenomenon, the limitations of traditional social movement research need to be overcome.
From cost-benefit calculations to the mobilizing power of collective identity For a long time, social movement research, on the one hand, and research on group processes and intergroup relations, on the other hand, coexisted as two rather strictly separated domains, with the former being oriented more toward sociology and the latter being oriented more toward social psychology. However, social movement researchers became increasingly dissatisfied with the overly atomistic and individualistic conceptualization of the potential participant in social movement activities as someone who rationally and egoistically weighs the costs and benefits of his or her participation (e.g., Friedman & McAdam, 1992; Gamson, 1992; Rucht, 1995). Their criticism resonated with the growing prominence of the social identity or selfcategorization perspective on group processes and intergroup relations in the field of social psychology (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner et al., 1987) and paved the way for cross-fertilization transcending disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the social identity or self-categorization perspective contributed the important insight that social movement participation is group-serving behavior. The participant acts qua group member (i.e., as a member of an aggrieved group or of a social movement organization representing the aggrieved group) so that collective identification operates as the basic social psychological process underlying social movement participation. Meanwhile, a solid body of empirical evidence has accumulated that testifies to the pivotal role of collective identification processes in social movement participation. For example, my co-workers and I have demonstrated in a variety of different social movement contexts that collective identification operates as an important pathway to social movement participation, in addition to and largely independent of the calculation of (individual or
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142 Bernd Simon collective) costs and benefits. Our research covered a wide spectrum of social movements including the older people’s movement, the gay movement, and the fat acceptance movement. In addition to their different political agendas, these movements also differ on a number of other non-trivial dimensions, such as national background, gender composition, and degree of formal organization. Despite this diversity, the results were remarkably similar. The empirical evidence, including correlational data from crosssectional designs as well as data from experimental and longitudinal designs, consistently pointed to the distinct mobilizing power of collective identity (for reviews, see Simon, 2004; Stürmer & Simon, 2004a). At first glance, a limitation of that research may be that the investigated movements all seem to represent a type of new social movement that “follow[s] a much more expressive logic in which collective action and the identities it produces become ends in themselves” (Kriesi, Koopmans, Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1995, p. 84). In other words, these movements may primarily be involved in (post)modern struggles for recognition rather than the “classic” struggles for redistribution (Fraser, 1998; for a critical discussion of the redistribution–recognition distinction, see also Fraser & Honneth, 2003). However, other research confirms that collective identity unfolds its mobilizing power also in more traditional social movements with a clear strategic or instrumental orientation toward redistribution, such as the labor movement (Kelly, 1993; Veenstra & Haslam, 2000) or the farmers’ movement (De Weerd & Klandermans, 1999).
An attempt at integration The articulation of social movement research with the social psychological analysis of the role of collective identity in group processes and intergroup relations is a fairly recent and admittedly still incomplete achievement. Nevertheless, the prospects of cross-fertilization and integration are very promising. In particular the following more comprehensive picture emerges regarding the role of collective identity as a mediating (meso-level) variable in social movement participation: Groups as social entities not only have an internal structure (e.g., internal status hierarchies), but are themselves part of a larger social structure of intergroup relations, such as group-based social stratifications or hierarchies. Collective identity derived from membership in such groups therefore imports (macro-level) social structure and associated cleavages into the immediate (meso-level) interaction situation and eventually into the individual (micro-level) psyche. At the same time, collective identity facilitates social influence and consensus mobilization through which (macro-level) frictions and contradictions are translated into (micro-level) psychological experiences of common fate involving shared grievances and common enemies. Similarly, (macro-level) opportunities for
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collective action are translated into (micro-level) psychological experiences of collective strength or hope. Awareness of common fate and collective strength in turn strengthen collective identity, which then facilitates action mobilization so that, for example by way of social movement participation, people act on (macro-level) social structure and may eventually change it. In addition, during participation in collective action, collective identity can be further strengthened due to an increase in cognitive salience of this identity and/or due to increased feelings of agency and empowerment. The strengthened collective identity further promotes subsequent consensus and action mobilization. To illustrate this rather abstract synthesis with a concrete example, women – as a group – still hold a subordinate position in the status hierarchy of many societies. To the extent that a (female) person defines herself and is defined by others in terms of her collective identity as a woman, gender-based status inferiority likely affects her interactions with men (and other women) as well as her self-perceptions and feelings, including feelings of self-worth. At the same time, collective identity as a woman facilitates the perception or construal of common fate (“we women are in this together”) and provides a platform for the seizure of opportunities for collective action (e.g., to endorse the election campaign of a pro-choice political candidate) and thus for the experience of common strength and hope (“united we stand”). In short, a dynamic process of (self-)reinforcement of collective identity as a woman is set in motion that positively contributes to the likelihood of social change in favor of gender equality.
Politicized Collective Identity Social groups do not exist in a social vacuum, but are typically embedded in a social structure of hierarchically organized, stratified intergroup relations which gives groups differential access to material as well as symbolic resources. Social groups are therefore regularly involved in political power struggles for (re)distribution and/or recognition (Fraser, 1998), trying either to change or defend the status quo depending on whether the current structure seems to disadvantage or advantage their respective membership (and possibly also depending on the perceived overall fairness of the structure [Rawls, 2001]). Because these struggles rarely leave the overall social or societal structure unaffected, it would be inadequate to analyze them merely as bipolar conflicts between two opposing groups (i.e., the disadvantaged vs. the advantaged). Rather, additional groups or segments of the wider society usually get involved as well, which calls for (at least) a tripolar or triangulated approach (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). In addition to the immediate antagonists, such as a disadvantaged minority and an advantaged
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144 Bernd Simon majority or elite, the general public or a more specific representative thereof, such as the government or the media, is regularly drawn into the conflict as a third party. In fact, the conflict becomes politicized to the extent to which the main antagonists try to influence or otherwise enlist the general public or representatives thereof for their own agendas. Groups struggling for or against social change (e.g., social movements or countermovements) are therefore anxious to stress that they are a legitimate part of the more inclusive population or polity and that their own interests are compatible with, if not identical to, the “common” interest. They often strive openly for hegemony, claiming that their own position is or should be prototypical or normative for the more inclusive in-group (e.g., the entire nation), and simultaneously try to discredit the position of their adversaries as being beyond the latitude of general acceptability (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). For a better understanding of the social psychological processes underlying group members’ willingness to actively engage in political struggles on behalf of their group, Bert Klandermans and I (Simon & Klandermans, 2001) introduced the notion of politicized collective identity (PCI), which rests on three critical pillars – collective identity, the struggle for power between groups, and recognition of the societal context of this power struggle. More specifically, PCI is that form of collective identity that underlies group members’ willingness to “engage, as a mindful and self-conscious collective (or as representatives thereof), in … a power struggle knowing that it is the wider, more inclusive societal context in which this struggle takes place and needs to be orchestrated accordingly” (Simon & Klandermans, 2001, p. 323). The emphasis in the definition of PCI on the embeddedness of the power struggle in the wider societal context and the ensuing need for appropriate orchestration of political action is in accord with the classic definition of politics as the constrained use of power by social actors in their attempt to initiate or to resist social change (Goodin & Klingemann, 1996; Weber, 1919). I will return to this aspect when I discuss the distinction between politicization and radicalization in the closing section. Although not specifically designed for that purpose, the social movement research referred to in the preceding section provides initial evidence for the explanatory power of the notion of PCI. It will be recalled that collective identification processes emerged as influential social psychological antecedents of social movement participation in that research, in addition to and independent of the predictor variables examined in prior social movement research (i.e., perceived individual and collective costs and benefits of participation). Moreover, my co-workers and I usually considered two levels of collective identity (for reviews, see Simon, 2004; Stürmer & Simon, 2004a; but also Kelly & Breinlinger, 1995, 1996). One concerned the broader social category from which the social movement in question typically recruited its
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members (e.g., older or gay people in general), whereas the other targeted the more politicized social movement or social movement organization (e.g., the gay movement as such or the organization of the Gray Panthers in the case of the older people’s movement). Multiple regression analyses revealed that identification with the broader recruitment category made no unique contribution to the prediction of intended or actual participation in collective action in contrast to identification with the more politicized social movement or social movement organization. The latter, presumably more politicized forms of identification had a reliable and unique (positive) predictive value. However, there was one interesting exception to this general pattern. In our longitudinal panel study on the gay movement in Germany, Stefan Stürmer and I (2004b) measured, in 1997, both identification with gay people in general and identification with the gay movement organization and then observed, as expected, that only the latter form of identification was a unique predictor of (self-reported) participation in collective protest in 1998. However, identification with gay people in general replaced identification with the gay movement organization as a unique predictor of participation in collective protest in 2000 – a year when there was a heated public debate in Germany about same-sex marriage. Thus, while social movements or their organizations seem to “routinely” provide their members with politicized collective identities, collective identity derived from membership in broader social categories or groups, too, can become politicized under the appropriate circumstances and then foster political engagement. Following Simon and Klandermans (2001) appropriate politicizing circumstances are those that heighten not only group members’ awareness of shared grievances and common enemies who are to blame, but also their perception that they are entitled to societal support for their claims, which then motivates them to involve society at large in their struggle. In the next section, I further illustrate the politicization process by examining the emergence of PCI among different groups of migrants in Germany.
Identity and Politicization among Migrants in Germany The collective mobilization of political demands by migrants is an issue of increasing importance in Europe and beyond. Notwithstanding important variation across national contexts, migrant groups have become noticeable collective actors in the political arena of many modern nation-states (e.g., De Wit & Koopmans, 2005; Koopmans & Statham, 1999, 2000). They are increasingly making political claims and are mobilizing for collective action in support of their claims, which concern, for example, immigration and naturalization policies, economic participation, education curricula,
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146 Bernd Simon political representation, and recognition of religious and other cultural practices including language use (Kymlicka, 1995; Rucht & Heitmeyer, 2008). In this section, I am concerned with the two largest migrant groups in Germany – migrants with a Turkish background and migrants from the territory of the former Soviet Union – and examine the role of collective identification processes in their politicization, or in other words, the emergence of PCI among these groups. In Germany about 15 million people or 20 percent of all residents have a migration background in the sense that they or their parents (father, mother, or both) were not born in Germany but once immigrated to Germany from a different country (Woellert, Kröhnert, Sippel, & Klingholz, 2009). From a wider socio-cultural perspective (Rucht & Heitmeyer, 2008), this number may even be an underestimate. It tends to neglect people with more remote non-German roots, who are nevertheless acutely aware of, and treated according to, their migration background (e.g., so-called third-generation migrants with German citizenship and parents born in Germany, but with grandparents who were born outside Germany and then immigrated to Germany). Migrants1 with a Turkish background are the largest migrant group of non-German descent in Germany. Since the late 1950s, Germany sponsored their immigration as “guest workers” in response to labor shortages, until restrictive immigration controls were implemented and maintained in the wake of the economic crisis in the early 1970s (Goldberg, Halm, & S¸en, 2004). Owing to the understanding – widely shared both in the indigenous community and in the migrant communities – that the “guests” would one day return to their homeland, official policies for integration were minimal. As a result, the (at least) 2.8 million migrants with a Turkish background that currently live in Germany are a clearly disadvantaged minority group relative to the indigenous majority. Their disadvantages range from structural discrimination in housing, education, and employment to openly racist treatment and even physical harm resulting from violent attacks, especially by German right-wing extremists (e.g., Gestring, Janßen, & Polat, 2006; Rucht & Heitmeyer, 2008; Thränhardt, 2004; Woellert et al., 2009). Until the end of the twentieth century, Turkish migrants (from now on short for “migrants with a Turkish background”) in Germany showed relatively little political engagement compared with migrant groups in other European countries, except for their involvement in homeland politics (De Wit & Koopmans, 2005; Koopmans & Statham, 1999). More recently, however, new integration policies emphasizing the importance of the acquisition of the German language together with a number of widely publicized controversies directly involving the Turkish 1
The term “migrant” is used from now on in the wider sense referring to both first-generation immigrants and their descendants.
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migrant community (e.g., debates over the ban on headscarves in many German schools or the high number of school dropouts and the high unemployment rate among Turkish youths) seem to have created a climate much more conducive to politicization and the emergence of PCI among Turkish migrants. In the 1990s, after the disappearance of the “iron curtain” and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany witnessed increased immigration from the territory of the former Soviet Union. The majority of migrants from that territory were admitted to Germany on the basis of their or their family members’ status as so-called (late) out-settlers, who – because of their German ancestry – are considered “returning” migrants (i.e., migrants of German descent) and granted privileged access to German citizenship. In fact, the around 4 million out-settlers from the territory of the former Soviet Union (and a few other Eastern European countries formerly under communist rule) even outnumber the Turkish migrants in Germany, who – as mentioned above – are the largest migrant group of non-German descent. In general, migrants from the territory of the former Soviet Union also face serious economic and social integration problems (Bade & Oltmer, 2003; Haug, Baraulina, & von Gostomski, 2008; Özcan, 2004; Woellert et al., 2009), even though they may experience somewhat lower levels of groupbased discrimination in comparison with Turkish migrants (Simon, 2008).
The emergence of politicized collective identity among migrants in Germany Unlike social movements or social movement organizations, which by definition provide their supporters or members with a collective political mission and thus with a PCI, migrants do not necessarily share a collective political agenda or PCI to begin with, even if they share a cultural or ethnic background or identity. Instead, they need to undergo a process of collective politicization first. The typical starting point of such politicization is awareness of shared grievances for which some other group or opponent is held responsible and blamed (e.g., a particular out-group or “the system” in general). Collective politicization is in full blossom when the aggrieved group transforms the confrontation with its opponent into a more comprehensive power struggle affecting the more inclusive political entity or polity, such as society at large or the nation-state (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). The power struggle is then at least tripolar or triangulated in that it also involves a third party, even if initially only as an audience, such as the general public or more specific representatives thereof (e.g., the media, political parties, the government, or other authorities). The politicized group tries to force the third party to take a stand in order to eventually enlist it as an ally for its own agenda (“You are either with us or with the bad guys!”). Because all
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148 Bernd Simon three parties (politicized group, opponent, and third party) usually belong to the same more inclusive or superordinate political entity (e.g., the nationstate or society at large), identification with this entity or its inhabitants comes into play as well. In fact, some sense of superordinate identification seems to be a basic prerequisite for politicization in that it ensures that the superordinate entity with its political game, rules, and players is acknowledged as one’s own. One then feels entitled to make political claims, because the superordinate entity is now also one’s own political habitat, one is motivated to get actively involved in the political game, because it is now also one’s own game, and one feels encouraged to approach third parties as potential allies, because they are now also one’s own people (i.e., in-group members at the superordinate level). Taken together, PCI is likely to assume the character of a dual (collective) identity. It combines collective identity as a member of the aggrieved ingroup with collective identity as a member of the superordinate (higherlevel) political entity. This dual character of PCI concurs with Albert O. Hirschman’s (1970) now classic analysis of exit, voice, and loyalty. Hirschman stressed that loyalty to the firm, organization, or state is an important psychological prerequisite for any attempt on the part of dissatisfied customers, members, or citizens to change (voice option), rather than to escape from (exit option), the objectionable state of affairs in the firm, organization, or state. Applied to the context of migration, migrants’ PCI should then reflect identity as both a member of the aggrieved migrant group and a member of the larger society of residence. In terms of Berry’s (1997, 2001) taxonomy of acculturation strategies, the emergence of PCI among migrants corresponds to the adoption of a strategy of integration that combines migrants’ maintenance of their minority culture with their active involvement or participation in the larger society of residence. This line of reasoning led my co-workers and me to predict that dual identification with both the aggrieved in-group of migrants and the society of residence should foster migrants’ political engagement in their country of residence. I will now report on two studies we have recently conducted on the politicization of Turkish and Russian migrants in Germany that provide converging evidence for the role of collective identification processes. The case of Turkish migrants in Germany. Drawing on an opportunity sample of 333 Turkish migrants, we measured several forms of collective identification (i.e., identification with Turks, identification with Germany, dual identification as both Turkish and German, separatist identification as Turkish as opposed to German, and religious identification) as well as several forms of political engagement (i.e., political claim making, tendencies to involve society at large or representatives thereof, and willingness to engage in a number of concrete collective political activities) (Simon & Ruhs, 2008). Because preliminary analyses yielded very similar results for
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the three political engagement measures, we combined them into a single index for the main analysis. In addition, we measured a number of sociodemographic variables (gender, age, level of education, citizenship, and membership in a labor union) as well as political activity in the past. A multiple regression analysis with the identification measures as possible predictors, political engagement as criterion, and the additional measurements as statistical control variables confirmed that dual identification as both Turkish and German was significantly and positively related to political engagement.2 Admittedly, given the cross-sectional nature of the above analysis, it would be premature to speak of dual identification as a “predictor” of political engagement. Fortunately, 66 of the original respondents volunteered to complete a second questionnaire at least six months later, thus enabling us also to conduct longitudinal analyses. More specifically, for this subgroup, we performed multiple regression analyses with all identification variables measured at Time 1 as possible predictors and actual political behavior reported at Time 2 (i.e., political activities between the two points of measurement) as criterion. Socio-demographic variables and past political activity again served as statistical controls. None of the identification variables predicted engagement in classical political action or “big politics” (e.g., participation in demonstrations or contact with members of the state or national parliament), possibly owing to the generally low incidence of such actions. However, for engagement in low-key political activities, such as engagement in neighborhood projects or exchange of migration-related political information with family and friends, dual identification was a significant and positive predictor. The other identification variables had no predictive value. Moreover, the relationship we observed between dual identification and Time 2 political behavior was fully mediated by Time 1 politicization. The cross-sectional and longitudinal findings thus converge to suggest a causal role of dual identification in political engagement. Finally, I need to briefly comment on our measure of dual identification. Rather than relying on the separate measurements of identification with Turks and identification with Germany, we used a new twoitem scale that directly captured the psychological synthesis or integration underlying the actual experience of dual identification (e.g., “I feel I belong to both the Turks and the Germans”). This novel approach proved wise because it was indeed only our new scale that had explanatory power. The statistical interaction of the two component identifications (Identification With Turks × Identification With Germany) had no predictive value (for details and further discussion, see Simon & Ruhs, 2008). However, the fact 2 Separatist identification was also significantly and positively related to political engagement. However, this relationship did not hold up in the longitudinal analyses and is therefore not discussed further.
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150 Bernd Simon that our dual identification scale consisted of only two items constituted a possible limitation, which we rectified in the second study. The case of Russian migrants in Germany. In light of the plurality and diversity of national and ethnic groups in the former Soviet Union, we focused exclusively on migrants from the territory of the Russian Federation, the heartland of the former Soviet Union (Simon & Grabow, in press). We collected (cross-sectional) data from an opportunity sample of 152 Russian migrants using a questionnaire that was closely modeled on that of Simon and Ruhs (2008), but contained additional items mainly in order to improve the identification scales. Most importantly, we used an eight-item dual identification scale. As expected, a multiple regression analysis confirmed that dual identification as both Russian and German, but no other form of collective identification (including the statistical interaction between identification with Russians and identification with Germany), was significantly and positively related to political engagement. Extending the findings of Simon and Ruhs (2008), we also found that perceived maltreatment of Russian migrants in Germany moderated the relationship between dual identification and political engagement. In keeping with Simon and Klandermans’ (2001) suggestion that the development of PCI presupposes (high) awareness of shared grievances, the relationship between dual identification and political engagement was observed for respondents who clearly perceived such maltreatment in Germany, but not for respondents without such perceptions. In conclusion, the results of both field studies strongly suggest that, for migrants, PCI takes the form of a dual identity involving identification with both the aggrieved minority in-group and the society of residence. Such PCI obviously possesses a unique mobilizing power as it operates above and beyond the influences of a number of socio-demographic variables, other forms of collective identification, and past or habitual political engagement.
Implications for Social Integration: From Politicization to Radicalization It is important to note that the unique mobilizing power of dual identity seems to be limited to the realm of “legitimate” politics. In both studies reported above (Simon & Ruhs, 2008; Simon & Grabow, in press), dual identification was uniquely and positively related only to such forms of political engagement that stayed within the limits of general normative acceptability, at least from the standpoint of liberal democracy. In fact, additional analyses revealed that, although it predicted support for moderate in-group organizations, dual identification did not foster support for
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in-group organizations with a radical (religious and/or nationalist) agenda or acceptance of violent protest (Simon & Ruhs, 2008). We even secured evidence that dual identification was uniquely and positively related to explicit self-restriction to peaceful, non-violent forms of protest (Simon & Grabow, in press). It thus appears that PCI based on dual identification with both the aggrieved in-group and the superordinate political entity or polity constrains or pacifies politicization in that it prioritizes political claims and activities that, in principle, all members of the polity can accept as legitimate or reasonable (Rawls, 2001). This interpretation is also in line with social psychological research on intergroup relations which has demonstrated a similar pacifying effect of shared group membership at a higher level of social inclusiveness. An increasing number of social psychologists therefore recommend a dual-identity strategy for conflict management that builds on the combination of identification with the original in-group and identification with more inclusive social entities (Brewer & Gaertner, 2001; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; González & Brown, 2006; Hornsey & Hogg, 2000). Especially in the context of (im)migration, PCI as dual identity could play a constructive role that may even go beyond mere conflict reduction or conflict management. The social psychological literature suggests that acting in accordance with normative standards is often the first step toward acceptance or even internalization of these standards (e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). In other words, there is a good chance that playing by the rules eventually leads to the internalization of the rules of the game by each player and possibly also to his or her acceptance by the other players. Migrants’ active, rule-abiding involvement in the political game of their country of residence may thus not only reflect achieved social integration, but may also reinforce their integration into the respective society. Political engagement driven by dual identification then comes into view as an intriguing, though hitherto underresearched, pathway to social integration. Conversely, one would expect that more exclusive forms of collective identification lacking the pacifying effect of superordinate identification, such as separatist identification driven by ethnic, cultural, or religious differentiations, facilitate more socially disruptive forms of political engagement including radical or even violent action. In our study on Turkish migrants in Germany (Simon & Ruhs, 2008), religious identification among the mostly Muslim respondents indeed predicted support for radical in-group organizations, but otherwise our research – fortunately – provided no empirical confirmation of that expectation. Neither separatist identification as Turkish as opposed to German (Simon & Ruhs, 2008) nor separatist identification as Russian as opposed to German (Simon & Grabow, in press) was related to support for radical in-group organizations or acceptance of violent protest in
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152 Bernd Simon Political ends normatively acceptable
normatively unacceptable
example:
normatively acceptable
example:
ends:
introduction of Muslim holidays in Germany
ends:
introduction of shariah in Germany
means:
social movement support
means:
social movement support
POLITICIZATION
Political means
normatively unacceptable
example:
example:
ends:
introduction of Muslim holidays in Germany
ends:
introduction of shariah in Germany
means:
suicide attacks
means:
suicide attacks
RADICALIZATION
Figure 7.1 Taxonomy of means–ends combinations characterizing politicization vs. radicalization.
the respective multiple regression analyses. Nevertheless, both real life and the social psychological literature on intergroup relations clearly suggest that political engagement driven by separatist as opposed to dual identification is – at least in the long run – particularly prone to produce social disruption and disintegration (e.g., Berry, 2001; Simon, 2004). Unlike dual identification, separatist identification unleashes unconstrained centrifugal forces that may then foster the transition from (normatively acceptable) politicization to (normatively unacceptable) radicalization.3 As shown in Figure 7.1, such politicization and radicalization can be characterized on the basis of two distinctions, namely, between normatively acceptable and unacceptable political ends and between normatively acceptable and unacceptable political means. Obviously, these distinctions necessarily hinge on and are relative to the norms of the dominant regime or social system, and the prevalent norms may themselves eventually be contested and change over time. But at 3
This is not to deny that radicalization can also be viewed as a form of politicization in the broader sense.
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a given time and within a given social system, there is usually sufficient normative consensus and stability (e.g., “overlapping consensus” sensu Rawls, 2001) to allow meaningful distinctions between normatively acceptable and unacceptable political ends and means. Thus, from the standpoint of liberal democracy, “legitimate” politicization, including political engagement driven by dual identification as examined in our research reported above, would then belong in the acceptable–acceptable cell of the taxonomy shown in Figure 7.1. The three remaining cells contain different variations of radicalization of which the unacceptable–unacceptable variant is the clearest and most extreme (paradigmatic) case. It is important to note at this point that, although, owing to its particularistic or even parochial character, separatist identification may have a more direct affinity for political ends and/or means that lie outside the social system’s normative frame or consensus, dual identification, too, harbors a potential for radicalization. If political engagement driven by dual identification is not met with positive responsiveness on the part of the larger social system or polity, then a growing sense of frustration or betrayal likely undermines dual identification and may precipitate conversion to separatist identification with all its socially disruptive implications (Simon & Oakes, 2006). In conclusion, for societies characterized by both a reasonable pluralism at the level of particularistic social group membership (e.g., membership based on cultural, ethnic, or religious allegiances) and an overlapping consensus at the level of political rules or norms (Rawls, 2001), dual identification with both one’s particular social in-group and the superordinate political entity emerges as a promising social integration mechanism. It ensures that, as group members, people do not lose access to their specific collective capital, including economic, cultural, social, and psychological resources, and, at the same time, enables them to cooperate with one another across group boundaries as citizens. Political engagement driven by dual identification, or in other words the development of PCI as dual identity, is part and parcel of this integration mechanism. In order to be or remain livable and well ordered in times of globalization and mass migration, society would be well advised to welcome such engagement from every citizen and especially from migrants. Migrants’ political engagement deserves particular appreciation because it signals that they are often willing to act as de facto citizens long before they are accepted as de iure citizens.
References Bade, K. J., & Oltmer, J. (2003). Einführung: Aussiedlerzuwanderung und Aussiedlerintegration. Historische Entwicklung und aktuelle Probleme [Introduction: Out-settler immigration and out-settler integration. Historical
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154 Bernd Simon development and current problems]. In K. J. Bade & J. Oltmer (Eds.), Aussiedler: Deutsche Einwanderer aus Osteuropa (pp. 9–51). Osnabrück: V&R Unipress. Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaption. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46, 5–68. Berry, J. W. (2001). A psychology of immigration. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 615–631. Brewer, M. B., & Gaertner, S. L. (2001). Toward reduction of prejudice: Intergroup contact and social categorization. In R. Brown & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Intergroup processes (pp. 451–472). Oxford: Blackwell. Brown, R., & Gaertner, S. L. (Eds.). (2001). Blackwell handbook of social psychology, Vol. 4: Intergroup relations. Oxford: Blackwell. De Weerd, M., & Klandermans, B. (1999). Group identification and social protest: Farmers’ protest in the Netherlands. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 1073–1095. De Wit, T. D., & Koopmans, R. (2005). The integration of ethnic minorities into political culture: The Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain compared. Acta Politica, 40, 50–73. Durkheim, E. (1895/1976). Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode [The rules of the sociological method] (5th ed.). Darmstadt: Luchterhand. Ellemers, N., van Knippenberg, A., & Wilke, H. (1990). The influence of permeability of group boundaries and stability of group status on strategies of individual mobility and social change. British Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 233–246. Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203–210. Fraser, N. (1998). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, and participation. In G. B. Peterson (Ed.), The Tanner lectures on human values (pp. 1–67). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso. Friedman, D., & McAdam, D. (1992). Collective identity and activism: Networks, choices, and the life of a social movement. In A. D. Morris & C. M. Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 156–173). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing intergroup bias: The common ingroup identity model. Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Gamson, W. A. (1992). The social psychology of collective action. In A. D. Morris & C. M. Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 53–76). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gestring, N., Janßen, A., & Polat, A. (2006). Prozesse der Integration und Ausgrenzung: Türkische Migranten der zweiten Generation [Processes of integration and exclusion: Turkish migrants of the second generation]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Goldberg, A., Halm, D., & S¸en, F. (2004). Die deutschen Türken [The German Turks]. Münster: LIT Verlag.
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González, R., & Brown, R. (2006). Dual identities in intergroup contact: Group status and size moderate the generalization of positive attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 753–767. Goodin, R. E., & Klingemann, H.-D. (1996). Political science: The discipline. In R. E. Goodin & H.-D. Klingemann (Eds.), A new handbook of political science (pp. 3–49). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haug, S., Baraulina, T., & von Gostomski, C. B. (2008). Kriminalität von Aussiedlern: Eine Bestandsaufnahme [Criminality of out-settlers: A review]. Working Paper 12 der Forschungsgruppe des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge. Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice and loyalty: Response to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hornsey, M. J., & Hogg, M. A. (2000). Subgroup relations: A comparison of mutual intergroup differentiation and common ingroup identity models of prejudice reduction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 242–256. Kelly, C. (1993). Group identification, intergroup perceptions and collective action. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 59–83). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Kelly, C., & Breinlinger, S. (1995). Identity and injustice: Exploring women’s participation in collective action. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 5, 41–57. Kelly, C., & Breinlinger, S. (1996). The social psychology of collective action: Identity, injustice and gender. London: Taylor & Francis. Klandermans, B. (1997). The social psychology of protest. Oxford: Blackwell. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (1999). Challenging the liberal nation-state? Postnationalism, multiculturalism, and the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany. American Journal of Sociology, 105, 652–696. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (2000). Migration and ethnic relations as a field of political contention: An opportunity structure approach. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), Challenging immigration and ethnic relations politics: Comparative European perspectives (pp. 13–56). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kriesi, H., Koopmans, R., Duyvendak, J. W., & Giugni, M. G. (1995). New social movements in Western Europe: A comparative analysis. London: UCL Press. Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lalonde, R. N., & Silverman, R. A. (1994). Behavioral preferences in response to social injustice: The effects of permeability and social identity salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 78–85. Mummendey, A., & Wenzel, M. (1999). Social discrimination and tolerance in intergroup relations: Reactions to intergroup difference. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 158–174. Özcan, V. (2004). Germany: Immigration in transition. Migration Information Source. Retrieved from http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display. cfm?ID=235. Pettigrew, T. F. (1996). How to think like a social scientist. New York: HarperCollins.
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156 Bernd Simon Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Roth, R., & Rucht, D. (2008). Die Sozialen Bewegungen in Deutschland seit 1945 [The social movements in Germany since 1945]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Rucht, D. (1995). Kollektive Identität: Konzeptuelle Überlegungen zu einem Desiderat der Bewegungsforschung [Conceptual considerations regarding a lacuna in movement research]. Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 8, 9–23. Rucht, D., & Heitmeyer, W. (2008). Mobilisierung von und für Migranten [Mobilization of and for migrants]. In R. Roth & D. Rucht (Eds.), Die sozialen Bewegungen in Deutschland seit 1945 (pp. 573–592). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Simon, B. (2004). Identity in modern society. Oxford: Blackwell. Simon, B. (2008). Einstellungen zur Homosexualität: Ausprägungen und psychologische Korrelate bei Jugendlichen mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund (ehemalige UdSSR und Türkei) [Attitudes toward homosexuality: Levels and psychological correlates among adolescents with and without migration background (former USSR and Turkey)]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 40, 87–99. Simon, B., & Grabow, O. (in press). The politicization of migrants: Further evidence that politicized collective identity is a dual identity. Political Psychology. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity. A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56, 319–331. Simon, B., Loewy, M., Stürmer, S., Weber, U., Freytag, P., Habig, C., Kampmeier, C., & Spahlinger, P. (1998). Collective identification and social movement participation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 646–658. Simon, B., & Oakes, P. (2006). Beyond dependence: An identity approach to social power and domination. Human Relations, 59, 105–139. Simon, B., & Ruhs, D. (2008). Identity and politicization among Turkish migrants in Germany: The role of dual identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1354–1366. Stürmer, S., & Simon, B. (2004a). Collective action: Towards a dual-pathway model. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 15, pp. 59–99). Hove: Psychology Press. Stürmer, S., & Simon, B. (2004b). The role of collective identification in social movement participation: A panel study in the context of the German gay movement. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 263–277. Tajfel, H. (1978). The achievement of group differentiation. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 77–98). London: Academic Press. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories: Studies in social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Tarrow, S. (1995). Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and mass politics in the modern state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Thränhardt, D. (2004). Immigrant cultures, state policies and social capital formation in Germany. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 6, 159–183. Toch, H. (1965). The social psychology of social movements. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Tyler, T. R. (2001). Social justice. In R. Brown & S. Gaertner (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Intergroup processes (pp. 344–366). Oxford: Blackwell. Veenstra, K., & Haslam, S. A. (2000). Willingness to participate in industrial protest: Exploring social identification in context. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 153–172. Weber, M. (1919). Politik als Beruf [Politics as profession]. In H. Baier, M. R. Lepsius, W. J. Mommsen, W. Schluchter, & J. Winckelmann (Eds.), Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (pp. 113–252). Tübingen: Mohr. Wenzel, M. (2004). A social categorization approach to distributive justice. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 15, pp. 219–257). Hove: Psychology Press. Woellert, F., Kröhnert, S., Sippel, L., & Klingholz, R. (2009). Ungenutzte Potenziale: Zur Lage der Integration in Deutschland [Unutilized potentials: On the situation of integration in Germany]. Berlin: Berlin-Institut für Bevölkerung und Entwicklung. Wright, S. C. (2001). Restricted intergroup boundaries: Tokenism, ambiguity and the tolerance of injustice. In J. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The psychology of legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Collective Identity, Political Participation, and the Making of the Social Self Stephen Reicher and John Drury The Impact of Collective Participation In this chapter, we address the relationship between collective action and politicized identities. This question of the impacts of collective action on identities can be broken down into two component parts. First, how does collective participation affect the strength and depth of identification? Second, how does participation affect the content and meaning of identification? These are both questions of fundamental importance, not only for social psychology but also for the social sciences in general – although in different disciplines they may be couched in somewhat different terms. So let us start by explaining the nature of our questions before going on to suggest some answers. The first question is, perhaps, the area where the other social sciences have most reason to look to social psychology and yet the most reason to be disappointed in what they find. Political scientists, economists, and sociologists can perform detailed analysis of structural and ideological contexts, and can plot the constraints upon people and the opportunities open to them. And yet still, despite all that, people often behave in unexpected ways. They cling to archaic and redundant social forms; they reject seeming friends as enemies; and embrace their oppressors as friends. There seems to be a distinctively psychological inertia in the system that requires explanation. We need to understand why people invest so much in the groups to which they belong and why they respond so passionately to the fate of the group. While there has been a recent reawakening of interest in collective emotion amongst psychologists (e.g., Mackie & Smith, 2004; Parkinson, Fischer, & Manstead, 2005), this has mostly been limited to showing how we appraise and respond to events in terms of what they mean for our groups. This work does not generally explain why groups are so
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important to us in the first place. Only by addressing this issue, by understanding the roots of collective investment and collective passion, can we begin to explain when people will retain their group memberships and why people can sometimes do extreme things in the name of the group. The second question has, again, been taken rather more seriously outside psychology than inside – despite the fact that it addresses a psychological issue. Indeed, in some cases, the idea that collective participation shapes the nature of our social identities has gone from being taken seriously to being taken for granted. For instance, many anthropologists study ritualized collective practices on the grounds that these serve as seed-beds for the everyday social identities that structure our social relations in society (see Cassidy et al., 2007; Prayag Magh Mela Research Group, 2007). The assumption is sufficiently entrenched that no effort is made to ascertain whether participation actually does have an impact on the way we identify ourselves, let alone how this might occur. Ozouf (1988), for instance, shows convincingly how the revolutionaries of 1789 sought to create new citizens by reshaping the festivals that punctuated French life. No longer were these events ordered in a strict hierarchy of social status. Rather, people intermingled across the old divides, and, if ordered at all, it was in terms of permeable categories such as age. But did this actually affect how people thought of themselves, their place in society, and their relation to others? This is where one might expect social psychologists to ride to the rescue. But we have been so focused on identity as social cognition that we have ignored identity as social practice and rarely examined the occasions on which people enact their identities – still less the consequences of such enactment. It is symptomatic of this that you will search in vain for the word “ritual” in the indexes of social psychology textbooks. But even in the brief sections on crowds and collective behavior – or the much longer sections on “groups” – you will find little on how we create ourselves as social subjects through what we do together. In the following sections we will investigate these twin questions – what we feel about our groups and how they make us think about ourselves – through the study of crowd behavior. Our rationale for so doing is that crowds provide a particularly clear and direct glimpse into the dynamics of human sociality. That, of course, is far from self-evident. For many, crowds are sites where our socialization breaks down and therefore they are the very last places to look for an understanding of sociality. More specifically, crowds are said to take emotion and passion to excess and therefore cannot tell us about emotion, investment, and attachment in everyday life. Equally, they reduce reason and thought to a minimum and therefore cannot tell us how people form their thinking about who they are, the nature of their society, and their social relationships.
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160 Stephen Reicher and John Drury These views, we argue, are simply wrong. Worse, they prevent us from appreciating the explanatory potential of crowd studies. Before embarking on our positive project, then, we therefore have a bit of ground clearing to do.
Classic (Mis)understandings of Crowd Behavior It is possible to encapsulate the ideas of classic crowd psychology in the work of one man and one book – Gustave Le Bon’s (1895/1947) The Crowd – not least because part of Le Bon’s success lay in the way that he synthesized, popularized, or even plagiarized, the work of his predecessors (Nye, 1975). Le Bon’s influence has been keenly felt for over a century. His concepts were the inspiration for the dominant framework in crowd psychology throughout the 1970s and 1980s, deindividuation theory (see Postmes & Spears, 1998);1 his assumptions continue to be part of the mainstay of police public order training (Reicher et al., 2007); and in other areas of the humanities and social sciences, there are periodic calls for the rehabilitation of Le Bonian notions of the irrational “crowd mind” (Laclau, 2005; Waddington, 2008). In short, whether to endorse his views or to put distance from them, modern accounts of the crowd continue to measure themselves against Le Bon. Le Bon’s view is that crowd psychology involves one fundamental negative transformation. When people become an anonymous part of the mass, they lose their individual sense of self. Because of this they lose access to the norms and values that normally constrain their behavior. They become incapable of evaluating the various influences that impinge upon them and so they helplessly follow any passing idea or emotion. This state of suggestibility is akin to a hypnotic state. Such suggestions may come from many places, but in particular they derive from the “racial unconscious” – an atavistic residue that lurks beneath our civilized surface. It is because the racial unconscious is primitive, passionate, and violent that crowd behavior is necessarily marked by these characteristics. The overriding theme, then, is one of loss and absence. In crowds, people have lost identity, they have lost control, their civilized nature has been stripped away. Yet all these substantive claims about absences in the crowd can be seen to derive from a foundational absence in Le Bon’s own analysis of the crowd. Indeed, perhaps the most striking thing about Le Bon’s whole account is more what is not there than what is. Le Bon was writing about 1
Developments in psychology after Le Bon largely mirrored his (negative) assumptions on what needed to be explained in crowd behavior. It wasn’t until the 1960s that social scientists made attempts to “rationalize” collective behavior. See Reicher (2001) for a comprehensive review.
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the class struggles of late nineteenth-century France. The events that concerned him were those such as the great miners’ strike at Decazeville in 1886 (Barrows, 1981). These were intergroup struggles between workers, owners, and the state. They involved confrontations between company officials, police, and (occasionally) militia. However, none of this appears in the pages of Le Bon’s crowd theory. The crowd appears alone, as if it were fighting nothing, just fighting because its nature is to fight. The patterns of anger one finds in the crowd make no sense at all since one cannot see how they relate to the actions of the other – repressive laws, wage cuts, police charges. Pattern thereby turns into spasm. The crowd is transformed from a social actor into a psychopathic jack-in-the-box – one which suddenly leaps forth, goes through its inevitably violent gyrations, and equally suddenly disappears. By removing the state and its agents from view (and hence from scrutiny), classic crowd theory represents action intended to change an unjust society as both antisocial and asocial action. It represents action that violates dominant limits on civility as action that is purely irrational and unconstrained. It represents the behaviors of those who act in terms of a politicized subjectposition (as miners, as workers, as citizens) as the behaviors of those who have lost all subjectivity. This has implications both politically and theoretically. Politically, it serves to pathologize mass opposition. Theoretically, the disappearing social context leads to a desocialized description of crowd action underpinned by a desocialized conception of the psychological subject. The only basis of controlled action is the isolated individual with an individual identity. In order to unravel these various claims, let us work backwards – starting with the claim that crowd behavior is fundamentally asocial and chaotic. To sustain such a claim, one might well look to food riots. These might appear to be the most simple and visceral of events. People are hungry. They get together. They lose their normal restraint. They break into food stores, seize what food is available, and flee. But if one looks at the historical evidence, a very different picture emerges. E. P. Thompson (1971) analyzed the some 700 food riots that occurred in England between 1750 and 1820. He shows, first, that they did not happen at times of greatest dearth but characteristically when grain supplies were increasing. Second, they were generally initiated by specific, not random, events, notably the transport of grain out of the locality. Third, the “riots” were far from inchoate: grain was seized, sold at a “popular” price, and the money and often the grain sacks were returned to the merchants. The riots were based on the clash between a traditional view of rights and obligations based on the locality, where there was a requirement to meet local needs when resources were available (the “moral economy”), versus developing market forces, where goods are taken to wherever they can command the best price. These two conceptions came
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162 Stephen Reicher and John Drury into conflict at the moment where grain was transported. Hence, both the onset and the unfolding sequence of crowd actions were governed by longstanding shared social beliefs, not asocial drives. The same point might be made about numerous other “disorderly” collective events studied by historians (e.g., Davis, 1978; Hobsbawn & Rudé, 1969). In each case, far from being unrestrained and chaotic, crowd behavior is limited and socially meaningful. Our challenge, then, is to explain how people can act together in ways that are patterned and culturally meaningful, even in the absence of any formal leadership or organization. That is, we need to account for the spontaneous sociality of crowd action. This spontaneous sociality is precisely what makes crowds such a promising site for investigating the formation of the social subject. It also points to the inadequacy of desocialized theoretical approaches. We need a new crowd psychology to deal with these new intellectual challenges.
Social Identity and Collective Investment in Crowds Thus far, we have referred to “crowds” without defining the term. The classic crowd psychologists never explicitly confront this question. But, implicitly at least, Le Bon and his contemporaries seem to intend something physical. Entry into a crowd means becoming a small, anonymous element submerged in a greater whole. Hence the physical and psychological aspects of the mass are conflated. A crowd is a gathering of people that is big enough for people to become submerged – even if “big enough” is hard to pin down to an exact number. This conflation is problematic. A physical gathering is not the same as a psychological crowd – by which we mean a set of people who think of themselves as belonging to the same social group, e.g., “we are all Catholics, we are all socialists, we are all Manchester United fans” or whatever. A gathering may contain no psychological crowds, it may constitute a single psychological crowd or even several psychological crowds (if, say, fans of different football teams were together). Sometimes, events transform a gathering into a psychological crowd. And when people do become members of such a crowd, there are three types of psychological transformation that occur. (1) A cognitive transformation. The key transformation that takes place when people become crowd members is the shift from thinking of themselves in terms of personal identity to social identity. This distinction is central to the social identity tradition which, over the last quarter century, has become the dominant approach to group phenomena in social psychology (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). According to this view, the self is not unitary; it is a complex system defined at different levels of abstraction; and at different times, in different places, different elements of the system may be salient. Sometimes we define ourselves in terms of what makes us unique
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compared to other individuals (“I” vs. “you”). This is personal identity. At other times we define ourselves in terms of what makes a group membership unique compared to other group memberships (“we” vs. “they”). This is social identity. Moreover, we all have various social identities (the same person may be a woman, a Catholic, a socialist, Scottish, and so on). Just as crowd membership entails a shift in identity rather than a loss of identity, so it also leads to a shift in the bases of behavioral control rather than a loss of behavioral control. Insofar as people define themselves on the collective level, the things that matter to them are likewise defined on the group level in at least two senses. On the one hand, the well-being of the group becomes their well-being. Accordingly, events are evaluated and responded to in terms of what they mean for the group. A good for the group is a good for the (collective) self and embraced as such, just as harm to the group is harm to the self and rejected as such. On the other hand, the definition of good and bad is a function of collective values, norms, and priorities. These determine the goals we pursue and the outcomes we seek to avoid. One implication of this is that for different crowds – and even the same person in different crowd contexts – different things matter. In short, in the crowd, the “self” of “self-interest” changes. People become neither more nor less rational. Indeed, rationality is not the issue. Rather, what is at issue concerns the grounds of interested action. These shift to the collective level. As a consequence, behavior becomes more socially meaningful because it reflects a social meaning system – social identity. This explains the patterning that we have noted in historical studies of crowds. Our own studies of contemporary crowds – urban uprisings (Reicher, 1984), student demonstrations (Reicher, 1996), football crowds (Stott & Reicher, 1998), environmental protests (Drury & Reicher, 2000) – allow us to go a step further. Certainly each crowd has a different social identity with a set of understandings and meanings. Certainly each crowd behaves differently with different limits to what it will do. But equally certainly, there is a consistent relationship between these two across the range of crowd events. (2) A relational transformation. When people form a psychological crowd – when they redefine themselves such that common category members stop being “other” and become part of one’s collective self – then there is a fundamental shift in social relations. There are two aspects to this: social validation and social solidarity. First, then, those who share a common identity expect to agree with each other, they seek agreement with each other, they trust and respect each other (for a review of this evidence, see Reicher & Haslam, 2010). They share a common perspective on the world and see their experience as shared by others. In a word, their views are validated by others.
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164 Stephen Reicher and John Drury The shift in social solidarity is illustrated by our study of crowd behavior among those affected by the London Underground bombings of July 7, 2005 (Drury, Cocking, & Reicher, 2009). As our interviewees observed, the daily experience of social relations on the London Underground is one of mutual individual competition for space. When the bombs exploded, however, people came together both psychologically and behaviorally. Their common fate led them to see themselves as one. It led them to help and comfort others even where this put them in personal danger. Processes of mutual support operate particularly strongly in situations where the crowd confronts another group. No only do crowd members routinely help each other in a thousand small acts of civility – not pushing and shoving, sharing food and drink, giving precedence to those who need it – they may also put themselves at considerable risk in defending fellow crowd members (often strangers) against outside attack (Reicher, 1996; Stott & Drury, 2000). Putting these points about validation and solidarity together, the transformation of social relations in the crowd creates the conditions for effective coordinated action. Both metaphorically and literally, people align themselves and aim their efforts in the same direction. Their actions begin to complement and supplement each other rather than work against each other and cancel each other out. Rather than feeling isolated under the surveillance of the police and other authorities, they feel united in relation to these authorities. Instead of all having an individualized experience of one-on-one with authority, they have a collective experience of fifty- or a hundred- or a thousand-on-one. (3) An affective transformation. Le Bon was clearly right to argue that crowds are passionate affairs. People express strong emotions in crowds, whether of joy, of anger, or of hate. We disagree, however, with the implication that this heightened emotion is a sign of diminished reason, loss of identity, and loss of control. Our argument is that the cognitive and relational transformations help explain the nature of the affective transformation that occurs for participants in crowd events. First, social identity (cognitive transformation) provides crowd members with a perspective on how the world is and how the world should be. Second, the relational transformation producing a sense of shared social identity provides (1) a validation of this perspective and (2) the solidarity (and hence the social power) to implement this perspective. Each of these outcomes is crucial, so let us dwell on them a little longer in order to understand how and why they might make people passionate about their groups. To understand the importance of validation in emotional investment in groups and crowds, it is important to understand that both the human advantage and the human predicament flow from the fact that we stand in
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a mediated relationship with social reality. That is, we interpret the meaning of events by reference to our models of reality and we consider the implications of different courses of action upon social reality. The great advantage of being thus “disembedded” from the present is that humans can plan how to create their future. We are able to create a social world that fits us rather than having to fit to the world as it is. Yet this mediated relationship to reality is also our predicament. It means that the way we see the world is open to challenge by others. Our views, if expressed, may meet with the disagreement, the disapproval, or even the ridicule of our peers. But in the crowd this contingency is replaced by certainty. As crowd members, we can shout slogans, show rage or express joy, confident that others will understand us and join in with us. Critically, then, our understanding of the social world and our position in it is confirmed. For a while, at least, our social being is beyond doubt. Add to this solidarity, and people do not just have a clear perspective on the world, they are now able to implement that perspective. Through mutual support, they are able, collectively, to make their own social worlds. So, far from people losing selfhood and hence agency in the crowd, the crowd is one of the few occasions where people gain agency. Validation and solidarity: social being and agency. It is the connection between these two pairs of factors that makes crowds such passionate affairs and that makes people feel so attached to the groups that these crowds represent.2 In a phrase, we invest in crowds because (and to the extent that) they can constitute us as social actors. The belief that one is involved in affecting the course of history, and indeed the experience of actually creating a social reality that embodies core in-group values and beliefs over and against the power of otherwise dominant groups, is exhilarating. We term this “collective self-objectification,” and we have shown how it is associated not only with immediate joy, but also with more enduring well-being (Drury, Cocking, Beale, Hanson, & Rapley, 2005; Drury & Reicher, 2005). All in all, then, the emotionality of crowds derives from rather than negates the socially meaningful nature of crowd action. Emotion and reason are not locked into a zero-sum game. Rather, the more meaningful the action and the more cohesive the crowd, the more powerful the emotions, whether they be joy at implementing the collective vision or anger at those who thwart such implementation (Sindic & Reicher, 2009). But there is another dimension to this. We act in contexts where our perceptions of what we do might not correspond with those of other relevant (and powerful) out-groups (such as the police). If it is true crowds allow us to act purposefully, meaningfully, and effectively in 2
These are key factors, but perhaps not the only factors involved. See Prayag Magh Mela Research Group (2007).
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166 Stephen Reicher and John Drury the world, then there may be (unforeseen) consequences for our perceptions of our place in the social world once we have acted. It is time to address this, the second of our two core questions, more explicitly: i.e., how does participation in crowd events affect the content and meaning of participants’ identities?
Intergroup Dynamics and the Locus of Identification in Crowds In the previous section we analyzed how crowd actions and emotions derive from processes of social identification. Now, in this section, we examine how the categories with which people identify derive from, and are changed as a result of, the intergroup interactions that occur during crowd events. There are three dimensions to this analysis, which we refer to as the elaborated social identity model (ESIM; e.g., Reicher, 1996). The first is a description of the dynamics that produce new identities. The second is a reformulation of core concepts in order to conceptualize identity change. The third is an account of the various types of change that can occur through crowd participation – changes that can have an enduring impact on the political perspective, involvement, and alliances of crowd members. We shall briefly outline the first two before dwelling at greater length on the third since it is more immediately relevant to the overall theme of this chapter.
Dynamics Across a number of studies, we have found a characteristic pattern of interaction that produces change. On the one hand, crowd members – or, rather, certain sections of the crowd – attend an event as liberal subjects who see the state (including the police) as neutral and whose aim is simply to voice their views to those in authority. On the other hand, the authorities (including the police on the ground) often view all crowd members as, at least potentially, conflictual. In addition, the police have the power to treat them as such – for instance, stopping crowd members from going where they want and doing what they want. Having been positioned and treated as oppositional, these crowd members begin to see the police as the opposition. They also see the police as an illegitimate opposition who have denied them their legitimate rights. Moreover, where initially there may have been diversity in the crowd between more or less radical elements, now all crowd members share a common oppositional positioning and hence unite around a common oppositional identity. This unity allows them to challenge the police, thus confirming the police perceptions of the crowd. Hence there is an escalating process of radicalization.
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It is important to stress that we are not arguing that change happens in every crowd, that it happens to everyone in the crowd, or that it always is in the direction of radicalization. Rather, change depends upon (1) an asymmetry between the self-categorizations of crowd members and the heterocategorizations that police officers (or other out-groups) have of crowd members; (2) the power of the out-group to enact their understandings of the crowd (i.e., to reposition crowd members); and (3) the power of the united crowd to challenge the (police) out-group. These conditions are actually rather infrequent. What is more, change should only occur for those in the crowd who did not, initially, see the police as the out-group and themselves as oppositional. Finally, where people already see the outgroup and themselves as oppositional, one would expect a process of de-radicalization where the police seek to facilitate rather than frustrate crowd members’ aims and intentions (Stott, Adang, Livingstone, & Schreiber, 2007).
Concepts So much for the description of the dynamics that lead to identity change. Let us now consider what this tells us about the nature of identity. Conventionally, social identity is treated as a set of adjectival characteristics (traits) associated with a given group membership. So, for instance “British” might be seen to mean being “freedom loving,” “traditional,” “modest,” and so on. Yet, to say one is British means so much more than this. First, it is to assert that we live in a world where national categories are most significant. Second, it is to claim a particular place within that world of nations. Third, it is to have a sense of what options are open to one given that place. Fourth, it is to have a moral sense of what sort of things ought to happen. In sum, social identity is a representation of one’s position in a set of categorical social relations along with the possible and proper actions that flow from that position. It follows from this that identities will change through crowd action if and when acting in terms of a given understanding of one’s social position/ social relations leads to one being placed in a different social position and set of social relations. That can occur, as should now be clear, because the action of one party may be perceived by the other party in ways that are at odds with one’s own intentions – thus leading to unintended consequences and unanticipated social relations.
Types of change To understand identity, then, we must take a historical and interactive approach – analyzing how the relations between groups develop over time. But equally, in understanding the nature of social identity, we are able to see
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168 Stephen Reicher and John Drury how four interlinked types of change flow from the process of repositioning. These are (1) the definition or content of one’s own identity; (2) the way one conceptualizes ones relationship to others – that is, who is included and excluded from the collective self; (3) the sense of group power in relation to specific others; and (4) the definition of legitimate group aims and criteria for success. We will illustrate these changes through our longitudinal study of an environmental campaign: the direct action protests against the building of the M11 link road through East London. The M11 link road was a key element of the then UK roads-building program. The plan was for a 3.5-mile-long stretch of dual carriageway to be built through the London districts of Wanstead, Leytonstone, and Leyton. At first, those who opposed the construction when it began in Wanstead in September 1993 were mainly people who had come from outside the area. They tried to climb on diggers and into trees. They were confronted by security guards who attempted to remove them. Occasionally, the police were involved and campaigners were arrested for minor public order offenses. A turning point came in early November. The contractors moved onto Wanstead’s George Green and cordoned off a section, including a symbolically important chestnut tree, with 8-feet-high fencing. A few days later, a large crowd overwhelmed the police and security guards. In a spirit of collective jubilation, they broke down all the fence panels one by one, with police and security looking on helplessly. A number of them climbed into the tree and occupied the land. However, on December 7 the police returned in large numbers. Despite the presence of some 200 protesters, the police evicted people from the land and the tree in a conflictual day-long operation. The contractors then resumed work on the George Green site. A series of direct actions was mounted against the construction of the road all through the following year. The contractors, security guards, and police confronted them until protesters had been evicted from every tree and every house on the route of the proposed road. The campaign against the M11 was significant for recent social movements in the UK and beyond. It evolved into the Reclaim the Streets movement, which in turn was the basis for the main anti-globalization mobilizations in the UK. The four types of identity change specified in the ESIM help us conceptualize the psychology entailed in these social movement-level transitions. In terms of identity content, prior to the events on the Green, people from Wanstead had been involved in the campaign, but they did not see themselves as “protesters”. Indeed, they distanced themselves from the campaigners, who they defined as “outsiders.” By contrast, they tended to define themselves as local individuals with certain universal rights and responsibilities. In this ideology of “citizenship,” the police’s role is to uphold individual rights. The police were therefore expected to enforce the law such that individuals would only be held responsible if they personally
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acted illegally. But George Green had long been a significant recreational space for local inhabitants. To fence off parts of the Green was therefore seen by many as an attack on the community. For the police to defend the fence therefore began to produce a shift in the perception of the police position from neutrality to “siding with the enemy.” To keep people away from the chestnut tree, even when they only wanted to express symbolic opposition to the construction project, consolidated that shift. We will return to the impact of such actions in due course. The most decisive change came with the eviction of December 7. There was a widespread perception that, on the day, the police acted toward crowd participants as members of a homogeneous illegitimate group rather than as individuals. They intervened indiscriminately, roughly forcing everyone away from the chestnut tree, even though most locals were willing to move had they been asked. This treatment served to delegitimize the police for these local participants. They now found themselves in an antagonistic relationship with the forces of the state and, from this position, they now defined themselves collectively as “political” and indeed as “radical.” In short, they had a transformational experience involving the revelation of a new-found self. Significantly, those who already saw themselves as oppositional campaigners were not surprised by the police action and had no experience of transformation. (For more details, see Drury & Reicher, 2000.) For many participants the experience of that day also transformed the campaign from being about “Wanstead” in particular to being about the environment in general and, even more broadly, to involving wider issues of justice. This meant that they broadened their sense of who they were campaigning with – who was counted as “in-group” or “one of us.” This second type of identity change is explored in more detail next. As we have indicated, prior to December 7, “locals” differentiated themselves from “protesters” and this was reflected in a division of labor. The former stood at the periphery, the latter sat directly in or under the tree. But having been lumped together by the police, participants began to categorize themselves together. They were all in danger from police intervention. This was reflected in a breakdown of the division. Those on the periphery and those under the tree joined together in a sit-down occupation of the space. There were reports of greater solidarity, with all participants, irrespective of their origins, supporting each other against the police. More enduringly, it was reflected in a tendency for participants to use the word “us” to denote all those involved in resisting “them” – the police. But that “us” was not necessarily limited to the M11 campaign. Some participants compared their situation to that of the miners during the 1984–1985 strike, to the mass eviction of environmentalists from Twyford Down, even to Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square – all references that were absent in the data prior to the George Green eviction.
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170 Stephen Reicher and John Drury In all these cases, participants were drawing on iconic instances of alleged police and state brutality (see Green, 1990, for example) to define their own situation and the nature of their allies. Moreover, it is because the social relations had become more abstracted, and now included not only people in the locality but also all those across time and space who were in an oppositional relation to authority, that the in-group became perceived as larger and more inclusive. (For more details of this analysis, see Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2003.) The third change follows directly on from this. A widening of in-group boundaries amongst M11 protesters had consequences for their sense of group power in relation to the contractors, their guards, and the police. This was first demonstrated as a sense of common identity between “outsider” protesters and locals first began to emerge around the fencing of George Green in November. The fence (and those that defended it) embodied the power of the authorities to impose their will upon the population. It stopped people from exercising their right to free movement in a space that was critical to the community. It also allowed the contractors to carry out their work of destroying the communal space and making it into a road. When people gathered early on for a rally and symbolic “tree dressing ceremony” (intended simply to demonstrate the meaning of the tree to Wanstead), no one – whether “local” or “protester” – was allowed anywhere near. In participants’ own terms, “everybody” was excluded. Crowd members thereby coalesced around a common sense of grievance. Whereas previously they were splintered into small groups, each of which (on its own) was relatively small compared to the numbers of police and guards, now they formed a single large group compared to which the numbers of police and guards were relatively small. Not only that, but (as we argued in addressing the issue of “investment”) common categorization led to the expectation of mutual action and mutual support. Others could be counted upon to assist in reaching mutually valued goals – and the defense of the tree was clearly the key goal. Each participant therefore felt they would be backed up if they acted to invade the site and demolish the fences. They would not be condemned and they would not be abandoned if out-group members (security or police) targeted them. So now, participants had both the will and the means to challenge the forces that confronted them. When a minority initiated an incursion into the site, others followed, and soon the police and security guards were overwhelmed. Taking advantage, the crowd broke open the gates, and invaded and occupied the site, as we have seen. (See Drury & Reicher, 2005, for more details of this analysis.) Of course, even with unity and solidarity, crowd members will not always be in a position to overcome the out-group. The police were later able to evict protesters from the Green by sheer force of numbers, even as they increased
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the common categorization amongst them. This made people feel angry and defeated in the short term. But not in the long term. For the shift in perceived social relations led to a fourth transformation that affected the ways in which people defined success or failure and hence whether they had managed to reach their intended goals. That is, changed social relations meant a changed social world. What was previously taken for granted as simply a means to achieving change (i.e., voicing one’s opposition to the policies of the powerful) was now seen as an achievement in itself. What is more, to stand up against the police and to reveal their “heavy-handed” nature was seen as a necessary accomplishment in the process of mobilizing people for change. So, if George Green was immediately experienced as a disempowering defeat, two months later, hundreds of campaign participants again mobilized around another eviction, this time of a group of houses on the route of the road, dubbed “Wanstonia.” This time they expected forceful police action and they expected eviction. So when they were duly evicted, they were not despondent. The number of bailiffs and police involved in the Wanstonia eviction was double that for George Green. Images of police officers clad in riot gear and of bailiffs dragging unarmed protesters from rooftops were spread across all the national newspapers the following day, exposing them to the wider world as “heavy-handed” and “undemocratic.” The Wanstonia eviction was celebrated as an event that had gone to plan. It increased rather than decreased morale and commitment to the cause. For now, in this new oppositional world, opposing the police was no longer an “occupational hazard” but a central focus. (Further details of this analysis are provided in Drury, 1996.)
Conclusion Whereas previous psychologies have depoliticized crowd behavior through rendering it meaningless and irrational, our own explanatory framework shows how even the most emotional and the most violent crowd action can be understood as meaningful socio-political participation. And where previous crowd psychologies have suggested that crowd behavior is so aberrant and monstrous that it requires a different set of concepts from other areas of psychology, we would argue precisely the opposite. This is not to say that the psychology of crowds does not differ from everyday life. Indeed, there are at least three differences that are either explicit or implicit in our arguments. First, the relative power of the crowd is such that people are often fully able to express aspects of their social identities that are usually concealed in everyday life for fear of sanctions (see Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). Second, intergroup relations in crowds are direct. The state is not a symbolic presence located in the structure of institutions
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172 Stephen Reicher and John Drury and regulations where it is often hard to see the agency of others with whom one is ultimately in interaction; rather, one directly confronts the army or the police. It is easy for participants to draw lessons about their position in society from these encounters. Third, whereas everyday life is often habitual and lived in well-established settings where people have shared understandings and expectations, both of themselves and of each other, crowd events more frequently present us with unexpected and novel realities where our self-understandings and those of other groups can be at odds, where our social positions are changed rather than confirmed, and where the nature of identity processes is laid bare in the process of change. Altogether, the difference between crowds and everyday life lies less in differences of the constructs involved – passion and investment, social identification, intergroup relations, social context – than in the transparency of the processes through which these constructs are brought into being. Rather than occluding an understanding of social identities and social movement participation, we hope, if nothing else, to have shown that crowd events are in fact a privileged arena for researching such questions. As for the more substantive question of what we learn about identities and participation from crowd studies, in conclusion we have three points to make. The first point is to reinforce the message that identity is as much a product as a precursor of collective participation. What is more, the impact of collective events on social identities may go well beyond those who were actually involved. Crowds often represent much larger social categories; they are “imagined communities” made manifest (Anderson, 1983). So what happens, say, to Black people at London’s Notting Hill Carnival tells Black people in general where they stand in relation to the police and to British society more generally. Generality is an issue of time as well as space. Out-group actions that are not only perceived as illegitimate and indiscriminate against the in-group, but are also ongoing and long term, are likely to have long-term consequences for the way in-groups define themselves and their relations to the out-group (Jasinskaja-Lahti, Liebkind, & Solheim, 2009). What is more, crowd events are more likely to be transmitted through the media3 than individual encounters – especially in cases of friction. Hence the message is both available to and diagnostic for the category as a whole. The second concluding point is that identities relate to social reality, but in a dynamic manner. They do not just reflect our position in society; they are also a statement about (and commitments toward) the way society 3
We have not had space to discuss it explicitly here, but the role of the media as a “third party” is clearly important in modern collective mobilizations – witness the use of the media portrayal of the police as part of their strategy of public support by the Wanstonia occupiers, above. This issue of social movements, their opponents, and the media and its audience (the general public) as a third party, and the dynamic relations between them, is elaborated in Simon and Klandermans (2001).
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should be. In this sense, identities are always moral statements and moral projects. This combination of agency and morality goes a long way to explaining the issues of investment and passion in groups. We invest in groups to the extent that they allow us to be world makers. We feel righteousness when we make the worlds that reflect our identities. We feel outrage when thwarted. The third and final point is that identities are both a representation of intergroup relations and develop as a function of evolving social relations. As we have stressed, mostly there is a symmetry between the views of self and other that allows social life to run smoothly and identities to be confirmed. Such continuity makes it easier to essentialize identities and ignore the ongoing dynamics that are continuously needed to reproduce them. But identities are always potentially fragile. Once asymmetries begin to exist between the perceptions of different parties, given identities can become rapidly destabilized. This has important implications at both a theoretical and a methodological level. Our argument is that the analysis of social identities needs to be interactive and historical. Ignoring either dimension must inevitably result in a static analysis and a static view of identity. Identity in general, and political identities in particular – however solid they might seem at a given point in time – can always melt into air. We need concepts, models, and methods that can address this ever-present possibility. We find them in the crowd.
References Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. London: Verso. Barrows, S. (1981). Distorting mirrors: Visions of the crowd in late nineteenthcentury France. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cassidy, C., Hopkins, N., Levine, M., Pandey, J., Reicher, S. D., & Singh, P. (2007). Social identity and collective behaviour: Some lessons from Indian research at the Magh Mela at Prayag. Psychological Studies, 52, 286–292. Davis, N. (1978). The rites of violence: Religious riot in sixteenth-century France. Past and Present, 59, 51–91. Drury, J. (1996). Collective action and psychological change. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Exeter. Drury, J., Cocking, C., Beale, J., Hanson, C., & Rapley, F. (2005). The phenomenology of empowerment in collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 309–328. Drury, J., Cocking, C., & Reicher, S. (2009). The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the 2005 London bombings. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 27, 66–95. Drury, J., & Reicher, S. D. (2000). Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 579–604.
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174 Stephen Reicher and John Drury Drury, J., & Reicher, S. (2005). Explaining enduring empowerment: A comparative study of collective action and psychological outcomes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 35–58. Drury, J., Reicher, S. D., & Stott, C. (2003). Transforming the boundaries of collective identity: From the “local” anti-road campaign to “global” resistance? Social Movement Studies, 2, 191–212. Green, P. (1990). The enemy without: Policing and class consciousness in the miners’ strike. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Hobsbawm, E., & Rudé, G. (1969). Captain Swing. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Jasinskaja-Lahti, I., Liebkind, K., & Solheim, E. (2009). To identify or not to identify? National disidentification as an alternative reaction to perceived ethnic discrimination. Applied Psychology, 58, 105–128. Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason. London: Verso. Le Bon, G. (1895/1947). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. London: Ernest Benn. Mackie, D., & Smith, E. (2004). From prejudice to intergroup emotions. New York: Psychology Press. Nye, R. A. (1975). The origin of crowd psychology: Gustave Le Bon and the crisis of mass democracy in the Third Republic. London: Sage. Ozouf, M. (1988). Festivals and the French Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parkinson, B., Fischer, A. H., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2005). Emotion in social relations. Hove: Psychology Press. Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). De-individuation and anti-normative behaviour: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 238–259. Prayag Magh Mela Research Group. (2007). Living the Magh Mela at Prayag: Collective identity, collective experience and the impact of participation in a mass event. Psychological Studies, 52, 293–301. Reicher, S. D. (1984). The St. Pauls “riot”: An explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity model. European Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 1–21. Reicher, S. D. (1996). “The Battle of Westminster”: Developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 115–134. Reicher, S. D. (2001). The psychology of crowd dynamics. In M. A. Hogg & R. S. Tindale (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Group processes (pp. 182–208). Oxford: Blackwell. Reicher, S. D., & Haslam, S. A. (2010). Beyond help: A social psychology of collective solidarity and social cohesion. In S. Stürmer & M. Snyder (Eds.), The psychology of prosocial behavior: Group processes, intergroup relations, and helping (pp. 289–309). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Reicher, S. D., Spears, R., & Postmes, T. (1995). A social identity model of deindividuation phenomena. European Review of Social Psychology, 6, 161–198. Reicher, S. D., Stott, C., Drury, J., Adang, O., Cronin, P., & Livingstone, A. (2007). Knowledge-based public order policing: Principles and practice. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1, 403–415.
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Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56, 319–331. Sindic, D., & Reicher, S. D. (2009). “Our way of life is worth defending”: Testing a model of attitudes towards superordinate group membership through a study of Scots’ attitudes towards Britain. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 114–129. Stott, C., Adang, O., Livingstone, A., & Schreiber, M. (2007). Variability in the collective behaviour of England fans at Euro2004: “Hooliganism,” public order policing and social change. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 75–100. Stott, C., & Drury, J. (2000). Crowds, context and identity: Dynamic categorization processes in the “poll tax riot.” Human Relations, 53, 247–273. Stott, C., & Reicher, S. D. (1998). How conflict escalates: The inter-group dynamics of collective football crowd “violence.” Sociology, 32, 353–377. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. London: Academic Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Thompson, E. P. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past and Present, 50, 76–136. Waddington, D. (2008). The madness of the mob? Explaining the “irrationality” and destructiveness of crowd violence. Sociology Compass, 2, 675–687.
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Part III
Radicalization Bert Klandermans
Over the last few decades the world has witnessed many examples of radical politics. Extreme right groups and parties openly express and disseminate xenophobic ideas in Western European countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. In the United States, Christian fundamentalists, militias, and extreme right groups employ radical tactics. At the other end of the political spectrum, far left groups like the anti-globalization movement the Black Block, or radical environmentalists and animal rights groups, engage in radical actions. But undoubtedly, from a Western perspective all this is overshadowed by Muslim activism, be it the attacks on the World Trade Center, the trains in Madrid, and the subway in London or the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands. The issue of radicalization in our ever more diverse societies has recently become an important topic of research. This research departs from the notion that radicalization is actually one of the paths that individuals and groups have taken as a reaction to their threatened collective identities. Such radicalized reactions have been observed on both sides of the cultural divide. On the one hand, extreme right groups and parties have emerged in host societies, while at the same time among migrants, especially migrants of African and/or Islamic descent, a growing uneasiness with the situation became fertile soil for radical ideas and actions to develop. This polarization is explained by Moghaddam (see van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, Chapter 9 in this volume) in a more global theoretical perspective, which argues that radicalization emerges when contact between cultures results in the reduction of cultural diversity, as seems to be the case under the influence of globalization processes. Another perspective is taken by van Stekelenburg, Oegema, and Klandermans (Chapter 13 in this volume), who propose that radicalization is a dynamic process of polarization within each group that is facilitated by anonymous means of communication and the absence of effective social control of these means.
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178 Bert Klandermans In general, Part III conceptualizes radicalization as a collective process that evolves within the context of movement dynamics. People do not radicalize on their own but as part of a group in which a collective identity is developed. Some members of the group take an activist route to promote or prevent change. Their interactions with their opponents intensify, while their ideas and beliefs sharpen. Indeed, radicalization is conceived of as a dual process of identity transformation on the one side, and cognitive and affective change on the other. In a conceptual piece on the process of radicalization, Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans (Chapter 9) unfold these processes in addressing the questions of when and why people radicalize. Nobody is born radical; radical political action results from processes of radicalization. They define the process of radicalization and discuss what causes radicalization. The remaining four chapters elaborate the process of radicalization from different empirical angles. Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking in Chapter 10 describe how different citizenship regimes in five European societies (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden) influence identity strategies among young Muslims. In many European societies, the theme of being different continuously echoes in the lives of young postdiasporic Muslims (second and subsequent generations), displacing and deferring their sense of coherence about self. Involved in all these settings are the constant struggles and negotiations that young Muslims experience. The authors focus in particular on how religion discursively constructs and is constructed by young Muslims who experience a sense of alienation and marginalization with regard to the majority and how this always involves a gendered dimension. Of interest here is to see how different citizenship regimes have impacted on the extent to which young Muslims turn to radical Islam or search for more moderate alternatives. Chapter 11 by Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer explores in depth how such a turn to radical Islam evolves. The authors demonstrate how the presence of radical sentiments among Moroccan Dutch youth encouraged some organizations or loosely coupled networks to mobilize for radical action. The fate of the Belgian organization AEL (Arabic European League) illustrates the argument. In 2002, this organization attempted to set up a Dutch branch. Among Moroccan Dutch youth this raised the hope that their grievances would now be expressed and addressed. However, due to external political pressure and internal mismanagement, the AEL failed to meet these expectations. Some in the Hofstad network saw the AEL as a last resort; its fate was proof that the conventional route “just did not work.” It prompted them to take a radical route to social change. The authors describe the itinerary the network took in this process from politicization to radicalization. Kathleen Blee in Chapter 12 on white radical racist women in the United States contends that “radicalizing ideologies” and “radicalizing strategies
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and tactics” can develop in alternating order. The women she interviewed embarked on different paths at different points in their lives, varying in which came first, racial ideas or racial practices. In terms of Moghaddam’s staircase metaphor of the process of radicalization (see Chapter 9 by van Stekelenburg and Klandermans in this volume), people may enter at different “floors.” The “staircase to terrorism” metaphor posits a sequence from perceptions and feelings to shifts in morality, recruitment to terrorist organizations, and, finally, to terrorist acts. This may well describe the experiences of many extremists and terrorists, but Blee’s chapter illustrates that this is not a necessary order. Finally, Chapter 13 by Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans reveals how discussions on the Internet radicalize. The Internet facilitates radicalization as the possibility to react anonymously restricts the social control of antisocial behavior. The absence of social control mechanisms enhances extremity of expressions so that processes of radicalization can evolve without much restriction. Employing automated content analysis at online discussion forums makes it possible to track the interactions between individuals and the interactions between groups to an extent that has never been possible before. These online forums contain the complete interactions between large numbers of individuals over long period of times. The authors investigate the social psychological dynamics of group polarization by analyzing postings on a Moroccan and a Dutch forum during the period from October 1, 2003 to July 31, 2005 in which several devastating “real-life” events such as the murder of Theo van Gogh or the attacks in Madrid and London took place.
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9
Radicalization Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans
Under certain circumstances individuals and groups are prepared to undertake radical political action. In this chapter we address the questions of when and why people are inclined to take part in more radical political activities. We take it that nobody is born radical, but that radical political actions result from processes of radicalization. In the following pages, we will first define what the process of radicalization is like, and then discuss what the causes of radicalization are. Although radicalization can be observed among many different groups, we will concentrate in this section mostly on radicalizing Islamists.
What is Radicalization? Social psychological work on the radicalization of intergroup conflict rarely builds on empirical data, perhaps because radicalization is complicated to study due to its elusive and often clandestine character. Therefore, social psychological literature lacks a deep understanding of the dynamics of radical intergroup conflict. In this chapter, we venture an initial conceptualization of radicalization. But before we do so we discuss two interrelated though different group processes that are nested in the process of radicalization, namely: politicization and polarization.
Politicization Politicization of a collective implies that people “intentionally engage, as a mindful and self-conscious collective (or as representatives thereof), in a power struggle knowing that it is the wider, more inclusive societal We thank Fathali Moghaddam for his excellent comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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182 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans context in which this struggle takes place and needs to be orchestrated accordingly” (Simon & Klandermans, 2001, p. 323). Typically, a process of politicization begins with the awareness of shared grievances. Next, an external enemy is blamed for these grievances and claims for compensation are made. In the final step to politicization, the group will directly or indirectly aim its actions toward the general public or the authorities (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). Conflicts take place in a wider, more inclusive societal context. When bipolar conflicts are augmented by involving society (or even the world) at large, the societal context is differentiated into opponents and (potential) allies. Bystanders must choose sides in a conflict: become allies or opponents. This involves strategic reformulation of the conflict issue such that it appeals to potential allies (Gerhards & Rucht, 1992; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986). Politicization of collective identity and the underlying power struggle unfolds as a sequence of politicizing events that gradually transform the group’s relationship to its social environment. In the 1990s, Islamic migrants were perceived in terms of their ethnic background throughout Western Europe; their ethnic identities were identity markers. After 9/11 and the so-called “war on terror” waged by the Bush administration, Dutch Turks and Moroccans, British Pakistanis, French Algerians, among others, became Muslims.
Polarization We conceive of polarization as an instance of movement/counter-movement dynamics in which the in- and out-group “keep each other alive” (Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996). In-group and out-group mutually reinforce each other, identifying themselves in opposition to each other and regarding the other as the main target of their collective actions. When groups polarize, a strict distinction between “us” and “them” evolves. Both groups assert that what “we” stand for is threatened by “them,” tribute is paid to the in-group’s symbols and values, and the out-group is derogated.
Radicalization We conceptualize radicalization as a collective intergroup process. People do not radicalize on their own but as part of a group and through the socially constructed “reality” of their group. Radicalization and intergroup conflict are in this sense interpreted as collective processes first and foremost. Indeed, radicalization is an intergroup process in which identification interacts with characteristics of the socio-political context to shape and mold trajectories of change in individuals and groups. Konaev and Moghaddam (2010), for example, showed how President Bush of the
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United States and President Ahmadinejad of Iran influenced both in-group and out-group through their actions, resulting in a process of mutual radicalization. These two leaders radicalized each other as well as their respective constituencies. Moghaddam (2005), presenting a view of the world “from the terrorists’ point of view,” conceives of the process of radicalization as a multi-story building with a staircase at its center. People are located on different floors of the building, but everyone begins on the ground floor. Thought and action on each floor are characterized by particular psychological processes. On the ground floor, the most important psychological processes influencing behavior are subjective interpretations of material conditions, perceptions of fairness, and adequacy of identity. Only some individuals move up from the ground floor to the first floor, in search of ways to improve their life conditions. These individuals attempt to improve their own situation and that of their groups. On this floor – the floor of politicization – they are particularly influenced by possibilities for individual mobility and voice. When people feel their voice is listened to during the decision-making process, they “buy into” the system. However, when they feel they have no voice, they become more dissatisfied and detached. Some of these dissatisfied individuals climb up to the second floor – the floor of polarization – where they come under the influence of persuasive messages telling them that the cause of their problems is external enemies. Many of the individuals who climb up to the second floor remain there, but some keep climbing up to reach the third floor, where they adopt a morality supportive of radicalization. Gradually, those who have reached the third floor become separated from the mainstream norms and values of their society, which generally condemn radical activism. They take on a view supportive of an “ends justify the means” approach. Those individuals who continue to climb up to the fourth floor adopt a more rigid style of categorical “us versus them,” “good against evil” thinking. Their world is now unambiguously divided into “black and white”; it is seen as legitimate to attack “the forces of evil” in each and every way feasible. Eventually, some of these individuals move up to the fifth floor and take part in and directly support terrorist actions. The higher people move up the staircase to radicalization, the lower the degrees of freedom (Moghaddam, 2005). On the ground floor, degrees of freedom are high relative to degrees of freedom on the upper floors; individuals on the ground floor have a wider range of behavioral options. After people have become part of a terrorist group or network and reached the highest floor, the only options left open to them are to try to kill, or be killed or captured. Moderate social movement organizations are often internally fragmented along radical and moderate lines over what constitutes appropriate means and desirable ends (Tarrow, 1998). Such within-movement
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184 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans interactions often lead to breakaway groups seeking more radical goals and actions. In this shift, members of the group break away from the moderate path and take a radical activist route to promote or prevent social change. By breaking away, radicalizing group members turn their back on the society at large and on their fellow activists. This implies a “double marginalization,” both from society and from the movement (Della Porta, 1995, p. 107). Such double marginalization often implies material, social, and psychological isolation. The group’s isolation is an important factor in explaining its deviation from the “normal” perception of reality (Della Porta, 1995, p. 186) and strengthens the tendency toward violence (Della Porta, 1995, p. 51). Because of their isolation, group members come into significant contact only with others who share their worldview and emotions. In this narrower, ideologically homogeneous network, worldviews are created largely based on mediated experience, stereotypes, and prejudices shaping even more detached imagined realities. What group members feel, think, and do is severely restricted. In fact, in isolation, no deviance from the group norm is accepted and the degrees of freedom decline to nearly zero.
The process of radicalization Politicization and polarization are two interrelated but different group processes that are nested in the process of radicalization. Augmenting the conflict against the society at large may cause people who had stayed aloof to take sides in a struggle through which whole societies may polarize and groups radicalize. In all these processes, identification has a steering role. As for politicization, group identification not only strengthens shared grievances but also entails identification on a higher societal level. A politicized identity is by definition a nested identity in that it involves both identification with the aggrieved in-group and identification with the more inclusive entity that provides the context for shared grievances, adversarial attributions, and the ensuing power struggle for social change. Identity processes also play a crucial role in polarization. Research demonstrates that threats from countermovements can shape a movement’s collective identity (Einwohner, 2002). First of all, the presence of powerful opponents makes identities more salient for activists (Van Dyke, 2003). Second, polarization implies a split in terms of friends and foes. Polarization, finally, also induces a strategic reformulation of “who we are.” Einwohner (2002), for instance, shows how animal rights activists responded to opponents’ claims that they were overly emotional by presenting alternate identity characteristics to the public, while in private they often embraced the “emotional” characterization.
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What Causes Radicalization? Characteristics of the socio-political context foster or hinder processes of radicalization. These are not simple mechanisms as evidenced by the fact that people’s opinions, worries, and concerns are not linked in a straightforward manner to the structural characteristics of the context in which they develop. Take, for example, the observation that 34 percent of French citizens display an unfavorable attitude toward Muslims compared to 51 percent of the Dutch (see Chapter 10 in this volume by Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larkin). If structural factors such as actual diversity were the only explanation for such intergroup attitudes, we would expect the French rather than the Dutch to be more negative about Muslims and thus more susceptible to radical appeals, because 9 percent of the French population is Muslim compared to 5.8 percent of the Dutch population (PEW, 2005; see Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larkin, Chapter 10 in this volume). If, on the other hand, perceived threat is a major factor, one could understand that after the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, Spanish (94 percent) and British (91 percent) citizens were more worried about terrorism and thus susceptible to radical beliefs and actions, but how can one make sense of the 96 percent of Portuguese who were even more concerned about terrorism? Figures like these illustrate that one should be careful in relating radicalization in a simple manner to characteristics of the socio-political context. Nor should one be satisfied with static conceptions such as “terrorist personality” (Taarnby, 2003, cited by Simon & Ruhs, 2008) to explain radicalization. Such arguments are not new. In fact, the main paradigm predicting radicalization in social movement studies departs from this idea. The so-called “end of protest cycle argument” (Della Porta, 1995; Della Porta & Tarrow, 1986) roots in the notion that although violence tends to appear from the very beginning of a protest cycle, the more dramatic forms of violence occur when the mass phase of the protest cycle is over. Clashes with opponents or the police during demonstrations are the more widely diffused types of political violence during the height of the cycle. In the last phase, aggression carried out by small groups of militants and direct attacks on persons become more frequent. Koopmans observes a similar pattern in the rise of racist and extreme right violence in Germany (Koopmans, 1997). Such violence as mobilization declines is attributed to people’s dissatisfaction with protest outcomes and their attempts to compensate for the “reduction in numbers” with increased radicalism (Della Porta, 1995), reinforced by a repression apparatus that becomes more effective toward the end of a cycle.
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Contextualizing radicalization Radicalization has been thought to stem from a failure of the state to absorb the demands of frustrated, marginalized groups. These days, supranational processes such as globalization, European integration, and migration are seen to create new tensions and frustrated groups that demand changes in their own (radical) way. Taken together, these developments have created a context wherein conflicts are partly rooted in local tensions and the workings of national socio-political systems and partly in supranational developments such as globalization, Europeanization, and migration. Explanations of contemporary radicalization must therefore take national and supranational contexts into account. We argue that people can radicalize along two different routes: through participation in radical political parties or through participation in radical social movements. We agree with Kriesi (2009), who argues that by neglecting the electoral channel, social movement scholars tend to overlook the most important contemporary actor mobilizing against the consequences of globalization: the populist radical right parties. As a matter of fact, since the 1990s, rightwing populist parties are well represented in national politics in many Western European countries. In what follows we present an explanatory framework for radicalization that combines these two routes: taking supranational next to national contexts into account and focusing on the political arena next to the social movement sector (see Figure 9.1). The explanatory framework departs from the notion that supranational processes shape and mold the micro level of (radicalizing) citizens’ demands, the meso level of social movements and political parties, and the macro level of national political systems. We proceed from the idea that the answer to questions such as who radicalizes, why people radicalize, and the forms radical action takes lies in the interaction of supranational processes, national political processes, and the context of political mobilization.
How supranational processes shape routes to radicalization Radicalization now is different from 30 or 40 years ago. Flows of information (e.g., Internet, Twitter, text messaging, Facebook), resources, technology, ideas (e.g., consumerism, global justice, democracy), and people (migrants, refugees, tourists, but also activists; Tarrow 1998) have given the world a new look. Identities become politically relevant, groups feel threatened or socially excluded, and grievances transfer from one setting to the other and resonate in different contexts. Salient identities, fears, and frustrations are easily mobilized by parties and social movement organizations with a dominant role played by the media (Vliegenthart, 2007). Nations, in turn, react to these changes by enhancing repressive measures and restrictive citizenship regimes.
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NATION Repressive citizenship regimes
Globalization Migration European integration
SUPPLY (socio-political landscape)
POLITICAL PARTIES
MEDIA
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
(RADICALIZING) DEMAND Salient identities Social exclusion Perceived threats
Route 1 to radicalism: radicalization of the social movement organizations Route 2 to radicalism: radicalization of the (conventional) political arena
Figure 9.1
Contextualized routes to radicalization.
We hold that major trends like globalization, European integration, and migration impact on the national political system and on the demand and supply side of politics in a country, be it party politics or movement politics. Such radicalization of demand and supply in the end results in political radicalization in the form of support for radical parties and/or radical movements. We will briefly discuss these elements of the process of radicalization. Globalization. “Just as globalization speeds ahead and group-based differences seem to be disappearing, there is also an ethnic revival and the reemergence of ethnic pride and ‘being different’ ” (Moghaddam, 2008, p. 4). Processes of globalization enhance inclusiveness, which as a consequence activates the need for differentiation. This is in line with Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991). Brewer argues that people search for optimal distinctiveness and will attempt to restore the balance once it is disturbed. Globalization might disturb the balance resulting in attempts to restore. Europeanization. While European integration has progressed rapidly, individual member states have undergone uncertain internal transitions (Della Porta & Caiani, 2009). With respect to identification, the more inclusive European identity seems to enhance the need to belong and thus
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188 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans strengthen the perceived threats related to minority identities (cf. Brewer, 1999). Identification with France, for instance, as an in-group is central to the identity of most French people. To change such allegiances so that French citizens now feel themselves part of a much larger unit – a united Europe – would take generations. In contrast, the formal laws and political and economic systems creating the European Union (EU) are coming into being relatively quickly. Thus, there is a tension between the relatively fast changes at the macro level and the slower pace of change at the psychosocial level (Moghaddam, 2008). These contradictory pressures are captured by the concept of fractured globalization, that is, “the tendency for sociocultural disintegration to pull in a local direction at the same time that macro-economic and political systems are set up to accelerate globalization. A result is that local languages and cultures are under threat” (Moghaddam, 2008, p. 13). Migration. Migration has increased the diversity of Western societies tremendously. Large groups of people in Europe, both natives and migrants, try to protect their ways of life and compete for scarce resources such as jobs and houses as well as for political influence (Koopmans & Olzak, 2004). In this volatile context, intergroup conflicts increase the socio-political relevance and psychological salience of collective identities and thus the likelihood that social groups and their political entrepreneurs make collective claims and undertake attempts to mobilize their members for (extreme) collective action (e.g., for natives see Klandermans & Mayer, 2006; for immigrants see Klandermans, van der Toorn, & van Stekelenburg, 2008; Simon & Ruhs, 2008). Moghaddam (2008) argues that for a variety of reasons, Islamic terrorism will be a greater threat in Europe than in the United States. He suggests a “distance-travelled hypothesis” (Moghaddam, 2008, p. 11), which proposes that the distance immigrants have to travel in order to settle in a host country determines the (material, educational, and other) resources needed to succeed in the migration. Muslims need to have more resources to move from the Middle East and North Africa to settle in the United States than they do to settle in Europe. The greater resources of American Muslims in part explain the greater success of Muslims in the United States, particularly in terms of economic and educational attainment, relative to Muslims in Europe (Moghaddam, 2008). Together globalization, Europeanization, and migration have a profound impact on what Europeans currently think, feel, and do. Today’s societies are increasingly described in terms of uncertainties and threat (Moghaddam, 2008), fears (Bauman, 2006), and risk (Beck, 1992). Such collective fear enhances radicalization (Bar-Tal, Halperin, & de Rivera, 2007).
Nation Nations vary in how they react to globalization, Europeanization, and migration. The political opportunity structure, the openness of the political system for challengers, the access points available for people to defend their
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interests and express their opinions, the temporal political configuration, are all identified as determinants of the incidence and type of protest in democratic polities (e.g., Koopmans, 1999; Tarrow, 1998). Claims making by the extreme right, for instance, depends on a combination of discursive opportunities deriving from the prevailing model of citizenship and the political opportunities made available by mainstream parties for far-right mobilization (Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, 2005). Citizenship regimes also impact on the formation of identities. Indeed, European countries are experimenting with an array of integration strategies, from extreme assimilation, that is, washing away intergroup differences (“Immigrants must become French”) to relativistic multiculturalism, that is, cherishing the intergroup differences (“sharia law can be implemented in Muslim homes”). These different citizenship regimes evoke different identity formation strategies of Muslims (see Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larkin, Chapter 10 in this volume). Nations differ in terms of repressiveness as well. This is important because repression might radicalize the protesting group and further unite those people who are opposed to the state (Tarrow, 1998). This is what Della Porta (1995) shows in her comparative study between Germany and Italy: the more repressive the police, the more likely that radical elements grow within the movement. Violence by the rebellious group tends to bring repression, scaring away non-violent sympathizers, dividing the society, and resulting in a small group of militants whose politics revolve around violence and who get trapped in a violent conflict with state authorities (see de Koning & Meijer, Chapter 11 in this volume).
Mobilizing context To describe the mobilizing context wherein frustration and fear are molded and mobilized into radical political action, we borrow Klandermans’ (2004) “demand and supply” metaphor. The supply side of politics refers to social movement organizations, political parties, political entrepreneurs, and media in a society. The demand side of politics refers to the potential of citizens in a society susceptible to appeals for political action. Mobilization refers to the techniques and mechanisms employed to bring demand and supply together. Supply. In a longitudinal study on the immigration and integration debate in the Netherlands, Vliegenthart (2007) shows the tight reciprocal interaction between the political and media debate and anti-immigrant party support. What stands out is the dominant role of the media. Traditional media like newspapers appear to play a dominant role in radicalizing demand. Vliegenthart (2007) shows that the media are most strongly influenced by real-world developments, especially events such as 9/11; the media in turn influence the parliamentary debate and the public’s support for
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190 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans anti-immigrant parties. However, next to the influence of traditional media, we point to the influence of new media on radicalization. The term “CNN effect” has been coined to describe the influence of satellite news on intergroup conflicts in other parts of the world: “The idea is that a global conscience comes into being through the global mass media” (Moghaddam, 2008, p. 128). Through satellite television and the Internet, people are more informed about the struggles of their brothers and sisters worldwide with which they feel emotionally connected. New media spur intergroup conflict because “explosive import products” such as the war in Iraq or fights between activists and the police during a G20 summit are vividly transmitted (Etty, 2009) and facilitate the creation of global activist identities such as the Black Block and Jihadi Muslims. Increasingly we see protest participation rooted in everyday networks of participants and social movement actors involved in diffuse and decentralized networks (Duyvendak & Hurenkamp, 2004; Melucci, 1996; Taylor, 2000). This is also observed for extreme Islamic organizations (Lacquer, 1999). In Western Europe populist parties are running on platforms built upon issues related to anti-immigration, Euroskepticism, nationalism, and protection of cultural identity. Demand. We propose that perceived threat and social exclusion fuel radicalization especially if citizens do not trust their government to solve their problems. Globalization and migration create dynamics that serve to include some and exclude others in a connected but polarized global context. In societies where “threat is in the air” (Moghaddam, 2008), prejudice is high (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007), just like hate toward other groups (van Stekelenburg, Oegema, and Klandermans, Chapter 13 in this volume), which fuels (radical) conflict behavior. Traditionally, young people are skeptical about the democratic process and the lower educated even more so (Campbell, 2006). Moreover, some scholars suggest that Islam is hostile to democratic values (e.g., (Kedourie, 1994). Hence, the most threatened and socially excluded groups in Europe tend also to be the groups who distrust their government and therefore run the risk of radicalization. Globalization and mass migration result in salient identities and ensuing clashes of ideologies (Moghaddam, 2005, 2008). Often groups that experience threatened identities are less concerned with policy and legalization than with cultural targets such as social norms, media representation, and cultural messages about the group. These groups do not so much reflect a desire to change government as they desire to create a cultural turn in which their cultural norms are accepted and they are treated with respect and dignity. Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans (2009) define this as a conflict of principle. Such conflicts easily turn into fierce confrontations as they cannot be solved by compromises like conflicts of interest.
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Mobilization. Globalization, European integration, and migration facilitate transnational activism. Increasing cross-national communication and exchange between people result in processes of diffusion and scale shift (Tarrow, 2005). The pace of diffusion is accelerated sharply by new media, which reduces dependence on personal relationships. Such new media help to steer loosely coupled structures (Lacquer, 1999) and make grievances, ideas, and ideologies travel rapidly from one context to the other. Moreover, social movement literature increasingly acknowledges that in response to globalization processes, social movement activity is uploaded to the transnational level and at the same time downloaded to the local level (e.g., Della Porta, Kriesi, & Rucht, 1999; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). All these studies show that the socio-political context in which movements operate to spread their aims and ideas is neither exclusively national, nor only supranational, but a mix of supranational, national, and local settings. Processes of rapid diffusion and scale shift in mobilization are exemplified by a global crisis of the ummah. This crisis is downloaded by European Muslims who locally reinterpret. Local conflicts are also uploaded, as the Danish cartoon conflict illustrates. Lack of the resources that give access to the polity may be another reason to resort to violent action repertoires, as may be the receptiveness of some (sub)cultures to violence (Della Porta, 1995).
Conclusion Our explanatory framework for contextualized radicalization integrates influences from the supranational, the national, and the mobilizing context. At a general level, radicalizing demand, supply, and mobilization are supposedly shaped by the supranational and national context. At a specific level, the mobilizing context is further colored by characteristics of the political arena, the social movement sector, and the role of media. The framework presumes that there are two routes to radicalization: party politics or movement politics (see also Jenkins and Klandermans’ diamond model, 1995). Little is known about how these routes vary or interact, how such variation is determined, or how it impacts on who radicalizes, for what reasons, and why people take one route rather than the other. Of course, in trying to achieve social change, people will attempt to keep their costs and their risks to a minimum (cf. McAdam, 1986). Therefore, one can expect that citizens demanding radical social change initially prefer the low costs/risks route of party politics. However, this is only possible if there is a supply of radical party politics that impresses as effective. Kriesi’s (2009) suggestion that the extreme right mobilizes via party politics seems to be confirmed by the supply of populist extreme right political parties in many
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192 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans European countries. The radical left, on the other hand, tends to choose movement politics. Hence, movement politics have been dominated by the so called “left-libertarian movement family” (Della Porta & Rucht, 1995), although in the United States we do encounter radical right movements (e.g., anti-abortion and recently the so-called tea parties, a radical right antigovernment campaign). Thus, we expect the radical left such as the “Autonomous” Black Block to opt for the movement route, if only because globalization and Europeanization have made them critical to the legitimacy of democracy. This might also be a reason for Islamic Jihadi’s opt for the social movement route. A final interesting issue is the relation between the two routes. As far as moderate political participation is concerned, the two routes have always been intimately related. That is to say, people who participate in party politics are also likely to participate in movement politics (Barnes & Kaase, 1979). However, if the route via the political representational system does not live up to citizens’ expectations, chances are that the protest route via social movements will be used more frequently. This raises the question whether the two routes for radical political participation are as intimately related as those for moderate forms of participation, and to what extent failing radical party politics would similarly make people shift to movement politics.
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Citizenship Regimes and Identity Strategies Among Young Muslims in Europe Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking Introduction The abandonment of pan-Arab nationalism, the Iranian Revolution, the collapse of Soviet communism, and the consequent shift in the Middle East strategy of the United States have together constituted a rebalancing of global power over the past three decades. These tectonic forces remapped the world and subsumed the old ethno-racial categorizations of the post-colonial order under new socially constructed global “civilizations.” Such forces prompted major recalibrations among both majority non-Muslim populations and Muslims themselves and salient identities shifted from ethnic to religious categorizations. Put simply, British Pakistanis and French Algerians became Muslims, while the majority British population reinvented English Christian values and the French promoted laïcité (secularism). These contemporary global forces and relations have conditioned new identity strategies among those for whom Islam has become salient. We sketch the characteristics of ideal-typical identity strategies that have emerged throughout Europe and specify how individual states and citizenship regimes, notably in their characteristic modes of integration and assimilation, promote certain identity strategies among Muslim youth.
The Countries and the Analysis This chapter explores identity construction strategies across five European societies: the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. We have selected these countries on the basis of their contrastive colonial history, patterns of immigration and citizenship regimes with respect to multiculturalism, and because of the growing relevance of Scandinavian countries to the debates on citizenship in contemporary
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196 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking Table 10.1 Country Denmark France Netherlands Sweden UK
Muslims in Europe, 2005 Total population
Muslim population
5,400,000 62,300,000 16,300,000 9,000,000 58,800,000
270,000 5,000,000–6,000,000 945,000 300,000 1,600,000
Muslims as % of total 5 8–9.6 5.8 3 2.8
Source: BBC (2005).
Europe. While dissimilar in many respects, each country can be said to have had negligible Muslim populations in the immediate postwar period and then to have experienced substantial immigration of a diversity of Muslims from the 1950s to the 1990s. Given the comparative youth of many Muslim immigrants over the past five decades, a rapidly growing proportion of European Muslims is European by birth. We refer to these generations as “post-diasporic” Muslims. A recent assessment of the number of Muslims in Europe, which makes use of a range of government data, generates the estimates shown in Table 10.1. Investigating the linkages between colonial history, established modes of immigration, citizenship regimes, and dominant identity strategies on the part of Muslim minorities, we generate detailed and often complex illustrative material to support the typology that we discuss below. While our empirical goals are to illustrate the applicability of the theoretical model rather than to empirically test hypotheses, it is useful to identify certain methodological choices undertaken in our fieldwork. Altogether, a total of 42 in-depth interviews with young Muslims were conducted in 2006 and 2007 in the United Kingdom (14), Denmark (15), and Sweden (13). Additionally, a three-hour focus group was undertaken among members of the Muslim Students’ Association at the University of Bradford, UK, in April 2007. Participants and interviewees were recruited through personal contact and the snowball technique. Interviews and focus group proceedings were recorded, transcribed, and interpreted through discourse analysis.
Colonial History, Immigration Patterns, and Citizenship Regimes Below we undertake a brief comparative sketch of five countries. For each country, we trace the dominant modes of immigration, the colonial history of the country, and an assessment of citizenship regimes with respect to
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multiculturalism in terms of characteristic modes of integration versus assimilation. Our central finding is that citizenship regimes, rather than colonial histories and patterns of immigration, exert the greatest impact on Muslim minority identity strategies. The largely assimilationist regimes of France (a major colonial power with substantial post-colonial immigration) and Denmark (a minor colonial power with little post-colonial immigration) are associated with relatively high levels of ethno-religious tension and comparatively little sense of engagement among the Muslim minorities. Both countries have generated relatively successful far right parties. The more multicultural and integrated approaches of the United Kingdom (a major colonial power with substantial post-colonial immigration) and Sweden (a minor colonial power with little post-colonial immigration) are associated with relatively lower levels of ethno-religious tension and a comparatively high sense of engagement among Muslim minorities. Despite its citizenship regime of recognition of minority cultures, the Dutch approach has been – like the French and Danish approaches – to remove deeper questions of integration from the agora and in so doing to be less successful in confronting ethno-religious tensions. The absence of a politics of community engagement beyond the “elite accommodations” of pillarization has been associated with the rise of substantial parties and movements of the far right. It bears repeating that our claims regarding the broad relationships between regimes and identities across Europe are cast at a macrological level that necessarily conceals considerable variation. Our principal findings are prefigured in Table 10.2.
Identity Strategies Throughout this chapter, “identity strategy(ies)” refers to relatively longterm plans of action concerning the formation and presentation of the self. We conceive of identity itself as an active verb, as a “doing” rather than as a noun, an achieved and static state of “being.” Identities are dynamic, complex, and always both in social context and in formation. Many Muslims in the diaspora find that their religion assumes new significance, and/or discover that its symbolic connotations have somehow shifted. In the case of the first generation, this is largely due to their transition from majority to minority status where a heightened awareness of Islam is discovered anew (Mandaville, 2001). In the case of post-diasporic generations who constitute a minority by birth, a more complex pattern emerges. Reitz’s insights resonate across the experiences of Muslim youth in Europe when he argues that young Muslims, unlike their parents, are often unable to rationalize and accept second-class status. Not only are they socialized through schooling to the entitlements of citizenship, but they experience fewer options for returning to their homelands (Reitz, 2005).
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Major colonial power. Predominantly post-colonial immigration to fill unskilled/ semi-skilled manual work and settlement in the banlieues Minor colonial power. Some post-colonial immigration, but mostly guest workers to fill unskilled/semi-skilled manual work and refugees/asylum seekers Insignificant colonial power. No post-colonial immigration, but mostly guest workers to fill unskilled/semi-skilled manual work and refugees/asylum seekers Insignificant colonial power. No post-colonial immigration, but mostly refugees and asylum seekers
FRANCE
SWEDEN
DENMARK
THE NETHERLANDS
Major colonial power. Predominantly post-colonial immigration to fill unskilled/ semi-skilled manual work in the industrial centers
Colonial/imperial history and dominant mode of immigration
Attempted integration through laissez-faire recognition of communities and groups and later multiculturalism
Pillarization and Muslims as the “fourth pillar.” Unavoidable costs and the creation of “two-tier” rights. Social closure between groups Highly assimilationist into a secular and notionally egalitarian regime
Immigrants integrated under and ascribed inferior status as displaced colonial subjects. Laissez-faire recognition of communities and groups and later multiculturalism Highly assimilationist into a secular and notionally egalitarian regime. Civic republicanism and laïcité
Characteristic mode of integration/assimilation
Dominant identity strategies among European Muslim youth
UNITED KINGDOM
Country
Table 10.2
Engagement and essentialism evident among young Muslims; retreatism common among first-generation Muslims
Essentialism and retreatism are both evident. Relatively little evidence of engagement
Engagement, essentialism, and retreatism all evident
Essentialism and retreatism are both evident. Relatively little evidence of engagement
Engagement and essentialism evident among young Muslims; retreatism common among first-generation Muslims
Dominant identity strategies
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In analyzing the social psychological forces encountered in the politicization of Islam, the concept of youth is particularly important. These are years of existential anxiety and ontological doubt in which competing claims for belonging and affiliation are most acutely in tension (Erikson, 1994). Focusing on the psychology of adolescence, Arnett (2002) discusses the uncertainty and confusion resulting from global change. As local cultures are challenged and changed as a result of globalization, some young people find themselves adrift: at home neither in the local context nor in the global situation. They search for alternative answers in mythologized traditions, fundamentalist religions, or far-away nationalisms. Entrepreneurs of meaning construct a range of essentialist readings of past, present, and future. Peter Mandaville (2007) expresses these social psychological dynamics well: Impressionable young European Muslims, many of whom have little knowledge or experience of their religion beyond a recently discovered desire to find some sense of moral certainty and a place in the world, are given an identity compass whose discourse of “global Islam” allows them to understand themselves as part of a larger struggle against hegemony, imperialism and godless capital. (pp. 111–112)
The fact that Islam, in response to legacies of colonialization, modernity, globalization, and current discourses on terror, has become increasingly politicized and securitized has sharpened identity issues among many young Muslims. As a result, Islam has become an emerging identifier among many young European Muslims as they struggle against racism, alienation, and marginalization. To be a young Muslim in many European societies of today requires a constant negotiation with the rest of the society. As young Muslims they are chronically associated with a religious tradition that is under the microscope throughout the societies in which they live and in which, for the most part, they are citizens. As young Muslims in Europe, they are under strong pressures to take a stand in the perceived conflict between various notions of European secularism and Islamic religion. Social psychological responses toward the quest for identity within the context of contemporary Europe are by no means uniform. We have developed a model of three broad identities that involve different identity strategies among both Muslims and non-Muslims, which we present as ideal types: Essentialism, Retreatism, and Engagement (Kinnvall & Nesbitt-Larking, 2010; Nesbitt-Larking, 2008). While our focus in this chapter is upon Muslim youth, our typology has broader applicability and is pertinent to the analysis of both other minority communities and majority communities. Grounded in the propensity to resort to stereotypes and to erect psychic barriers of security through the invocation of familiar and trusted signifiers, an essentialist identity may be manifest in forms of totalistic modes of
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200 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking reasoning, black and white thinking, religious or secular fundamentalism, and other manifestations of psychic rigidity. An essentialist identity strategy is an attempt to retreat from the cold hostility of normlessness and to secure coherence in a world that is otherwise fragmented and threatening. Familiar symbols and tropes, such as those of nation, gender, and religion, are used to anchor the self, often through a retreat to a mythical past (Kinnvall 2004, 2006; Kinnvall & Nesbitt-Larking, 2010). To assert an essentialist identity strategy is to appropriate meaning in the establishment of a pristine and privileged interpretation of certain discourses and texts. In Bakhtin’s terms, it is monological, meaning that a single authority has monopolized meaning, to the exclusion of all competing voices (Bakhtin, 1994). Essentialism can be viewed as an identity strategy that establishes clear boundaries between self and Other, truth and heresy, the sacred and the profane, and the just and the unjust. The reassertion of boundaries between us and them is a necessary if not always sufficient precursor to action. It is a discourse as well as a strategy in which those regarded as Other are cast as enemies to be denigrated, shunned, or crushed. For many Muslims and for many members of majority populations, an essentialist identity strategy is psychically uncomfortable in that it is too rigid and absolute. There are indeed dangers in constructing and positing such all-or-nothing identities. A more attractive option is to remain undefined in often-uneasy retreatism from the world of tension and conflict, and to stay under the definitional radar. Retreatism keeps the options open – both subjectively and intersubjectively. To retreat and to distance oneself from the modern polity is an identity strategy that seeks to avoid any commitment at all. However, this does not mean that any future commitment is precluded. A retreatist might covertly share a belief system with the essentialist, but be hesitant to articulate it. Under such circumstances, lines of communication are kept open – at least minimally – with the Other and overt hostility is minimized. On the other hand, a retreatist may be retreating or withdrawing from a powerful essentialist membership group in which to express doubt or objection is to risk being labeled an infidel or a traitor. Retreatists are by definition neither “for us nor against us.” They may be covert essentialists, fearful of a broader political community or society in which essentialisms are rejected, or they could be those secretly favoring a politics of open engagement in a climate of mutually hostile and irreconcilable essentialisms. Engagement is the third identity strategy. Rejecting both the hostility and mistrust of essentialism and the evasiveness of retreatism, engagement as an identity strategy implies a willingness to open self to Other, both psychologically and sociologically, and to move from a monological to a dialogical identity strategy (Bakhtin, 1994). A dialogical identity strategy references both the dialogical self which opens up introspective
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communication (argument within the self) and dialogue in a social setting in which there is a genuine attempt to communicate, to listen, and to be heard. Engagement as an identity strategy suggests an assertive motivation toward collective problem solving in a society and the coming together of disparate voices in a genuinely political forum of conciliation and compromise. In the absence of a potential agreement, there is at least the agonistic tension of agreement to disagree without disrespect or violence. For Muslims and non-Muslims, serious engagement with others becomes a possible solution and strategy to identities in question and formation in which fears and uncertainties are overcome through forms of self-conscious dialogue and openness to others. Below we investigate the three identity strategies of essentialism, retreatism, and engagement as we map the formation and deformation of identities among young Muslims in Europe and how their identity strategies are affected by their memories of a colonial past and immigration, as well as their experiences of integration, assimilation, and the citizenship regimes in which they live.
United Kingdom Dominant modes of immigration and colonial history In the wake of decolonization and the partition of India, Indians and Pakistanis, many of them Muslims, immigrated into Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. Under the 1948 British Nationality Act, citizens of former colonies had rights of settlement and citizenship in the United Kingdom, and hundreds of thousands took advantage of the need for labor to settle in London and the industrial towns of the Midlands and the North. Under more restrictive immigration legislation, East African Asians supplemented the first waves of immigration throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Since the 1970s, significant numbers of Muslims have migrated from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan, some as refugees and asylum seekers. As a former colonial power, in which an elite of White settlers in collaboration with comprador elements exercised considerable power over native populations, the United Kingdom constituted a place of settlement in which, notwithstanding their legal status as citizens, new commonwealth immigrants arrived with an already ascribed inferior status as displaced colonial subjects. Full and equal national integration was, therefore, an inherent contradiction. Not only were Muslim immigrants assigned to a lower “caste,” but their occupational categories upon arrival placed them predominantly in the working class.
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202 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking
Characteristic modes of integration or assimilation With respect to integration, most Muslim immigrants initially reacted with some form of retreatist identity strategy, quietly sustaining their own communities and remaining only partially assimilated. Balibar points out that British colonialization saw itself as “respectful of cultures,” while French colonialization proclaimed itself “assimilatory” (Balibar, 1991). This point of distinction was to prove highly influential in the respective trajectories of these two former large-scale colonial powers. While the French project of uniform republican and secular solidarity would result in widespread and fundamental struggles over the sacred in public spaces, the more pragmatic and accommodating British approach gave rise to policies of multiculturalism. In the British case, integration has been viewed as a question of managing public order between majority and minority populations with ethnic cultures and practices mediating the process. The focus of British multicultural politics is rooted in “race and ethnic relations” (Geddes, 2003; Melotti, 1997; Modood, 2005). The result has been “multiculturalism on one island” as Adrian Favell (1998) puts it, where immigrant and ethnic minorities have been “nationalized” in relation to British social and political institutions. As in the Dutch case, described below, this has aggravated social closure among a series of distinct and enclosed minorities. Such closure, with its attendant separation and alienation, was the object of an impassioned 2006 speech by Tony Blair, in which he stressed “the duty to integrate” (Blair, 2006).
Dominant identity strategies Given their willingness to participate, the young British Muslims we interviewed articulated a strategy of engagement for the most part, even if support was qualified and nuanced. Searching for commonalities, one of our Muslim youth interviewees in the United Kingdom, a public spokesperson for the strategy of engagement, stressed the extent to which British Muslims “are not in a sense distinct from mainstream British society … they believe in fairness, tolerance, understanding etcetera.” Reflecting on a familiar point of tension between Muslims and the authorities, he went on to explain how most Muslims enjoy a good relationship with the police and assist the police once they are aware of criminal activity in their community. Other respondents were less sanguine regarding the British police and some made reference to patterns of endemic and overt police racism. Despite this, even the more vocal critics conceded that in their daily engagements, relations with the police were quite acceptable, while they were concerned with the more global climate of Islamophobia, arbitrary interrogation, detention, arrest, and rendition. Our focus group was conducted among members of the Muslim Students Association in Bradford, who noted that while the rule
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of law and justice obtain in the United Kingdom for the most part, many Muslims are beginning to doubt the extent to which the presumption of innocence applies to them. With respect to political participation, our interviewees identified the principal challenges as the failure of Muslims themselves to exercise their rights of citizenship, to mobilize actively, and to make demands beyond block voting for members of parliament (MPs) on the basis of traditional tribal loyalties, a characteristic of their parents’ generation. A female student stated that parents have a different political understanding from Muslim youth because: “they’ve come from a time or origin where they had their loyalty to the British, like kind of the Empire and everything, whereas we’ve been born and bred in a society in the West and we’re rejecting those values that they call the Western values, and it’s like if you talk to a majority of the youth, they don’t want to be positive contributors in society … the best thing that has happened so far for Muslims in the UK is the Islam channel.” Many of our respondents expressed satisfaction with the formal and anticipated rights of citizenship in the United Kingdom and felt that their rights were respected. However, most also believed that they had been excluded from a broader sense of inclusion in the British nation. They experienced challenges getting job interviews, were shunned in public spaces, and believed that their core values were seriously misunderstood. Perhaps in reference to Blair’s speech, one frustrated female student in Bradford stated: “On the one hand we’ve got some people going ‘oh, we’ve got to integrate more,’ but at the same time it’s double standards, they don’t allow us to because of all these misconceptions that they have … you’ve got to understand, people are saying ‘integrate’ and at the same time shutting the doors in front of your face.” Certain scholars have emphasized notable generational differences among British Muslims where the post-diasporic generation often shows dissatisfaction with the cultural and linguistic preoccupations of older community members (Gilliat-Ray, 1998; Modood & Werbner, 1997; Modood, 2005; Robinson, 2005). What they are objecting to are strategies of retreatist ethnic traditionalism that too readily coexist with the passive acceptance of low status and discrimination. Many young British Muslims have been attracted to a reimagined global ummah in which a reawakened religiosity serves to anchor pride and an authentic sense of rootedness (Modood, 2005; Robinson, 2003, 2005). A study by Saeed, Blain, and Forbes (1999) of Pakistani Muslim teenagers found that young Muslims’ identification with Islam constituted a core religious identity in 97 percent of the sample group. Hence, while some Muslims thought of themselves as culturally and socially substantially British, the evidence suggested that there was still some reluctance to assert Britishness as anything beyond legal entitlement.
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204 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking Recent surveys of Muslim opinions in Britain show that up to one third of the respondents claimed to have more in common with Muslims in other countries than with non-Muslims in England (Mizra, Senthilkumaran, & Zein, 2007). Western foreign policy plays a large part in this process and may induce some young Muslims to enter the radicalization phase. The United States-led “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the situation in Kashmir and Chechnya, Western support for Israel, and the painful pictures of suffering Muslims emerging from the occupied areas in Gaza and the West Bank are often perceived as Western foreign policy. Hence we see two dominant identity strategies among young British Muslims where engagement appears to coexist with essentialism. Most of our interviewees and those participating in our focus groups were reacting against their broader sense of exclusion from the British community. However, most of them expressed a serious willingness to engage and to involve themselves in dialogue rather than resorting to more essentialist strategies of violent practice. At the same time, it is important to note that we may be witnessing a more general discontent with democratic politics among post-diasporic Muslim youth in Britain. And even if only a very limited amount of people are likely to act violently in order to challenge the British state and the international community, an identity strategy of essentialism may result in violent encounters unless attempts to counter such identity strategies are taken seriously.
France Dominant modes of immigration and colonial history Proportionately, the Muslim population of France is the largest in Western Europe. On the basis of a civic egalitarianism, the former French colonies enjoyed French citizenship rights and the right of immigration to France. The majority of Muslim immigrants to France are from the former French colonies of North Africa, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and more recently from Turkey. The specific pattern of French colonialism was strongly assimilationist, furnishing certain legal rights, but nonetheless superimposed upon a racist and francocentric political culture. Throughout its history as a global republic, the emphasis on a universalist idea of integration has implied the transformation of immigrants into full French citoyens (Favell, 2001). With its established public mythology of founding a great homogeneous nation with a strong centralized state, France has tried to integrate migrants without any official recognition of national minorities or local ethnic groups. Integration has meant assimilation to the French culture and nation, and the demand that migrants drop particular
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forms of cultural identity in order to become “good Frenchmen” (El Hamel, 2002; Kivisto 2002; Melotti, 1997).1 From the Constitution through the centralized educational system, the political culture of laïcité, and specific regulations on public space, particularisms are discouraged.
Characteristic modes of integration or assimilation Despite the formal equality of all citizens, the political culture has sustained practices of social differentiation and exclusionism. Large proportions of the mostly poor Muslim immigrants live in the banlieues, the impoverished suburban belts surrounding French cities. Many of the banlieues constitute zones of exclusion, heavily policed and often characterized by violence as a way of ruling through confrontation. This obviously creates a space for a range of marginalized and minority groups to emerge and make their voices heard among disillusioned youth. As most majority French never visit these areas, the banlieues are regarded as alien communities. The absence of interaction and communication has been evidenced in a series of challenges, such as the long-standing hijab controversy. With only minimal consultation with established and moderate Muslim communities, the post-colonial French state adopted a series of absolutist regulations that served to exacerbate tensions and to alienate Muslim youth. The French state’s unwillingness to legitimize religion in public life, together with a generalized cultural suspicion of Islam, is thus likely to continue an ongoing problematic relationship with Muslim diasporic and post-diasporic groups.
Dominant identity strategies The riots that spread across France after the death of two teenagers in October and November 2005 must be viewed in the light of such structural inequalities. However, the riots should also be understood from a generational perspective as a form of relative deprivation. Young French Muslims searching for a meaningful identity have been able to bind local experiences and life in the banlieues to imagined homelands and have at times resulted in Islam becoming a source of global identification, related to global wars, insurgencies, and perceptions of post-colonial discrimination (Moussaoui, 2003). Kastoryano (2006) argues: “Islam thus gives a ‘romantic’ sense to the conception of the community. It serves as a justification for internal cohesion and ethnic pride, providing a means of recovering ‘lost’ youth and reaching out to the ‘victims of immigration’ ” (p. 66). By casting Muslims in the role of victims, Islamist organizations have also been able to appeal to 1
This position is slowly changing, however, with the establishment of a Muslim council by the authorities (Samad & Sen, 2007).
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206 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking many young Muslims. The Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF), an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, became increasingly visible in the mid-1980s as it expanded its social, political, and media visibility. To capture a young social base, its emphasis has often been on the necessity to rebuild one’s identity on a political religious basis that will work as a remedy for the loss of cultural and social markers. As emphasized by one UOIF member, Abdelkarim, Whether you are White, tanned or Black, you have to reject slurs and pet names that put you in the category of “we don’t know who you are.” You are not a North African or an Arab.… You are neither an Islamist nor a fundamentalist.… Yes, in France you are at home. And whether you apply the precepts of Islam or you are non-practicing, you are Muslim. Therefore, you are: a young Muslim. Respect starts here! Then you will be able to demand respect from others. (Quoted in Kepel, 2004, pp. 268–269)
By viewing religion as a minor feature of mainstream French society, thus ignoring how Christian religion has been institutionalized through customs and habits, Muslims cannot but be aware of the secondary status of their religion. Muslims are not perceived as fully responsible autonomous beings as declared by the French universalist state. Identity politics in France thus exists within a state of tension between a post-colonial narrative of monocultural national unity and the reality of globalization and multicultural diversity. By virtue of being institutionally excluded and made into the “deviant” Other, many young Muslims are redefining their sense of self and others to reflect the post-colonial insecurities they are experiencing. While some French Muslim youth have adopted retreatist strategies and a few manifest strategies of engagement, a significant and alienated minority has turned to variants of essentialist identity strategies in order to achieve integrity, pride, and a sense of belonging. The relative lack of engagement among French Muslims is reflected in a recent Gallup Poll (BBC, 2009) that reports 77 percent of British Muslims identifying with the United Kingdom, while only 52 percent of French Muslims identify with France.
The Netherlands Dominant modes of immigration and colonial history In the Netherlands, a small number of post-colonial Muslim migrants arrived in the 1950s from Indonesia, the Moluccan Islands, and Surinam. However, the post-colonial experience of Muslim immigration into the Netherlands has never been as prominent as that of the United Kingdom and France. The Netherlands has thereby avoided the patriation of social
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relations and conflicts directly from the former colonies. In the Dutch case, further waves of Muslims migrated from Turkey and Morocco in the 1960s and 1970s as guest workers on special permits. Refugees and asylum seekers arrived from Bosnia, Somalia, Iran, and Pakistan in the 1990s and beyond. Many of those originally admitted on work permits have been able to gain permanent residency and their numbers have been enhanced under family reunification policies and marriages in the homeland. Recent changes to Dutch immigration legislation have introduced strict economic, cultural, and social criteria as citizenship tests and this has reduced the number of Muslim immigrants dramatically. Net migration from Morocco, for instance, decreased from 4,132 in 2001 to −525 in 2007, while net migration from Turkey during the same years decreased from 4,707 to −24.2 During 2008 and 2009, net migration has increased from both countries, however. From Turkey the net increase was 4,114 in 2008 and 5,686 in 2009, while from Morocco it was 5,634 and 6,515, respectively.3
Characteristic modes of integration or assimilation In a manner similar to the French, the Dutch approach to the integration of Muslim minorities is an extension of the dominant civic culture. In the French case, it is civic republicanism, and in the Dutch instance, it is the principle of pillarization. Originally established over a century ago as a state form to achieve consensus among the leaders of the Catholic, Protestant, and Socialist communities, the metaphor regarded each community as a pillar at the apex of which the elites of each pillar negotiated among themselves. Pillarization has more recently been extended to include a fourth Muslim pillar (however, for a contrary view, see Vink, 2007). The pillarization system is a form of consociationalism that has given religious groups the right to establish their own infrastructures (e.g., schools, religious buildings, interest groups) and has enabled them to be subsidized by the government. According to Shadid, pillarization has created a pervasive “unavoidable costs” approach toward political integration (Shadid, 1991).The unavoidable costs are those associated with the potential for individuals to be denied certain rights by those who claim to speak on their behalf, and for the entire society to be burdened with the costs associated with creating and perpetuating a “two-tier” system of parallel communities characterized by significant social closure. Partly in response to the perceived failures of pillarization and unavoidable costs, the new right in the Netherlands, exemplified by 2
Statistics Netherlands 2009, retrieved September 21, 2009 from http://statline.cbs.nl. See Statistics Netherlands (CBS), May 13, 2009. In Annual Policy Report 2008: Developments in Dutch Migration and Asylum Policies, August 2009. Retrieved November 23, 2009 from http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/MPI-BBCreport-Sept09.pdf. 3
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208 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking Geert Wilders’ Party For Freedom (PVV), has recently been aggressively promoting an assimilationist citizenship regime.
Dominant identity strategies As in France, many Dutch Muslim youth have become increasingly dissatisfied with low status, social exclusion, and discrimination. As in other European countries, residential segregation has inhibited many Moroccan and Turkish youth from developing a Dutch identity and a belief that they have little say in Dutch society. The relatively low economic status of many Moroccan and Turkish youth has further contributed to their search for religious identities that can provide a sense of security and affirmation. A pervasive lack of trust in the legitimacy of the government has also become increasingly visible (Demant, Maussen, & Rath, 2007). This can partly be traced to the reactions of the majority community to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the response among Dutch politicians who competed in anti-Islamic statements and measures. Kelley, Morgenstern, and Naji (2006) argue that the hostility of prominent Dutch leaders toward Muslims, exemplified in the speeches of Wilders, has reinforced a feeling of exclusion and humiliation among many Moroccan and Turkish youth, playing an important role in the radicalization of certain Muslim youth. The application of pillarization principles toward Muslims emerged from a broadly egalitarian and pluralistic public policy and few thought through the consequences of simply applying it to those who had not already been integrated. Neither the majority nor minority communities were helped by applying principles that had been developed for a native population with largely similar socio-economic status, history, and culture to the integration of migrants of diverse cultural background (Cuperus, Duffek, & Kandel, 2003). Pillarization offered a symbolic form of equality, while in practice it reinforced and reproduced ethnic cleavages and segregation on a distinctly unequal basis. Pillarization might have worked in the context of the largely retreatist strategies of generations of new migrants for whom deference to majoritarian Dutch values and their own community leaders was widespread. In his study of Muslims in the Netherlands, Buijs (2007; see also Buijs & Rath, 2006) points out that the development of young Muslims as radicals in many cases starts with a generational conflict. Parents come to be regarded as assuming a submissive position in society, whose retreatism is decoded by Muslim youth as a “routine-Muslim” status among those who are not fully devoted to their faith. Despite the pressures, most Dutch Muslim youth retain the quiescent retreatist strategies of their parents and others consciously organize for a
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strategy of engagement. While many of those born in the Netherlands have been particularly vocal in demanding broader public support for their new-found Muslim demands, a small hard-core element, about 5 percent of all Muslim youth, has been found to be susceptible to fundamentalist political ideas (there are no comparable data available to us for the other countries). However, it is important to stress that Moroccan youth has also played an important role in countering the current polarization in societal climate by engaging in activities that promote dialogue. As a result of the need for young Muslims to respond to hostility or prejudice at school or at work, Islamic youth organizations have initiated public discussion meetings (e.g., the foundation “Ben je bang voor mij?” [Are You Afraid of Me?]) in order to raise awareness of Islam and the positions of Muslim youth (ter Val, 2005). Thus, while strategies of essentialism exist among Muslim youth in the Netherlands, these are counterbalanced by the existence of substantial numbers of youth whose strategic identities have emerged as both retreatist and engaged.
Denmark Dominant modes of immigration and colonial history As in the Netherlands and Germany, Turkish Muslims initially migrated to Denmark in the 1970s in order to take up temporary jobs. Other early Muslim immigrants to Denmark included some from Pakistan, Morocco, and the former Yugoslavia. A second wave of Muslims came in the 1980s and 1990s: in the 1980s as refugees from Iran, Iraq, and Palestine among others, and in the 1990s mostly from Somalia and Bosnia. Currently, Muslims with a refugee background comprise about 40 percent of the Muslim population in Denmark, and this is a characteristic shared with Sweden (Hussain, 2007; Lassen & Østergaard, 2006; OECD figures for 2006). While Denmark and Sweden both had overseas possessions, neither country was in the class of the British or the French.
Characteristic modes of integration or assimilation The dominant approach to political integration in Denmark approximates the French model of reuniversalized citizenship in which group and community characteristics are removed from the public domain. In the political culture and public policy, the Danish nation is often defined as an ethnic community whose cultural survival is guaranteed by the state. This is believed to be best achieved through the assimilation of immigrants into Danish cultural values (Holm, 2006; Mouritsen, 2005). This development
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210 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking has intensified since the November elections of 2001, which brought a rightwing minority party, the Danish People’s Party (DPP), into the coalition government. In addition, the Danish Aliens Act, passed in 2002, has enhanced the security state and promoted an anti-terrorist discourse often directly targeting Muslims. Muslim youth have experienced themselves in Danish society as stigmatized and targeted. Structural exclusion and psychological vulnerability have thus affected many young Danish Muslims in their search for an embracing identity.
Dominant identity strategies The young Danish Muslims we interviewed in the Copenhagen area were all associated with South Asian organizations and they were clearly aware of the changed atmosphere in Denmark after 9/11.4 After 9/11, one young man argued, Islam was often the topic of conversations during lunches at work. Since very few people knew he was Muslim, people felt they could say exactly what they felt. Almost everything they said was negative and he became convinced that he would not tell his co-workers that he was Muslim. Hence “the 9/11 situation,” as one young Muslim woman framed it, “has developed many stereotypes about Muslims.” This, she argued, is “mostly because of the way [the] media is presenting these issues.” The Danish media have been instrumental in exploiting racism through framing the discourse and priming the audience. This is not only the result of 9/11, but started already in the 1990s when the newspaper tabloid Ekstra Bladet ran a campaign focusing on the desirability of a multicultural society in Denmark (Rydgren, 2005). This was followed by an increasing number of hostile media reports focused on Muslims (Hervik, 2002, 2006). The culmination of this process was reflected in Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the Muhammad caricatures in September 2005, a decision that resulted in increased insecurity for many Muslims in Denmark. In addition to media discourse, the Danish People’s Party has also been heavily involved in the stigmatization of Muslims. In such discourses, the question of Muslim women, honor killings, and the hijab are some of the most contentious. A number of young Muslims we interviewed emphasized the fear many Muslims experienced during the Muhammad debate and how misconceptions about Muslims affected the entire community negatively. One young Muslim woman talked about how she had started to wear the hijab after 9/11 as it provided her “mental peace,” but, she argued, “I have noted that a lot of people don’t like it.” Another young Muslim woman argued that she was not comfortable with non-Muslims. When asked why, she responded 4
The interviews in Denmark and Sweden were conducted with help from three graduate students, Anna Traustadottir, Matilda Padoan, and Zayeda Sharmin.
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that so many subjects that were important to her were not relevant for nonMuslims. Issues like homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and promiscuity were, she felt, part of Danish everyday life, but were in her view haram (forbidden). Therefore she kept her children in Islamic schools, ensuring they had only Muslim friends. Despite such retreatist strategies and the heated debates in the press, it should be noted that unlike in France, the wearing of the hijab has been widely accepted in schools and any problems involving Muslim pupils are usually resolved in dialogue with the Muslim parents at the local level (Hussain, 2007). The fact that many of these young Muslims live in a non-Muslim society that sees Islam as the antithesis of democracy, human rights, and gender equality has resulted in an attempt to prove to the majority that Islam does indeed value these elements (Cesari, 2007; Schmidt, 2004). This search has often involved a return to some essence of Islam. In the process, parents are often viewed as biased in their Islamic practices by their culture and language, making parents a defining Other within a context where Islam and Muslims are under constant attack (Schmidt, 2004). One young Muslim student emphasized how difficult he found the pressure from his parents who wanted him to speak Malay at home, despite the fact that he had only been to Malaysia a few times and that it made him feel different from his friends. “I’m not sure what it means to be Muslim, but my friends keep asking me. I guess I’m a Danish Muslim. I was really angry when I saw the cartoons. I felt I had to defend who I am.” In an interview shown in the documentary Mit Danmark, Janusz Bakrawi articulates a similar post-diasporic narrative of the awakening of difference and distinction: I was born in Denmark, here in Virum … My mother is Polish and my father Palestinian. As a child and a teenager I never saw myself as being different. I was Danish and my friends were called Mikael and Jakob. Slowly I discovered, however, that people saw something different. A stranger, an immigrant – somebody allowed visiting. The only immigrants I had known were my mother and father. I didn’t even know that they were immigrants. It is strange to discover that you are suddenly a guest. (“My Denmark,” Final Cut Film Production, DR 1, February 4, 2007)
During a walk through the city, Bakrawi makes reference to the anger and frustration of not belonging. He talks about how he has tried to fit in, tried to be a “real” Arab, tried to laugh with the Danes when they made jokes about immigrants, but all this just made him angrier. In response he finds himself asking questions about his identity. While speaking the language and being accultured to Danish customs and traditions, Bakrawi remains an outsider. While Bakrawi’s experience may result in a strategic choice to retreat into a parallel existence to the majority society, it could also be the
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212 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking beginning of an essentialist strategy. In this Bakrawi’s expression of religious confusion and anger is probably similar to many non-aligned Islamists across Europe, who appear to have a rather superficial knowledge about Islam and lack rigor in their religious studies. Instead they exhibit a ritualistic adherence to prayers and dress code and often attract attention because of their outspoken religiosity. Retreatist and essentialist identity strategies are thus likely to coexist in the Danish case. In 2002, the Danish government passed a package of laws, called L35, to combat the growing threat of international terrorism. These laws give the police greater powers of covert surveillance that can be used against Muslim groups or individuals (Hussain, 2007). As expressed by a young Muslim from Tåstrupgård, an area on the outskirts of Copenhagen: “I feel the police are constantly on my case. Last week we were stopped twice and they always have that funny look on their faces, as if we can’t speak or something, I don’t know – we’re just hanging out.” This does not necessarily mean that these young people become radical Islamists. According to a report (Taarnby Jensen, 2006), only a small number of dedicated Islamists subscribe to violent Islam, so called Jihadists who are not in any way representative of the majority of Muslims in Denmark. On the contrary, they appear to be rather isolated groups whose views on jihad have marginalized them from their original immigrant communities. Hence it could be concluded that the particular Danish context of outspoken and institutionalized Islamophobia has, at times, resulted in a search for essentialist identity strategies, but that these are by no means the only response to the current political climate.
Sweden Dominant modes of immigration and colonial history Sweden, along with other European countries, has experienced a dramatic change from economic migration to the migration of refugees. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Sweden kept a very open migration policy, which resulted in a remarkably high level of immigrants in relation to the total population. The Muslim population in Sweden is highly diverse, with Muslim migration from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, South Asia, Africa, and the Balkans (Sander, 2004).
Characteristic modes of integration or assimilation As with the United Kingdom, Sweden has adopted a policy of group-based pluralism in which a multicultural recognition and fostering of minorities have been encouraged. Sweden’s multicultural policies date from the mid-1970s.
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They have often worked to reinforce cultural boundaries around the migrant groups by providing cultural rights without always providing access to political, social, and economic institutions. While enjoying formal citizenship rights and protected cultural rights, Muslims in Sweden have experienced economic exclusion and social closure. This has led to increased segregation in terms of housing, economic marginalization, illegal economic activities, the formation of gangs, and a culture of violence (Larsson, 2006).
Dominant identity strategies As in Denmark, it is clear from a report from the Swedish Department of Integration (SDI, autumn 2005) that anti-Muslim sentiments in Sweden increased following 9/11. Sixty percent of respondents in the SDI survey agreed with the statement that Islam cannot coexist with basic “Swedish values,” and only four out of ten believed that “Swedish Muslims are like Swedes in general.” The effects of such Islamophobia and racism are most visible on the Swedish job market. One young woman we interviewed described how her father had been a university teacher in Afghanistan, but could find nothing more than routine manual work in Sweden, despite his efforts to upgrade. Despite the undoubted challenges of integration and the continued isolation, the politics of engagement seems to remain a viable and constructive strategy for a majority of Muslim youth in Sweden. The fact that no right-wing party has been allowed to seriously affect mainstream politics constitutes a significant difference between the Danish and the Swedish case. This is not to say that Sweden has been immune from essentialist strategies among Muslim youth – which have, at times, resulted in violent activities. Hence, as in Denmark (as well as in other European societies), a small number of extremists have come to achieve prominence out of all proportion to their numbers. In 2005, Swedish police arrested three young men who had planned to blow up a Swedish church. Characteristic of other young Muslim extremists across Europe, they were psychologically troubled young men, inspired toward acts of violence to fulfill grandiose needs for recognition and belonging (Sydsvenskan, May 3, 2006). Their knowledge of Islam was so weak that their actual levels of religiosity seemed irrelevant to their actions (Dagens Nyheter, June 14, 2006). Among the more than 300,000 Muslims in Sweden, there is, as in Denmark, an increasing minority who are affected by global narratives of Islamic resurrection and who would like to institutionalize religion in a more essentialist sense (Carlbom, 2003). The Swedish Muslim Council (SMC) is often set in this category. The main tasks for this organization are to institute parallel Muslim organizations and institutions, particularly in
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214 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking law and education (Carlbom, 2003, pp. 89, 91; Otterbäck, 2004). Some of the SMC’s concerns are carried into the basement mosques of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Friday prayer in many of these mosques is often about more than religious ritual. It is a combination of strong political attacks and moral directives concerning how a Muslim should live – what is haram (forbidden) and what is halal (allowed) (Sydsvenskan, February 8, 2006). Often these basement mosques are used to create male bonding and for recruiting young Muslims. According to Carlbom (2003, p. 92; see also Sydsvenskan, February 10, 2006), these groups are not interested in integration, but rather see isolation and separation (a parallel society as manifest in identity strategies of essentialism and retreatism) as an advantage for protecting and strengthening their version of Islam. Although the SMC claims to represent all Swedish Muslims, this is clearly not the case (Carlbom, 2003). There are also a number of organizations who actively work to improve relations between young Muslims and the Swedish society. Swedish Young Muslims (Svenska Unga Muslimer, SUM) is one such organization with around 5,000 members and 30 local branches. Omar Mustafa, one of its leaders, describes how SUM encourages interfaith conferences, workshops, and camps and how the organization makes active involvement in the public sphere a top priority. He also maintains that Islamophobia has not been as visible in Sweden as in the rest of Europe, especially pointing to the difference with Denmark, where xenophobic attitudes have been much more prevalent.5 This style of calm and integrated Muslim assertiveness eschews the extremes of isolated retreatism and angry essentialism. Far from being compliant, it is agonistic and assertive, making claims in the agora of pluralistic struggle, seeking compromises and bargains and advocating a strategy of engagement. In our interviews with young Muslims in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, many of our interviewees also expressed little or no reluctance to be part of Swedish society. Many emphasized a sense of engagement and argued that they felt generally welcome in Sweden and that most Swedish people treated them with respect. One young (male) leader of the Muslim Scouts told us how he and some friends were involved in training “peace agents” in response to misconceptions about Muslims in the wake of 9/11. “There will always be extremists and fundamentalists all over the world. One can’t just point to all Muslims as terrorists. So we are trying to change that view … well, especially the young people, they feel that they don’t know how to respond, which is why we intend to educate peace agents. They will provide a different picture, respond to all the questions, reduce some stereotypes.” 5
Interview with Omar Mustafa on the Young Left’s web page (http://www.ungvanster.se/ template/arkiv/?pressID=1147).
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Interviews with two imams reinforced the notion of Muslim identity as a tool for integration. They argued that Islam can work as a tool for integration rather than separation for different Muslim groups. According to their views, Islam – devoid of any cultural or ethnic elements – can easily be combined with a Swedish identity as “the message of Islam is eternal and inclusive and can thus contain all cultures.” Jocelyn Cesari (2004) agrees: “As was the case several times before in Islamic history, Muslims in the West are revising and recreating Islamic culture by hybridizing their own heritage with the dominant norms and values of their host societies” (p. 83). So far it appears that Swedish policies toward integration have been more successful than their Danish counterparts and that the lack of explicitly xenophobic and Islamophobic parties has managed to create a less hostile atmosphere. This may explain some of the tendencies toward strategies of engagement rather than essentialist confrontation. At the same time, it is difficult to dispute the fact that, among minority groups, it is Islamic identity constructions that have grown most strongly in Sweden. According to Friedman and Ekholm Friedman (2006), Muslim groups are among the largest migrant groups and are the most internally integrated and externally separated. This creates a strong foundation for continued mobilization. Hence, we can see that although the extremes of essentialism may have been avoided by young Muslims in Sweden in favor of engagement, the situation is unstable and it is unclear what kind of balance will eventuate.
Conclusion Despite their very different experiences with colonialization, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands have developed a conceptualization of immigrants as separate entities rather than relational beings. These societies have been largely unsuccessful in nurturing a politics of engagement. In so doing, they reflect the incapacity to transcend in-group/out-group binaries made familiar through the minimal group experiments of social identity theory (Kinnvall & Lindén, 2010; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Such are the consequences of insisting on a regime of assimilation on the level of citizenship that papers over the schisms of national and religious identities that are (de) formed in the mutual hostilities of social closure and the systemic hatreds of racism. While the complex histories of colonial conquest continue to pervade ethno-racial and religious relations throughout contemporary Europe, it has become apparent to us that public policy on the cultural entitlements and arrangements of citizenship regimes exerts an independent impact. The return to Islam opens up a radical questioning of the Enlightenment assumptions of liberalism, republicanism, and pillarization. Statham, Koopmans, Giugni, and Passy (2005) argue: “it is the public nature of the
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216 Catarina Kinnvall and Paul Nesbitt-Larking Islamic religion, and the demands that it makes on the way that followers conduct their public lives, which makes Islam an especially resilient type of identity, and which results in claims-making for group demands” (p. 441). On the basis of the daily hard work of navigating agonistic political relations, Muslims and non-Muslims alike have exhibited the trust and good will to sustain a pervasive politics of engagement in Europe, notably in Sweden and the United Kingdom, where there has been less emphasis on the conformity of newcomers to the existing political culture and institutional arrangements. In such contexts, robust and self-confident claims made in the public sphere have been both acceptable in the national conversation and likely to exert a positive impact. For a minority of others, most significantly in assimilationist settings, the ummah – a global Muslim community – has come to substitute for the good-enough national political community and has thereby enhanced an anti-Western global identity, often referred to as “Western-phobia” (see Larsson, 2006). Rejecting the West, young Muslims have converted themselves into accidental orientalists adhering to whatever essentialized versions of Islam have the greatest currency on the active web sites. Like their Western equivalents, these cyber-fundamentalists have constructed protective walls of essentialism and retreatism behind which they can build community. While small in numbers, their impact is huge and consequently much of the energy in shaping public policy around religious being and expressivity in Europe must attend to their identity strategies. In the end, if the essentialists are too hard to reach, the world of the retreatists can be engaged through a respectful and genuinely mutual dialogical politics of recognition.
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Going All the Way Politicization and Radicalization of the Hofstad Network in the Netherlands Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Introduction This is our will. At this moment we are under siege and we have nothing that can protect us. Except Allah. He is our Lord. It is very strange. We are not afraid, because Allah is with us, and when Allah is with you, no one can take you on. Those Roman dogs1 have run away. We are fighting in the Way of Allah and for nothing else, so his laws will be implemented. May Allah accept this from us.
This is the farewell letter written by two young men, Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh, in the city of The Hague, during a siege of their house on November 10, 2004, following which Walters threw a grenade at five police officers who had come to arrest them. Both were members of the so-called Hofstad network, a group of young male and female Muslims that originated partly in The Hague (a city that is also called Hofstad in reference to its function as the home city of the Dutch monarchy). A week earlier, on November 2, 2004, another member, Mohammed Bouyeri, killed the writer and film director Theo van Gogh. His reason for doing so was that Van Gogh had made a film, Submission, with the conservative politician Hirsi Ali in which they tried to demonstrate a relation between Islam and domestic violence. The Hofstad network has been implicated in several other incidents, such as threats against Hirsi Ali and populist politician Geert Wilders. It can be seen as a network of angry young Muslims espousing an ideology that is a mixture of so-called Al-Qaeda and other Salafi–Jihadi ideologies.
1
“Roman dogs” in this instance means the police, or more precisely, the arresting officers.
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The murder of Van Gogh and the siege in The Hague had a tremendous impact on Dutch society. There have been numerous serious attempts to explain the murder of Van Gogh and the radicalization and emergence of the Hofstad network (Aarts & Hirzallah, 2005; AIVD, 2005, 2006; Benschop, 2005; Buijs, Demant, & Hamdy, 2006; Buruma, 2006; Eyerman, 2008; Nesser, 2005; Peters, 2005; Slootman & Tillie, 2006; Vidino, 2007).2 None of these studies regards the Hofstad network as part of a larger movement, apart from those which over-emphasize its link with Al-Qaeda (Vermaat, 2005), nor do they adequately place the rise of the group against a larger background of rising “assimilationist” anti-Islamic populism in Holland3 and the simultaneous rise of an Islamic revitalization movement, the Salafi movement (Meijer, 2005). In this chapter we analyze the shift from a politicized identity to a radicalized identity of (members of) the Hofstad network. Our findings are based on an analysis of texts written by the Hofstad network by Meijer (2006), who acted as an expert witness at one of the trials involving the network. We also include observations by De Koning (2008), who followed the activities of the Hofstad network on the Internet between 2002 and 2005 and conducted interviews with three key informants within the network. After introducing the Hofstad network, we provide an analysis of the “assimilationist” discourse and the rise of the Salafi movement as a background for the politicization and radicalization of the members of the Hofstad network. This process is analyzed from a social movement perspective, following Gamson (1992), by focusing on their perception of injustice, the agency of the people, and their identity.
Introducing the Hofstad Network In public debates and the media, the group composed of Mohammed Bouyeri, Jason Walters, Ismail Akhnikh, and others became known as the Hofstad group, a name provided by the General Intelligence and Security Agency (AIVD) in 2002. Based upon our own research, we prefer to speak of a loosely coupled network structure, as first described by Gerlach and Hine (1970), that is non-hierarchical and characterized by a segmentary-like mobilization, fission, and fusion of several subnetworks (cf. Price, Nonini, & Fox Tree, 2008, p. 146). The Hofstad network consists of several subnetworks that together include about 30 people. Their spiritual leader was 2
Both Buijs et al. (2006) and Slootman and Tillie (2006) pay attention to transnational developments and the (very loose) link with Al-Qaeda, but they lack analysis of how local and transnational developments connect with the rise and toning down of the Salafi movement. 3 There are a few exceptions, such as Buijs (2009).
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222 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Redouan Al Issa, a Syrian illegal immigrant also known as Abu Khaled, who was considerably older than the rest of the group. As he disappeared on the day Van Gogh was murdered, it is unclear what his precise role was, both with regard to the murder and within the network. Samir Azzouz was one of the best-known younger members of the group. He grew up in Amsterdam-West, a large migrant area in the capital. In January 2003 Azzouz tried to reach Chechnya with a friend, but he was caught and sent back by the Russian police. In October 2003 he was arrested for preparing a terrorist attack along with four others, but was later acquitted. In June 2004 he was arrested again for being an accessory in the robbery of a supermarket. During a search, weapons and blueprints of several “strategic” buildings were found. Azzouz was charged with planning another terrorist attack. After his acquittal in the first trial (for a terrorist plot), he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for planning murder and arson. In 2005 he was arrested again, with several others, for planning a terrorist attack. He was also accused of being part of another terrorist group, the Piranha group (Meijer, 2006). Eventually, he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment but on appeal was re-sentenced to nine years. Mohammed Bouyeri grew up in the same neighborhood as Samir Azzouz in Amsterdam-West. He left school without a diploma. His interest in Islam grew after his involvement in street disturbances and the death of his mother. For a while he became a volunteer at a neighborhood center. During this period he was introduced by Samir Azzouz to the Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam, which belongs to a network of Dutch and European Salafi mosques. Besides Abu Khaled, Bouyeri was one of the main ideologues of the network. Before murdering Theo van Gogh, he dedicated a considerable amount of time to disseminating his own work and translations of English texts on the Internet. Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh, who were arrested after the siege of their house in The Hague (where another friend and member of the Hofstad network, Zakaria, also lived), became involved in the network in Schiedam in 2002, as did Nouredine el Fatmi (an illegal immigrant who was arrested in 2006 on terrorism charges). At the time of writing, Walters and Bouyeri are detained in a high security prison. In 2002 and 2003, the core of the network around Samir Azzouz and Ismail Akhnikh was located in Schiedam, a town near Rotterdam. Its members met in the Internet Phone Center close to where Abu Khaled lived. Another important part of the network consisted of a group of volunteers working for a charity organization in Rotterdam that raised funds for the “victims of the Israeli occupation of Palestine” (De Koning, 2009). Within the network, marriages were arranged according to the version of Islamic law followed by Abu Khaled or Mohammed Bouyeri. As some of the couples divorced and remarried, there was a constant flow of people joining and leaving the core or the periphery of the network. Besides the
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Internet Phone Center, the homes of Ismail Akhnikh and Jason Walters in The Hague and that of Mohammed Bouyeri in Amsterdam were important meeting places.
The Dutch Islam Debate From the 1990s onwards, ethnicity and religion were increasingly seen as private matters in the Netherlands instead of issues for the state to deal with (Fermin, 1997, p. 233). At the same time, toleration for religious and cultural differences was beginning to be questioned by a broad political spectrum ranging from the ultra-left to the ultra-right, including socialist and liberal parties as well as religious parties, who saw it as a threat to social cohesion (Fermin, 1997, p. 247). The assimilationist debate began in the early 1990s when the centrist-liberal politician Frits Bolkestein of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), in a campaign against multiculturalism, warned that Islam was an adverse influence on integration. It received a further boost with an article by social democrat Paul Scheffer (2000). Although the article focused mainly on the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of migrants, Islam featured prominently in it. After 9/11 the focus on integration in the media and in politics shifted almost entirely to Islam and Muslims, and to the alleged threat they posed to Dutch society (Vliegenthart, 2007). From that moment onwards, Islam was associated with backwardness and considered as an undermining force in Dutch society, which was seen to uphold the tenets of the Enlightenment. The argument was that Dutch society supported equality of men and women, did not condemn homosexuality, and embraced modern thought and lifestyles, whereas Islam represented everything that Dutch society was not: violence, irrationality, and intolerance. As important as the content of the new debate was its tone, which became abusive. If, before 9/11, the debate had been civilized and focused on finding socio-economic solutions, now the gloves were off and the debate was framed as a war of civilizations. What made the Islam debate all the more pernicious was that it coincided with the rise of a populist movement led by the politician Pim Fortuyn, who used the scare around Islam to attract a mass following among people who were fed up with the establishment’s policy of “pampering” migrants. The harsh Dutch Islam debate did not immediately lead to significant changes in policy, but with influential spokespersons such as Hirsi Ali and Wilders in parliament Islamophobia became a prominent part of public discourse, a trend that increased when the “assimilationist” minister Rita Verdonk was appointed as minister of integration. As part of the elite, assimilationists had ample access to the media and could launch their assault through newspapers, TV, and the Internet. The result was that Muslims felt
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224 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer themselves confronted by an almost solid oppositional front of White Dutch adversaries (although some politicians did defend the civil rights of Muslims), while internal ethnic and religious differences made it almost impossible for them to form a united counter-movement.4
The Rise of the Salafi Movement We treat the different Dutch Salafi networks with their imams, preachers, participants, organizations, and ideological differences as part of a transnational Salafi social movement. This movement aims to revitalize Islam based upon the life of the first Muslims and strives to live according to that idealized vision which its followers find more just and satisfying than the present.5 Doctrinally, Salafism aims to cleanse Islam from so-called non-Islamic accretions such as Sufism, Shi’a Islam, or local practices and doctrines. These are believed to have sullied a “pure” Islam (Meijer, 2009a). The transnational Salafi movement consists of local and global branches and is characterized by a loosely coupled network structure. The various Salafi networks share the same doctrine of the unity and uniqueness of God, but they differ on the manner of achieving their goals and its members and branches choose different strategies according to their local sources and practices. The first Salafi mosque in the Netherlands, the Tawheed mosque, was founded in 1986 in Amsterdam. It was followed by the Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven (1989), the As Soennah mosque in The Hague (1990), and the Islamic Foundation for Education and Transmission of Knowledge (ISOOK) in Tilburg (2000), as well as other organizations and networks in Rotterdam and outside the major cities. These institutions stress the importance of education and rearing children and are focused on instilling in Muslims correct Islamic doctrines and methods (De Koning, 2009). During the 1990s the Salafi movement was able to build up its networks and institutions while remaining out of the spotlight. It adopted a quietist approach toward Dutch political leaders, operated in relative isolation from Dutch society, and used the Dutch infrastructure to enable migrant groups and religious denominations to establish their own youth organizations and Islamic schools, which are subsidized by the state (as are Christian, Jewish, and Hindu schools). The movement also set up its own lecture circles throughout the country and was among the first religious groups to create its own web site. In 2000, the Salafi movement expanded its (Muslim) audience when Noer Publishers was established. Although not a Salafi publishing agency, it translated much 4 Other factors such as the lack of resources may also have contributed to the lack of mobilization; see, for example, Fennema and Tillie (2001). 5 This definition is inspired by Price et al. (2008).
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of the available English Salafi literature into Dutch and sold both English and Dutch literature on the public market and in mosques. Salafism first caught the attention of policymakers, opinion leaders, the media, and politicians in January 2002 when two Moroccan Dutch youth were killed in Kashmir. They had apparently been recruited for jihad in the Fourkaan mosque in Eindhoven. This triggered the belief that terrorism was not just a “foreign” issue and that the Netherlands had homegrown terrorists as well. The public was shocked when it appeared that Islamic schools were promoting intolerance, spreading anti-democratic and especially anti-assimilationist ideas among children, and reproducing sermons about jihad against the United States and Israel. From 2002 onwards, populist politicians in particular called for mosques to be closed down, and politicians, the national government, local authorities, and security services were forced to examine the issue. While Salafism was basically a nonviolent, apolitical identity movement geared to the purification of Islamic doctrine, because of its “withdrawal” from Dutch society it was targeted by the assimilationist populist movement as the epitome of the failure of Dutch multiculturalism. This created a paradox. While in populist eyes the very existence of Salafism and its practices was portrayed as a challenge to Dutch culture and political rule, the Dutch Islam debate created a platform for Salafism to engage with Dutch political institutions and public opinion. In fact, many of the movement’s activities did not directly aim at confronting Dutch society. Most were limited to establishing an organization for Islamic home care, or “teaching” women how to be “proper Muslim women” by, for example, wearing the niqab or headscarf. Only when these activities were exposed and subjected to political scrutiny and debate did Salafi imams react strongly. For instance, the imam of the As Soennah mosque fiercely attacked Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh for their film Submission, as well as other Muslim organizations for succumbing to Dutch public opinion. As a result, the position of Salafism in Dutch society became even more contested (De Koning, 2009). Most of the time, however, Salafi mosques avoided politically sensitive topics. In the long run this new accommodating attitude of the Salafi mosques, according to the AIVD (2005), pushed the recruiters for jihad outside the mosques.
Politicization and Radicalization of the Hofstad Network The Dutch assimilationist trend and the Salafi response mutually reinforced each other, leading to a movement/counter-movement interaction (see Chapter 13 by Van Stekelenburg, Oegema, and Klandermans in this volume). In this process, Salafi Muslims developed their ideas and actions in reaction to politicians and opinion leaders in the Dutch Islam debate (and transnational issues),
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226 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer and vice versa. Both movements then became mutually constitutive, identifying themselves in opposition to each other and regarding the other as the main target for their collective actions, creating a cycle of counter-measures. This is most clearly illustrated by the emergence of the Hofstad network and its shift from a politicized identity to a radicalized one. The Hofstad network arose out of the Salafi networks and represented a growing dissatisfaction with the moderation of the Salafi message under pressure of the assimilationists. At the same time, the activities of the Hofstad network seemed to confirm the public view that Salafism posed a threat to Dutch society. In order to analyze the development of the Hofstad network, we need to provide a definition of a politicized and radicalized identity. According to Simon and Klandermans (2001, p. 327), the awareness of a collective identity related to a particular religious or political ideology can be the basis for a politicized identity. Such an identity requires (1) an awareness of shared grievances; (2) an outsider to be blamed for a group’s predicament; and (3) claims for compensation leveled against the outsider. If a group tries to win support from other groups in an attempt to turn its claims into a matter of public interest, the collective identity becomes fully politicized. This in turn changes the relationship between the group and its social environment because involving other parties means recognizing society and its social arrangements, producing a more inclusive in-group membership. Radicalization is defined by Beach (1977, p. 3) as “a change in one or more of the components of a social movement’s ideology and/or a change in the strategies and tactics employed or advocated by the movement such that the total of the change or changes brings the movement into a condition of lesser congruence with the values and means which are presented as legitimate by the dominant sector of the society in which the movement is acting.” This is a very useful definition because it focuses mainly on identity and strategies within the movement and on the opinions and interests of other parties in the wider society. Unfortunately, in his worthwhile elaboration on this definition, Beach (1977) conceptualizes societally approved values as (“initially”) static. Given the above elaboration on the Dutch Islam debate and the rise and toning down of the Salafi movement, it is clear, however, that consensus can change rapidly. A shocking event such as 9/11 is a catalyst for radicalizing young Muslims, as we will show below. We therefore propose a slightly modified and more precise definition of radicalization, as follows: it is a change in one or more of the components of a group’s identity and/or ideology and/or a change in the strategies and tactics employed or advocated by the group which brings the group into a condition of lesser congruence with the prevailing social arrangements, values, and means that are presented as legitimate by the institutions and elites concerned with upholding these social arrangements and values. Instead of recognizing wider society and its institutions (as in the case of politicization), radicalization involves a turn away
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from wider society into an exclusive membership of an in-group with an anti-systemic ideology and/or tactics (see also Beach, 1977, p. 313). The emphasis in both politicization and radicalization is on consciousness that links individual beliefs about the social world with cultural belief systems and ideologies (cf. Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2007, p. 177). In order to understand the shift from politicization to radicalization, we need to ask what the underlying mechanisms are that determine one’s understanding of the social world. And how does this understanding relate to action? The construction of “reality” is imperative for social movements to produce collective action frames, or “a set of action-oriented beliefs and meanings that inspire and legitimate social movement activities and campaigns” (Gamson, 1992, p. 7). These frames consist of three elements that will inform us of the reality production of the Hofstad network: injustice, agency, and identity. Together they legitimate collective action.
Injustice: The War against Islam The first component, injustice, refers to signifying a particular event or action as unfair but also to emotions such as moral indignation, resentment, dissatisfaction, and anger. According to Gamson (1992, p. 7), the injustice frame allows and enables participants to construct and make sense of their grievances. It creates a political consciousness in which individual processes of identification, cognition, and emotion merge into a “motivational constellation preparing people for action” (Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2007, p. 177). Contrary to what, for example, Vidino (2007, p. 285) argues (and notwithstanding the fact that ultimately its target was Dutch society), the Hofstad network was not only motivated by domestic issues, but also followed different and dual trajectories of raising consciousness about domestic and foreign issues, which came to be subsumed under the umbrella of the “war against Islam.” The life stories of Azzouz and Bouyeri illustrate this process. Azzouz’s biography and interviews with three members of the network make clear that the Second Intifadah (starting in 2000) was a critical event in the development of the political consciousness of the Hofstad network (De Koning, 2008). Samir Azzouz was especially touched by the duty to express solidarity with oppressed Muslims in the world and wondered why Muslims and nonMuslims did not stand up and raise their voice against the fate of the Palestinians and oppose the United States and Israel as oppressors. The second major politicizing event was 9/11 and its aftermath. The “war on terror” that was unleashed after the attacks was increasingly perceived as a war against Islam. Jason Walters in particular after 9/11 became increasingly interested in a radicalized version of Islam on the Internet. After 9/11 the
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228 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Palestinian issue was merged with other conflicts in Chechnya, Kashmir, and Iraq. For Azzouz and Walters, these issues expressed their identification with the imagined ummah (global community of Muslims) and the deep crisis in which it found itself because of the violent conflicts mentioned above, the presence of (or occupation by) Western military forces, and the subordinate political, economic, and military position of the Muslim world in relation to the West. In this zero-sum game, the ummah is declining while the “infidels” are becoming stronger and more powerful. If initially the growing awareness of shared grievances pertained mainly to conflicts outside the Netherlands, when after 9/11 the Dutch Islam debate really took off, Dutch politics became increasingly connected in the minds of several Hofstad network youth with the chain of global politics and events. It was Bouyeri in particular who focused on the problematic relationship of Dutch society with its Moroccan Dutch youth. He had had several encounters with the police and law enforcement in the past and even spent a few weeks in jail for assault in 2001. After his release, he started working at a youth center in 2002 and dedicated himself to improving the position of Moroccan Dutch youth. It is clear that Bouyeri, as well as Azzouz and Walters, not only felt humiliated by the Dutch Islam debate, but was also outraged by the double standards applied to Muslims. As Jason and another network member, Bilal, pointed out in their writings on the Internet, politicians such as Fortuyn, Wilders, and Hirsi Ali were free to insult Muslims and Islam, whereas Muslims did not have the same freedom to utter support for Islam or criticize the Netherlands. Gamson aptly remarks that indignation “puts fire in the belly and iron in the soul” (1992, p. 32). In this sense, the fate of the Palestinians, the atrocities in Chechnya, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the verbal abuse by Dutch politicians and opinion leaders were so many “moral shocks” (Jasper, 1999, p. 106) to their sense of justice. In order to make sense of this and give it purpose, Bouyeri, Azzouz, and others combined their individual experiential knowledge with the larger, global (Salafi) narratives of the war against Islam. Singling out Hirsi Ali, Wilders, and Van Gogh as the ultimate enemies created and cultivated what Jasper (1999, p. 107) calls an “Attack mode”: an emotional state that channels anxieties and fears into moral indignation and anger toward concrete policies and decision-makers.
Fighting for God: Agency The Second Intifadah, the wars in Chechnya and Iraq, the attacks of 9/11, and the Dutch Islam debate should be regarded as part of a sequence of politicizing events changing the political consciousness of the network’s participants. This does not immediately lead to collective action, but the necessary
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precondition for the next step is that collective action is regarded by participants as effective; in Gamson’s (1992) words, actors must have a sense of agency. Between 2001 and 2004, several developments contributed to changing the sense of agency among members of the Hofstad network. This change was related to two issues. The first concerned the choice between a democratic, non-violent route or a violent one. Between September 2001 and May 2003, the conviction arose among the group that democracy was not an adequate instrument for Muslims to combat injustice and that violence was inevitable. Later, violence was even welcomed as the only justifiable means for Muslims to fight for their religion. The second issue was related to a particular debate held among Jihadis at the time (Gerges, 2005). Should they fight against the “near enemy” (the enemies of Islam in the Middle East, the Arabic states) or against the “far enemy” (the Western enemies of Islam outside the Middle East)? This issue regards the Middle East as the center of Islam, but the participants in the Hofstad network took part in this debate as Muslims who lived among the “far enemy.” As we will show below, they gradually shifted their focus as targets of their violent jihad from the Arab states and Western (or Russian) armies in Muslim countries to opinion leaders (Hirsi Ali, Wilders, and Van Gogh) in the Netherlands. This shift took place between the summer of 2003 and March 2004. As we will show, both shifts cannot be understood without relating ideas of the effectiveness of particular actions to an increasing indignation about issues of injustice: the change in their sense of agency follows the change in the focus of their perception of injustice, and vice versa. The events of 9/11 formed a catalyst in contributing to an awareness that effective action could be taken against the greatest enemies of Muslims worldwide, Jews and the United States. In the period that followed, Samir, Ismail, and Jason felt encouraged in their engagement with global jihad by the highly emotional sermons, lectures, and informal talks in the Amsterdam Tawheed mosque and the As Soennah mosque in The Hague. The two boys who had died in Kashmir at the beginning of 2002 particularly confirmed Samir’s idea that it was possible really to do something and become a martyr. Somewhat later, during the spring of 2002, Samir, Ismail, Jason, Nouredine, and Abu Khaled started organizing meetings at the Internet Phone Center in Schiedam, where they expanded on these ideas. By the end of 2002, Azzouz believed not only that fighting the jihad was necessary to combat injustice outside the Netherlands, but also that it was the only way. The example of the Taliban who defeated the Russians in Afghanistan and the fighters in Chechnya “who gave the Russians a hard time” appealed to him and others. Inspired by these examples, at least four members went abroad for jihad. Azzouz tried to reach Chechnya with a friend in January 2003, but after a few weeks both were sent back at the Russian border. In September 2003,
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230 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Jason, Zakaria, and Ismail traveled to Pakistan to join a jihad cell or train for jihad. After a few weeks they returned to the Netherlands. The attempts by Samir Azzouz and others to join the global jihad suggest that by the end of 2002 (or, in the case of Jason and Ismail, September 2003), they were full-fledged radicals. This is confirmed by the fact that in the fall of 2002, the AIVD first mentions the existence of a group of young radical Muslims it labels the “Hofstadgroep.” However, this group was not coherent and the trajectories toward violence were not predetermined. In particular Azzouz, Akhnikh, and Walters followed a dual trajectory. While they became increasingly radicalized in global issues (for example, publishing calls for joining the jihad in Chechnya in the spring of 2002), they were less radical though highly politicized in regard to the situation of Muslims in the Netherlands. Their different trajectories started to come together in the spring of 2003. It is interesting to note that Azzouz and several other members of the network were active in the Arab European League (AEL) as an alternative movement for the cause of the global predicament of Muslims. This Belgian organization, founded in Antwerp, was led by the Lebanese Abou Jahjah. The AEL was notorious for its alleged involvement in riots and its harsh critique of Belgian politicians. In 2002, it was announced that the AEL was to set up a Dutch counterpart. This met with an enthusiastic response among Moroccan Dutch youth, who saw the AEL as a “Moroccan pride” or “Muslim pride” organization. The initial tours by the AEL throughout the country raised hopes among Moroccan Dutch youth that it would be able to express their grievances. However, because of external pressures from politicians, police, and the security agency as well as internal problems and mismanagement, the AEL never fully met these expectations. For some in the Hofstad network, the AEL was the last chance to pursue democratic change, however controversial the movement was. The decision in May 2003 by the proposed Dutch chairman of the AEL, the popular Mohammed Cheppih, not to become the Dutch AEL leader particularly alienated most members of the Hofstad network. Cheppih combined a religious outlook – his father was active in one of the Salafi networks – with an emancipatory political discourse and was widely regarded as a credible authoritative leader. His withdrawal and the subsequent demise of the AEL were proof for some of the network members that the democratic route “just did not work to begin with” (De Koning, 2008). Mohammed Bouyeri followed a different trajectory. Contrary to the other members, he was more occupied with the Dutch situation. Although an adequate student, he did not finish his education and got into trouble with the police on a number of occasions. The death of his mother in 2001 led to a significant change in attitude; he became more religious and more politically
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aware. At first Bouyeri tried to improve the situation of Moroccan Dutch youth in a migrant area in Amsterdam through his activities as a youth worker in the spring of 2002. Leaving youth work after his plans failed to materialize, he became more involved in the Salafi networks, having been introduced to the Tawheed mosque by Samir Azzouz. The disillusionment with regular politics following the demise of the AEL and Bouyeri’s unsuccessful attempt to become a social worker coincided with disappointment in the failure of the Salafi mosques to stand up to the pressure of Dutch public opinion. In his biography, Azzouz reveals his anger at the Salafi mosques’ retreat from their adamant stance at the beginning of the war in Iraq in March 2003. In order to bridge the gap between their idealistic perceptions of the world and reality, the Hofstad youth tried to find answers elsewhere. The end result, as the AIVD (2006, p. 12) states in one of its reports, was a split that occurred between “moderates” and “radicals,” with the latter going underground. In the subsequent cycle of confrontation between the state and the Hofstad network, the network became increasingly isolated. Although the Hofstad group never completely severed its ties with the mainstream Salafi movement, its members gradually grew more estranged from other Muslims in general and from Salafi Muslims in particular. The arrest of network members from 2003 onwards must have strengthened the feeling of isolation. Some members were arrested on terrorist charges and others for issuing threats against Wilders and Hirsi Ali. Arrests made before and after the murder of Van Gogh reinforced the idea that the authorities were “out to get them.” Some members of the Hofstad network were no longer welcome in (Salafi and other) mosques, while many (although certainly not all) members had severed ties with their families and mosques. Moreover, many left their jobs and no longer had contact with non-Muslims. The network increasingly became a closed circle, strengthening the tendency toward violence, as subcultures “tend to isolate themselves from society and therefore develop their own, alternative normative system” (Della Porta, 1995, p. 51). Although most of the members of the Hofstad network were not directly involved in political violence, the clearest expression of the network’s tendency to engage in violent actions is the murder of Van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri. Comments made by Hirsi Ali (comparing the Prophet Muhammad with a pedophile, according to “contemporary Western standards”), Wilders (linking Islam with terrorism), and Van Gogh (calling radical Muslims “goatfuckers”) were seen as such grave insults that they deserved the death penalty. The focus on Hirsi Ali, Wilders, and Van Gogh signaled a shift in the ideas of the Hofstad network. Previously engaged with a global jihad in Chechnya, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, it now focused its attention on the Netherlands. The decisive moment came a few months after Jason and
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232 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Ismail returned from Pakistan and several group members were arrested in October 2003. His father’s remarriage that same year further alienated Bouyeri from his family. For him and other members of the network, the March 11, 2004 attacks on trains in Madrid “proved” that jihad outside the Middle East against targets other than Israel and the United States was permissible according to Islam. On March 26, Theo van Gogh published a column criticizing the AIVD for the pressure on the freedom of speech and at the same time called the Prophet Muhammad a “dirty uncle” and a “rapist of little girls.” The column provoked rage among many Muslims (De Koning, 2008) and confirmed the idea among the Hofstad network that the Netherlands had become a battleground. Mohammed Bouyeri made several written threats against Dutch politicians. He issued a call for Muslim youth to engage in a jihad and produced a text called The Obligation, in which he claimed that it was every Muslim’s duty to kill anyone who insulted the Prophet Muhammad. The document was accompanied by death threats published on the Internet by others in the network against Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh after the release of Submission. In terms of Gamson’s collective action frames, jihad constituted the agency component that not only allowed the network members to believe that (violent) actions could bring about change, but also that their actions could produce that change and were necessary. As such, fighting the jihad is an agency frame that “empower[s] people by defining them as potential agents of their own history” (Gamson, 1992, p. 7). In the increasingly volatile atmosphere, the death threats ending in the assassination of Van Gogh caused a momentous crisis in the Netherlands and led to even harsher statements against Islam by politicians such as Hirsi Ali and Wilders.
The Lions of Tawheed: Identity Collective action involves not only an awareness that something can be done against injustice but also that “we” can (and must) do something (Gamson, 1992, pp. 7–8). The politicization of identity based on the idea of the crisis of the ummah, as described above, implies an external enemy who is blamed for the plight of the in-group and against whom the claims for compensation are leveled (Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2007). Identity reflects and stimulates a consciousness in which “we” are defined in opposition to a particular “they,” whose values, interests, and behavior are different. “They” are identified and defined as the target of people’s collective actions. For the Hofstad network, the people constituting “they” grew larger and larger. First, the enemies of Islam were the Arab states who oppressed the people and those armies attacking Muslim countries. Later, Arab and other Muslim leaders and movements who supported the Western invasion of Iraq
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came to be seen as enemies as well as the governments of Western countries. After the beginning of the war in Iraq, everyone participating in the Western democratic system was regarded as an enemy while democracy (in particular after the demise of the AEL) was increasingly seen as a way to oppress Muslims. Muslims who actively supported “Western” policies were also targeted as enemies, later followed by Muslims (including some of the Salafi networks) who did not actively oppose the “war against Islam.” Politicization implies a search for alliances with outsiders. Radicalization, on the other hand, involves the breakdown of social relationships and a cognitive reconfiguration of the environment in which other parties are no longer perceived as potential allies but as enemies who are out for destruction. In the case of the Hofstad network, anyone who did not comply with the members’ vision was seen as an infidel involved in a war against Islam and therefore eligible as a target of their violent actions. The period between March 2003 and March 2004 was decisive with regard to identity. During this time, different modalities of a highly politicized identity merged into one radicalized identity. It is no coincidence that shortly after the start of the war against Iraq in March 2003 and the resignation of Cheppih as designated leader of the AEL in May, a call by Abu Omar appeared on the Internet: It is necessary that this group [of “true Muslims”] whose foundation is “the religion” adopt an organized and active form. It is necessary that this group separate itself from the jahiliya6-society, become independent of it, and distinguish itself from the jahiliya-society that aims to work against Islam.
From the summer of 2003 onwards, in particular under the influence of Mohammed Bouyeri, the core members of the Hofstad network created an identity in which they thought of themselves as the “Lions of Tawheed,” or later the “Ushers of Allah” (signifying their belief in violent jihad to secure God’s rule over the world), or “Poldermujahideen” (an interesting combination of the Dutch word “polder” symbolizing the “typically Dutch” piece of land reclaimed from the sea with the Islamic concept of fighters of the jihad), indicating the idea that they were the vanguard of “true” Muslims combating injustice against Muslims worldwide (including in the Netherlands). Identity in this case plays a major role not only in mobilizing and sustaining the network, but also in explaining to a large extent why the group members left the non-political Salafi movement. As they saw it, their identities were no longer adequately represented in the Salafi mosques, where imams refrained 6
Jahiliya refers to the idea of chaos and the time before Islam applied to current local and global contexts.
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234 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer from mobilizing people and calling for jihad. Although identity always involves a division between “us” and “them,” the members of the Hofstad network took their dichotomous worldview a step further by elaborating on the undivided loyalty that Muslims should show exclusively to God, Islam, and their co-religionists, on the one hand, while actively rejecting and hating anything deemed un-Islamic on the other (Meijer, 2009b). This doctrine is fundamental to their practice of excommunicating other Muslims who do not comply with their view of Islam. As with many other aspects of the Hofstad network, this mirrors the polarized Dutch Islam debate in which Islam was attacked in increasingly harsher terms and was seen as a religion at odds with Dutch culture and loyalty to Dutch society. For the people of the Hofstad network, only one’s identity as a Muslim counts and this identification is at odds with other national or ethnic identities (such as a Dutch or Moroccan Dutch identity). The practice of excommunicating (takfir) was the result of such a dichotomous worldview and reproduced it. Fighting the jihad was more than “just a solution” to the perceived crisis; according to the members of the Hofstad network (in particular Bouyeri, Walters, and Azzouz), it was the only way of proving oneself to be a true Muslim. It is perhaps easy to see this as a “nihilistic attraction to violence” (Vidino, 2007, p. 587), but according to our findings, for the Hofstad network jihad was an existential mark of distinction between hypocrites and true believers. Putting your life at stake demonstrates your membership of the group of true Muslims, and jihad and martyrdom are regarded as the only way to prove your love for God and that you are a “real” Muslim.
Conclusion In this chapter we have analyzed the Hofstad network as part of a social movement. By using a social movement approach we have been able to refine the analysis of the development of the network. The social movement approach we used here attempts to explain not so much why a particular movement appears as how it develops, who is involved, and why. We have used social movement theory because it avoids reductionist or even stereotypical tendencies that often influence research on Islamic movements (Meijer, 2005). The crux of our analysis is Gamson’s (1992, p. 67) notion of examining the interaction between “individuals who operate actively in the construction of meaning and socio-cultural processes that offer meanings that are frequently contested.” This tension contributes to our understanding of how the Hofstad network changed its understanding of the social world and
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how this change related to social action. As Simon and Klandermans (2001, p. 323) argue, a politicized identity provides the motivations for group members to engage in a power struggle. Such analysis not only sheds more light on these motivations, but also allows us to see the development of the participants’ motivations in time, the development of their self-understanding, and the sense of agency during the course of politicization and radicalization. By focusing our attention on the internal social and ideological dynamics of the network within the larger context of the Dutch assimilationist discourse and the gradual accommodationist trend in the Salafi movement, we are able to demonstrate how the people within the network took strategic decisions and adapted themselves and their ideology to changing circumstances. Simon and Klandermans make clear that politicization – and we might as well add radicalization – is not an “all-or-nothing phenomenon” but rather a dynamic one that unfolds as a series of events that change the group’s relationship to its environment. By combining Gamson’s approach with the movement/counter-movement spiral, we have shown that the network’s relationship between identity and injustice changed in such a drastic manner that the perception of injustice led to a worldview of dichotomous, mutually exclusive identities. This development took place within the context of the rise of the assimilationist discourse and the “moderation” of the Salafi movement. Under the pressure of the Dutch Islam debate and the subsequent compromise-prone tendency of the Salafi movement, the focus of the injustice frame shifted to include not only global issues but also Dutch ones, as well as politicians and spokespersons who, according to the Hofstad group, were involved in all-or-nothing war against Islam and whose prominent representatives became the focus of their anger. It was disappointment with the Salafi movement and the AEL that contributed to the idea that violence was the only possible course of action. In order to distinguish themselves from the general Salafi movement and the AEL and to justify their violence, they regarded themselves as the vanguard of Muslims and as “true” Muslims defending an embattled Islam. In this dichotomous worldview, all others (including Muslims) were reduced to infidels out to destroy Islam. In this process as well, the relationship between identity and agency changed. The isolation of the network and the dichotomized and conflictual sacralization of its political consciousness became a precursor and justification for aggressive and even violent action (cf. Knott, McFadyen, McLoughlin, & Francis, 2006, p. 26). Reform, reconciliation, and dialogue were out of the question and the only viable option was to wage jihad against Muslim rulers and other (including Dutch) enemies of Islam that were intent on destroying them and their way of life.
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236 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Our account of the Hofstad network provides insight into the dynamics of the manner in which the politicization of identity turns into radicalization. For it is clear that after most claims of disgruntled Muslim youth are denied or suppressed by opinion leaders, politicians, and state institutions, the struggle does not just continue or end. Rather, the nature of the struggle changes. In the case of the Hofstad network, there seemed to be no alternative left that could transform the confrontation into a more comprehensive struggle by seeking alliances. The disengagement and isolation that ensued as a result of the assimilationist debate and the accommodating attitude of the Salafi movement led to the convergence of different trajectories into a single course of confrontation: jihad in the Netherlands as the only viable and legitimate option. In conclusion, we believe that it is not possible to understand the shift from politicization and radicalization within a broader context without taking into account the changes in the relationship between injustice, agency, and identity. Radicalization involves the breakdown of relations with society as a whole.
References Aarts, P., & Hirzallah, F. (2005). Lions of Tawhid in the Polder. Middle East Report, 235, 18–23. AIVD. (2005). Saudi influences in the Netherlands: Links between the Salafist mission, radicalization processes and Islamic terrorism. The Hague: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties. AIVD. (2006). Violent jihad in the Netherlands: Current trends in the Islamist terrorist threat. The Hague: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties. Beach, S. W. (1977). Social movement radicalization: The case of the people’s democracy in Northern Ireland. Sociological Quarterly, 18(3): 305–318. Benschop, A. (2005). Kroniek van een Aangekondigde Politieke Moord. Jihad in Nederland. Utrecht: Forum. Instituut voor Multiculturele Ontwikkeling. Buijs, F. J. (2009). Muslims in the Netherlands: Social and political developments after 9/11. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35(3), 421–438. Buijs, F. J., Demant, F., & Hamdy, A. (2006). Strijders van eigen bodem. Radicale en democratische moslims in Nederland. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Buruma, I. (2006). Murder in Amsterdam: The death of Theo van Gogh and the limits of tolerance. New York: Penguin. De Koning, M. (2008). Zoeken naar een “zuivere” islam. Geloofsbeleving en identiteitsvorming van jonge Marokkaans-Nederlandse moslims. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. De Koning, M. (2009). Changing worldviews and friendship. An exploration of the life stories of two female Salafists in the Netherlands. In R. Meijer (Ed.), Global Salafism: Islam’s new religious movement (pp. 372–392). London: Hurst.
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Della Porta, D. (1995). Social movements, political violence, and the state: A comparative analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eyerman, R. (2008). The assassination of Theo van Gogh: From social drama to cultural trauma. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fennema, M., & Tillie, J. (2001). Civic community, political participation and political trust of ethnic groups. Connections, 1, 26–41. Fermin, A. (1997). Nederlandse politieke partijen over minderhedenbeleid 1977–1995. Amsterdam: Thesis. Gamson, W. A. (1992). Talking politics. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Gerges, F. (2005). The far enemy: Why jihad went global. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gerlach, L., & Hine, V. (1970). People, power, change: Movements of social transformation. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Jasper, J. M. (1999). The art of moral protest: Culture, biography, and creativity in social movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Knott, K., McFadyen, A., McLoughlin, S., & Francis, M. (2006). The roots, practices and consequences of terrorism: A literature review of research in the arts and humanities. Final Report, University of Leeds, Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Meijer, R. (2005). Taking the Islamist seriously: Social movement theory and the Islamist movement. International Reviews of Social History, 50, 279–291. Meijer, R. (2006). Piranha Rapport. Unpublished expert witness report. Meijer, R. (2009a). Introduction. In R. Meijer (Ed.), Global Salafism: Islam’s new religious movement (pp. 1–32). London: Hurst. Meijer, R. (2009b). “Salafism: Doctrine and practice. In K. Hroub (Ed.), Political Islam: Context versus ideology. London: Saqi Books. Nesser, P. (2005). The slaying of the Dutch filmmaker: Religiously motivated violence or Islamist terrorism in the name of global jihad? Retrieved from http:// rapporter.ffi.no/rapporter/2005/00376.pdf. Peters, R. (2005). De ideologische en religieuze ontwikkeling van Mohammed B. Rapport van het deskundigenonderzoek in de strafzaak tegen Mohammed. B. Unpublished expert report. Price, C., Nonini, D., & Fox Tree, E. (2008). Grounded utopian movements: Subjects of neglect. Anthropological Quarterly, 81, 127–159. Scheffer, P. (2000). Het multiculturele drama. NRC Handelsblad. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56, 319–331. Slootman, M., & Tillie, J. (2006). Processen van radicalisering. Waarom sommige Amsterdamse moslims radicaal worden. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Migratieen Etnische Studies. Van Stekelenburg, J., & Klandermans, B. (2007). Individuals in movements: A social psychology of contention. In B. Klandermans & C. Roggeband (Eds.), Handbook of social movements across disciplines (pp. 157–204). New York: Springer Science and Business Media.
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238 Martijn de Koning and Roel Meijer Vermaat, E. (2005). De Hofstadgroep. Portret van een radicaal-islamitisch netwerk. Soesterberg: Uitgeverij Aspekt. Vidino, L. (2007). The Hofstad Group: The new face of terrorist networks in Europe. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30, 579–592. Vliegenthart, R. (2007). Framing immigration and integration: Facts, parliament, media and anti-immigrant party support in the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam.
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Trajectories of Ideologies and Action in US Organized Racism Kathleen M. Blee Sean Gaines was once what a reporter described as “a skinhead’s skinhead: 230 pounds of red-laced, jack-booted aggression, recklessness and bravado, notorious for flashing his gun one minute at white power gatherings, and his penis the next” (SPLC, 2008). Raised by a drug-addicted father fond of saying “nigger-this, nigger-that,” Sean learned to steal cars and cook methamphetamine at an early age. By 16, he and his father were involved in a vicious torture-murder of a Native American man. Ten years later, the spree of violence and mayhem of this notorious racist skinhead ended with Sean’s arrest for capital murder. At first glance, Sean’s biography fits a stereotyped sense of the path into racial extremism: schooled in racist ideas by his father, he turned to violence against racial minorities. Yet, Sean’s story is more complicated. He insists that he “didn’t have any idea of racism till I hit prison” the first time. There, he gained the attention of a racist skinhead called Odius, who “introduced me to what got me to where I am.” Odius gave Sean the opportunity to earn his first “White Pride” tattoo for attacking a prisoner who owed Odius money. He also tried – unsuccessfully – to teach Sean the ideology of white power. By the time he left prison, Sean still knew little about the ideology behind the white power movement. Nonetheless, he was convinced he was a skinhead and decided to join with other skinheads on “hunting trips” to racial minority-dominant neighborhoods to attack victims at random. It was on these trips that Sean finally learned and adopted the ideology of white supremacy that fit his commitment to racist action. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Workshop on Politicization and Radicalization at VU University, Amsterdam and the Workshop for the Study of American Conservative Movements at the University of California, San Diego. I thank Bert Klandermans, Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, and participants in both workshops for useful feedback, and Kim Creasap for assistance on the manuscript.
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240 Kathleen M. Blee Sean’s transition from acting like a racist to thinking like a racist is counter to the usual assumption that people develop an ideology and then act on it (Azzam, 2007; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008). But Sean’s case is not uncommon among white supremacists in the US today. As this chapter shows, they become committed to racist ideologies and actions at different times, to different degrees, and for different reasons. Learning racist ideology can make someone interested in extreme acts, but participating in racist actions can provide the opportunity to learn extreme racism, as it did for Sean. Becoming a racist extremist is a complex and uneven process. Two sets of findings from studies of political and religious radicalization are useful for understanding how people adopt racially extreme ideologies and actions. One is about process: the factors that prompt radicalization are quite diverse, found at the micro-level of psychological processes, the mesolevel of small group dynamics, and the macro-level of society and culture (Cilluffo, Cardash, & Whitehead, 2007; Della Porta, 1992; Fichter, 2008; Horgan, 2008; Klandermans & Mayer, 2006; Kuhn, 2004; Moghaddam, 2005; Richardson, 2006; Schmidt, Joffé, & Davar, 2007; Silke, 2008). The other is about timing: radicalization occurs in a variety of time frames, depending on external influences and perception of one’s circumstances and the options for changing them (Horgan, 2008; Klandermans, 1984; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008; Moghaddam, 2005; White, 1992). In this chapter, I examine process and timing in activists’ accounts of their trajectories into racial extremism. I begin with a description of contemporary US white supremacism and the methodological approach and data of this study. I then identify commonalities in how racists describe the way they developed racially extreme ideologies and a commitment to racial action. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for understanding how people become involved in extremist politics.
US White Supremacism The modern white supremacist movement in the US is a loosely organized collection of mostly tiny groups and overlapping networks. Its size is difficult to estimate since racist groups generally do not maintain public membership rosters, wildly exaggerate their membership, and operate underground or with great secrecy. By most accounts, there are no more than 50,000 racist extremists, a considerable reduction from numbers in the past. With rare exceptions, they have little interest in electoral offices. There are no significant racist political parties in the US today. White supremacist groups view non-whites as both biologically and culturally inferior to whites. Their ideology is distinct from the racism that is widespread among US whites in three dimensions. First, white supremacists
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not only despise non-whites but believe that they should be banned from certain places like the environmentally pristine Northwest US, the US as a whole, or the global North. Second, the racial categorization used by extreme racists is more starkly dichotomous than the categories employed in ordinary racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Essed & Goldberg, 2002). Virtually all racist extremists are deeply hostile to Jews, whom they regard as non-white. They view white Aryans as radically distinct from those with ancestors from Africa, Asia, or Latin America, as well as all Jews. (The racial status of those who are Semitic but not Jewish is complicated: they are regarded as non-white but also as allies against Jews.) Third, extreme racist thinking employs a profoundly conspiratorial logic that is self-confirming. Jews are seen as all-powerful yet invisible. All problems – from world financial crises and war to personal troubles – result from the work of Jewish conspirators who are effective precisely because they cannot be identified. Most white supremacist groups foresee the white race as doomed. They fear that lower birth rates among whites than non-whites will result in a white “race suicide” or that white Aryans will be slaughtered by non-whites and their Jewish overlords in a catastrophic “race war.” Many go further, actively promoting and/or practicing racial violence. The “Turner Diaries,” a novel believed to be a blueprint for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by a white supremacist, is widely influential. Organized white supremacism has three broad segments: the Ku Klux Klans, neo-Nazi groups, and white power skinheads. The Klans are the oldest of these, dating to the Southern backlash against African Americans and Northern politicians in the aftermath of the Civil War in the mid-nineteenth century. Over time, the Klans have always supported white supremacy and regarded Jews and racial minorities as enemies, but modern Klan chapters have largely abandoned an earlier emphasis on anti-Catholicism. Today’s several dozen Klans are mostly found in the rural South and Midwest, populated largely by middle aged and elderly whites attracted by an ideology of patriotism, militant Christianity, and traditional moralism. Overall, the Klan is small and shrinking, due both to its difficulty attracting young adherents and to its propensity for internal conflict. Neo-Nazi groups are a more vigorous and growing sector of organized racism, taking their inspiration from resurgent Nazi and fascist movements in Europe and the former Soviet Union. They vary considerably, from residential compounds to loosely linked networks and groups, and are found across the country, although more commonly in cities than in rural areas. Neo-Nazi groups are strongly anti-Semitic and racist, but, unlike the Klan, they generally do not embrace ideologies of patriotism or Christian supremacy. To the contrary, US neo-Nazis often support pan-Aryan internationalism, regarding the US federal government as a puppet of Jewish forces, a Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG). They also view institutional
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242 Kathleen M. Blee Christianity as beholden to Jewish influence, favoring instead a virulently anti-Semitic revision of Christian doctrine known as Christian Identity, which posits Jews as literal descendants of the devil and all people except those of Northern European descent as non-human. Ideologically close to neo-Nazis are white power skinheads, whose numbers are growing, especially in major cities. These generally recruit young adults and teenagers, many of whom eventually “age out” of racism or end up dead or in prison. Only a few become adult racist extremists. White power skinheads are immersed in a culture of violence, expressed in brutal rituals, music, and physical assaults on enemy groups, especially persons of color, Jews, and sometimes gay men and lesbians, as well as each other and themselves. In recent years, there are increasing numbers of racist extremists who are not part of organized groups. These operate in loosely linked networks of individuals and as solo “lone wolf” activists. This unorganized sector of the racist movement is partly a strategic response to enhanced government surveillance and prosecution in the wake of domestic terrorist incidents in the US. White supremacists believe that they can avoid detection by the authorities by shifting away from formal organizations (like the Ku Klux Klans) to what they term “leaderless resistance” in which they act in accord with an overriding philosophy but maintain few contacts with other racist extremists. The proliferation of unorganized racist extremism also is due to the Internet, through which racial extremist propaganda can reach people directly rather than through racist groups (Blee, 2002, 2005a, 2009; Daniels, 2009; DHS, 2009; Durham, 2007; SPLC, 2009; Vertigans, 2007; Zeskind, 2009).
Methodology This chapter looks at how people describe how they came to the racial extremist ideology and actions of organized racism. I define racially extreme ideology as the belief that Jewish conspirators control the world’s economy and politics, non-whites are inherently inferior to whites both biologically and culturally, and white Aryans face imminent peril at the hands of non-whites and the Jews who control them. I define racially extreme actions as those taken on behalf of a racist agenda, such as promoting extremist racial ideology, recruiting or developing strategies for racist groups, or attacking non-whites and Jews as enemies of white supremacism. This chapter draws on data from life history interviews that I conducted with 34 women racist extremists. I interviewed women because they are increasingly numerous and important in US organized racism, constituting an estimated 25 percent of members and 50 percent of new recruits in some
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prominent groups (Blee, 2002; see also Cunningham, 2003). Women are largely excluded from formal leadership, so interviewees are rank-and-file members of racist groups. Interviewees were selected in a multi-stage sampling process. Beginning with a list I compiled of all active racist groups, I selected groups that varied in type and geographical area. I then contacted the groups to solicit an interviewee, varying the selections by age as well as length of time and position in the group. This resulted in a sample of women who ranged in age from 16 to 90, with most in their 20s and 30s. Some were relatively new recruits; most had been racist extremists for some time. Interviews were conducted at a place of the interviewee’s choosing, which ranged from public restaurants to racist rallies to private homes. They began with a series of prompts asking the interviewee to describe how she ended up as a racist extremist, producing narratives that ranged from one to six hours in length, followed by a structured life history event chronology. Interview data were later supplemented with observational data from racist group meetings and events and informal interviews with other racist activists and their associates. All interviews were recorded and transcribed in full. All data were analyzed using the qualitative software program NVIVO.
Trajectories into Racism Racist women describe five paths into racial extremism: socialization, dramatic event, searching, participating, and belonging. Most identify a singular path into extremism, but some describe having taken several paths. Their paths vary in whether they first adopted racial ideology or racial practices. But all paths culminated in a self-reinforcing cycle of racist ideology and actions.
Path 1: Socialization One set of women narrate having been socialized into organized racism essentially from birth; they call it being born into racism. Their description coincides with the trajectory into extremist politics that Annette Linden and Bert Klandermans (2007) term a path of “continuity.” Scholars have identified this as a common trajectory for people raised in contexts in which ideologies and practices that are considered extreme by the larger society are widely accepted within a subculture (Azzam, 2007; Burgess, Ferguson, & Hollywood, 2005; Cunningham, 2003; DeWitte, 2006; Horgan, 2008; Klandermans & Mayer, 2006; Koonz, 2003; Loza, 2007).
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244 Kathleen M. Blee
Ideology Socialization Action
Figure 12.1
Socialization.
Women who claim to have been born into racism generally describe being raised by racial extremist parents and sometimes in isolated self-identified racist communities where they are exposed to extreme ideologies and actions from an early age. For them, racist ideologies and racist actions are fully intertwined and consistent. Their actions are a means of enacting racist ideologies. Their ideologies are generated as they take racist actions. Schematically, the trajectory they describe is shown in Figure 12.1. The number of racist women who talk of being born into racism is quite small. Indeed, such a trajectory is uncommon in the US for two reasons. Socialization of children into racial extremism is rare because few racist groups last long enough for children to participate in the same group as their parents. Aside from a handful of small Klans, no racist group has persisted over generations. Moreover, despite their similar goals and ideologies, different segments of the US racist movement view each other as antagonists and rivals, so parents are unlikely to encourage their children to join a different racist group. Also, racial extremist mothers are surprisingly ambivalent about having their children join the racist movement, seeing their own participation as necessary because the white race is imperiled but too onerous to wish upon their children (Blee, 2002). Socialization into racist extremism also is uncommon in the US because very few groups – mostly a handful found in racist paramilitary communities – can insulate their members effectively from alternative political ideas and practices. Few, therefore, are able to demand intense commitment and loyalty or socialize their members by shaping their sense of reality (Bjørgo, 1998; Della Porta, 1992). Women in this first set say they always knew that their parents were active racists. They never thought about race outside the framework they inherited from a racist group. More strikingly, they saw racist action as an integral part of holding racist ideas. As one told me, “I am in the Klan and the Klan is in me.” They could not imagine not acting on their racist ideas; that would be lazy at best, betrayal of one’s race at worst. Neither could they consider being in a group like the Klan and not holding its ideas. This would be just a way to “show off” or “act macho.”
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Event
Figure 12.2
Ideology
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Action
Dramatic event.
Path 2: Dramatic event A variant of racist socialization, generally occurring later in life, is described by a second set of women. For them, an event provoked their interest in racist ideologies and action. In these accounts, women point to dramatic experiences that were transformative, that made them re-evaluate their lives, identify with other racists, and search for new sources of information (Burgess et al., 2005; Ferguson, 2008). Women socialized into racism, the first path, claim they cannot recall a time when they did not hold racist ideologies or want to act on behalf of the racist movement. In contrast, this second group of women relate their lives in distinct and disjointed segments. Before, they were naive or misguided. Then, they were enlightened. They describe their transition as an all-embracing conversion, a comprehensive reorientation of the self, a movement from complete ignorance to secure knowledge (Blee, 2002; see also Linden & Klandermans, 2007). Accounts of racist socialization are given mostly by women in insular racist groups, but stories of personal change through dramatic event are told by those throughout white supremacism. Figure 12.2 diagrams this latter process. An account of transformation through dramatic event was related by a middle-aged mother of two. A longtime white supremacist who had exercised informal leadership in several groups, she made her living by selling racist paraphernalia like Klan dolls, bumper stickers, and t-shirts. She began by recounting her childhood in an impoverished area of central Detroit, part of it spent during the racially charged violence that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. Neither of her parents, nor other adults she could recall, were active in racist groups or had extreme racist beliefs. Rather, violent episodes in her school, she insisted, pushed her to extreme racism. As she said, “in Detroit, you had to beat, well let’s not be nasty, you had to be adept to get an education because if you didn’t then the blacks would just keep beating you and robbing you and beating you and robbing you.” To her, such violence was dramatic and immediate, moving her abruptly from a life of racial innocence to the committed racial warrior she became. Racist ideas, she claimed, gave her a way to understand her situation – as a young, naive girl victimized by violent African Americans. In her account, she moved from victim to agentic actor as she first searched for racist information and then sought out contacts into the racist movement.
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246 Kathleen M. Blee Ideology
Figure 12.3
Action
Ideology
Searching.
Path 3: Searching A third set of women talked of seeking out racist ideologies and, once convinced, deciding to act. In this trajectory, learning new ideas preceded and caused their racist action. Once they took racist action, it reinforced their racist ideas. This is illustrated in Figure 12.3. A neo-Nazi who lived in a well-to-do suburb of a mid-sized midwestern city is an example of someone who describes this path to racist extremism. She cites her personal interest as the initial factor that led her into Nazism, claiming that she “became very interested in my own racial heritage in high school [because] I am German, in fact Aryan.” Despite what she recalls as her parents’ complete disinterest in their German background, she began her identity search at the local library. There, she recalls, “I learned a lot about Germany before, during, and after World War II [but] was shocked at the vast amount of disinformation the victorious side [the Americans] had put out [whereas] on most issues a person can find many diverse opinions.” Discovery of what, to her, was biased history led her into racism. As she put it, “The deeper I dug, the more lies I uncovered. This was very upsetting … I then started to research medical journals, athletic studies, academic studies, and many other sources.” She said she contacted every pro-German organization she could find for information, eventually stumbling on the Holocaust-revisionist group, the Institute for Historical Review, and through them was ushered into the neo-Nazi movement.
Path 4: Participating A fourth set of women describe having participated in racist protests, assaults, or violence and, in so doing, learning racial extremist ideas. They talk of having joined in actions without considering the ideology that underlay them, a pattern that has been found in mainstream politics as well (Pierce & Converse, 1990). Young skinheads were particularly likely to describe this path. They tell of taking part in violent clashes along with racist skinheads without realizing that these were motivated by white supremacism. For them, violence was exhilarating and they claim to have paid little attention initially to its political content. A young woman in a city in the West explained that she liked to fight, that it made her feel alive and powerful. When she met people
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in a skinhead group, she was instantly attracted to their aggressiveness, the way they talked of smashing their enemies. She joined them in street fights and in violent initiations of new members and soon became a regular. But, she claimed, it was some time before she fully realized and came to embrace the neo-Nazism of these skinheads. Many skinheads mention being attracted more to the movement’s violence than to its ideology. If these accounts are accurate, the shallow way in which many skinheads understand or embrace racist ideologies might explain why racist skinheads sometimes precipitously “change sides” and join gangs of violent anti-racist skinheads who fight their former racist skinhead groups. Fighting and violence, they say, are what motivates them; ideologies are incidental, at least at first. The violence of skinhead groups is very different from the strategic violence of other racist groups who seek to advance white supremacy through targeted attacks on enemy groups, places, or institutions like synagogues, federal government agencies, and African American neighborhoods. Skinhead violence is more similar to the violence of street gangs. On the surface, it can seem meaningless, consisting of random attacks on strangers (including fellow whites), violent responses to the most incidental perceived slights, and violence as recreation and group sport. At its core, however, such violence appears a seductive lure into organized racism.1 Young women are not the only ones who describe entering racial extremism through action. Adult women, too, reported that they took part in racist group actions before they developed intense antipathy toward non-whites. They talked of meeting people (who they later realized were racist extremists) in settings in which no explicit expressions of racism were made. They joined campaigns to improve their children’s schools, save the environment, or end violence in the neighborhood. Only later, they claim, did they understand that they had been working in a racist group. But through these actions they came to see the world differently. As one woman said, she was “learning the truth” – about Jews, persons of color, and other minorities. These women describe a trajectory in which they became involved in racist actions, from street violence to school improvement campaigns, and thus were exposed to racist ideas. Their actions provided a means by which they learned the ideas of racism (Blee, 2007, 2005b; Crenshaw, 1992; Horgan, 2008; Silke, 2008; White, 1992). 1 A more coercive version of this path in racist extremism is found in some prisons in which white prisoners seek protection from non-white inmates by affiliating themselves with powerful gangs of white supremacists such as the prison-based Aryan Brotherhood. Once affiliated, these prisoners are in a network in which the tenets of extremist racism are widely circulated (Blazak, 2001; see also Cillufo, Cardash, & Whitehead, 2007).
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248 Kathleen M. Blee Action
Figure 12.4
Ideology
Action
Participating.
These accounts are starkly different than conventional understandings that people join racist groups because they hate racial minorities. In these women’s stories, action came first; only later did they learn and adopt the ideologies that then confirmed their extremist actions. Actions were not taken to express their racist ideas. Rather, action transformed their ideas. They were exposed to racist ideologies in the context of racist actions. For them, racist ideologies were the result, rather than the precipitator, of racist activism. This trajectory is shown in Figure 12.4.
Path 5: Belonging A final set of racist women report belonging to a racist group before they took up racist actions or ideas. Unlike women who are socialized into racial extremism, these women talk of choosing to join racist groups or networks. Belonging, however tangentially, is what they see as having provoked their interest in racism, as preceding both believing or behaving (Kaplan, 1967).2 In their accounts, organized racism was a space in which both their racial ideologies as well as their sense of appropriate racial behavior was formed (Munson, 2008), as represented in Figure 12.5. This fifth set of women describe having joined organized racism through affiliation. Young women talk of being attracted to white power music to express anger and defiance, paying little attention to the racist ideologies
Ideology Belonging Action
Figure 12.5
Belonging.
2 In extremist groups it can be difficult to separate the process of belonging from the process of behaving, as most data on extremist groups focus on their extremist actions (Della Porta, 2008).
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expressed in its lyrics (Ferrell, 1993; Hundeide, 2003; Virchow, 2007; see also Edelstein, 2003). They describe drifting into racist venues – white power concerts, parties, rallies, and scenes – where they were exposed to the exhilarating possibilities of defying the conventions of adult society by tattooing themselves with swastikas, donning t-shirts emblazoned with the fiery cross of the Klan, and shaving their heads. And then things seemed to spiral. A racist skinhead from a west coast city recounted: There was a lot of hoopla going around about a skinhead group called East Side White Pride. There’d been a murder, people were in jail, and some people I went to school with were involved with that group, but I didn’t really know that much about it … I got invited to their first holiday evening and I met people that were white supremacists but it didn’t faze me. It didn’t seem real at that point. It was just a social thing at first and you met more people. How I really started believing, it was through the music. I’ve always loved music. It’s real powerful. It gives you an identity. Once you start listening to the music, becoming familiar with the lyrics, you repeat them, you start to believe them. The more you associate with a certain crowd of people, the more you start to adopt their sense of style … I started being a part of that lifestyle. You’d do everything from guns coming.… It was so fun.
These women described becoming part of a group as their route into racist ideas and activities. Hanging out in white power music venues, racist parties, and other white supremacist cultural scenes was how they developed a racist identity and loyalty (Hundeide, 2003; Simon & Klein, 2006; Taylor & Louis, 2004). And it is how they began to see the world as racist activists do, with fear and paranoia, and embraced the views that separated them from mainstream society (Bjørgo, 1998).
Implications The five paths that women describe as their routes into organized racism vary considerably. In some, ideologies and actions are embraced simultaneously, through socialization in younger years or a dramatic event or belonging to a racist group later. Others are sequential, as the embrace of new ideologies leads women into racist action or into new ideologies. The biographical stories of racist women are retrospective accounts of experience that, however plausible, need to be examined critically. Being socialized into racism, the first path, is the trajectory that is widely regarded to be the main route into extremism. Yet, accounts of socialization are problematic when scrutinized closely. Consider the story of a middle-aged Klanswoman in the South who described herself as having essentially been
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250 Kathleen M. Blee in the Klan from birth. She was not considered a leader, but had a significant role in decision making in the Klan, including writing and distributing propaganda in print, on electronic bulletin boards, and through the Internet. At the time of our interview, she was a stay-at-home mother of three small children and, although still devoted to the Klan’s agenda, less active in its meetings and rallies than in the past. When I asked her to tell me how she got to where she was now, she started in childhood. Raised in a small town in the mid-South, she remembered the place as having no African American or Hispanic residents because “they’re not allowed there … [and] get harassed to the point where they’re leaving.” Her father, an “extreme racist,” “tried to teach us hate” and was implicated, she claimed, in kidnapping the two-year-old child of a black family that tried to move into the area, at which point his involvement in the Klan became public. On the other hand, her mother, who she described as “real religious,” was, by her account, not racist at all. After her parents’ divorce she lived with her mother, who enrolled her in an integrated school, but through visits to her father, as she put it, she always “lived around [racism].” When this Klan woman describes herself as having been socialized into racism by her father, it is tempting to accept this account. But her life was actually more complex. It is not clear whether the father’s influence was actually decisive since her mother – the primary caretaker – was not involved with racism. In another part of the story, she mentioned, almost in passing, that her mother was opposed to racist extremism: “My mom would have a massive stroke if she found out … [that] I was a racist. She didn’t ever think I would go radical, be active. She always told me, ‘Don’t you move to [further south], it’s more racist down there.’ ” Even when she ultimately joined the Klan, it was not through her father. Rather, a man she later married convinced her to come to an event featuring the prominent racist spokesperson David Duke. To assume that the influence of the racist parent was decisive is an analytic error, one that assumes that extraordinary conditions must have extraordinary causes. Stories of racist conversion by dramatic event, the second path, also can be as misleading if taken at face value. Claims of conversion are constructed in retrospect, through the filter of subsequent experience. Whether an event was indeed dramatic or pivotal at the time is difficult know. The neo-Nazi who recounted a dramatic life event structured her story to suggest a causal connection between sets of experiences that seem similar on the surface. In school, she recalled, she witnessed a great deal of violence. This explains her later proclivity for the violence of organized racism. But a closer look suggests that her experience of violence in school might not have been particularly dramatic, transformative, or even especially racialized at the time it happened. Her life story includes tales of many fights in
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school, most of which don’t feature African Americans as the instigators. For example, she remembers white friends like Timmy, “my buddy,” who “wound up getting murdered later on [by a white friend].… As a matter of fact, all the boys [she means white boys] that I was raised with have wound up dead one way or the other … one was an accident, Timmy, others was murdered [all by other whites]. Real, real bad situation. That’s what the city brings you to, you know.” She grew up in an environment in which both intra- and inter-racial violence was constant. It is an over-simplification to conclude that only inter-racial violence shaped her later racist commitments. It is more likely that being in a racist group made her convinced that early inter-racial conflicts had been significant. Descriptions of moving from dramatic event to racist ideology may not accurately depict actual experience. Even accounts of searching for racist ideologies, the third path, must be examined with a critical eye. One woman described coming across racist material in her quest to learn more about race and then deciding to join the racist movement. But when asked for a chronological series of events, she told a very different story in which she began to look for information about race only after meeting a Nazi recruiter. In fact, a trajectory into extreme racism that begins with a search for information is likely to be rare in the US. Finding racist information is easy, especially on the Internet. But taking the next step, finding a racist group to join, is difficult. Few racist groups advertise their locations since they fear infiltration and surveillance by the police or attacks by anti-racist extremists. Joining generally requires a personal contact who can vouch for a potential recruit. Accounts that describe participating or belonging as precursors of racist ideas and actions, the fourth and fifth paths, more closely mirror women’s chronological accounts of their lives than other accounts. Yet these also are retrospective narratives rather than literal descriptions of experience. They are as likely to be shaped by the current experiences and commitments of their narrators. The life stories of racist women suggest the need for caution in interpreting data from retrospective accounts. These women produced life narratives that ordered events into causal sequences, showing how an incident or person brought them to the ideologies they now hold. Yet, their narratives were clearly constructed and formatted by later events. Their accounts are the backward-looking reflections of women who became deeply involved with racist ideologies and agendas. Like all narrators, they assembled pieces of their past to make sense of their current lives and commitments. In the paths into extremism that they describe, the causal sequence of motivations and rationales may be impossible to disentangle. This study makes two contributions to the literature on extremism. First, it points to a different causal sequence than is generally described among
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252 Kathleen M. Blee extremists. Fathali Moghaddam’s (2005) metaphor of a “staircase to terrorism” posits a sequence of deepening involvement, from perceptions and feelings, to shifts in morality, recruitment to terrorist organizations, and, finally, to terrorist acts. This may well describe the experiences of many extremists and terrorists, but it is not consistent with the narrative accounts of most US racist women. Rather, they talk of participating in racist actions before they developed the perceptions and feelings of a committed racist. Second, this study builds on the set of fundamental motives for participating in social movements that Bert Klandermans (2004) has identified as instrumentality, identity, and ideology. Instrumentality is the effort to change society, identity is an affiliation with a group, and ideology is expression of political views. Racist women share these motives, but also recount an additional and somewhat different reason for their participation. They participate in racist movements because they have taken part in actions with racist activists and become interested in racist ideologies. For them, action can be a motive for ideology. Acting like a racist precedes thinking like a racist. Of course, these findings are based on a small sample of racist activists in the US. Additional research is needed to know whether an action-based trajectory into extremism is found as well among participants in other extremist groups.
References Azzam, M. (2007). The radicalization of Muslim communities in Europe: Local and global dimensions. Brown Journal of World Affairs, 13, 123–134. Bjørgo, T. (1998). Entry, bridge-burning and exit options: What happens to young people who join racist groups – and want to leave. In T. Bjørgo (Ed.), Nation and race: The developing Euro-American racist subculture (pp. 231–258). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Blazak, R. (2001). White boys to terrorist men: Target recruitment of Nazi skinheads. American Behavioral Scientist, 44, 982–1000. Blee, K. M. (2002). Inside organized racism: Women in the hate movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Blee, K. M. (2005a). Women and organized racial terrorism in the US. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 28, 421–433. Blee, K. M. (2005b). Positioning hate. Journal of Hate Studies, 3, 95–206. Blee, K. M. (2007). The microdynamics of hate violence: Interpretive analyses and implications for responses. American Behavioral Scientist, 51, 258–270. Blee, K. M. (2009). The stigma of racial activism. In F. Butera & J. Levine (Eds.), Coping with minority status: Responses to exclusion and inclusion (pp. 222–242). New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Burgess, M., Ferguson, N., & Hollywood, I. (2005). A social psychology of defiance: From discontent to action. Minding Evil: Explorations of Human Iniquity, 19–38. Cilluffo, F. J., Cardash, S. L., & Whitehead, A. J. (2007). Radicalization: Behind bars and beyond borders. Brown Journal of World Affairs, 13, 113–122. Crenshaw, M. (1992). Decisions to use terrorism: Psychological constraints on instrumental reasoning. International Social Movements Research, 4, 29–42. Cunningham, K. J. (2003). Cross-regional trends in female terrorism. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 26, 171–195. Daniels, J. (2009). Cyber racism: White supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Della Porta, D. (1992). Political socialization in left-wing underground organizations: Biographies of Italian and German militants. International Social Movement Research, 4, 259–290. Della Porta, D. (2008, July 24–27). Unpublished remarks. Workshop on Politicization and Radicalization, VU University, Amsterdam. DeWitte, H. (2006). Extreme right-wing activism in the Flemish part of Belgium. In B. Klandermans & N. Mayer (Eds.), Extreme right activists in Europe: Through the magnifying glass (pp. 127–150). London: Routledge. Durham, M. (2007). White rage: The extreme right and American politics. New York: Routledge. Edelstein, W. (2003). A culture of threat: Right-wing extremism and negative identity formation in German youth. New Directions for Youth Development, 98, 81–98. Essed, P., & Goldberg, D. T. (2002). Cloning cultures: The social injustices of sameness. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25, 1066–1082. Ferguson, N. (2008). Crossing the Rubicon: Deciding to become a paramilitary in Northern Ireland. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 2, 130–137. Ferrell, J. (1993). Crimes of style. New York: Garland. Fichter, M. (2008). German trade unions and right extremism: Understanding membership attitudes. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 14, 65–84. Horgan, J. (2008). From profiles to pathways and roots to routes: Perspectives from psychology on radicalization into terrorism. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 618, 80–94. Hundeide, K. (2003). Becoming a committed insider. Culture and Psychology, 9, 107. Kaplan, M. M. (1967). Judaism as a civilization. New York: Schocken Books. Klandermans, B. (1984). Mobilization and participation: Social-psychological expansions of resource mobilization theory. American Sociological Review, 49, 583–600. Klandermans, B. (2004). The demand and supply of participation: Social psychological correlates of participation in a social movement. In D. A. Snow, S. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 360–379). Oxford: Blackwell.
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254 Kathleen M. Blee Klandermans, B., & Mayer, N. (2006). Right-wing extremism as a social movement. In B. Klandermans & N. Mayer (Eds.), Extreme right activists in Europe: Through the magnifying glass (pp. 3–15). London: Routledge. Koonz, C. (2003). The Nazi conscience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, H. P. (2004). Adolescent voting for right-wing extremist parties and readiness to use violence in political action: Parent and peer contexts. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 561–581. Linden, A., & Klandermans, B. (2007). Revolutionaries, wanderers, converts, and compliants: Life histories of extreme right activists. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 36, 184–201. Loza, W. (2007). The psychology of extremism and terrorism: A Middle Eastern perspective. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12, 141–155. McCauley, C., & Moskalenko, S. (2008). Mechanisms of political radicalization: Pathways toward terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 20, 415–433. Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The staircase to terrorism: A psychological exploration. American Psychologist, 60, 161–169. Munson, Z. W. (2008). The making of pro-life activists: How social movement mobilization works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pierce, R., & Converse, P. E. (1990). Attitudinal sources of protest behavior in France: Differences between before and after measurement. Public Opinion Quarterly, 54, 295–316. Richardson, L. (2006). What terrorists want: Understanding the enemy, containing the threat. New York: Random House. Schmidt, C., Joffé, G., & Davar, E. (2007). The psychology of political extremism. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 18, 151–172. Silke, A. (2008). Holy warriors: Exploring the psychological processes of jihadi radicalization. European Journal of Criminology, 5, 99. Simon, B., & Klein, L. (2006). Identity and right-wing extremism: Levels, functions, and processes. In B. Klandermans & N. Mayer (Eds.), Extreme right activists in Europe: Through the magnifying glass (pp. 224–247). London: Routledge. Southern Poverty Law Center. (SPLC). (2008). The transformation: Facing trial, racist skinhead claims change. Intelligence Report. Retrieved January 1, 2009, from http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=878. Southern Poverty Law Center. (SPLC). (2009). Website read by accused racial killer encouraged “Lone Wolf” murders. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from http://www. splcenter.org/blog2009/01/23/website-read-by-accused-racial. Taylor, D. M., & Louis, W. (2004). Terrorism and the quest for identity. In F. M. Moghaddam & A. J. Marsella (Eds.), Understanding terrorism: Psychosocial roots, consequences, and interventions (pp. 169–185). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). (2009). Rightwing extremism: Current economic and political climate fueling resurgence in radicalization and recruitment. (Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division Publication). Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
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Vertigans, S. (2007). Beyond the fringe? Radicalization within the American far-right. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8, 641–659. Virchow, F. (2007). Performance, emotion, and ideology: On the creation of “collectives of emotion” and worldview in the contemporary German far right. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 36, 247–264. White, R. W. (1992). Political violence by the nonaggrieved. International Social Movements Research, 4, 79–103. Zeskind, L. (2009). Blood and politics: The history of the white nationalist movement from the margins to the mainstream. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
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No Radicalization without Identification How Ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslim Web Forums Radicalize Over Time Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans
Relations in Europe’s migrant societies are polarizing. Groups of citizens in countries such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands increasingly grow apart. Extreme right groups and parties blatantly express and disseminate xenophobic and Islamophobic ideas, while among migrants – particularly Muslims – a growing Westernphobia, frustration, and anger can be observed. Cleavages between ethnic Dutch and migrants, between “us” and “them,” seem to enlarge and clashes between the two opposing groups easily flare up. This intergroup conflict is fueled not only by local and national conflicts, but certainly also by “explosive import products” such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict or the war in Iraq (Etty, 2009). In the Netherlands the polarization between ethnic Dutch and Muslims has provided fertile soil for radical actions. The dynamic is dramatically demonstrated by the murder of Theo van Gogh by a young Moroccan, shortly after Van Gogh directed a film about the repression of Muslim women. In response to this attack, rightist racists burned mosques and Islamic schools. Equally alarming, though less visible, is the radicalization of the public debate. Consider, for instance, the sharp and fiery public debates on headscarves, the Danish cartoons, the movie Fitna by populist politician Geert Wilders, and especially the murder of Van Gogh. While our knowledge of why people undertake radical actions is rather elaborated (see Chapter 10 by Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking, Chapter 11 by We thank Xenia Chryssochoou for her excellent comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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de Koning and Meijer, and Chapter 12 by Blee in this volume; also Moghaddam, 2005), how and why public debates sharpen is poorly understood. Perhaps because public debates are elusive and sequential, radicalization of these debates is hard to grasp. How do we examine whether “flaming and blaming” (Oegema, Kleinnijenhuis, Anderson, & Van Hoof, 2008) intensifies or declines in ongoing discussions and conversations? To complicate matters even more, radicalization is a collective phenomenon. If conflicts flare up, the locus of self-definition shifts from “I” to “we” (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). We conceive of radicalization as an instance of movement/ counter-movement interaction. The opposing groups develop their ideas and actions in reaction to each other and the perceived opposition (Touraine, 1985). Just as, for instance, the pro-life and the pro-choice movement “kept each other alive” (Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996), ethnic Dutch and Muslims appear to develop their beliefs and ideas in reaction to each other. Both groups assert that what “we” stand for is threatened by “them,” tribute is paid to in-group symbols and values, and the out-group is derogated. In such “relational conflicts” group members define themselves in opposition to other conflicting groups. The societal context is differentiated into opponents and allies (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). Bystanders are forced to choose sides in a conflict, which does not allow the comfort of neutrality. They become allies or must accept the consequences of being deemed an enemy. You are either with us or against us. This seems to result in antagonistic intergroup relations, whereby intergroup interactions intensify and opinions, views, and feelings sharpen back and forth. Hence, two interrelated but different group processes are nested in the process of radicalization: politicization and polarization. In terms of the public debates, this implies that opinions and feelings within the respective groups politicize and radicalize while the debates between the opposing groups polarize. How to examine such processes as they evolve? The Internet – particularly Web forums – is a “place” where the dynamics of radicalizing public debates can be observed. Newly developed techniques make it possible to study the content of group discussions as they evolve on the Internet over time. What is more, the social structure in society tends to be reflected in the social structure of the Web forums; that is, Muslims interact on Islamic forums, and ethnic Dutch on nationalistic forums. Computerized content analyses of opposing Web forums provide a suitable method to examine radicalizing public debates in society over time. In this chapter we describe a study in which we examine the content of two opposing Dutch Web forums (ethnic Dutch vs. Dutch Muslims). Opposing forums are computer-mediated conversational arenas that can be seen as a digital reflection of – or even part of – public debates. On these Web forums ethnic Dutch and Muslims discuss, converse, and quarrel about – among other themes – socio-political issues such as immigration and integration.
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258 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans We examined the content of these two forums from October 2003 to April 2006. This time period includes several severe incidents (e.g., the murder of Van Gogh and the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London) that made the intergroup conflict flare up. This enabled us to examine when ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims felt the urge to discuss such political issues as integration and immigration, and what they talk about. In other words, to assess how the respective public debates change as a function of the ebb and flow of a protracted intergroup conflict.
No Radicalization without Identification We conceptualize radicalization as a collective response in the context of intergroup conflict. It roots in fear and frustration about group-based feelings of social exclusion and perceived threats (Berting, 2010). People do not radicalize on their own but as part of a group in which a collective identity is developed. Intergroup interactions intensify, while opinions, views, and feelings sharpen. Radicalization and intergroup conflict are in this sense interpreted as a collective process. It is an intergroup process in which identification processes interact with characteristics of the socio-political context to shape and mold trajectories of change in individuals and groups (see Chapter 9 by Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans in this volume). We maintain that social identification processes are crucial to radicalization. But what makes individuals feel, think, and act as group members? Tajfel and Turner (1979) have shown that social categorization according to some trivial or “minimal” criterion such as the “blue” or the “red” group suffices to make people feel, think, and act as a group member. Compared to this minimal group paradigm, real-world intergroup conflicts can be seen as “maximal group paradigms” that bring group membership powerfully to mind. According to social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and its successor, self-categorization theory (SCT; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), the cognitive-motivational basis of intergroup behavior contains three components: social categorization, self-enhancement, and social identification. In order to achieve a stage of “social identification,” two social psychological processes need to be in place: social categorization (seeing oneself as similar to some group of people and different from others), and self-enhancement (the process of seeing one’s own group as positive in relation to relevant out-groups). Hence, on the one hand, social identification is strengthened via social categorization which makes people more aware of their group membership (McGarty & Grace, 1996), while on the other hand, social identification is strengthened via selfenhancement (e.g., Turner et al., 1987).
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Social categorization is a cognitive tool for the ordering of the social environment in terms of groups and helps people to define their place in society (Turner et al., 1987). People have many social identities that remain latent most of the time. A particular identity is salient if it is “functioning psychologically to increase the influence of one’s membership in that group on perception and behavior” (Turner et al., 1987, p. 118). SCT hypothesizes that depending on contextual circumstances a transition from “I” to “we” as locus of self-definition occurs (Turner, 1999). In reaction to threatened social identities, group members try to enhance their social self-esteem by searching for positive group distinctiveness, because any threat to the position of the group implies a potential loss of positive comparisons (Haslam, Oakes, Turner, & McGarty, 1996; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). In these processes of self-enhancement groups are assigned certain stereotypical attributes and an evaluation of these attributes, such that “our” attributes are positively evaluated and “their” attributes are negatively evaluated. These biased intergroup attitudes create a meta-contrast between in-group and out-group which enhances people’s social self-esteem (Haslam & Turner, 1995; Turner et al., 1987). Groups polarize because group members converge to more extreme positions so that it most clearly differentiates the in-group from the contextually relevant out-group (McGarty, Turner, Hogg, David, & Wetherell, 1992). This polarization defines other groups in the social and political arena as “pro” or “con,” allies or opponents. An external enemy is blamed for the group’s predicament, and claims for compensation are leveled against this enemy. The collective identity fully politicizes if in the course of this struggle the group seeks to win the support of third parties such as more powerful authorities (e.g., the national government) or the general public (cf. Simon & Klandermans, 2001). The more politicized group members are more likely to engage in collective action directed at the government or the general public to force them to intervene or to take sides. The more a group perceives a threat to its identity, the more its members are motivated to reach consensus on the definition of the situation, and the degree of freedom of group members to choose what to do, think, or feel decreases (cf. Moghaddam, 2005), resulting in collective definitions of the situation. In sum, we assign identification processes a prominent role in the radicalization of public debates. We assume that identity-threatening incidents spur social identification. On the one hand, social categorization makes people more aware of their group membership, which strengthens their social identification. On the other hand, due to processes of selfenhancement, group members attempt to “repair” their self-esteem through in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, which subsequently strengthens their social identification. By portraying “us” as good and “them” as evil the debate radicalizes and simultaneously creates a push for
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260 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans distinctiveness by which the groups drift apart and polarize. In case of a protracted intergroup conflict, one may assume that each new incident, like a terrorist attack, will start off the whole process again. Importantly, from incident to incident, social identification becomes stronger and ideas and feelings become more radical. This cyclical mechanism may radicalize the debate and widen the cleavage between groups. This echoes Moghaddam’s (2005) staircase metaphor. According to this metaphor, radicalization is a collective intergroup process which gradually proceeds through several stages in which polarization and politicization play a pivotal role.
Radicalizing Debates on Two Opposing Web Forums Now that we have described theoretically what we mean by radicalizing debates, how do we expect to observe and measure these processes on the web forums? Inspired by agenda setting research on issue salience, we start with coding words as representative of a concept. The presence of coded words is used as an indicator to characterize the debate (e.g., the presence of such words as “Dutch” and “Muslims” indicates social categorization, the occurrence of “We as Muslims” indicates identification). By simply counting how often such words appear on the respective forums over time the occurrence and change over time of a specific concept is measured. The dynamics of radicalizing debates can thus be observed by mapping the presence of coded words over time. We employed computer assisted content analysis to find and count the coded words. Owing to space constraints we cannot elaborate on this method, but we refer readers to van Atteveldt (2008). In order to show the impact of intergroup incidents on radicalizing debates, the amount of attention for object was calculated per week. On some points we expect an absolute increase, for example in the amount of discussion (expressed in the number of words). On most points, however, we expect a relative increase or decrease in attention, for example for extreme actors, issues, and emotions. For this reason, we calculated how often the objects were mentioned per 10,000 words. Mean attention for objects on both forums during the week of an event and the three following weeks is contrasted with the mean number in all other weeks. This procedure is applied for four events: the attack in Madrid, the one in London, the murder of Van Gogh, and the Danish cartoons. These cartoons were included because they evoked violent protests in several Arab countries and terrorist threats especially in Denmark, but also in the Netherlands, particularly at the start of 2006. In order to facilitate comparison, the changes are expressed as the percentage of increase or decrease after the events.
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From October 1, 2003 to April 30, 2006, we collected literally thousands of postings of an ethnic Dutch Web forum (40,051 postings of NL.politiek) and a Dutch Muslim web forum (17,768 postings of Marokko.NL). NL. politiek counted more than 40,000 participants and the content of the forum suggests these are mostly younger white males with a high involvement in politics, with predominantly rightist, conservative preferences. Marokko. NL counted 89,000 participants, and was especially popular among young Dutch Moroccan students (90 percent of the registered participants are between 15 to 30 years of age) (Marokko Media, 2004). We assign identification processes a pivotal role in radicalizing debates. The basic idea is that after an intergroup incident, debaters articulate: 1 Social categorization: mention the relevant groups. 2 Social identification: express identification with their in-group. 3 Self-enhancement: repair their self-esteem by portraying us as good and them as bad.
Social categorization Attention for social categories is measured by counting how frequent social categories such as ethnic, religious, and national groups are mentioned (e.g., “Muslim,” “Dutch,” “Moroccans”). One may expect that events in the social-political context like the attacks in Madrid bring the relevant social identities powerfully to the psychological foreground; that is, the respective social categories become more salient in the news and the relevant social categories will be more frequently mentioned in the Web forums. That is exactly what we see: compared to normal periods (without an incident) the mentioning of “Muslims” or “Dutch” increases by 9 percent on NL.politiek and on Marokko.NL by 11 percent in the four weeks after an incident. Interestingly, though, attention on NL.politiek decreases for their own category (−15 percent), whereas attention for the category Muslims increases (32 percent). On Marokko.NL we see that the attention for both categories increases (13 percent ethnic Dutch and 9 percent Dutch Muslims). This corresponds with Hegarty and Pratto’s (2001) findings that people tend to focus more on minorities when they want to explain (identitythreatening) situations.
Social identification Attention for social identification is measured by counting the frequency of expression of being a member or not being a member of one of the relevant groups. So, merely mentioning a group is not enough; a direct expression of belonging or not belonging is required. Identification with the in-group
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262 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans could be expressed as “I, as a Dutchman” or “we Muslims.” In many cases the identification is negatively expressed as “you Moroccans” or “those Muslims.” Although these direct expressions of (non-)membership are relatively scarce, the tone is easily recognized in a statement like “again those Moroccans, I am tired of it.” In the four weeks after an incident the number of expressions of (non-)membership with the in-group or the out-group changes on average 27 percent. On Marokko.NL, debaters mention ethnic Dutch as out-group 33 percent more often, and they also refer to Muslims as an in-group more often (24 percent). On NL.politiek, debaters’ reference to Muslims as an out-group increases by 19 percent, whereas reference to ethnic Dutch as an in-group decreases by 31 percent. Hence, in times of intergroup conflict, positive in-group and negative out-group identification seem to differ for dominant and subordinate groups. Whereas group members of the dominant ethnic Dutch group display more out-group derogation rather than in-group favoritism, members of the subordinate Muslim group display both more in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. This corresponds with the findings of Leonardelli and Brewer (2001), who found that members of subordinate groups have a greater need to affirm membership than members of dominant groups. In-group favoritism helps members of subordinate groups to affirm their threatened in-group. Translated to our findings on the Web forums, this seems to imply that after an incident, dominant ethnic Dutch, “just” want to be clear that Dutch Muslims are an out-group, whereas subordinate Muslims have a greater need to define their out-group and to affirm their threatened in-group.
Self-enhancement In a reaction to potential group threat, ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims feel the urge to “repair” their social self-esteem. These processes of self-enhancement can be observed by changes in their intergroup attitudes. Intergroup attitudes are composed of a behavioral, cognitive, and affective component. Behavior. First and foremost, people want to reach consensus on the definition of the situation: “What is going on?” Therefore, one may expect that both for ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims their degree of participation, expressed as the mean number of words exchanged by a group in a week, will increase. And indeed, after an incident, the degree of participation increases strongly for both groups: 55 percent for the ethnic Dutch and as much as 98 percent for the Moroccans. Also, the number of participants in the discussion boosts: a 43 percent increase for NL.politiek, and 86 percent for Marokko.NL. People also interact at a slightly higher rate (an individual sends 10 percent more postings per week on Marokko.NL and 14 percent more on NL.politiek).
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Murder Theo van Gogh
250000
Number of Words
263
Attack Madrid
200000
Danish cartoons
Attack London Memorial Van Gogh
150000
100000
50000 NlPolitiek MarokkoNl 0 200310 200312 200402 200404 200406 200408 200410 200412 200502 200504 200506 200508 200510 200512 200602 200604
Year-Month
Figure 13.1 Attention for immigration and integration issues on two opposing Web forums (number of words).
Figure 13.1 relates the amount of participation to the events that took place in the period under study. The amount of discussion in both forums between October 2003 and April 2006 is expressed as the number of words in the postings about immigration and integration. Obviously, the online discussion shows a strong response to the three major terrorist attacks during this period. The attack in Madrid on March 11, 2004 introduced large-scale terrorism to Western Europe. The line for Marokko. NL shows a slight but clear peak at this point in time. The postings for NL. politiek are missing on the Web archives for this month.1 The murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam by the Dutch Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri (Mohammed B.) – a participant on Marokko.NL – on November 2, 2004 introduced terrorism to the Netherlands and clearly dominates the debate for a long period and generates a strong, lasting growth of the Moroccan forum. A few months earlier, Van Gogh had produced with Hirsi Ali the critical, provocative film Submission, about Islam and the position of women. The third, more modest peak is observed after the attack on the London 1 This is probably due to external censorship by the Dutch judiciary. NL.politiek is not moderated (there is no internal censorship), which sometimes leads to heated and insulting discussions.
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264 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans Underground. The memorial of the murder of Van Gogh leads to another peak, especially on NL.politiek, and the Dutch Muslims react especially to the “provocation” of the Danish cartoons in the first months of 2006. People are strongly motivated to air their views and to find out what exactly happens after an incident. Moreover, from incident to incident, the ethnic Dutch and Moroccan debates appear to drift further and further apart. This can be inferred from the fact that after an incident participation levels peak, but they do not return to a lower level than before the incident. Especially for the Dutch Muslim forum, the cleavage between Dutch Muslims and ethnic Dutch seems to widen from incident to incident. This obviously says nothing about the actual content of the debates. To examine the content of the debate we will turn our attention to extreme cognitions and emotions in the postings. Cognitions. Next to behavioral changes, SIT would predict that “reparation” of self-esteem induced by processes of self-enhancement can be observed in changes in cognition. That is, one can observe an increase in extreme expressions – references to extreme actors and extreme issues. Examples of extreme actors are Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortuyn, Mohammed B. (murderer of Theo van Gogh), and Samir A. (Samir Azzouz, the leader of the so-called Hofstad group; see Chapter 11 by de Koning and Meijer in this volume). Extreme issues are strong deviations from norms in society. In the context of this study, only the issue of terrorism is labeled as extreme. The use of deadly violence for political or religious goals as a means of imposing fear on people is a clear violation of Western norms. Attention for cognitions is measured by counting how frequently issues and actors are mentioned in a text. In total, a list of over 500 different search keys was used to discern the relevant clusters of actors and issues. The actors were clustered in extreme actors (e.g., Dutch Islamic extremists, rightist extremists, anti-immigrant parties and politicians like Fortuyn, Verdonk, Wilders, and Hirsi Ali) and political actors (e.g. politicians and parties, ministers). The issues were clustered in: terror (e.g., terrorism, Al-Qaeda), Islam (e.g., mosque, jihad), criminality (e.g., crime, criminals), demands on new immigrants (e.g., language courses, residence permits), position of Muslim women (e.g., equal rights for women, headscarf), immigration issues (e.g., asylum seekers, refugees), and foreign conflicts (e.g., in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan). We define radicalization of cognitions as increased attention for extreme actors and issues on the forums. And indeed, after incidents, the attention for extreme issues increases for NL.politiek and Marokko.NL by 37 percent and 52 percent, respectively. The Moroccan forum also shows an increase of 30 percent in the attention for extreme actors after incidents, but NL.politiek shows virtually no increase (2 percent). The rightwing extreme actors consist especially of politicians (Fortuyn, Hirsi Ali, Verdonk, and Wilders), whereas Muslim extreme actors are extremists that used violence (Mohammed B. and Samir A.). This asymmetry is typical for this debate: on
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the right, a small number of politicians dominates the debate. Extreme right activists (like neo-Nazis) attract relatively little attention. The Muslim side reveals the reverse: here the attention is concentrated on a small number of extremists who were involved in (the planning of) terrorist incidents, while politicians who can represent the Dutch Muslim minority in public and political debate are hardly visible. There is also another, more structural shift in the agenda that can be typified pessimistically as a narrowing of the mind or more optimistically as a focusing of the agenda. The amount of attention for the top ten issues, the ten issues that get most attention, grows after incidents. In the online discussion of the ethnic Dutch, the attention for this top ten is normally 35 percent and this rises to 47 percent. In the Moroccan forum the focus is normally already very strong (49 percent), but this hardly changes after an incident (51 percent). The more a group perceives a threat to its identity, the more its members are apparently motivated to reach consensus on the definition of the situation, and the degree of freedom of group members to choose what to do, think, or feel decreases (cf. Moghaddam, 2005), resulting in collective definitions of the situation. President Bush’s claim in the US Congress shortly after 9/11 offers a classic expression of such a dynamic: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Groups polarize because group members converge to an extreme position so as to most clearly differentiate the in-group from the contextually relevant out-group (cf. McGarty et al., 1992). All in all, both the focus on a smaller set of objects and the shift to more extreme objects seems to indicate radicalizing cognitions. Emotions. Finally, emotions play a role in self-enhancement processes whereby individuals “repair” their self-esteem. An intergroup conflict in which the out-group constitutes a threat to the in-group evokes emotions of fear, anger, and hatred (Bar-Tal, Halperin, & Rivera, 2007). Being fearful, angry, or full of hate are different emotional experiences. Fear is a primary aversive emotion that arises in situations of perceived threat and danger (Bar-Tal et al., 2007). It causes great mistrust and delegitimization of opponents and is a major platform for violence. People are angry, on the other hand, when they experience an unfair or illegitimate situation for which they can blame someone else who could have acted otherwise, but with the expectation that they are able to do something about it (Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996; Walker & Smith, 2002). Anger is assigned an important role in driving action against those responsible, which makes anger the approachemotion of fight or attack (Averill, 1983; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). Hatred is a direct reaction to protracted harm perceived as deliberate, unjust, and stemming from the hated group (Bar-Tal et al., 2007). Hate delegitimizes the out-group and facilitates a clear distinction between the out-group and the in-group (Bartlett, 2005): people want the out-group to be eliminated, which makes
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8 6 15 5 10 28 6 13 7 3
For Marokko.NL Parties and cabinet Government Extreme actors Demands new immigrants Position women Islam Criminality Terror Immigration other issues Other issues 40 43 44 48 45 46 44 41 39 45
44 41 45 44 41 42 43 34 41 43
Anger row %
23 25 35 37 25 30 28 29 25 28
17 21 26 33 27 30 24 23 20 22
Hate row %
37 32 21 15 30 24 28 29 35 27
39 38 29 23 32 28 33 42 39 35
Fear row %
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Total emotions %
6.2 7.9 9.7 9.1 7.4 9.5 7.8 9 5.9 8
7.3 7.9 9.4 9.9 10 11.5 7.4 9.8 6.7 7.5
Total emotions (hits per 10,000 words)
14.8 19.2 22.5 23.8 28.0 27.6 19.2 25.4 22.6 24.8
11.2 14.6 17.2 24.1 35.5 29.5 15.9 22.6 15.6 19.7
Categorization (hits per 10,000 words)
1.2 2.1 1.9 2.5 2.1 2.2 2 2 2 2.1
1.3 2 1.5 1.7 2.6 1.9 1.7 1.9 1.5 1.9
Identification (hits per 10,000 words)
Example: On Marokko.NL, Islam dominates the agenda (28 percent, see data column 1), extreme actors lead the agenda of NL.politiek (22 percent). Most emotions (11.5 times per 10,000 words, see data column 6) are found in postings on NL.politiek that discuss Islam. A rather high percentage of the emotions (30 percent, see data column 3) in the context of Islam consists of hate. Also, the mentioning of groups scores extremely high for this subject (29.5 times per 10,000 words, see data column 7). The last column shows that the position of women evokes the strongest identification (score of 2.6) among the ethnic Dutch participants.
17 6 22 8 4 11 7 13 10 3
Attention for actor or issue column %
Emotions and identification per actor or issue for both forums (number of hits per 10,000 words and percentages)
For NL.politiek Parties and cabinet Government Extreme actors Demands new immigrants Position women Islam Criminality Terror Immigration other issues Other issues
Table 13.1
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hatred one of the most vicious motivational forces in conflicts (Sternberg, 2008). The main difference between anger and hate is that people experience anger when they feel efficacious and hate when they feel incompetent or weak. Emotions are straightforwardly measured by counting how frequently they (and their synonyms and variants) are mentioned in a debate. Obviously, severe intergroup incidents such as terrorist attacks evoke fear, anger, and hate, observed on the Web forums by an increased mention of fear, anger, and hate. Normally, in periods without incidents, these three negative emotions are mentioned about equally in both forums, although fear prevails more on the forum of the ethnic Dutch. After an incident, the number of emotions mentioned increases much more on Marokko.NL (24 percent) than on NL.politiek (9 percent). On Marokko. NL, fear rises only slightly (9 percent) after incidents, but anger (26 percent) and especially hate (39 percent) increase strongly. Fear not only prevails more on NL.politiek, but it also increases strongly after incidents (17 percent), more so than anger (1 percent) and hate (11 percent). The more prominent role of fear in the ethnic Dutch discussions may reflect the fact that all terror attacks are targeted at the ethnic Dutch, not at the Moroccans. These results suggest that radicalizing public debates are inherently emotional.
Which actors and issues are “hot” and which are not? We have described the reaction to intergroup incidents by an increased attention for social categorization and social identification, and an increased attention for extreme actors and issues fueled by emotions signifying processes of self-enhancement; they all seem to signify processes of radicalization. From this point on, we will elaborate on the relations between these processes. We will start with the role of cognitions, because they play a pivotal role in the debate. Indeed, each public debate has the form of a set of actors and issues that is discussed. Every actor and every issue offers unique opportunities to trigger social categorization and identification processes and to evoke emotions. In Table 13.1 feelings, social categorization, and identification are related with the issues and actors that are discussed in the respective debates. The first data column in Table 13.1 shows the attention for these issues and actors; that is, for the agenda of the online discussion. The ethnic Dutch have a stronger focus on political actors (23 percent), such as political parties, the cabinet, and the government, than do the Moroccans (14 percent). Marokko.NL and NL.politiek pay, respectively, 28 percent and 35 percent of their attention to the extreme parts of the agenda (as the sum of the attention for extreme actors and terror). For the Moroccans, the issue of Islam strongly dominates the agenda (28 percent).
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268 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans Notwithstanding these clear differences, the two agendas are also linked to each other; for instance, by the focus on the extreme issues. The two agendas as presented in the first data column correlate 0.41 with each other, suggesting that these two debating groups are connected to each other as parts of a movement and counter-movement. The sixth column in Table 13.1 (total emotions) reveals which issues and actors are cold and which are hot. How hot an actor or issue is, is defined by how often the emotions of fear, anger, and hate are mentioned in the postings that discuss that actor or issue. On the ethnic Dutch forum, Islam evokes most emotions (11.5 times per 10,000 words), followed by the position of women, demands on new immigrants, extreme actors, and extreme issues. At the Moroccan forum the extreme actors elicit most emotions, closely followed by Islam. Demands on new immigrants and terror are hot issues as well. Every issue and every actor evokes its own unique set of emotions. In the second, third, and fourth data columns the proportion of attention for each of the three emotions is calculated. On both forums the variation in anger is smaller than the variation in hate and fear. On NL.politiek, terror evokes relatively little anger (34 percent), and fear is the dominant response (42 percent). On this forum, hate is important in postings about new immigrants and about Islam. On Marokko.NL, hate is often mentioned in postings about extreme actors and also in postings about demands on new immigrants. Such a pattern is often observed in prejudice: if superiority is threatened, fear can undergo transformation into hatred and violence (Dozier, 2003). Hence, Dutch Muslims and ethnic Dutch talk more about Muslims while the issues become more similar: the position of women, Islam, terrorism, and demands on new immigrants. The groups differ, however, in terms of the emotions they display. Although the four issues in general appear to evoke anger in both forums, they evoke more fear for the ethnic Dutch (particularly the issue of terrorism) and more hate for the Muslims (particularly the issue of demands on new immigrants). Ethnic Dutch are afraid of terrorism, which evokes fear. Fear causes great mistrust and delegitimization of opponents and is a major platform for violence (Bar-Tal et al., 2007). But how is it possible for an emotion like fear – typically characterized by aversive and flight tendencies – to be related to radicalization – typically characterized by approach and fight? Participating in online debates may be qualified as “therapeutic” social in-group involvement rather than extremely violent acts against opponents. Intensification of social sharing and social interaction was found after the attacks in Madrid (Páez, Basabe, Ubillos, & González-Castro, 2007), but after the murder of Theo van Gogh we also observed Dutch natives setting fire to Islamic schools and mosques. Hence, collective coping can take different forms. It might well be that the more “therapeutic” form correlates with fear, whereas more violent forms correlate with hate or anger. Dutch
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Muslims hate the ethnic Dutch for the more stringent demands on new immigrants, causing social exclusion. Both fear and hate delegitimize “the other” and facilitate a clear distinction between “us” and “them.” The more debaters feel the need to defend threatened identities, the more they display self-enhancement processes by describing their rival in negative, “hot” cognitions. By portraying “us” as good and “them” as evil the debates radicalize and simultaneously create a push for distinctiveness by which the groups drift apart and polarize. The politicization of identities can be observed as the extent to which ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims are mentioned in postings about political issues and actors. These groups are most often mentioned on NL.politiek in the debate about the position of Islamic women. Mentioning of identification scores also high for this issue (mentioned 2.6 times per 10,000 words; see Table 13.1, last column). The position of women is a minor issue, however. This is not the case for Islam, which triggers the mentioning of groups as well as identification. For the Moroccans, the demands on new immigrants, such as obligatory language courses, evoke the strongest identification, probably because they perceive these new policies as a form of discrimination and as an identity imposed on them. The more ethnic Dutch express identification, the more they mention terror; for strongly identifying Moroccans, it evokes especially the mentioning of groups. Moreover, attention for emotions (Table 13.1, sixth column, “total emotions”) is strongly related to attention for ethnic Dutch and Muslim groups and expressions of identification.2 The stronger people express identification, the more they think and feel for “us.” The formation of consensus follows similar lines on both forums. The opponents disagree about virtually all issues and actors involved. But at the same time they discuss a similar agenda, and they mention groups and identify in similar ways in reaction to the actors and issues on this agenda. Extreme actors particularly evoke strong emotions on both forums, but terror, Islam, and the position of women are other hot issues. Table 13.1 nicely illustrates the group dynamics of the involved ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims: identifying with a group leads to adopting more characteristics of that group and colors the way one perceives the world. This suggests that group members not only come to agree on what to think about a certain issue or actor, but also on what to feel about these issues and actors. Taken together, these results confirm our proposition that identification processes are pivotal for radicalizing debates. Moreover, consensus formation not only implies that people come to share cognitions, but emotions as well. Although this is perhaps not very surprising, we believe that we are the first 2
The correlations for NL.politiek between these data columns in Table 13.1 are respectively 0.79 and 0.44; for Marokko.NL they are respectively 0.48 and 0.53.
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270 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans to have documented such a process of dual consensus formation. This is important because the affective component seems to function as an accelerator and an amplifier when it comes to the translation of cognition into action (van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2007). In other words, consensus on radical cognitions is amplified by shared emotions and turns into radical action accelerated by the same shared emotions. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate the social psychological dynamics of radicalizing online public debates. To sum up, devastating events such as the attacks in Madrid and London, or the murder of Theo van Gogh, are clearly the talk of the town, and in “virtual cafès.” Our results indicate that people do not just talk randomly about these events, but in a predictable manner. We have attempted to catch radicalization in the texts that Dutch Muslims and ethnic Dutch post on “their” Web forums, reflected in how processes of categorization, self-enhancement, and identification are shaped by the ebb and flow of incidents over time. After an incident, debaters clearly feel the urge to express their view: participation on the Web forums increases and for the Moroccan forum even doubles. People “talk” much more in terms of the conflicting groups – Muslims, Jews, Moroccans, ethnic Dutch, etc. – which enhances their inclination to define themselves as a member of one of these groups – “I as Muslim,” “I as a Dutch.” Incidents bring group membership forcefully to the psychological foreground, such that Dutch Muslims and ethnic Dutch are faced with a threatened group identity. Consequently, group members reveal the urge to defend or “repair” their threatened group identity and the debates boil down to a few stereotypical characteristics fueled by strong emotional loadings to differentiate between the loved in-group and the hated out-group. In relying on such stereotypes people express a maximum of meaning with a minimal amount of words and that is exactly what the behavioral pattern reveals: after an incident, both Dutch Muslims and ethnic Dutch put up more postings while using less words. Increasing ferocity of the debates can be inferred from the emotional loading: ethnic Dutch refer more often to fear and anger after an incident, while hate and anger figure more prominently in the postings of the Dutch Muslims. Remarkably, the number of emotions mentioned rises much more on Marokko.NL than on NL.politiek. Hence, radicalizing public debates are inherently emotional, the more so for Dutch Muslims. The content also sharpens: extreme issues and extreme actors become the central targets of the debates, although much stronger for Dutch Muslims than for ethnic Dutch. After intergroup incidents, Moroccans apparently feel a much stronger urge to air their views than do ethnic Dutch, and they do this in more extreme terms with a stronger emotional loading. Why would the Dutch Muslim debate radicalize more than the ethnic Dutch debate?
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Why the Dutch Muslim debate radicalizes more than the ethnic Dutch debate Our study reveals three escalating mechanisms which may explain why subordinate groups radicalize more than dominant groups: (1) Dutch Muslims, the subordinate group, show stronger identification processes than the dominant ethnic Dutch; (2) extremist entrepreneurs fruitfully mobilize consensus on extreme issues and the emotions of subordinate groups; (3) a so-called fear–hate spiral strengthens these effects. The first mechanism rootes in the fact that members of subordinate groups identify more strongly with their in-group than do members of dominant groups (cf. Gurin, Peng, Lopez, & Nagda, 1999). As a consequence, they interpret the socio-political context more likely in terms of friends and foes than do members of dominant groups. Friends are described in warm, positive terms, while foes are described in heated, negative terms. As identification processes spur radicalization, the strong identification of members of subordinate groups can be seen as the first escalating mechanism to radicalization. The second mechanism roots in the politicization of the conflict. The group conflict is augmented by involving society (or even the world) at large and the groups politicize (Simon & Klandermans, 2001). Dominant and subordinate groups seem to involve different “polarization entrepreneurs.” The dominant ethnic Dutch attempt to involve particularly Islamophobic politicians (Fortuyn, Hirsi Ali, Verdonk, and Wilders), whereas subordinate Muslims address extremists that used violence, like the murderer of Van Gogh, Mohammed B., and the alleged leader of a terrorist cell, Samir A. The political entrepreneurs of the dominant group and the entrepreneurs of the subordinate group may have played a central – albeit different – role in feeding the escalatory dynamic in the conflict. After incidents the dominant group seems to retreat into its comfort zone, while the subordinate group radicalizes and becomes more and more entrenched in the Islamic–Western identity conflict. The third mechanism stems from the emotional loading of the respective debates. The “attacked” dominant group is fearful, whereas the “attackers,” i.e., the subordinate group, is full of hate. The debates of ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims on terrorism and stringent demands on new immigrants – including the emotions attached to these topics – may be two sides of the same coin. After all, in the case of a terrorist attack, the dominant ethnic Dutch have the power to take measures to minimize their fear, for instance by stronger demands on new immigrants; these more stringent measures in turn evoke hatred from the vulnerable subordinate Dutch Muslims. They in turn become motivated to act against the hated dominant ethnic Dutch, so making the dominant ethnic Dutch more fearful again. Such fear–hate
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272 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans spirals may play a central role in feeding the escalatory dynamic of intergroup radicalization and polarization. In documenting how ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims talk about the same identity-relevant incidents, we bring two strands of literature together. On the one hand, identity processes underlying intergroup conflict are observed from the dominant group’s point of view, focusing for instance on ethnic competition and prejudice. On the other hand, they are studied from the subordinate group’s point of view, focusing on stigmatization and discrimination. Our findings suggest that it is fruitful to integrate the two literatures; dominant and subordinate groups discuss similar identity-threatening events, but each from their specific vantage point. Consequently, identity threats are differently “repaired” by members of dominant and subordinate groups, and the three escalating mechanisms explain why the chances are greater that the public debates of subordinate rather than dominant groups radicalize.
To Conclude We analyzed online debates over a period of two and a half year as a looking-glass through which intergroup relations between ethnic Dutch and Dutch Muslims were observed. This raises questions on the relation between online virtual life and offline real life. Are these opposing forums a digital reflection of – or even part of – radicalizing public debates? Can changes in the online debates be seen as a mirror-image of a hardening or radicalizing societal climate in the wider society? Are they an accurate reflection of changes in the offline societal climate? On another important matter, public debates do not merely discuss (multicultural) society, they also have an important influence on that same society. Particularly, debates in national media (newspapers, weekly magazines, radio, and television) have a stronger social impact than debates in parliament or the content of policy documents or party programs (Prins & Slijper, 2002). However, voices of marginalized groups are virtually completely excluded from these media. Compared to traditional media, the Internet is said to be particularly suited for marginalized groups to voice their viewpoints in public debate. Whether these online opportunities also lead to a more nuanced picture of Muslims and Islam among members of the Dutch public remains to be seen. On the other hand, the Internet can be viewed as a radicalizing force itself, precisely because everyone can express themselves freely. Are the online public debates a sign of marginalized groups engaging in deliberative democratic participation or do they mainly polarize intergroup relations? Our study is a first cautious step in observing online rather than offline intergroup relations. We sincerely hope that it
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stimulates other scholars to address the questions we have raised on the complex but timely relation between online and offline intra- and intergroup behavior.
References Averill, J. R. (1983). Studies on anger and aggression: Implications for theories of emotion. American Psychologist, 38, 1145–1160. Bar-Tal, D., Halperin, E., & Rivera, J. (2007). Collective emotions in conflict situations: Societal implication. Journal of Social Issues, 63(2), 441–460. Bartlett, S. J. (2005). The pathology of man: A study of human evil. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomson. Berting, P. (2010). Two routes to anger: Perceived threat and social exclusion as predictors of radicalization. Unpublished MA thesis, Free University, Amsterdam. Dozier, R. W. (2003). Why we hate: Understanding, curbing, and eliminating hate in ourselves and our world. London: McGraw-Hill Professional. Etty, E. (2009, January 13). Explosive Importproducts. NRC Handelsblad. Gurin, P., Peng, T., Lopez, G., & Nagda, B. R. (1999). Context, identity, and intergroup relations. In D. Prentice & D. Miller (Eds.), Cultural divides: The social psychology of intergroup contact (pp. 133–170). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Haslam, S. A., Oakes, P. J., Turner, J. C., & McGarty, C. (1996). Social identity, self-categorization, and the perceived homogeneity of ingroups and outgroups. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (pp. 182–222). New York: Guilford Press. Haslam, S. A., & Turner, J. C. (1995). Context-dependent variation in social stereotyping: Extremism as a self-categorical basis for polarized judgement. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 341–371. Hegarty, P., & Pratto, F. (2001). The effects of category norms and stereotypes on explanations of intergroup differences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 723–735. Leonardelli, G. J., & Brewer, M. B. (2001). Minority and majority discrimination: When and why. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 468–485. Mackie, D. M., Devos, T., & Smith, E. R. (2000). Intergroup emotions: Explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 602–616. Marokko Media. (2004). Internet tariefkaart. Marketing report ordered by Marokko.NL. McGarty, C., & Grace, D. M. (1996). Categorization, explanation and group norms. Unpublished manuscript, Australian National University. McGarty, C., Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., David, B., & Wetherell., M. S. (1992). Group polarization as conformity to the prototypical group member. British Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 1–20. Meyer, D. S., & Staggenborg, S. (1996). Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology, 101(6), 1628–1660.
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274 Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, Dirk Oegema, and Bert Klandermans Moghaddam, F. (2005). The staircase to terrorism: A psychological explanation. American Psychologist, 60, 161–169. Oegema, D., Kleinnijenhuis, J., Anderson, K., & Van Hoof, A. M. J. (2008). Flaming and blaming: The influence of mass media content on interactions in on-line discussions. In E. A. Konijn, M. Tanis, & S. Utz (Eds.), Mediated interpersonal communication. Mahwah: Erlbaum. Páez, D., Basabe, N., Ubillos, S., & González-Castro, J. L. (2007). Social sharing, participation in demonstrations, emotional climate, and coping with collective violence after the March 11th Madrid bombings. Journal of Social Issues, 63(2), 323–337. Prins, B., & Slijper, B. (2002). Multicultural society under attack. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 3(3/4), 413–456. Roseman, I. J., Antoniou, A. A., & Jose, P. E. (1996). Appraisal determinants of emotions: Constructing a more accurate and comprehensive theory. Cognition and Emotion, 10(3), 241–278. Simon, B., & Klandermans, B. (2001). Towards a social psychological analysis of politicized collective identity: Conceptualization, antecedents, and consequences. American Psychologist, 56(4), 319–331. Sternberg, K. (2008). The nature of hate. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Touraine, A. (1985). An introduction to the study of social movements. Social Research, 52(4), 749–787. Turner, J. C. (1999). Some current themes in research on social identity and selfcategorization theories. In N. Ellemers, R. Spears, & B. Doosje (Eds.), Social identity: Context, commitment, content (pp. 6–34). Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Van Stekelenburg, J., & Klandermans, B. (2007). Individuals in movements: A social psychology of contention. In C. M. Roggeband & B. Klandermans (Eds.), The handbook of social movements across disciplines (pp. 157–204). New York: Springer. Van Zomeren, M., Spears, R., Fischer, A. H., & Leach, C. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(5), 649–664. Walker, I., & Smith, H. J. (2002). Relative deprivation: Specification, development, and integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Part IV
Integration Assaad E. Azzi
The last part of the book discusses an alternative to radicalization, namely the potential change that a society or state could experience as a result of the cultural diversity produced by immigration or other factors that bring about the coexistence of different cultural groups within the same political entity. The political and economic interdependence between these groups could effectively translate into cultural change in each of the groups involved and in the society as a whole. The concept of integration, while commonly understood as involving changes especially in immigrant identities and communities that bring them closer to the host society’s identity and culture, will be examined in the next four chapters as a much more complex phenomenon that involves processes of change and innovation, both at the individual and the societal levels. Like the other parts of the book, this part will present both social psychological and sociological approaches to integration. Starting with the social psychological approach to identity strategies in the context of cultural contact, the chapter by Berry charts the different trajectories that are often observed within and between various immigrant groups in the process of acculturation. Starting with the observation that not all immigrants settle into their new lives in the same way, he presents his acculturation model describing the various identity strategies adopted by immigrants. According to this model, integration is one of four possible strategies and consists of “integrating” within an individual’s identity elements of both the host national culture and the culture of origin. He presents empirical evidence for these various trajectories from a recent comparative study of immigrant youths in 24 countries, which obviously differ in their national immigration policies. These results clearly show that the integration strategy, while not the choice of the majority, remains the most common choice among second and third generation youths. He also provides an explanation that is rooted in basic psychological processes implicating individuals’ motivations to maintain their original cultural identity, on the one
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276 Assaad E. Azzi hand, and to adopt some of the identity elements of the host culture, on the other. His explanation is, however, neither limited to the identity dynamics within the immigrant group nor to such dynamics at the individual level. It also includes both the effect that the host culture’s reactions could have on this process and the identity dynamics at the societal level. More particularly, the research shows that variations in the rate of choice of the integration path are associated with the host nation’s attitudes and policies with regard to immigrants (and their integration). It also shows that integration and adaptation to the host society are aided by the maintenance of ethnic identity, a finding that is echoed by the next sociological chapter. Jacobs and Tillie discuss the role played by the presence or absence of ethnic social capital in the political participation and integration of immigrants in a number of European countries. They analyze the societal and individual effects of voluntary participation in ethnic social networks on trust and participation in national political institutions. They also provide recent evidence that immigrants from different ethnic origins, and in different host nations, differ in the degree to which they participate in the political life of the host nation, and that these group-level variations in integration (defined here as political participation) are associated with the number of voluntary ethnic associations and with their networking density (liaisons between different ethnic organizations, and between these and non-ethnic political organizations or institutions). Interestingly, and in line with the first chapter, they argue that immigrants’ membership and participation in ethnic networks can have positive effects on integration into the larger society, in the sense that it could become a stepping-stone to entry and participation in mainstream organizations. Finally, and in relation to the preceding part on radicalization, some of the data they present suggest that the lack of ethnic group organizations (or participation in such organizations) could be an indicator of a “failure” in the process of integration, given that it leads instead to radicalization. The next chapter is also sociological and complements the preceding two chapters. Diehl and Blohm examine integration at the structural and individual levels and present data from Germany showing that integration implies both the creation of opportunities by the host society and the use of such opportunities by immigrants. In this chapter, identification and integration are both defined in terms of the decision by individuals from different immigrant origins to benefit from the recent change in German legislation that allows them to apply for German citizenship. However, diverging from the other chapters, they argue that assimilation into German society provides greater incentives for certain groups than for others, resulting in the possibility that the maintenance of dual identities may not be a good predictor of structural integration across different migrant groups. Combining both aggregate level statistical data with individual level microcensus data, they
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demonstrate the presence of differences between immigrant groups in Germany with regard to the tendency of their members to apply for citizenship, and argue that these differences cannot be fully explained on the basis of tangible naturalization incentives. Although these appear to play a role, a better fitting explanation would be one that includes symbolic motivations such as social boundary crossing and symbolic status acquisition. The last chapter, by Branscombe and Cronin, provides an overview of recent social psychological research on the role of intergroup forgiveness in promoting peaceful coexistence between various cultural groups in a single political entity. Given that, in many cases, these cultural groups share a “common” yet conflicting history, they analyze the way in which the past is remembered and socially transmitted; they then examine the effect of such collective memory, on the one hand, and forgiveness, on the other, on the potential for reconciliation or disintegration. The relevance of these processes to societies that are culturally diverse as a result of immigration may not be direct, but at the same time should not be underestimated. Many of these societies have had a conflicting past due to colonization, or a conflicting but more recent past due to prejudice and discrimination. Throughout the chapter, Branscombe and Cronin use the prototypical case of South Africa by examining, both empirically and conceptually, the impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on intergroup reconciliation. The combined literature review and case analysis illustrate the role of basic cognitive and emotional processes and their potential interaction with (modulation by, or effect on) societal processes (institutionalized reconciliation or conflict). The thrust of their argument is that reconciliation may be a necessary ingredient to the “integration” of culturally diverse groups into a single political entity. The four chapters of this part, while using different conceptual frameworks and methods of investigation, anchored in various disciplines, provide a rich overview of the individual and societal processes that may determine the integration or disintegration between various cultural groups in a single society. They also provide a potentially important and “integrated” or converging view of what would be important in order to achieve integration: contrary to what may be the commonsense understanding of integration, with the exception of Diehl and Blohm, all of these chapters converge on the idea that immigrants’ desire to maintain their cultural or ethnic identity, and the recognition of this by the host national group, may be an important element that facilitates integration. As we will see in the book’s concluding chapter, this idea is in line with the arguments presented by Chryssochoou and Lyons in the first part of the book, with regard to the socially constructed incompatibility between ethnic and national identities, and to the arguments introduced by Simon in the second part, which indicate that dual identification (ethnic and national) is a facilitator for political participation.
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14
Immigrant Acculturation Psychological and Social Adaptations John W. Berry
The intake and settlement of immigrants has become a core issue in many societies, with political, economic, educational, and psychological dimensions. How can we understand the orientations of both immigrants and receiving societies with respect to their acculturation and settlement? It is now clear that not all immigrants settle into their new lives in the same way. It is equally clear that they all do not have the same experiences, nor do they achieve the same degree of success in their personal lives, or in their communities. It is also clear that not all receiving societies attempt to settle immigrants in the same way. This chapter poses three questions: what are the variations in how immigrants and the national society seek to acculturate; what are the variations in how well they adapt; and what are the relationships between ways of acculturating and levels of successful adaptation? If there are important relationships between how and how well, then it may be possible to outline a best practice for societies of settlement and their institutions (particularly educational and justice systems), and for immigrant cultural communities (including families and individuals) to adopt over the early years following their migration. These questions will be addressed using concepts and evidence from earlier research with adults, and from a study of immigrant youth from 24 societies who are settled into 13 countries (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006). In essence, results show that those immigrants who embrace both their culture of origin and the society of settlement have better psychological and social adaptation than those who are oriented toward one or the other (or neither) group. Some policy implications are advanced, based on analyses of variations across individuals and across societies of settlement.
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280 John W. Berry
Introduction: Immigration and Settlement in Plural Societies The process of immigration has made all contemporary societies culturally plural; no society is made up of people having one culture, one language, and one identity (Sam & Berry, 2006). The prediction made two centuries ago by Quincy Adams (1811; cited in Lens, 1974, p. 3) that “The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs,” has not come to pass in North America, nor in any other part of the world. This is because contact between cultures is a creative and reactive process, generating new customs and values, and stimulating resistance, rather than simply leading to cultural domination and homogenization (Berry, 2008). All plural societies are currently debating this core issue of homogeneity versus diversity. For example, in Canada the national policy of multiculturalism (Government of Canada, 1971) was an early advocate for diversity and equity, and argued against the search for cultural uniformity. This policy simultaneously promotes heritage cultural maintenance by all ethnocultural groups (both dominant and non-dominant) and the participation of all groups through the removal of social barriers and discrimination. It also promotes the acquisition of one or both of the national languages (Berry, 1984; Noels & Berry, 2006). These three elements form the essential basis of a program to foster a plural society. More recently (2005), the European Union has promoted the same three elements in a set of “Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration Policy in the EU.” Among the 11 principles, one article accepts the right to cultural maintenance: “The practice of diverse cultures and religions is guaranteed under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and must be safeguarded, unless practices conflict with other inviolable European rights or with national law.” Another promotes participation: “Frequent interaction between immigrants and Member States citizens is a fundamental mechanism for integration. Shared forums, intercultural dialogue, education about immigrants and immigrant cultures, and stimulating living conditions in urban environments enhance the interactions between immigrants and Member State citizens.” Further: “Access for immigrants to institutions, as well as to private goods and services, on a basis equal to national citizens and in a non-discriminatory way is a critical foundation for better integration.” And a third notes the importance of learning the national language: “Basic knowledge of the host society’s language, history, and institutions is indispensable to integration; enabling immigrants to acquire this basic knowledge is essential to successful integration.”
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In the USA, there is no apparent official policy on these issues. However, the debate has generally come down more on the side of advocating cultural uniformity (starting with Adams). A main contemporary proponent is Huntington (2005), who has predicted that the United States will wane if its founding Anglo-Protestant character is diminished any further. He argues that current immigration from Latin America, and elsewhere, brings other cultural values and languages that undermine this core US American culture. His solution is clearly on the side of the pursuit of a return to the unitary view of society, where cultural diversity is to be restricted in the search for a common identity. In Europe, despite the EU’s “Common Basic Principles,” the question is still open, and the debate still rages. The assertion in the document that “Integration is a dynamic, two-way process of mutual accommodation by all immigrants and residents of Member States” is not widely understood nor accepted – witness the highly variable attitudes toward immigrants and settlement in the EU (Meuleman & Reeskens, 2008). The current debate in France over “French identity” illustrates the highly volatile nature of these attitudes and policy initiatives. In this chapter, I provide some concepts and empirical findings from psychology that address this debate. I also make some suggestions about policy options that can promote “mutual accommodation” and may lead to a more positive intercultural climate for immigrants (Berry, 2006).
Acculturation: Cultural and Psychological Acculturation is the process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between cultural groups and their individual members (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits, 1936). Such contact and change occurs during colonization, military invasion, migration, and sojourning (such as tourism, international study, and overseas posting); it continues after initial contact in culturally plural societies, where ethno-cultural communities maintain features of their heritage cultures. Cultural changes take place in both groups in contact. Adaptation to living in culture-contact settings takes place over time; occasionally it is stressful, but often it results in some form of mutual accommodation between the groups and individuals. Graves (1967) introduced the concept of psychological acculturation, which refers to changes in an individual who is a participant in a culture contact situation, being influenced both directly by the external (usually dominant) culture, and by the changing culture (usually non-dominant) of which the individual is a member. There are two reasons for keeping the cultural and psychological levels distinct. The first is that in cross-cultural psychology, we view individual human behavior as interacting with the
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282 John W. Berry cultural context within which it occurs; hence, separate conceptions and measurements are required at the two levels (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002). The second is that not every individual enters into, and participates in, or changes in the same way; there are vast individual differences in psychological acculturation, even among individuals who live in the same acculturative arena (Sam & Berry, 2006). A framework that outlines and links cultural and psychological acculturation, and identifies the two (or more) groups in contact (Berry, 2003), provides a map of those phenomena which I believe need to be conceptualized and measured during acculturation research. At the cultural level, we need to understand key features of the two original cultural groups prior to their major contact. It is essential to understand this pre-contact variation among the groups that are now attempting to live together following migration. Migrants bring cultural and psychological qualities with them to the new society; and the new society also has a variety of such qualities. The compatibility (or incompatibility) in religion, values, attitudes, personality (etc.) between the two cultural communities in contact needs to be examined as a basis for understanding the acculturation process that is set in motion. It is also important to understand the nature of their contact relationships. It may be one of domination of one group over the other, or of mutual respect or hostility. Finally, at the cultural level, we need to understand the resulting cultural changes in both groups that emerge during the process of acculturation. No cultural group remains unchanged following culture contact; acculturation is a two-way interaction, resulting in actions and reactions to the contact situation. In many cases, most change takes place in non-dominant communities; however, all societies of settlement (particularly their metropolitan cities) have experienced massive transformations following years of receiving migrants. The gathering of this information requires extensive ethnographic, community-level work. These changes can be minor or substantial, and range from being easily accomplished through to being a source of major cultural disruption. At the individual psychological level, we need to consider the psychological changes that individuals in all groups undergo, and their eventual adaptation to their new situations. Identifying these changes requires sampling a population and studying individuals who are variably involved in the process of acculturation. These changes can be a set of rather easily accomplished behavioral shifts (e.g., in ways of speaking, dressing, and eating) or they can be more problematic, producing acculturative stress (Berry, 2006; Berry, Kim, Minde, & Mok, 1987) as manifested by uncertainty, anxiety, and depression. Adaptations can be primarily internal or psychological (e.g., sense of well-being, or self-esteem) or socio-cultural (Ward, 1996), linking the individual to others in the new society, as manifested for example in competence
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in the activities of daily intercultural living. As a result of attempts to cope with these acculturation changes, some long-term adaptations may be achieved. Adaptation refers to the relatively stable changes that take place in an individual or group in response to external demands. Moreover, adaptation may or may not improve the “fit” between individuals and their environments. It is thus not a term that necessarily implies that individuals or groups change to become more like their environments (i.e., adjustment by way of assimilation), but may involve resistance and attempts to change their environments, or to move away from them altogether (i.e., by separation). In this usage, adaptation is an outcome that may or may not be positive in valence (i.e., meaning only well adapted). Adaptation to acculturation is highly variable, ranging from well to poorly adapted, and varying from a situation where individuals can manage their new lives very well, to one where they are unable to carry on in the new society. Adaptation is also multifaceted. The initial distinction between psychological and socio-cultural adaptation was proposed and validated by Ward (1996). Psychological adaptation largely involves one’s psychological and physical well-being, while socio-cultural adaptation refers to how well an acculturating individual is able to manage daily life in the new cultural context. While conceptually distinct, they are empirically related to some extent (correlations between the two measures are in the +.4 to +.5 range). However, they usually have different time courses and different experiential predictors. Psychological adaptation is predicted by personality variables, social support, and life change events, while sociocultural adaptation is predicted by cultural knowledge, degree of contact, and positive intergroup attitudes. Psychological problems often increase soon after contact, followed by a general (but variable) decrease over time; positive sociocultural adaptation, however, typically has a linear improvement with time (for a comprehensive review, see Ward, Bochner, & Furnam, 2001).
Acculturation Strategies in Immigrant Communities and National Societies The concept of acculturation strategies refers to the various ways that groups and individuals seek to acculturate. Knowledge of these variations has increased substantially in recent years (see Berry, 2003), challenging the assumption that everyone would assimilate and become absorbed into the dominant group (Gordon, 1964). At the cultural level, the two groups in contact (whether dominant or non-dominant) usually have some notion about what they are attempting to do (such as colonial policies, or reasons for migrating). At the individual level, persons will vary within their cultural group (e.g., on the basis of their educational or occupational background);
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284 John W. Berry ISSUE 1: MAINTENANCE OF HERITAGE CULTURE AND IDENTITY ISSUE 2:
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Figure 14.1 Acculturation strategies in non-dominant ethno-cultural groups, and in the larger society.
and within their families, persons will vary according to their gender or position (e.g., mother, son). The more immediate outcomes of the acculturation process (including the behavior changes and acculturative stress phenomena) are known to be a function, at least to some extent, of what people try to do during their acculturation (i.e., their acculturation strategies). And the longer-term outcomes (both psychological and socio-cultural adaptations) often correspond to the strategic goals set by individuals and by the groups of which they are members (Berry, 1997). Four acculturation strategies have been derived from two basic issues facing all acculturating peoples. These issues are based on the distinction between orientations toward one’s own group and those toward other groups (Berry, 1980). This distinction is rendered as (1) a relative preference for maintaining one’s heritage culture and identity and (2) a relative preference for having contact with and participating in the larger society along with other ethnocultural groups. It has now been well demonstrated that these two dimensions are empirically, as well as conceptually, independent from each other (e.g., Ryder, Alden, & Paulhus, 2000; Sabatier & Berry, 2008). This two dimensional formulation is presented in Figure 14.1, for non-dominant ethno-cultural groups and individuals (on the left) and for dominant groups and individuals in the larger society (on the right). These two issues can be responded to on attitudinal dimensions, shown as varying along bipolar dimensions, rather than as bald (positive or negative) alternatives. For non-dominant ethno-cultural groups, orientations
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to these issues intersect to define four acculturation strategies. These strategies carry different names, depending on which group (the non-dominant or dominant) is being considered. From the point of view of non-dominant ethno-cultural groups (on the left of Figure 14.1), when individuals do not wish to maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with other cultures, the assimilation strategy is defined. In contrast, when individuals place a value on holding on to their original culture, and at the same time wish to avoid interaction with others, then the separation alternative is defined. When there is an interest in both maintaining one’s original culture, while in daily interactions with other groups, integration is the strategy. In this case, there is some degree of cultural integrity maintained, while at the same time seeking, as a member of an ethno-cultural group, to participate as an integral part of the larger social network. Finally, when there is little possibility or interest in cultural maintenance (often for reasons of enforced cultural loss), and little interest in having relations with others (often for reasons of exclusion or discrimination), then marginalization is defined. Note that integration has a very specific meaning within this framework: it is clearly different from assimilation (because there is substantial cultural maintenance with integration), and it is not a generic term referring to any kind of long-term presence, or involvement, of an immigrant group in a society of settlement (Berry, 2007). The assessment of these acculturation attitudes of non-dominant peoples is a core feature in acculturation research (e.g., Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki, 1989). These two basic issues were initially approached from the point of view of the non-dominant ethno-cultural groups. However, the original anthropological definition clearly established that both groups in contact would change and become acculturated. Hence, a third dimension was added: that of the powerful role played by the dominant group in influencing the way in which mutual acculturation would take place (Berry, 1974, 1980). The addition of this third dimension produces the right side of Figure 14.1. Assimilation when sought by the dominant group is termed the melting pot. When separation is forced by the dominant group, it is segregation. Marginalization, when imposed by the dominant group, is exclusion. Finally, for integration, when diversity is a widely accepted feature of the society as a whole, including by all the various ethnocultural groups, it is called multiculturalism. Views about these issues held by the dominant society and its members have been examined (see Berry, Kalin, & Taylor, 1977; Berry & Kalin, 2000). The acculturation ideologies and policies of the dominant society, and the attitudes of its individual members, constitute an important element of acculturation research. As a counterpart to the acculturation attitudes of non-dominant peoples (on the left of Figure 14.1), there is the
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286 John W. Berry construct of multicultural ideology (introduced by Berry et al., 1977) that is held by members of the larger society. This concept attempts to encompass the general and fundamental view that cultural diversity is a public good for a society and its individual members (i.e., there is a high value placed on cultural maintenance), and that such diversity should be shared and accommodated in an equitable way (i.e., there is a high value placed on contact and participation among all groups). This combination of the acceptance of both diversity and equity constitutes the basis of integration and multiculturalism. In addition, the notion of multicultural ideology incorporates the acceptance of the view that the dominant society and its members should be prepared, themselves, to change in order to accommodate others in the larger society. In various studies, this ideology has been assessed by a scale that loaded integration items positively, and melting pot, segregation, and exclusion items negatively. Our results generally support its construct validity (e.g., Berry et al., 1977; Berry & Kalin, 1995), and others have also found that integrationist views usually contrast with the other three attitudes (e.g., van de Vijver, Helms-Lorenz, & Feltzer, 1999). Multicultural ideology has close empirical links to ethnic attitudes and prejudice, but is more explicitly related to practices for managing intergroup relations in culturally diverse groups. The assertion that there is a close connection between the attitudes of the non-dominant and dominant communities has been reinforced by the work of Bourhis (e.g., Bourhis, Moise, Perreault, & Senecal, 1997) and Navas (e.g., Navas, Rojas, García, & Pumares, 2007) in their presentation of their interactive acculturation models. Integration can only be chosen and successfully pursued by non-dominant groups when the dominant society is open and inclusive in its orientation toward cultural diversity (i.e., when there is widespread acceptance of multicultural ideology). However, in some societies, such acceptance is very low, or even absent. For example, in France, limits on the public expression of a person’s heritage culture carry with them an increased likelihood of being discriminated against (Berry & Sabatier, 2010; Sabatier & Berry, 2008). For integration to work, a mutual accommodation is required for integration to be attained, involving the acceptance by both groups of the right of all groups to live as culturally different peoples. This strategy requires nondominant groups to adopt the basic values of the larger society, while at the same time the dominant group must be prepared to adapt national institutions (e.g., education, health, labor) to better meet the needs of all groups now living together in the plural society. This recipe has been advocated by Bouchard and Taylor (2008) to promote intercultural harmony in Quebec, as well as in the European Union (2005). With the use of this dual framework, comparisons can be made between individuals and their groups, and between non-dominant peoples and the
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larger society within which they are acculturating. Inconsistencies and conflicts between these various acculturation preferences are common sources of difficulty for those experiencing acculturation. For example, this can occur when individuals do not accept the main ideology of their society (when individuals oppose immigrant cultural maintenance in a society where multiculturalism is official policy), or when immigrant children challenge the way of acculturating set out by their parents. Generally, when acculturation experiences cause problems for acculturating individuals, we observe the phenomenon of acculturative stress, with variations in levels of adaptation (Berry, 2006). The various meanings of the two (individual and societal) levels of the concepts of integration and multiculturalism shown in Figure 14.1 have been examined by Berry (2007). In essence, I argue that there is no incompatibility (at the psychological level) between having two identities, being competent in two languages, or having two sets of daily behavioral repertoires. These psychological features can be accomplished in two ways: by engaging them simultaneously (by merging or mixing); or by alternation (by switching between them, according to their appropriateness in particular contexts). These two ways of managing dual identities have been extensively studied (e.g., by Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005) using the concept of bicultural identity integration. At the societal or cultural level, there may or may not be compatibility between the two sets of norms or practices. In some cases, both forms of managing this duality can be successful; for example, by merging cultural practices (in the domains of cooking, clothing, and forms of social relationships). However, in other domains (such as religion, family, and gender relationships) such merging may not be possible. In these cases, the alternation between cultural practices may be the more successful way of acculturation, in particular by making a clear distinction between cultural expressions in the private (home, cultural community) and public spheres of daily life. The presentation of these strategies for the non-dominant group has been based on the assumption that non-dominant groups and their individual members have the freedom to choose how they want to behave during their acculturation. This, of course, is not always the case; the preferences (attitudes) of individuals do not always become expressed in their actual behavior. Thus, in addition to attitudes, researchers usually also assess behaviors in the same domains as their attitudes (for example, the preferences and actual behaviors for, food eaten, dress worn, religion, and family relationships). There is always less than a perfect relationship between acculturation attitudes and acculturation behaviors, just as in the case of any other areas of life. The combination of acculturation attitudes and behaviors has been termed acculturation strategies (Berry, 1997).
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Research Examples There are three questions that have guided much of the recent research on acculturation at both levels: groups and individuals. These questions have existed in various forms for many years, but have become formalized in a recent book (Berry et al., 2006) that make them explicit. Although these questions have a long history, they have been clarified by recent research, and partly in response to critical comments and debate in the acculturation literature (e.g., Berry, 2009; Berry & Sam, 2003; Rudmin & Ahmadzadeh, 2001). The three questions are the following: 1 How do people acculturate? Are there variations in acculturation strategies, in the goals that societies and individuals seek to achieve? As noted above, for many years this question seemed to be settled: the goal, the process, and the end result of acculturation was thought to be the inevitable absorption of non-dominant groups and individuals into the dominant society, leading to a culturally homogeneous society. However, there is now some agreement that there are substantial variations. Despite this, there is no consensus on how many there are, on how distinct they are one from another, and how best to assess them. 2 How well do people adapt? For many years it was thought that immigrants inevitably encounter problems, and that these experiences result in poor adaptation, mainly of a psychological nature. Much of this generalization came from reports prepared by those professionals (mainly psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, and other clinicians) who were working with immigrants who were in fact experiencing, and seeking help for, their problems. 3 What is the relationship between how they acculturate and how well they adapt? If there are variations in how people acculturate, and variations in how well they adapt, this third question inevitably arises. If there are systematic relationships, the possibility exists for some “best practices” in how to acculturate in order to achieve better, rather than worse, adaptations. To illustrate these concepts and questions, there follows an overview of a study of the acculturation and adaptation of immigrant youth (Berry et al., 2006). Samples included immigrant youth (aged 13 to 18 years) settled in 13 societies (N = 5298), a sample of their parents (N = 2350), and samples of national youth (N = 2631) and parents (N = 967). The study was guided by the three core questions identified above: how do they acculturate; how well do they adapt; and are there important relationships between how they acculturate and how well they adapt?
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To address the first question of how immigrant youth live during their acculturation, a number of acculturation variables were measured in the study; these included both attitudes and behaviors. We assessed preferences for the four acculturation attitudes (IASM); we also examined two cultural identities (ethnic and national), language knowledge and use (ethnic and national), and peer relations (ethnic and national). These variables were then incorporated in a cluster analysis. Four clusters resulted: integration (36.4 percent of the sample); separation/ethnic (22.5 percent); assimilation/ national (18.7 percent); and marginalization/diffuse (22.4 percent). In the integration cluster, youth were oriented toward both their heritage culture and the national society: they preferred the integration acculturation attitude, and rejected assimilation, separation, and marginalization; they had positive ethnic and national identities, used both their heritage and national languages, and had friends from both groups. In the separation/ethnic cluster, they were primarily oriented toward their heritage culture: they preferred separation and rejected the integration, assimilation, and marginalization strategies; they had a positive ethnic identity and a negative national identity, used their heritage language but not the national language, and had friends from their own ethno-cultural group but not from the national group. In the assimilation/national cluster, youth preferred assimilation, and rejected the integration, separation, and marginalization strategies; they had a positive national identity and a negative ethnic identity, used the national language but not their heritage language, and had friends from the national society but not from their own ethno-cultural group. In the marginalization/diffuse cluster, youth appeared confused, exhibiting ambivalence and uncertainty: they had a preference for marginalization, but also for assimilation and (to a lesser extent) separation, while rejecting the integration strategy; they had negative ethnic and national identities, used their heritage language but not the national language, and had some friends from their ethno-cultural group but not from the national society. This pattern resembles the “diffuse” period during identity formation (Marcia, 1994), where young people seem to lack commitment to a direction or purpose in their lives. It also resembles the classic description of the marginal person (Stonequist, 1937) who was characterized as being poised in psychological uncertainty between two cultural worlds, uncertain which way to turn. Clearly, assimilation is not the preferred acculturation strategy. Even among immigrant youth, who are often characterized as adopting a common or global youth culture, giving up their heritage culture identity and behavior is the least desired way of acculturating. Instead, integration that links them to both their heritage culture and that of the national society is vastly preferred. And in second preference, separation is the strategy
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290 John W. Berry adopted. Taken together, integration and separation include heritage culture maintenance, and are the preference of 59 percent of youth. Marginalization is least preferred (along with assimilation); both strategies involve giving up heritage culture, with a resulting loss of engagement with family and community. The profiles were analyzed for differences in relation to some individual characteristics. Because we do not have longitudinal data, we used length of residence in the new society as a means of examining differences in profiles over time following immigration. The profiles showed a clear pattern of differences across the three length-of-residence categories. The integration profile was more frequent among those with longer residence; the proportion of integration profile among those with 12 years or more of residence was more than double that of those with 6 years or less of residence (45 percent vs. 22 percent). In contrast, the marginalization/diffuse profile was dramatically less frequent in those with longer residence; over 45 percent of those with six years or less residence showed a diffuse profile, while only about 12 percent of those with the longest residence showed this profile. The assimilation/national profile was higher over these three groups, changing from 7 percent to 24 percent. On the other hand, the separation/ethnic profile was almost equally frequent in all length-of-residence categories. In sum, among the most recent arrivals, the marginalization/diffuse profile dominated, while the integration profile was very low. The reverse was the case for those with 12 or more years of residence. In spite of these differences, a substantial group of adolescents, 20–25 percent, showed strong and enduring involvement with their ethnic culture regardless of length of residence. We expected perceived discrimination to be negatively related to adolescents’ involvement in the larger society; that is, to be less frequent in the assimilation/national and integration profiles. Analysis of variance showed a significant difference among the profiles in perceived discrimination: significantly less discrimination was reported by adolescents with the integration profile and assimilation/national profiles than the other two profiles. Adolescents with the marginalization/diffuse profile reported more perceived discrimination than those in the other three profiles. These results were essentially unchanged when length of residence was included as a covariate. Acculturation profiles were significantly related to neighborhood ethnic composition. Results showed that the integration profile was most strongly represented in the balanced neighborhoods, where there were approximately equal numbers of own-ethnic and national residents. The separation/ethnic profile dominated in communities made up entirely of the adolescent’s own ethnic group, while neighborhoods with a larger proportion of residents who were not from one’s own group tended to have a higher proportion of assimilation/national profiles than those with more same-group residents.
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Since youth do not usually select where the family lives, we may interpret this relationship in a causal way: neighborhood ethnic composition influences the way in which immigrant youth acculturate. The proportion of males and females differed significantly across profiles, with girls more often showing the integrated profile and boys the diffuse profile. Parental occupational status showed only a modest relationship to the profiles; the assimilation/national profile was more common among those whose parents had higher status occupations. At the country level, the profiles differed depending on whether the society of settlement had been established largely by immigrants (“settler societies” such as Australia, Canada, and the US) or whether immigration was a more recent and less common phenomenon (e.g., European countries). In the settler societies, over 50 percent of the adolescents showed an integration profile. The integration profile was generally less common in European countries, typically between 30 percent and 40 percent. Of particular interest is the variable pattern of cultural identities across societies of settlement. While the mean ethnic identity was higher than national identities in all 13 societies, the difference varied from smallest in the USA and Finland (ethnic = 3.99/3.91; ethnic = 3.17/3.10) to the largest in Canada and the Netherlands (ethnic = 4.45/4.54; national = 3.15/3.19). However, the pattern of correlations differed between settler societies and the others. In all settler societies, the correlations between ethnic and national identities were positive, while in all (but one – the UK) of the other societies the correlations were negative. It appears that in settler societies, youth have figured out that it is possible to have both identities, while in other societies they may feel that they have to choose to be one or the other. The study also addressed the second question: how well are immigrant youth adapting to living in their new society? Previous research has indicated that there are two distinct forms of adaptation: psychological and socio-cultural (Ward, 1996). Two factors were indeed found: the first factor included life satisfaction, self-esteem, and lack of psychological problems (such as anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic symptoms). The second factor (socio-cultural adaptation) included school adjustment and lack of behavior problems (such as truancy, petty theft). Adaptation was weakly but significantly related to gender, with immigrant boys having a slightly better psychological adaptation score than immigrant girls, while immigrant boys scored lower on socio-cultural adaptation. We also examined how well immigrant youth were adapting in comparison to national youth. Overall, national and immigrant youth had similar levels of both psychological and socio-cultural adaptation. This is not to say that there are no differences between immigrant youth and national youth generally. However, it is to say that when immigrant and national youth are sampled from the same neighborhoods (where many social and economic conditions
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292 John W. Berry are shared) no differences were found. Among national youth, we again found the earlier reported effect of gender, with boys having higher scores for psychological adaptation and lower for socio-cultural adaptation than girls. With respect to our third question, is it the case that how an adolescent acculturates relates to how well they adapt? The pattern in our findings is very clear: those in the integration profile had the best psychological and sociocultural adaptation outcomes, while those in the marginalization/diffuse profile had the worst; in between, those with a separation/ethnic profile had moderately good psychological adaptation but poorer socio-cultural adaptation, while those with an assimilation/national profile had moderately poor psychological adaptation and slightly negative socio-cultural adaptation. This pattern of results was largely replicated using structural equation modeling with the same data set (see Berry et al., 2006). We also examined relationships between the two forms of adaptation and perceived discrimination: we found that discrimination was negatively and significantly related to both psychological and socio-cultural adaptation.
Implications for Immigration and Settlement Policies At the beginning of this chapter, a core issue facing all plural societies was presented as a debate, and a choice, between seeking a culturally homogeneous society and seeking a culturally diverse society. In the presentation of acculturation strategies, four alternatives were suggested. In fact, when shown in a circular intercultural space that is defined in terms of two key issues, many points in that space are intermediate, and were left unnamed. That is, there are other ways of seeking a resolution to this issue. One that has been articulated in Europe by respondents (see Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2007) is the distinction between public and private domains for the expression of cultural diversity. For many respondents, it is acceptable for immigrants to maintain their heritage cultures, as long as it is kept in their family and community, and does not intrude into the public domain. In our scale of multicultural ideology (Berry et al., 1977), this view is expressed in the statement: “If people of different ethnic and cultural origins want to keep their own culture, they should keep it to themselves, and not bother the rest of us.” This sentiment is contrary to the multicultural vision of how to manage a culturally plural society, and is close to the segregation strategy. The “republican” vision in France (Sabatier & Boutry, 2006) is akin to the assimilation option as defined in this chapter. However, it is often referred to as interculturalism, a term that implies the acceptance of cultural others by the dominant group as long as they adopt the main features (values, language, etc.) of the national society. That is, mutual accommodation is limited to tolerance on the part of the dominant group, but does not
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include any substantive changes on their part. A similar approach has recently appeared in the province of Quebec in Canada, where the term interculturalism is also used. Here the position is close to the Canadian policy of multiculturalism, but is somewhat in the direction of assimilation: cultural diversity is advocated, but in return, the “cultural communities” should enter into a kind of social contract with the larger society, accepting the special place of French Canadian culture in the life of the province. This position advocates the need for “reasonable accommodation” on all sides (Bouchard & Taylor, 2008). As we saw in the section on research studies, there is strong evidence that immigrant youth prefer to maintain their heritage cultures, and at the same time to participate in the life of the larger society (i.e., the strategy of integration). The relationship between this strategy, if allowed and supported by the dominant society, is not only the preferred way, but is also the most successful. If it had been preferred, but had negative outcomes, the debate would surely be more difficult to resolve. However, there is a fortuitous coinciding of a preference for integration, and a positive outcome when it is pursued. And since it is fully consistent with the EU common principles for integration, further research should seek to verify these findings. As for all social and psychological research, emerging generalizations from a few countries need to be evaluated by continuing research in many other societies. If found to be valid, then sharing and promoting them through public education and advocacy is an obvious course of action.
References Arends-Tóth, J., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2007). Acculturation attitudes: A comparison of measurement methods. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 7, 1462–1488. Benet-Martínez, V., & Haritatos, J. (2005). Bicultural identity integration (BII): Components and psychological antecedents. Journal of Personality, 73, 1015–1050. Berry, J. W. (1974). Psychological aspects of cultural pluralism: Unity and identity reconsidered. Topics in Culture Learning, 2, 17–22. Berry, J. W. (1980). Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In A. Padilla (Ed.), Acculturation: Theory, models and findings (pp. 9–25). Boulder, CO: Westview. Berry, J. W. (1984). Multicultural policy in Canada: A social psychological analysis. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 16, 353–370. Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46, 5–68. Berry, J. W. (2003). Conceptual approaches to acculturation. In K. Chun. P. BallsOrganista, & G. Marin (Eds.), Acculturation (pp. 3–37). Washington, DC: APA Press.
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294 John W. Berry Berry, J. W. (2006). Stress perspectives on acculturation. In D. L. Sam & J. W. Berry (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology (pp. 43–57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berry, J. W. (2007). Integration: A cultural and psychological perspective. In Estonian Integration Foundation (Eds.), Integration: A psychological and cultural perspective (pp. 124–141). Tallinn: Estonian Integration Foundation. Berry, J. W. (2008). Globalisation and acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32, 328–336. Berry, J. W. (2009). A critique of critical acculturation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33. Berry, J. W., & Kalin, R. (1995). Multicultural and ethnic attitudes in Canada: Overview of the 1991 survey. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 27, 301–320. Berry, J. W., & Kalin, R. (2000). Multicultural policy and social psychology: The Canadian experience. In S. Renshon & J. Duckitt (Eds.), Political psychology: Cultural and cross-cultural foundations (pp. 263–284). London: Macmillan. Berry, J. W., Kalin, R., & Taylor, D. (1977). Multiculturalism and ethnic attitudes in Canada. Ottawa: Supply and Services. Berry, J. W., Kim, U., Minde, T., & Mok, D. (1987). Comparative studies of acculturative stress. International Migration Review, 21, 491–511. Berry, J. W., Kim, U., Power, S., Young, M., & Bujaki, M. (1989). Acculturation attitudes in plural societies. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 38, 185–206. Berry, J. W., Phinney, J. S., Sam, D. L., & Vedder, P. (Eds.). (2006). Immigrant youth in cultural transition: Acculturation, identity and adaptation across nations. Mahwah: Erlbaum. Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2002). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and applications (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Berry, J. W., & Sabatier, S. (2010). Acculturation, discrimination and adaptation among second-generation immigrant youth in Montreal and Paris. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 34, 191–207. Berry, J. W., & Sam, D. L. (2003). Accuracy in scientific discourse. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 44, 65–68. Bouchard, G., & Taylor, C. (2008). Fonder l’avenir: Le temps de la conciliation. Rapport de la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles [English version: Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation]. Montreal: Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. Bourhis, R., Moise, C., Perreault, S., & Senecal, S. (1997). Towards an interactive acculturation model: A social psychological approach. International Journal of Psychology, 32, 369–386. Government of Canada. (1971). Multicultural Policy: Statement to House of Commons. Ottawa. Graves, T. (1967). Psychological acculturation in a tri-ethnic community. SouthWestern Journal of Anthropology, 23, 337–350.
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Gordon, M. (1964). Assimilation in American life. New York: Oxford University Press. Huntington, S. (2005). Who are we? The challenges to American national identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lens, S. (1974). The forging of the American empire. New York: Thomas Crowell. Marcia, J. (1994). The empirical study of ego identity. In H. Bosma, T. Graafsma, H. Grotevant, & D. de Levita (Eds.), Identity and development: An interdisciplinary approach (pp. 67–80). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Meuleman, B., & Reeskens, T. (2008, July 9). Integration policy and attitudes toward immigration: A comparative analysis across 17 European countries. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISPP 31st Annual Scientific Meeting, Sciences Po, Paris, France. Navas, M., Rojas, A. J., García, M., & Pumares, P. (2007). Acculturation strategies and attitudes according to the Relative Acculturation Extended Model (RAEM): The perspectives of natives versus immigrants. International Journals of Intercultural Relations, 31, 67–86. Noels, K., & Berry, J. W. (2006). Acculturation in Canada. In D. Sam & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology (pp. 274–293). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Redfield, R., Linton, R., & Herskovits, M. (1936). Memorandum on the study of acculturation. American Anthropologist, 38, 149–152. Rudmin, F. W., & Ahmadzadeh, V. (2001). Psychometric critique of acculturation psychology: The case of Iranian migrants in Norway. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 42, 41–56. Ryder, A., Alden, L., & Paulhus, D. (2000). Is acculturation unidimensional or bidimensional? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 49–65. Sabatier, C., & Berry, J. W. (2008). The role of family acculturation, parental style, and perceived discrimination in the adaptation of second-generation immigrant youth in France and Canada. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 159–185. Sabatier, C., & Boutry, V. (2006). Acculturation in Francophone European countries. In D. L. Sam & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology (pp. 349–367). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sam, D. L., & Berry, J. W. (Eds.). (2006). Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stonequist, E. V. (1937). The marginal man. New York: Scribner’s. Van de Vijver, F. J. R., Helms-Lorenz, M., & Feltzer, M. (1999). Acculturation and cognitive performance of migrant children in the Netherlands. International Journal of Psychology, 34, 149–162. Ward, C. (1996). Acculturation. In D. Landis & R. Bhagat (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural training (2nd ed., pp. 124–147). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Ward, C., Bochner, S., & Furnam, A. (2001). The psychology of culture shock. London: Routledge.
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Ethnic Social Networks, Social Capital, and Political Participation of Immigrants Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie Introduction Since the work of Putnam (1993, 2000), the concept of social capital has been increasingly in vogue as a crucial explanatory variable for political trust and political participation (van Deth, Maraffi, Newton, & Whitely, 1999). Social capital – which we narrowly define here as being embedded in a social network through associational life – is thus seen as an important factor influencing the political trust level and the intensity of citizens’ political participation (both formal and informal). Recently, the social capital approach has also become more important in studies of political participation of (ethnic) minorities. In this contribution, we will briefly discuss the key developments of recent empirical research in Europe on the link between immigrants’ political participation and engagement in associations. The Dutch political scientists Fennema and Tillie (1999, 2001) began the debate with their claim that differences in ethnic minorities’ political participation are linked to differences in ethnic civic community, primarily seen as the relevant group’s amount of ethnic social capital (participation in ethnic associational life). Fennema and Tillie argue that the denser a particular ethnic group’s network of associations and the higher the level of membership in associations, the more political trust they will have and the more they will participate politically. In their research in Amsterdam, they found a correlation between the density of networks of ethnic associations and membership levels, on the one hand, and political participation and trust of ethnic minorities, on the other. An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Social Capital and Political Participation of Immigrants in Europe: Key Developments in Empirical Studies.” In D. Vogel (Ed.), Highly active immigrants: A resource for European civil societies (pp. 47–58). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.
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First, we briefly reconsider the findings and theory of Fennema and Tillie and discuss some of the challenges to their theoretical and empirical perspective. We then look into the research agenda and the results of a number of recent studies examining the link between social capital and political participation of ethnic minorities in several European countries. However, we also discuss the other side of the coin: what are the consequences of a lack of social capital with respect to the political integration of immigrants? For this, we will report the relevant results of an empirical study on Muslim radicalism in Amsterdam, which invites more reflection and research on the consequences of a lack of social capital.
Critical Assessment of the “Ethnic Civic Community” Argument In their research on Amsterdam (Fennema & Tillie 1999, 2001) and other Dutch cities (Berger, Fennema, van Heelsum, Tillie, & Wolff, 2000), Fennema and Tillie have found an interesting correlation at the aggregate level between political participation and political trust of ethnic minorities, on the one hand, and the networks of ethnic associations (and their membership levels), on the other. For instance, Turks in Amsterdam have a denser network of associations than Moroccans. Turks at the same time have more political trust and a larger participation in the political field than Moroccans. Similar results, linking associational networks and political participation, have been found for Surinamese and Antilleans. Fennema and Tillie (1999, 2001) claim there is a causal link underlying this correlation. Inspired by Putnam, they argue that voluntary associations create social trust, which spills over into political trust and higher political participation. In addition, they claim that a network of organizations further increases political trust through interlocking directorates. In this context, they speak about the degree of civic community within ethnic groups – or ethnic civic community (Fennema, 2004) – as a basis for political trust and political participation. Fennema and Tillie also noted that the use of mass communication can be an important element of this ethnic civic community. The more ethnic citizens watch ethnic television and read ethnic newspapers, the higher the degree of civic community is and the more likely they are to be politically active. For most political commentators, this is a counter-intuitive theory: it is widely assumed that a strong ethnic community is detrimental for the political inclusion of its members in mainstream politics. They would remain “trapped” in their own world, cut off from the rest of society. Ethnic (minority) associations would be isolated islands, located at a dangerous distance from the mainland.
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298 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie Fennema and Tillie claim the opposite: ethnic (minority) associations function as bridges between ethnic minority groups and the ethnic majority in a given society (Vermeulen & Berger, 2008). The limitations of the original argument and research of Fennema and Tillie have been noted (Jacobs, Phalet, & Swyngedouw, 2002; Jacobs & Tillie, 2004). First, their attention remained limited to ethnic social capital (embedding in ethnic associations) without considering forms of crosscultural social capital (embedding in mixed and more mainstream organizations) and the relationship between these two types of social capital (Phalet & Swyngedouw, 2002). Also, no substantial research has been done on the specific role of ethnic media in the constitution of ethnic communities and their ties to mainstream society. In addition, potential different effects for different types of organizations are disregarded (Hooghe, 2001; van Londen, Phalet, & Hagendoorn, 2007). Furthermore, the relationship between density of networks and membership levels has remained unclear (Vermeulen, 2005; Jacobs, Phalet, & Swyngedouw, 2006). Also, there is no acknowledgment of the importance of other forms of social capital such as nonorganizational personal networks (La Due Lake & Huckfeldt, 1998) or of cultural capital. These could be designated as stimulating the formation of bridging social capital. One should especially think of forms of social and cultural capital, which are differentially distributed among (ethnic) groups and are influential for integration into the receiving society (i.e., entrepreneurship, educational participation, language proficiency, etc.). So, is there a link between social capital (participation in associational life), political trust, and political participation and is this link always univocal? Furthermore, what exactly in associations is responsible for the assumed effect on political involvement? In considering these issues, not only do the types of organization and their activities have to be taken into account, but attention should also be given to different kinds of networks in which associations are potentially embedded. Last but not least, one should look at the national/city-related processes – political opportunity structures (Koopmans, 2004; Koopmans & Statham, 2000), which can lead associations to have different effects on different groups. For instance, perhaps a typical national political opportunity structure caused the phenomena observed in the Netherlands (Jacobs & Swyngedouw, 2006; Vermeulen & Berger, 2008). Is the thesis correct that differences in political participation between groups are to be explained by different levels of social capital? This question can be addressed at both the individual and aggregate levels. Let us reformulate the argument at stake. Fennema and Tillie contend that an ethnic group’s aggregate level of social capital leads to a particular amount of political trust and political participation. Fennema and Tillie claim that ethnic voluntary associations create social trust, which spills over into political trust and higher levels of political participation. On the aggregate level this would
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imply that ethnic communities which constitute a stronger “civic ethnic community” (i.e., groups who have a higher civic participation level and a more densely connected ethnic associational arena) will have a higher level of political trust and a higher level of political involvement. If this is correct, there should also be observable consequences at the individual level. Indeed, one would expect to see that the more an individual belongs to voluntary associations, the more the individual participates politically. Within different (ethnic) groups, a link has to be found at the individual level between social capital (membership of organizations) and political participation. One should be able to show that differences between ethnic groups in aggregate levels of political participation are, at an individual level, linked to membership participation within the groups. On the individual level this would imply that (1) members of ethnic organizations have higher trust levels and a higher degree of political involvement than non-members (all other factors being constant) and that (2) members of cross-ethnic organizations have higher trust levels and a higher degree of political involvement than non-members (all other factors being constant). According to Fennema and Tillie (and in line with Putnam), there would – due to interlocking directorates of associations and the density of an ethnic civic network – also be an aggregate effect partly independent of individual effects. Inspired by Putnam, they indeed claim there is also a rainmaker effect through the aggregate level: individuals who are not active in associations but are part of an ethnic group in which there is a high degree of (ethnic and/or cross-ethnic) associational participation will have higher trust levels and a higher degree of political participation than the same kind of individuals who are part of an ethnic group in which there is a lower level of associational involvement. The latter hypothesis is based on the idea of diffusion of trust through informal social networks, organized around ethnic identity and cultural affinity. Civically active individuals would “contaminate” non-civically active individuals in an ethnic minority group with their trust level. Inspired by Paxton (2002), Tillie (2004) has, furthermore, added an additional element to the original thesis in suggesting that members of an isolated organization will have a lesser amount of social capital than members of connected organizations, and will thus be less inclined to participate politically. Members who are part of a well connected organization will, on the contrary, experience a boost in their trust level and political involvement. Moreover, members of bigger associations will have more social capital than members of smaller associations. In other words, ethnic voluntary associations which are densely connected with other organizations create more social trust (leading to political trust and political involvement) than less connected or isolated organizations. Moreover, bigger ethnic associations create more trust (spilling over into political involvement) than smaller
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300 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie associations. The underlying idea here is that, as a member of an association, one has access to the (informal) social capital of other members, but also to the social capital of the organization as such. However, it seems to be equally (or even more) important to show – in other contexts than the Netherlands alone – that there is a link at all between participation in associational life and political involvement of ethnic minority groups. Moreover, this should be the case not only for ethnic minority groups, but also for non-immigrant residents. In this context, it would also be interesting to check whether there is a relation in the other direction, from political to cross-ethnic participation. Do highly active citizens, who want to make a political career, invest in links with ethnic and cross-ethnic associational life?
Research Projects into Associational Membership and Political Participation of Immigrants These challenges could only be answered with internationally comparative and cross-cultural research (including different ethnic groups and the autochthonous group). Ideally, such a research design would distinguish between different kinds of associations according to their type of activities. As previously noted, according to Phalet and Swyngedouw (2002), when examining ethnic minorities and the effects of organizational membership, one should equally consider potential differential effects of ethnic social capital (membership in immigrant organizations) and cross-cultural social capital. Jacobs, Phalet, and Swyngedouw (2002) further stressed that it might be artificial and insufficient to only look at so-called social capital – be it ethnic or cross-ethnic – in itself. Investigating the importance of being socially embedded through associational life should be complemented by measuring other elements that facilitate so-called bridging cultural capital – education, language proficiency, etc. Furthermore, survey research, organizational studies, and network analysis should be combined to test all aspects of the claims made by Fennema and Tillie (in the wake of Putnam), especially those regarding the so-called rainmaker effect, i.e., the positive influence of strong ethnic networks on the political participation of people who are not members of ethnic associations. To stimulate this kind of research and to cooperatively address these issues, an informal research network – Multicultural Democracy in European Cities – was set up at the beginning of this decade.1 The network 1
The initiative was taken by researchers from the University of Amsterdam and included members from many European countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and UK). The ambition of the network was to develop a common core for future survey research (on the individual level), for organizational
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has been inspiring research projects in Norway and Sweden2 and was the basis of a recent (2006–2009) joint research program, “Multicultural Democracy and Immigrants’ Social Capital in Europe: Participation, Organizational Networks, and Public Policies at the Local Level” (LOCALMULTIDEM),3 financed by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission. In LOCALMULTIDEM, the patterns of political integration of immigrant residents are being investigated in six European cities: Lyon (France), Budapest (Hungary), Milan (Italy), Madrid (Spain), Zurich (Switzerland), and London (UK). This research project primarily asks to what extent immigrants from different ethnic groups are politically integrated into the local life of their cities and what explains the variations in the degree of political integration from one ethnic group to another. To answer these questions, the project examines the impact that social inequality has on political inequality in terms of individual or micro-level attributes, collective organization resources, and political and discursive opportunity structures. The final results, which are to be published in 2010, will allow further evaluation of the validity of the Fennema and Tillie thesis on the link between ethnic minorities’ political participation and associational involvement.4 However, currently, several available data sets allow modest comparisons and tests of the “ethnic civic community” argument on a number of points. Some researchers have in recent years tried to test the hypotheses of Fennema and Tillie in other settings. In doing so, they have looked further into the relation between participation in ethnic associational life and political participation, not only at the aggregate level, but also at the individual level. Indeed, as we have already stressed, if there is a link between the degree of civic community within ethnic groups and their degree of political studies (network research), and for the inventory of political opportunity structures. The group has met on several occasions – with workshops and conferences organized in Wassenaar (2001), Uppsala (2002), Berlin (2002), Villamoura (2003), Amsterdam (2004), Ghent (2006), Pisa (2007), and Brussels (2009). 2 Research project “Multicultural Democracies and Political Integration in Large Cities: A Comparative Study” by Jon Rogstad (Institute for Social Research, Norway) and research project “Etnisk organisering och politisk integration i storstaden” by Bo Bengtsson and Gunnar Myrberg (Uppsala University). See Rogstad (2004) and Myrberg (2010). 3 See www.um.es/localmultidem. The project coordinator is Laura Morales (Universidad de Murcia). Other participants are Marco Giugni (Université de Genève), Manlio Cinalli (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques), Endre Sik (MTA Etnikai-nemzeti Kisebbségkutató Intézet), Mario Diani (Università degli Studi di Trento), and Paul Statham (University of Leeds). 4 Laura Morales (University of Manchester) and Marco Giugni (University of Geneva) are in the process of editing a volume on the results of the LOCALMULTIDEM project with the working title “Making Multicultural Democracy Work: Political Opportunities, Social Capital, and the Political Inclusion of Immigrants in European Cities.”
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302 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie participation at the aggregate level, there should also be a (partly) underlying link between membership of ethnic associations and political participation at the individual level. This is exactly what several contributions to a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS 2004, vol. 30, no. 3) set out to examine. Lise Togeby5 investigated the situation in Denmark. Maria Berger, Christian Galonska, and Ruud Koopmans reported their findings on Berlin. Dirk Jacobs, Karen Phalet, and Marc Swyngedouw discussed the link between associational membership and political involvement in Brussels. Jean Tillie focused on Amsterdam. All four of these articles were written using the same approach to analyze the link between ethnic social capital and political participation. As such, a first tentative cross-national test was being undertaken. The results should be interpreted with caution. Indicators used in studying the various theoretical variables differed in each study of the JEMS special issue and therefore comparative observations are difficult to make. However, there are already strong indications that various ethnic groups behave differently in the same countries; while, for example, Turks behave the same in different countries.
First Results from Empirical Studies in Europe In all of the contributions to the aforementioned special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, a number of ethnic minority groups were compared at the aggregate level with regard to – at least – political participation and political interest. All the researchers performed tests of significance of observed differences in political involvement between their samples of ethnic minority groups. At the same time, all these contributors provided a comparison of ethnic minority groups on the aggregate level with regard to participation in cross-ethnic associations, participation in ethnic associations, and total participation in associations. Each time, tests of significance were provided for observed differences between samples of ethnic minority groups. Using this information, a first cross-national test of the Fennema and Tillie argument on the link between social capital (operationalized as participation in ethnic associations) and political involvement on the aggregate level could be undertaken for several countries. Without going into all the details, let us summarize some of the main findings. In Brussels (Jacobs, Phalet, & Swyngedouw, 2004) and in Denmark (Togeby, 2004), no straightforward correlation was found at the aggregate 5 We regret to have to report that our colleague Lise Togeby, professor in political sociology at Aarhus University, to whom we would like to dedicate this chapter, died (at the age of 66) in October 2008.
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level between political participation and political trust of ethnic minorities, on the one hand, and ethnic associational involvement, on the other. However, a link is partly to be found in Berlin (as it had been found before in Amsterdam). In Berlin, Italians are most interested in German politics, followed by Russians and Turks, between which there is no statistically significant difference (Berger, Galonska, & Koopmans, 2004). All ethnic groups, however, have significant lower levels of political interest than Germans. With regard to political activities, Italians score the best – and even participate to the same degree as native Germans. Turks have a lower level of political involvement, but it is the Russian group that is least politically active. Overall, Turks and Russians seem to participate to the same degree in ethnic voluntary associations, while Italians have a higher degree of involvement in ethnic associations. All in all, merely looking at overall levels of membership in ethnic associations, the results for Amsterdam and Berlin seem to confirm the Fennema and Tillie argument, while the data for Denmark and Brussels lack this confirmation or even seem to contradict it. Perhaps more interestingly, in all contributions, the relationship between membership of associations and political involvement was directly monitored at the individual level, making use of cross-sectional survey data. Using a similar procedure in their respective case studies, all the contributors tried to test whether it is correct that (ethnic) associational membership fosters political involvement. In doing so, they equally wanted to consider important potential explanatory factors such as gender, education, language proficiency, and employment status – if only to rule out spurious effects. In order to do this, all contributions performed an analysis, according to the logic of a similar sequential regression model, with political involvement as the dependent variable. First, a linear regression with gender and education (low or higher) as independent dummy-variables, and language proficiency as a quasi-metric independent variable, was undertaken. Subsequently, a dummy of employment status (unemployed, employed) was added to the model in a second step, and dummies for ethnic membership (none, some), cross-ethnic membership, and union membership (none, some) were added to the model in a third step. This order in introducing the independent variables to the model was used, since it was postulated that the variables already present in the model are (or could be) logical antecedents to the subsequent variables. The researchers thus wanted to control for all variables of the preceding step in their analysis. Such a sequential model also allows consideration of direct and indirect effects of the variables in the model. A distinction was made between union membership and (other forms of) cross-ethnic membership, given the specific nature and importance of union membership for interest representation (Jacobs et al., 2002). As indicated earlier, in the papers by Berger, Galonska, and Koopmans (2004), Jacobs, Phalet, and Swyngedouw, (2004), Togeby (2004), and Tillie
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304 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie (2004), the model presented above was empirically tested for four countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. Within each country, the studies noted observable differences between ethnic groups as to the degree of political integration and the impact of comparable independent variables. In Belgium, ethnic social capital has different effects on the political involvement of Moroccans and Turks; furthermore, there seems to be an important gender dimension. For Denmark, Lise Togeby concludes that both the scope of mobilization and mobilization mechanisms seem to vary from group to group. In Berlin, substantial differences in the political participation patterns of Italians, Turks, and Russians are observed; but, for all groups, ethnic civil society encourages participation in German political activities. Despite the (local) differences with respect to patterns of political integration and the significance of ethnic civic community, important similarities between the four countries could be observed. This becomes especially clear if we compare the results for Turks, which as a group was present in all the studies. Ethnic organization membership figures are highly comparable for three countries: Belgium, Denmark, and Germany. In the Netherlands, ethnic organization membership figures are lowest, which is surprising since this country has a long tradition of promoting ethnic organizations. With respect to cross-ethnic organization membership and trade-union membership, there are strong differences between the countries. Cross-ethnic organization membership is highest in Belgium. In Denmark, relatively more Turks are members of a trade union than in Germany. However, if we look at relative membership numbers, in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, Turks do engage more in cross-ethnic organizations than in ethnic organizations; while in Denmark, the second generation of Turks engages more in trade unions than in ethnic organizations. Also, with respect to the determinants of political integration, similarities in the four countries can be observed. Language proficiency is significant for all countries where data are available. Gender is significant in Belgium and the Netherlands, while education is only significant in Denmark and employment status only significant in Belgium, respectively. Most important, in all four studies, ethnic membership has a significant effect on political integration. Ethnic membership either has a positive effect on political involvement or at least does not have a detrimental effect on political integration. In addition, in three of the four countries, cross-ethnic organization membership (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands) and trade-union membership (Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands) have a significant effect on political participation. It also seems that ethnic membership fosters access to more mainstream cross-ethnic associations. The final verdict, in other words, is still out. Things are clearly not as simple as predicted in the original Fennema and Tillie argument on ethnic
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civic community, but they do at least seem to have a point that ethnic associational membership has some positive effect on political participation or at least does not function as a hindrance to it on the individual level. Ethnic associational membership does, moreover, seem to function as a step towards inclusion in mainstream organizations (or is, at the least, often quite correlated with it). So we can indeed claim that ethnic associations are rather to be compared to bridges than to islands. The special issue of JEMS was just a first approach to the puzzle of the link between associational membership and political involvement of immigrants. Further research has to be done (and is being done at the moment) with regard to the density of ethnic associational networks and their effects. Furthermore, organizational studies will have to show to what extent there are similarities or differences with regard to political mobilization through associational life between and within ethnic groups (and across countries). One of the major weak spots in the original – Putnam inspired – argument by Fennema and Tillie is that political trust is the key mediating mechanism that connects civic engagement with political involvement. Theoretically this seems to be very plausible, but empirically this has yet to be demonstrated on the individual level (Togeby, 2004; van Londen et al., 2007). Does ethnic social capital lead to higher trust levels among ethnic minorities and facilitate their socio-political integration in the host society? If Fennema and Tillie are right, then ethnic social capital should, of course, be fostered and stimulated. Do ethnic associations indeed function as bridges towards the dominant ethnic groups in mainstream society? Or do they, as some policymakers argue, in contrast rather lead to the institutionalization of ethnic entrenchment in divided societies? Perhaps they are just neutral and do not hinder nor facilitate (political) integration, because other variables (economic capital, language knowledgeability, cross-ethnic interaction patterns) are far more important. The research projects we have been discussing are trying (and have tried) to settle the question, by using both quantitative and qualitative methods in a mixed research design, combining survey research, network analysis, and in-depth organizational studies. Most have now focused on the individual level – or at least have mainly reported on findings related to that level – and have indeed shown that ethnic associations are not to be perceived as a threat for political inclusion. The challenge is now to push the debate and the analysis still a bit further by genuinly combining insights from the survey research focusing on the individual level and insights from the network studies and organizational analysis focusing on the group and aggregrate level. A remaining question is whether there is a link between (the lack of) embeddedness of ethnic organizations in an ethnic associational network on the one hand and (the lack of) political participation (by and through ethnic organizations) on the other hand. This issue is not limited to the field of
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306 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie ethnic studies, but has a larger relevance for social sciences. To our knowledge, the more general hypothesis that voluntary associations which are densely connected (on the elite level) with other organizations create more social trust (leading to political trust and political involvement) than less connected or isolated organizations, has not yet been formally tested in a convincing and direct manner. The broader theoretical relevance is that it allows to test the hypothesis that social capital can “travel” and that trust is “contagious”; not just in networks of individuals (in organizations) or in networks of elites (between organizations), but also through the elite network (across organizations) to members of other organizations. We do not have the space here to develop the entire set of plausible hypotheses and thus will just focus on the most straightforward ones which could merit attention in future analyses. Let us first of all focus on the organizational level. One hypothesis to be tested is whether ethnic organizations which are more firmly embedded in an ethnic (and/or cross-ethnic) associational network, through interlocking directorates at the elite level and/or informal contacts on the elite level, will develop more political activities than organizations which are (more) isolated in the field of ethnic associations (all other factors, such as size, being constant). A second hypothesis is that ethnic organizations which are more firmly embedded in an ethnic (and/or crossethnic) associational network, through interlocking directorates at the elite level and/or informal contacts on the elite level, will try to boost social and political trust and will stimulate their members more actively in being politically involved than organizations which are (more) isolated in the field of associations (all other factors, such as size, being constant). The aforementioned Swedish study has been focusing on this specific issue and official publication of the results of their analyses are to be expected soon.6 Self-evidently, we are equally interested in the next step on the individual level: can one expect that members of ethnic organizations which are (more) firmly embedded in an ethnic (and/or cross-ethnic) associational network to have higher trust levels and higher political participation levels than members of ethnic organizations which are (more) isolated (all other factors being constant)? The aforementioned effect will probably be more pronounced when we encounter bridging social capital (organizational links with associations of the ethnic majority group) than when we encounter bonding social capital (only links within the same ethnic group). Let us try to explain more clearly what this means in terms of a research agenda. The following figures represent formal interlocking directorates between, on the one hand, ethnic Moroccan organizations with other Moroccan associations (Figure 15.1) and, on the other hand, ethnic Turkish organizations with 6
First results were presented by Strömblad and Bengtsson (2007) at the conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Pisa, September 2007.
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Ethnic Social Networks and Political Participation ACRB
Espacededial
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renaissance lemmens
comitedesgra
sacomab clubsportifd atlal
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Citoyennetéplus
Scandis artdecolesco CSAM
ASB
Global Expertise
Amicale des travailleurs
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federatiemar
radiosallam ALKHAYRIA aavm lesamisdelet
Almadina
AEMS
maoual
AJFM clubbruxello
casadimarco capris
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aideauxdemun benimellal eliteconseillère Espoirs Jeunes
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Centre du Savioir AL-Ma'rifa Al lmmam Al bokhari
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La Perle d'Orient Mosquée RAHMA buurtwerknoo
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Espace Culturel Nord-Sud
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Figure 15.1 Interlocking directorates of Moroccan associations in Brussels (1998–2003).
Fédération turco-héllénique
PRISMA (Prizma Egitim Merkezi)
ISPAT SIMA / Turk-Danis
Centre d'information et de Dialogue islamique
CCS Jeunesse Araméenne
Samanyolu
Centre de Recherche de la Communauté turque de Belgique
Centre culturel et sportif d'Urhoy
Club Nur
UIuday (Aksany)
Sivrihisar
F.C.Mizizah
FC Kaldirim
Aydin
Papatya
Fondation internationale belg-turque d'Entraide (EYAD)
Fédération des Araméens (Syriaques) de Belgique
Groupe d'assistance culturelle et sociale des Travailleurs turcs résidant en Belgique
FC Suryoyés Bruxellois
Sportif SK
Groupe des Jeunes, en abrégé ''Gözde''
Brussels UTD Centre culturae et sportif du Tour-Abdin Mohammed Ali Ehli Beyit Dayanasma Der Negi
SILA
Association Intenrationale Belgo-Turque d'Entraide, et de Solidarité de Bayat et de sa Région F.C. Molenbeek-Turk Betiad, Association d'Entrepreneurs belges et turcs
Accueil, Orientation et Aide (AOA)
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Communauté musulmane de Belgique, ''CMB''
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Association de la Pensée d'Atatürk de Belgique (APAB)
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European Association of Turkish Academics (EATA) Anadolu
Association Féminine belgo-turque ''A.F.B.T.'' Dostlar Kosesi Saz Grubu Belgika Turk Dostluk Dernegi (BTDD-voorheen FSTB)
Association de l'Union de I'Islam de Brexelles Association sociale et culturelle des Travailleurs turcs résidant en Belgique Foundation religieuse islamique turque en Belgique (DIYANET)
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Vereniging van de Turkse Islamitische Godsdienstleerkrachten van België
Figure 15.2 Interlocking directorates of Turkish associations in Brussels (1998–2003).
other Turkish associations (Figure 15.2) in Brussels. Completely isolated organizations are not shown in the figures; we only show those that are connected with at least one other ethnic organization. It is clear that the Turkish ethnic organizational network structure is much more fragmented than the Moroccan one. One might now hypothesize that the more densely
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308 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie interconnected part of the Moroccan associational life is more effective in resorting to political involvement than the more fragmented Turkish associations. We can do the same exercise comparing Moroccan associations linked to Belgian associations, on the one hand, with Moroccan associations which are not cross-culturally connected, on the other hand; or we can compare a Turkish organization which is isolated in ethnic terms with a Turkish organization which is isolated in cross-ethnic terms, and so on. An integrated analysis thus implies the combination of a number of steps in terms of data collection and data linking: 1 A series of organizational studies (i.e., a standardized questionnaire identifying key activities and characteristics of an association) among ethnic associations in a given urban setting. 2 A network analysis of ethnic minority associations based on interlocking directorates on the board level and a network analysis of joint activities of interactions between ethnic minority associations (and preferably also ethnic majority and cross-ethnic associations). 3 A survey research among a representative sample of ethnic minority groups in selected neighborhoods in a given urban setting (and non-immigrant persons living in the same neighborhoods). Another option is targeted samples of members of different types of ethnic organizations. This is exactly what has been done in the LOCALMULTIDEM project (and for which we are expecting integrated results in the near future) and what is currently in process in a new study in the Brussels Capital Region. Although the organizational survey, network analysis, and survey research will deliver research results which are interesting in their own right, the most exciting and innovative part will be the combined analysis of the different data sources. This will allow us to assess the impact of embedded organizations against isolated organizations on political involvement. We will, however, equally be able to assess whether also other structural network properties (such as centrality within a network, etc.) of organizations have an influence. If we indeed do find an effect of structural network properties, it will most probably remain difficult to assess – merely on the basis of quantitative data – how this effect is exactly articulated. It would thus be a welcome addition to have qualitative studies of different types of ethnic associations, entailing open interviews with members and leaders of different kinds of organizations and participant observation at their activities. In sum, we need a mixed-method design to assess all aspects of the (potential) impact of ethnic social capital on political involvement. Having discussed the (potential) relationship between social capital and political participation, we now turn to the other side of the coin. What consequences can a lack of social capital – that is, social isolation – have
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for political participation? A recent research project on the receptiveness of Muslims for radicalism addresses this issue. This research is of relevance for this book as it suggests that the lack of social capital may lead to over-ambitious, high-intensity participation, as well as to withdrawal from the surroundings.
Lack of Social Capital: Receptiveness to (Muslim) Radicalism Social isolation can be seen as the opposite of social capital. People who are socially isolated are short of social networks. Social isolation can be structural (an objective lack of social networks) or cultural (subjective low evaluation of existing networks, that is the feeling that if, for example, one is in trouble your friends will not help you). A theoretical and empirical link exists between a lack of social capital and receptiveness to (Muslim) radicalism. Theoretically, the concept of psychological security is important. Empirically, a study by Slootman and Tillie (2006) revealed the receptiveness of (young) Amsterdam Muslims to radicalism. We focus here on recent research on the receptiveness for radicalism among Muslims, one subsection of the larger immigrant population, which has been receiving extensive media and political attention in recent years. Of course, the research agenda on the consequences of the lack of social capital can (and should) be much broader than this topic – but there is no space to develop this further here. People (especially youth) need acceptance, confidence, and support. Lack of any of these has a negative effect for the self-image of the young person and therefore his or her attitude towards society. It makes them rigid and defensive, and increases the chances of victimization, alienation, and retreat into one’s own group. Academic literature describes the consequences of psychological insecurity and identity threat (Edmondson, 2003; Kahn, 1990; Straw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981). Every individual has a need for psychological security, a situation characterized by confidence and mutual respect and absence of perceived threats such as not being accepted or valued as an individual. Psychological security stimulates acceptance of a situation because people feel free to be themselves. They feel valued and confident in taking risks and exploring new things without being punished for who they are and what they do. They know what they can expect from their surroundings. This is also beneficial for the surroundings, because people feel connected to their surroundings and their role in them (personal engagement). They show who they are, do not withdraw into their shells, show initiative, and begin social contacts (also outside their own group). They express their ideas and desires
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310 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie and are open to those of others. This attitude stimulates the constructive character of discussion and interaction. Identity threat, a threat to one’s personal identity, combined with the situation of psychological insecurity, has negative, stress-related effects and people react in different ways. Major describes these reactions using three dimensions (Major & O’Brien, 2005). The first dimension deals with the cause. The individual can take personal responsibility, but the usual reaction is to blame psychological insecurity on an external cause, or as Major and O’Brien (2005) call it, the external locus of control (p. 404). The disadvantageous situation is therefore not explained as resulting from personal actions or characteristics, but from social discrimination, thus protecting feelings of self-worth. This attitude of victimization also leads to a lack of self-knowledge, as Major and O’Brien have discussed. It hampers insight into one’s own strengths and weaknesses and can therefore lead to overambition, with extra frustration as a consequence of unfulfilled expectations. Heitmeyer, Müller, and Schröder (1997) also found in their research that many young people have an excessively high ambition level, especially the higher educated. The second dimension described by Major is that of disengagement or extra commitment. A threat to identity can lead individuals to redouble their commitment to their surroundings in an effort to prove themselves. But the alternative reaction, a withdrawal from the surroundings, is seen as the most usual reaction to psychological insecurity. Psychological insecurity leads to personal disengagement, passivity, a defensive attitude and evasion of social contacts. It also leads to rigidity; individuals fall back on what is well known to them and they no longer see nuances; in groups, this strengthens group cohesion, but also reduces tolerance for the other; the focus is on the leaders and, in an organization, power is concentrated. This attitude of personal disengagement leads to conflicts, which develop under psychologically insecure circumstances. These conflicts quickly escalate because people are oriented towards their own interests; they no longer see the communal interests or nuances and are quick to take the conflict personally. Falling back on the familiar and focusing on one’s own group is also a characteristic of the third dimension, strengthening or weakening of the identification with the group. Group identification can often compensate for rejection and discrimination’s negative effects on a sense of self-worth, since groups can provide emotional, informational, and instrumental support. Despite these advantages of group identification, stigmatization and underdevelopment can also lead to a weakening of an individual’s identification with the group; this is especially likely for those who did not initially strongly identify with the group. Slootman and Tillie (2006) demonstrated an empirical relation between feelings of social isolation and openness to radical Muslim thought. That is,
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people who feel alone in times of trouble are more orthodox and consider Islam a point of political conflict on which they need to act. These observations indicate not only the need for a further study of the relation between social capital and political participation, but also the need for an international comparative study on the consequences of a lack of social capital within immigrant communities.
Discussion In their research on the Netherlands, Fennema and Tillie have found an interesting correlation at the aggregate level between political participation and political trust of ethnic minorities, on the one hand, and membership levels in ethnic associations and characteristics of networks of ethnic associations, on the other. Inspired by Putnam, they argue that voluntary associations create social trust, which spills over into political trust and higher political participation. In addition, they claim that a network of organizations further increases political trust through interlocking directorates. In this context, they speak about the degree of ethnic civic community as a basis for political trust and political participation. A number of theoretical and methodological remarks have been raised with regard to the limitations of the “ethnic civic community” argument, but recent European research does seem to confirm that ethnic membership plays a role in facilitating political participation, underlining some of the claims by Fennema and Tillie. Yet, it is also clear that the ethnic civic community argument needs more elaboration in an international comparative perspective and the relationship with other variables needs to be addressed in more depth. Also, there are strong indications that a lack of social capital is related to Muslim radicalism, which can be considered a failure of political integration. All this underlines the need for a truly comparative study of the political integration of immigrants in European societies. In the explanatory model, variables such as the local political opportunity structure, the specific migration history of ethnic groups or transnational contacts between ethnic organizations and institutions in the home countries, all need to be included. The JEMS special issue was a first contribution in the debate on the link between associational membership and political involvement of ethnic minority groups in Western Europe. There are, however, many loose ends with regard to the link between immigrant self-organization and political participation. We sincerely hope further research – for instance, from the recent European LOCALMULTIDEM project or the Swedish, Belgian, and Norwegian research projects – can tie them together, fruitfully making use of the insights which have been collected and presented on the issue up till
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312 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie now. As already stated and clearly visible from the focus of this review, we expect major research progress from survey research, organizational studies, and network analysis. However, we will not exclude the possibility that studies that analyze individual immigrant activity biographies, narrated from the immigrant’s point of view, or participant observation in ethnic minority associations, may also draw attention to some interesting aspects that have so far been neglected. The issue at stake is, clearly, more than merely academic. It has been argued – also by the authors of this contribution – that ethnic self-organizations help to integrate immigrants into the host society and its political system. If this claim is correct, host societies should invest (more) in ethnic associational life, not only because it is in the interest of the immigrant groups, but because it is also an investment in the quality of democracy. For the time being, most empirical evidence seems to be pointing in this direction. It would be incorrect, however, to claim that everything on the topic has been said. We invite all who agree and all who disagree with our normative opinions on the importance of support for ethnic organizations to further investigate the matter. It is substantiated facts that count, not ideological beliefs.
References Berger, M., Fennema, M., van Heelsum, A., Tillie, J., & Wolff, R. (2000). Politieke participatie van etnische minderheden. The Hague: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties. Berger, M., Galonska, C., & Koopmans, R. (2004). Political integration by a detour? Ethnic communities and social capital of migrants in Berlin. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 491–508. Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Psychological safety, trust, and learning in organizations: A group-level lens. Working Paper, Harvard Business School. Retrieved February 22, 2006, from http://www.hbs.edu/units/tom/faculty_files/edmondson_trustnew_pap.pdf. Fennema, M. (2004). The concept and measurement of ethnic community. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 429–448. Fennema, M., & Tillie, J. (1999). Political participation and political trust in Amsterdam: Civic communities and ethnic networks. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 25(4), 703–726. Fennema, M., & Tillie, J. (2001). Civic community, political participation and political trust of ethnic groups. Connections, 24(1), 26–41. Heitmeyer, W., Müller, J., & Schröder, H. (1997). Verlockender Fundamentalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hooghe, M. (2001). Waardencongruentie binnen vrijwillige verenigingen: een sociaalpsychologisch verklaringsmodel voor de interactie van zelfselectie en socialisering. Mens en Maatschappij, 76(2), 102–120.
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Jacobs, D., Phalet, K., & Swyngedouw, M. (2002, March 22–27). Social capital and political participation among ethnic minority groups in Brussels: A test of the civic community argument of Fennema and Tillie. Paper given at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops: Political Participation of Immigrants and their Descendants in Post-War Western Europe, Turin. Jacobs, D., Phalet, K., & Swyngedouw, M. (2004). Associational membership and political involvement among ethnic minority groups in Brussels. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 543–560. Jacobs, D., Phalet, K., & Swyngedouw, M. (2006). Political participation and associational life of Turkish residents in the capital of Europe. Turkish Studies, 7(1), 145–161. Jacobs, D., & Swyngedouw, M. (2006). La vie associative marocaine et turque dans la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale. In B. Khader, M. Martiniello, A. Rea, & C. Timmerman (Eds.), Penser l’immigration et l’intégration autrement: Une initiative belge inter-universitaire (pp. 135–158). Brussels: Bruylant. Jacobs, D., & Tillie, J. (2004). Introduction: Social capital and political integration of migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 419–428. Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692–724. Koopmans, R. (2004). Migrant mobilisation and political opportunities: Variation among German cities and a comparison with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 449–470. Koopmans, R., & Statham, P. (2000). Migration and ethnic relations as a field of political contention: An opportunity structure approach. In R. Koopmans & P. Statham (Eds.), Challenging immigration and ethnic relations politics: Comparative European perspectives (pp. 14–56). Oxford: Oxford University Press. La Due Lake, R., & Huckfeldt, R. (1998). Social capital, social networks, and political participation. Political Psychology, 19(3), 567–584. Major, B., & O’Brien, L. T. (2005). The social psychology of stigma. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 393–421. Myrberg, G. (2010). Political integration through associational affiliation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, accepted for publication. Paxton, P. (2002). Social capital and democracy: An interdependent relationship. American Sociological Review, 67(2), 254–277. Phalet, K., & Swyngedouw, M. (2002). National identities and representations of citizenship: A comparison of Turks, Moroccans and working-class Belgians in Brussels. Ethnicities, 2(1), 5–30. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rogstad, J. (2004, November 18–20). Political integration, networks and trust in the multicultural Oslo. Paper presented at the 13th Nordic Migration Conference, Aalborg, Denmark. ISF-paper 2004:022. Slootman, M., & Tillie, J. (2006). Processes of radicalisation: Why some Amsterdam Muslims become radicals. Amsterdam: Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam.
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314 Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie Straw, B. M., Sandelands, L. E., & Dutton, J. E. (1981). Threat-rigidity effects in organizational behavior: A multilevel analysis. Adminstrative Science Quarterly, 26, 501–524. Strömblad, P., & Bengtsson, B. (2007, September). Political participation of ethnic associations: Exploring the importance of organizational-level differences in endowment and ambition. Conference presentation, ECPR Pisa, Italy. Tillie, J. (2004). Social capital of organizations and their members: Explaining the political integration of immigrants in Amsterdam. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 529–542. Togeby, L. (2004). It depends … How organizational participation affects political participation and social trust among second-generation immigrants in Denmark. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(3), 509–528. Van Deth, J., Maraffi, M., Newton, K., & Whitely, P. (Eds.). (1999). Social capital and European democracy. London: Routledge. Van Londen, M., Phalet, K., & Hagendoorn, L. (2007). Civic engagement and voter participation among Turkish and Moroccan minorities in Rotterdam. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 33(8), 1201–1226. Vermeulen, F. (2005). Organizational patterns: Surinamese and Turkish Associations in Amsterdam, 1960–1990. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(5), 951–973. Vermeulen, F., & Berger, M. (2008). Civic networks and political behavior: Turks in Amsterdam and Berlin. In S. K. Ramakrishnan & I. Bloemraad (Eds.), Civic hopes and political realities: Immigrants, community organizations and political engagement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
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Naturalization as Boundary Crossing Evidence from Labor Migrants in Germany Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm Introduction The social and economic integration of migrants who possess the passport of their country of residence is often more likely than the integration of “foreigners”1 (Haug, 2002; Salentin & Wilkening, 2003). This does not, however, imply that migrants’ “legal integration” has a direct impact on their inclusion in other societal spheres. In fact, the acquisition of citizenship seems to be a consequence rather than the cause of migrants’ structural assimilation, e.g., in the educational system or in the labor market. Comparisons of minority groups in different countries suggest that being a citizen has only limited impact on the life chances of the foreign born and their children (for a comparison of migrants in France and Germany, see Tucci, 2004). Migrants’ legal inclusion obviously does not protect them from social and economic marginalization. Although the direct effect of naturalization on migrants’ integration should not be overstated, its indirect influence must not be ignored either. In most countries, non-naturalized migrants do not enjoy (full) voting rights. This raises issues of political legitimacy and representation, especially when the share of non-citizens who are legal permanent residents is large. Germany is an example of an immigration-hesitant country with a restrictive naturalization law that has been liberalized only after German reunification in the early 1990s. Ten percent of the population – including many second generation migrants born in the country – are excluded from this important dimension of political participation. While voting rights may 1
In the following, we use the term migrant to refer to immigrants and to their children born in the country (second generation).
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316 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm have little direct impact on people’s life chances, the indirect link between naturalization and integration is important because the collective interests of citizens are much more likely to be considered by political leaders. Citizens can pursue their political interests more efficiently than foreigners and naturalized migrants are more likely to get involved in political matters of their host country (for the US, see Portes & Rumbaut, 1996, pp. 93ff.). It is thus hardly surprising that in Germany, migrants’ political interest has been shaped rather strongly by the conflicts and cleavages in their countries of origin (see Diehl, 2002; Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, 2005; Ögelman, 2003). So far, European research on immigrant naturalization has been marked by a genuinely macro-institutional focus in this topic (see Brubaker, 1992; Gerdes & Faist, 2006; Hagedorn, 2001), whereas research in classical settler societies such as the US, Canada, and Australia has focused on describing and explaining the pronounced between- and within-group differences in naturalization patterns. In Germany in particular, most research has focused on the nature and origin of Germany’s restrictive naturalization (Bauböck 1997; Brubaker, 1992; Hoffmann, 1994, 1998; Thränhardt, 1998), whereas naturalization decisions and processes have received considerably less attention (but see Anil, 2007; Diehl & Blohm, 2003; Prümm, 2004; Wobbe & Otte, 2000; Wunderlich, 2005). This is at least partly due to differences in the availability of data. Naturalized citizens cannot be identified in many German data sets or case numbers are too small to conduct meaningful analyses. For two reasons, this situation has recently changed. Naturalized first and second generation migrants can be identified in the German Microcensus (GMC) because, in the 2005 survey, questions on migration background were asked only to those individuals who hold German citizenship. Furthermore, naturalization figures have increased during the last two decades so that more detailed and systematic analyses on naturalized minority members have become possible. In this chapter, we will describe and explain the developments in groupspecific naturalization patterns. Our starting point is a puzzle obvious to any scholar interested in immigrant integration in Germany: the group that lags behind on all measurable dimensions of assimilation – migrants from Turkey – displays particularly high naturalization rates. Even though Turks are the most poorly assimilated and least accepted immigrant group in Germany, and are often blamed for their strong emotional attachments and loyalties to their homeland, they seem to be the most willing to integrate legally. This is even more puzzling because as legal permanent residents they enjoy many social and civic rights as “foreigners” – and because the acquisition of citizenship requires them to renounce their Turkish citizenship. Under these circumstances, naturalization can be
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considered to reflect migrants’ identification with the host society rather than their utilitarian interests in becoming citizens. In order to look into this puzzle, we will first describe the development of naturalization figures in Germany over time using new official sources of data. Based on this, we discuss possible explanations for group-specific differences in naturalization trajectories and present our main hypotheses. After a presentation of our data, we present the results of our empirical analyses. We conclude with a summary and discussion of the most important findings.
Naturalization Processes in Germany: Evidence from Official Data Sources For a long time, German naturalization law was characterized by the tension between an “ethno-national” understanding of citizenship and the presence of a large number of non-citizens residing in the country permanently. When the need to modernize the law became obvious after German reunification in 1991, several steps were taken to make the German passport more accessible for immigrants. As a consequence, naturalization figures increased substantially. The last and most important reform took effect in 2000. Somewhat paradoxically, naturalization figures have declined since. This decline was partly due to the fact that a conditional ius soli was introduced in 2000, allowing German-born children of parents who reside in the country for at least eight years to obtain German citizenship by birth. This reform was expanded to children born between 1990 and 2000, which partly accounts for the high naturalization figures in the years 1999 and 2000. In fact, analyses not presented here show that the decline in naturalization figures was particularly dramatic among children. Furthermore, the “pool” of eligible migrants willing to apply for the German passport has been shrinking, so that the naturalization process lost momentum ever since. Figure 16.1 gives an overview of the development in naturalization patterns by showing quotas (naturalizing migrants per 100 individuals for each group, respectively) for three important nationality groups. We need to limit ourselves to those migrant groups who came to Germany during the period of guest-worker recruitment, i.e., immigrants from Turkey, from the former Yugoslavia, and from European-15 countries such as Italy and Spain, because more detailed analyses are not possible for other groups due to lack of data. Note, however, that smaller groups of political refugees such as Afghans display very high naturalization rates, partly because they do not need to relinquish their old citizenship. We can see that over many years Turks have the highest naturalization quota. This pattern cannot simply be due to short-term changes in legal
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318 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm 6 5
in (%)
4 3 2 1 0 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Turks
Figure 16.1
Former Yugoslavians
mean
EU-15
Annual naturalization quotas of selected immigrant groups.
Source: Centra Aliens Register, Naturalization Statistics; own calculation.
regulations, even though these may partly account for changes in annual quotas. The introduction of the Pink Card in Turkey in 1995, which guaranteed Turkish Germans equal rights with Turkish citizens, might have played a role in this regard.2 Rising naturalization figures for migrants from the former Yugoslavia are most likely caused by the fact that Albanians from Kosovo with citizenship from Serbia-Montenegro do not need to relinquish their former citizenship any longer. For Bosnians and Croats, naturalization rates have remained low (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2007). In sum, 2.5–3 percent of all Turks, about 1 percent of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, and less than 0.5 percent of migrants from EU-15 member states have naturalized in the period under consideration. This picture takes us back to the question raised in the introduction: why were Turks more likely than migrants from the former Yugoslavia to acquire German passports? Migrants from both groups have mostly come to Germany as guest-workers (with the exception of Kurdish asylum seekers and war refugees from Bosnia), and they share similar migration biographies. As third country nationals, they also have a comparable legal status in Germany. In the next section, we will discuss three possible explanations for Turkish migrants’ proneness to naturalize. 2
According to Caglar (2004, pp. 283ff.), in Berlin only 2,302 Turkish-origin migrants owned a Pink Card in 2000.
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The Decision to Naturalize: Theoretical Assumptions, Existing Findings, and Hypotheses One first and easy explanation for Turkish migrants’ proneness to naturalize is that they acquire German passports more often because they are more entitled to do so. They could, for example, meet the prerequisite to have lived in the country for several years more often than other groups. A second explanation could be that they are more likely to naturalize because they gain more legal benefits by doing so than other groups. While these two explanations focus on the legal preconditions and benefits of the naturalization process, a third explanation emphasizes the identification aspects of “changing flags.” These could render the option to become a host-country national more attractive for some groups than for others – independently of the legal benefits that accrue with becoming a citizen.
Do naturalization quotas reflect group differences in options to naturalize? Not every migrant or person of immigrant origins is entitled to naturalize. In pre-unification Germany, naturalization law was restrictive, i.e., becoming German was mostly a matter of being born as the child of German parents. After incremental reforms in the early 1990s, the most fundamental reform was implemented in 2000, when a conditional ius soli was introduced for children born in Germany who have one parent who has been living in the country for at least eight years. These children acquire German citizenship as well as citizenship of their parents’ country of origin, but when they turn 23, they need to decide whether or not to keep their German passport and relinquish their parents’ citizenship. For all migrants, the minimum duration of stay was reduced from 15 to 8 years, with a somewhat shorter period for spouses of German citizens. Dual citizenship not being an option, migrants who can obtain passports are those who can actually earn their own living, declare their loyalty to German institutions, show basic knowledge of these institutions and of German history and language, and are willing to pay a fee. It is possible that the high naturalization rate of Turks displayed above reflects a high share of eligible individuals in this group. In turn, refugees from the former Yugoslavia or temporary migrants from EU-15 countries could not fulfill the necessary requirements in terms of their duration of stay, so that the share of eligible individuals could be lower among them (see Mau, 2007, pp. 126ff.). Such an explanation seems unlikely for at least two reasons. First, Turks are less likely than other migrants to speak the language and to earn their own living due to their lower levels of
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320 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm “cognitive” and structural assimilation. Secondly, the attempt to explain group differences in naturalization rates with group differences in the shares of eligible migrants implies that all migrants have the same desire to apply for citizenship. This assumption might well be wrong, given that legal permanent migrants in Germany enjoy far-reaching social and civic rights even if they do not hold the country’s citizenship.
Legal incentives to naturalize As already mentioned, legal permanent residents gain only a few additional rights when they become German citizens. The long-lasting predominance of the ius sanguinis, together with a rather large foreign-born population, led to a far-reaching decoupling of many social, civic, and legal rights from citizenship (Brubaker, 1992; Castles, 1994; Hammar, 1990; Prümm, 2004; Santel, 1998). EU citizens in particular are almost on full equal terms with natives after Union membership was introduced in the early 1990s. This applies, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree, to legal third country nationals as well: ●
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Being a citizen does not offer better access to welfare payments. The concept of “protective citizenship” that has been used in order to explain high naturalization rates of disadvantaged immigrant groups in the US is thus not suitable to explain high naturalization rates among Turks in Germany (Borjas, 2001; Gilbertson & Singer, 2003; Yang, 1994; critically, Balistreri & Van Hook, 2004). Naturalized migrants cannot be expelled from the country, a protection that is often mentioned when it comes to the benefits of naturalization. However, migrants with a secure residence status can only be expelled in severe cases of criminality or if they are long-term recipients of welfare. Welfare recipients, however, cannot become citizens anyway. Citizenship offers incremental benefits when it comes to traveling. With an Aufenthaltserlaubnis, migrants can travel in most EU countries the same way as EU citizens can. When they leave the country for more than six months, their rights to stay in Germany usually expire, although there is the possibility of declaring one’s departure to prevent this consequence. Besides, this regulation does not apply to retired people. Migrants who are entitled to naturalize usually fulfill the requirements to acquire a work permit that enables them to have almost any job they want or to become self-employed. To become self-employed as a dentist, physician, psychotherapist, or psychologist, migrants have to be German citizens or EU members, except if they finished high school in Germany or are married to a German or EU citizen. Only German citizens can become public officials in fields related to national sovereignty, and only
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Germans or EU migrants can become public officials in other areas (the police is an exception). Unlike in the US, where the expanded right to petition for relatives living outside the host country is one of the most important benefits of citizenship (Jasso & Rosenzweig, 1990, p. 98), German citizenship does not expand this right compared with permanent resident status. Except for very severe cases (Härtefälle), citizens can only sponsor spouses and minors – just as can migrants with a permission to stay, although only citizens can sponsor these close relatives while receiving welfare. EU-15 state nationals can participate in local and European elections, while third country nationals do not enjoy voting rights.
The costs of naturalization differ substantially between groups: for most EU state members, double citizenship is accepted by now. As already mentioned, this also applies to political refugees and to many migrants from Serbia. Turks, however, still need to renounce their old citizenship unless they came to Germany for political reasons (like many Kurds). For a while, Turkey renaturalized Turkish-origin Germans, but due to protests from the German government this practice – that has generated about 50,000 dual citizens – was abolished in 2000 (Deutscher Bundestag Drucksache 15/4880, http:// drucksachen.bundestag.de/drucksachen/index.php; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7.2.2005). This review shows that legal permanent migrants living in Germany gain certain rights from naturalizing, but the legal benefits are rather small in comparison to countries such as the US. However, the costs of acquiring the German passport are rather high, especially for those groups who need to relinquish their old citizenship. This raises the question of whether legal benefits are in fact the most important reason for migrants to change flags.
Naturalization as “ethnic boundary crossing” From a neo-assimilationist perspective, naturalization is a form of “individual boundary crossing” by individual members of disadvantaged and stigmatized groups, comparable to a religious conversion or language shift (Alba, 2005; Zolberg & Long, 1999, p. 8). The more salient and stable this boundary is, the more likely would be the adoption of majority traits, along with an increasing distance from the ethnic group: Boundary crossing … will generally be experienced by the individual as something akin to a conversion, i.e., a departure from one group and a discarding of signs of membership in it, linked to an attempt to enter into another, with all the social and psychic burdens a conversion process entails: growing distance from peers, feelings of disloyalty, and anxieties about acceptance. (Alba, 2005, p. 24)
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322 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm While boundary crossing has been described as a stressful and risky process by authors such as Tajfel (1978, p. 15), the motivational incentives for this step are obvious. It has been argued that this transition has positive implications for minority members’ social identity (in the sense of “that part of a person’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group”; Tajfel, 1981, p. 255). This effect is limited to minority groups with a low group status because, for them, becoming a majority member is related to an increase in social status. In fact, individual assimilation into higher status groups has been described as one important exit strategy for members of low status groups (collective attempts to enhance group status are an alternative strategy; see Tajfel, 1978). Integration into the social networks of majority members plays an important role in this regard. On the one hand, it prevents minority members from becoming marginalized, especially in the presence of social norms that shun assimilation into the higher status group (in our case, norms against renouncing the former citizenship). If group boundaries are particularly salient, majority members with close social ties to minority members might even insist that they dissociate themselves from their group of origin. The motivation for boundary crossing is missing when the salience of the boundary and differences in group status are low. In this case, assimilation occurs as “boundary blurring,” i.e., the ethnic boundary itself becomes less important (Zolberg & Long, 1999, p. 8) – with important consequences for minority members: “they are not forced to choose between the mainstream and their group of origin. Assimilation of this type involves intermediate, or hyphenated stages, that allow individuals to feel simultaneously as members of an ethnic minority and of the mainstream” (Alba, 2005, p. 25). The minority groups under consideration here differ substantially with regard to the (perceived) social and cultural differences that demarcate them from the majority population and that determine the nature and salience of the ethnic boundary (Alba, 2005, p. 22). On the group level, the status differential between labor migrants (and their children) from EU-15 countries has decreased and ethnic boundaries have lost importance. Those between Turks and Germans, in turn, have remained rather stable. Compared to EU migrants, Turkish migrants have greater language problems (Diehl & Schnell, 2006; Esser, 2006), a lower education level and occupational status (Granato & Kalter, 2001; Kristen & Granato, 2004), and fewer contacts with Germans (Haug, 2003). They report to be discriminated against more often and they are less popular than other minority groups (Böltken, 2003; Steinbach, 2004, pp. 120ff.; Wasmer & Koch, 2003). Often, their “willingness” to integrate is doubted and they are blamed for showing tendencies toward segregation (see Heitmeyer, Müller, & Schröder, 1997; Leggewie, 2000; critically: Diehl & Schnell, 2006; Salentin, 2000). As Muslims, they are also confronted with a cultural devaluation of Islam by the majority
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population (Kühnel & Leibold, 2007). The integration of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia is, in comparison, more likely (this applies particularly to Croats; cf. Esser, 1980). They hold higher educational degrees than Turks (Hinrichs, 2003; Kultusministerkonferenz, 2002), have less pronounced differences in status (Kristen & Granato, 2007), have more contacts with Germans (Esser, 1990; Mehrländer, Ascheberg, & Ueltzhöffer, 1996), feel German more often (Dustmann, 1996; Worbs & Wunderlich, 2002), and are less often discriminated against and more popular than Turks.3
Hypotheses Based on the theoretical elaborations presented in the last section, we can now formulate specific hypotheses about the strength and the logic of different groups’ naturalization behavior. Since the migrants considered here share a similar migration history, i.e., they or their parents came to Germany mostly as labor migrants, it is unlikely that Turks will be much more often eligible for naturalization than migrants from the former Yugoslavia or EU-15 countries. In fact, Turks may be more likely to live on welfare due to their low levels of structural assimilation. We thus expect that the differences in the naturalization quotas of Turks, migrants from the former Yugoslavia, and from the EU-15 countries will remain stable or even increase, when only eligible migrants are considered. With regard to the legal incentives to naturalize, we have argued that EU-15 migrants enjoy far-reaching legal equality with natives even before they naturalize. We thus assume that an explanation of group differences in naturalization rates that focuses on the legal incentives of naturalization is particularly suited to explain why EU members are less likely to naturalize than third country nationals. This holds especially true for individuals with higher educational degrees because they may benefit from better opportunities to use their human capital, e.g., by traveling freely, by working as civil servants, for instance as teachers, and by better venues for political participation. These returns will be more relevant for younger migrants who benefit from these advantages for a longer time period than older migrants. Based on a “legal incentive model” of naturalization, we thus assume that only Turks and migrants from the former Yugoslavia (but not EU-15 migrants) will be more likely to naturalize when they are younger and when they hold higher educational degrees and occupational positions and when they are interested in politics. 3 In 2003, 7 percent of the Turkish respondents in the SOEP but only 2 percent of the migrants from the former Yugoslavia and from EU-15 states say that they are often discriminated against because of their ethnic origin.
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324 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm Turks usually need to relinquish their citizenship when they apply for German passports; at the same time, they have, on the aggregate level, low levels of human capital. Consequently, for them, naturalization is associated with high costs and comparatively small gains in terms of better opportunities (e.g., being able to become a teacher in Germany). The net gain of changing flags should thus be lower for Turks than for Yugoslavs, who often manage to keep their former citizenship and who meet the individual requirements for higher status jobs more often. We thus assume that the differences in the naturalization quotas of Turks and Yugoslavs increase when individual level indicators for these gains are taken into account (political interest, human capital, intention to stay) and only for migrants who had to relinquish their former citizenship. Our third hypothesis is based on the assumption that naturalization would be particularly attractive to individuals who belong to a minority with a low social group status. For these minority members, it offers an opportunity to cross a salient ethnic boundary and to formally become a member of the higher status majority group. As outlined above, this option is only feasible for those minority members who already possess contacts with the majority members, which keep them from becoming socially marginalized. We thus assume that Turkish migrants would show an increasing proneness to naturalize to the extent that their social assimilation increases, i.e., if they have contacts with majority members. Based on these hypotheses, we will now turn to our empirical analysis.
Data and Variables: The German Microcensus and the Socio-Economic Panel In order to test our hypotheses we need to (1) calculate the share of migrants who are eligible in terms of their duration of stay and source of income (occupied household head versus welfare recipient), (2) assess the legal incentives related to naturalization (education, occupational status, political interest, age, intention to stay), and (3) look into the role of migrants’ access to majority networks, i.e., into their social assimilation. Since no existing data set contains all the information required, the following analyses will be based on different data sets that enable us to look into the different aspects of migrants’ naturalization behavior. The German Microcensus (MC) is conducted annually by the German Federal Statistical Office: 1 percent of all households in Germany are asked about their demographic traits, education and training, occupation and income, mobility, and health. Since participation is mandatory, unitnonresponse is low (about 3 percent – see Lüttinger & Riede, 1997, p. 27).
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We will use the MC 2005 because in that year respondents’ migration background was measured independently of their citizenship, which had not been the case in the years before. Most importantly, they were asked if they or their parents were born or have migrated to Germany, if they have obtained German citizenship by birth or via naturalization, and if they possess citizenship of more than one country (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2006, pp. 73ff.). Other variables, e.g., information on respondents’ eligibility for naturalization (duration of stay, welfare payments), are measured in each year of the survey. The same applies to educational degrees, occupational status, and age. More specifically, we will test whether or not younger third country nationals with higher levels of human capital are especially prone to naturalize. The MC has, however, several shortcomings when it comes to answering our research questions. First of all, it does not contain information on migrants’ political interest or intention to stay in Germany permanently, which is an important indicator for the instrumental incentive to become a citizen. Second, it is a cross-national data set. We can thus describe the characteristics of naturalized individuals but not look into these characteristics in the year naturalization has taken place. In order to test the causal relationship between respondents’ individual level traits and their proneness to naturalize we need longitudinal data. Finally, information on migrants’ social networks is required in order to test our third hypothesis. While this information is missing in the MC, it is included in the Socio-Economic Panel. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) has been conducted by the German Institute for Economy (DIW = Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaft) annually since 1984 (see SOEP Group, 2001). Each year, the same households (including new persons who moved into or were born in these households and have reached a certain age) are asked about such things as their social networks, political attitudes, and everyday behavior. To be included in the sample, interviewees had to live together in one household with a German or an immigrant head of household, and had to be at least 16 years old at the time of the survey. In addition, immigrants who had migrated to Germany during the period of labor recruitment (i.e., those households having a Turkish, Spanish, Greek, “Yugoslav,” or Italian head) are oversampled in the survey. The SOEP survey thus does not represent the ethnic origins of all foreigners in Germany. However, labor migrants who comprise, in numerical terms, the largest nationalities in the immigrant population and other migrants are included (roughly proportional to their population share). Our analysis is based on those waves of the SOEP that were conducted between 2001 and 2003. In the SOEP, naturalized migrants can be identified when they changed their citizenship to “German” during the course of the survey, i.e., between
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(548) (818) (222) (181) (547) (214) (79) (971)
31.0 46.2 12.6 10.2 30.2 11.8 4.4 53.6
30.1* 19.2* 3.7 46.9*
14.5* 53.4* 17.8* 14.3*
24.2* 12.6 49.0 42.2* 15.5* 68.9*
(1668) (239) (868) (1813) (401) (1374)
25.8 13.2 47.9 38.9 26.1 75.8
(255) (1631) (31) (397)
(120) (443) (148) (119)
(779) (107) (415) (874) (109) (583)
10.2* (82) 8.2* (70)
22.1 (402) 21.0 (381)
Former Yugoslavia
21.2* 28.2* 12.1* 38.5*
12.1* 42.6* 17.8* 27.6*
29.3* 6.2* 45.2 44.5* 30.6* 60.3*
(388) (515) (221) (703)
(215) (761) (317) (494)
(1661) (113) (826) (1828) (453) (1102)
7.2* (131) 5.9* (107)
EU-15 (115) (105) (176) (654) (54) (333) (672) (159) (544)
(136) (215) (59) (153)
45.5* 74.4 19.7 55.3*
(363) (477) (130) (242)
54.2 73.3 19.4 38.4
(48) (156) (74)
(43) (35) (54) (287) (23) (158) (300) (68) (205)
36.1* (108) 18.4* (55)
17.3 56.1 26.6
14.6 11.6* 22.3* 27.0* 7.7 52.7 45.2* 21.4 68.3*
Former Yugoslavia
33.4 (224) 12.4 (83)
18.3 (114) 54.8 (342) 26.9 (168)
17.1 15.6 33.6 24.5 8.0 49.6 39.7 21.9 81.0
Turks
SOEP
(45) (33) (33) (619) (27) (313) (665) (190) (459)
41.8* 67.0* 25.0* 68.4*
(272) (427) (164) (420)
31.2* (203) 26.9* (175)
11.5* (72) 53.4* (334) 35.0* (219)
6.8* 5.0* 5.8* 31.0* 4.1* 47.1 45.8* 29.6* 69.0*
EU-15
Source: Own calculations based on the German Microcensus (Scientific Use File Mikrozensus 2005, standard weights) and on the SOEP 2001–2003. * = differences statistically significant (p < .05) between Turks and other nationalities.
Naturalized including double citizenship Naturalized excluding double citizenship Intention to naturalize Duration of stay (Means) Welfare recipient Female Age (Means) 2. Generation Married Education: no degree basic school intermediate degree higher degree Occupational status worker employee self empl./civil servant other/not employed Intention to stay High political interest German friends
Turks
Microcensus
Table 16.1 Distributions of variables in MC and SOEP by (former) nationality (means and %), absolute numbers in parentheses (in 1,000 for MC)
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1984 and 2003. Unfortunately, their number is limited, especially for those migrants of non-Turkish origin. In 2001, only 43 migrants from the former Yugoslavia had acquired German passports, some of them long before their participation in the SOEP, so that information on the independent variables at the time of their naturalization is missing. We deal with this restriction by not looking at migrants’ actual naturalization behavior, but their intention to apply for a German passport during the next two years.4 Notwithstanding this shortcoming, the SOEP enables us to look into the relationship between migrants’ social assimilation (access to majority networks) and their proneness to naturalize. The former is measured by asking if the respondent has a German origin person among his or her three closest acquaintances. In addition, the SOEP allows us to estimate a more encompassing legal incentive model because it contains information on respondents’ politcal interest and on their intention to stay in Germany forever. In Table 16.1, we present an overview of the most important variables in both data sets. Due to the different sampling strategies of both surveys, the distributions differ substantially. Turks in the MC – which offers an accurate description of the population – show higher levels of naturalization than migrants from the former Yugoslavia or from EU-15 states. This is only partly the case in the SOEP.5 However, the share of individuals who plan to apply for citizenship in the near future is highest among the Turkish respondents in the SOEP. With regard to the independent variables, the distribution resembles the pattern known from other studies. Structural assimilation (educational degrees and occupational status) of migrants from the former Yugoslavia is more likely than assimilation of Turkish migrants. This difference is more pronounced in the MC than in the SOEP, but even in the SOEP “Yugoslavs” are much more likely to have German friends than Turks. All three groups have a similar duration of stay and a similar demographic composition, which reflects their similar migration biography.
Results The hypotheses outlined above will be tested in three steps. First, we will show that group differences do not merely reflect differences in groupspecific shares of eligible migrants. Second, we estimate the “legal incentive 4 Analyses not presented here show that almost all naturalized citizens had an intention to do so, whereas not all migrants with an intention to naturalize actually apply for citizenship. 5 The high quota for Yugoslavs is due to individuals included in the other (non-immigrant) samples of the SOEP who have partly been naturalized a long time before and who show a higher proneness to naturalize than those “Yugoslavs” included in the immigrant sample of the SOEP.
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Turks EU-15 former Yugoslavia female male
.76*** .06 −.53*** .07
Std.Err
13927 .05/14726
.12
Std.Err
.17 −.26
.60*** .09 −.04 .07
7034 .06/6231
−1.6*** .25
.37
.50** .13
2012 .04/2509
−3.93***.50
.15 .16
.26
.59** .25
.13
.46*** .08
−.10
.02*** .01 .23 .17
.14
ß
1.68*** .22 1.02*** .25
.08
.00 .08
.06
Std.Err
Former Yugoslavia
1.34*** .11 .82*** .10
.17*
−.01 −.04
.10
ß
Turks
Source: Own calculations based on the German Microcensus (Scientific Use File Mikrozensus 2005).
−2 Log likelihood Cox & Snell R2 /N
2nd 1st Marital status married not married Education higher degree intermediate degree basic degree no degree Occupational self.-empl./ status civil servant employee worker not employed Constant −1.64***0.53
Age Generation
Sex
Nationality
ß
Baseline model
Basic legal incentive model, Microcensus (logistic regressions)
Naturalized = Eligible in 2005 = 0
Table 16.2
Std.Err
.11
.14 .16
.17
3010 .06/5352
−7.17*** .43
.06 −.34*
−.03
.86*** .19
.98*** .21 .75*** .22
.02
.05*** .00 .59*** .12
.45*** .10
ß
EU-15 Std.Err
.06
.09
12393 .08/14092
−4.06***.20
.29*** .07 −.14* .06
.21*
0.72*** .07
1.36*** .09 1.00*** .09
.01
.02*** .00 .26*** .06
.20*** .05
1.06*** .07 −.75*** .08
ß
Total
Std. Err
.06
.10
11475 .09/13847
−4.45*** .20
.34*** .07 −.08 .06
.20*
.74*** .07
1.36*** .09 1.03*** .09
.01
.02*** .00 .29*** .07
.21*** .05
1.25*** .07 −.71*** .08
ß
Total without double citizenship
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329
model” and particularly whether migrants’ higher naturalization rate is due to the fact that this group benefits more from changing flags than Yugoslavs. Third, we will look into the hypothesis as to whether Turkish migrants are more prone to naturalize when their social assimilation is more pronounced, because as a low status group, those who have achieved access to the status systems and social networks of the higher status native group may be particularly motivated to change their formal group belonging.
Naturalization quotas by eligibility Naturalization quotas presented above may reflect shares of eligible migrants rather than shares of migrants interested in naturalization. When the denominator is restricted to those migrants who fulfill naturalization requirements in terms of their duration of stay and economic situation, we can see that the majority of Turkish, Yugoslav, and EU-15 migrants have been entitled to naturalize in the time span considered here (63 percent, 55 percent, and 68 percent, respectively).6 On average, the annual naturalization quota is about 4 percent for the Turks, 2 percent for the Yugoslavs, and 0.3 percent for the EU-15 migrants. This shows that the higher naturalization quotas of Turkish migrants are not caused by the fact that the share of eligible migrants is higher in this group.
The legal incentives to naturalize Based on MC data, we now calculate a legal incentive model, i.e., we control for group differences in the degree to which migrants benefit from naturalizing. As a reminder, we assume that migrants who hold higher educational degrees and have a higher occupational status, who are younger and more interested in politics, and who plan to stay in Germany forever, are more interested in the legal benefits of naturalizing (e.g., voting rights and access to jobs as civil servants) than others (see Table 16.2). In order to compare groups with similarly high naturalization costs, we calculate this model once including and once excluding those migrants who managed to maintain their homeland’s citizenship. Migrants not eligible for naturalization are excluded from the following models. Table 16.1 presents simple legal incentive models based on MC data, Table 16.2 more encompassing models (including migrants’ political interest and intention to stay) based on SOEP data.
6 We define those migrants as eligible for naturalization who have been living in Germany for 15 (prior to 2000), 8 (since 2000), or 3 or 4 years – as child or spouse of someone eligible for naturalization – and who do not live on welfare.
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Turks EU-15 former Yug. female −.45 male −.09*** 2nd −.29 1st married −.38
ß
−.05** .23
.03
ß
415 .21/399
1.12
377 .25/388
.99 1.46
.33
.88**
.42
.38 −.54
.32
.31
.05
.27
1.12***
.43
.40 −.00
−.29
−.04* .14
−.09
ß
1.46
0.58
0.45
.50
.80
.43
1.12
1.28
.44
.00 −.17
−.02
ß
.59
.61
1.06
1.11
.56
.02 .66
0.45
Std. Err ß
−.44
2.50*
.85
.38
.82
.78
.59
−.01 −.52
−.18
EU-15
177 .01/465
.40 −1.76***
ß
.61
1.04
.62
.64
1.07
1.13
152 .04 /444
0.19
.71
0.27
0.21
.28
.33
0.24
812 .18/1054
1.18*
−.01
0.17
.07
.01
.63 −0.11
ß
0.21
.24 .30
Std. Err
.82
.24
.25
0.28
0.23
.30
.35
0.25
744 .21/1020
.123
.38
1.23***
−.07
.15
.03
−.09
−.10
−.06*** .01 −.15 0.25
−.22
.23 .39 .28 −1.73***
Std. Err
Total
.02 −.06*** .01 .71 −0.13 0.26
.50 −0.24
Std. Err
1.64 −4.60* 1.99 −5.37** 2.30
.55
.59
.58
.44
.53
.66
.47
.02 .62
.40
Std. Err
171 .13/188
.37
−.32
1.46*
−.18
.01
−.58
.63 −1.11
.46
.02 .56
0.39
Std. Err
182 .09/190
1.50
−.52
−.13
−.70
.50 −1.12
.37 −0.11
.02 .38
.29
Std. Err
.47 −.09
.36 −.24
.02 −.10*** .37 −.22
.27 −.42
Std. Err
Former Yugoslavia
Source: Own calculations based on the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 2001–2003).
−2 Log likelihood Cox & Snell R2 /N
Education
not married intermediate .03 degree or higher basic degree .09 no degree Occupational employee .19 status worker −.21 not employed Intention to yes stay no Political high interest low Constant 3.14***
Marital status
Age Generation
Sex
Nationality
ß
Turks
Basic and more encompassing legal incentive model, SOEP (logistic regressions)
Intention to naturalize = 1 No intention to naturalize = 0
Table 16.3
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Results show that those individual characteristics that come with higher legal advantages of changing flags are in fact positively related to the likelihood of being naturalized. Contrary to what was expected, this is the case for all three groups; but in accordance with our hypothesis, this relationship is particularly strong for third country nationals. Only Turkish migrants are more likely to be naturalized when they hold a higher occupational status. This suggests that the link between migrants’ individual assimilation and their proneness to naturalize is particularly strong for this group. As expected, self-employed migrants and civil servants are only more likely to be naturalized when they are third country nationals. With regard to demographic characteristics, results show that Turks are more likely to be naturalized when they are married. This might reflect the fact that family reunification is only possible for non-citizens when they have enough living space available. This could increase the proneness to naturalize for younger Turks who still live with their parents. This effect, however, is rather weak. We have argued above that naturalization of third country nationals should occur at younger ages because older migrants have less time ahead of them and thus benefit less from the legal advantages of being a citizen. The link between age and naturalization should be less pronounced for EU-15 migrants who already enjoy far-reaching legal equality with natives. Results show that Turks (but not “Yugoslavs”) are more likely to naturalize when they are younger. Note, however, that this finding is difficult to interpret because we do not have information on respondents’ ages when they naturalized. Analyses not presented here show that EU migrants have in fact postponed their naturalization over the life-cycle after the introduction of European Union membership. The global model shows that more Turks than Yugoslavs and EU-15 migrants are naturalized when individual level indicators for the legal benefits to naturalize are taken into account. In fact, group differences have become even more pronounced (see basic total model in Table 16.3). According with our expectations, this applies also when only naturalizations that came with similar costs are taken into account, i.e., when people who hold dual citizenship were excluded from the models. The Turkish policy to re-naturalize Turkish migrants, who had to renounce their Turkish citizenship prior to becoming German citizens, is thus not responsible for the high share of naturalized Turks. The same holds true for Kurds who were granted political asylum in Germany and who are also entitled to retain their Turkish passports. Our analyses thus show that a model that focuses on the legal incentives of becoming a citizen cannot explain differences in the naturalization rates of Turks and Yugoslavs. Rather, we need to look into those aspects of the naturalization process that differ with regard to their attractiveness for the third country nationals considered here.
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332 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm
Becoming a majority member: Naturalization as boundary crossing Using SOEP data, we now recalculate the legal incentive model for the intention to naturalize. In a second step, we include migrants’ intention to stay in Germany and their political interest in doing so (see Table 16.3). Finally, a social assimilation model of naturalization will be presented in order to test the hypothesis that only Turkish migrants’ interest in naturalizing increases when they have developed strong ties to majority members. The first model shows that migrants’ intention to naturalize and their actual naturalization behavior follow a rather different logic. Eligible migrants, for example, whose structural assimilation is more pronounced, do not show a particularly high intention to naturalize, and this relationship is even negative for migrants from the former Yugoslavia. As expected, age has a negative relationship with the intention to naturalize only for third country nationals, while EU migrants (who do not gain any legal benefits by doing so, except for voting rights) have a stable though low naturalization intention throughout their life course. The more encompassing legal incentive models yield some unexpected findings as well. More Turkish migrants than migrants from the former Yugoslavia plan to naturalize when they are interested in politics. Since SOEP data do not differentiate between interest in political matters of the country of origin versus the host country, this finding can only be interpreted in an ad hoc manner: Due to the conflicts in the 1990s, migrants from the former Yugoslavia may be particularly interested in political matters of their home countries so that new avenues for political participation in Germany may not be an incentive to naturalize for this group. It is also possible that those Turks who are interested in politics feel a special need to be able to participate politically because Turks suffer from more social and economic disadvantages than other groups. Even though Turkish migrants’ political interest is not particularly high (see Table 16.1), they may feel that their special group interests are not sufficiently taken care of by majority members. Again, migrants’ intention to stay in Germany permanently leads to higher naturalization rates for all groups. The global model shows once more that Turkish migrants intend to naturalize more often than migrants from the former Yugoslavia and EU-15 migrants (p < .10). The fit of the model increases substantially when indicators for migrants’ social assimilation are included. As expected, Turkish migrants are much more likely to naturalize when they have developed close social ties to majority members (for a similar finding in the Netherlands, see Bevelander & Veenman, 2006). For the other groups considered here, this relationship tends to be negative.
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We tested the full model that includes an interaction between respondents’ nationality and their ties to majority members. This interaction effect is statistically highly significant, while the main effect for migrants’ nationality disappears and even changes its direction. This means that Turkish migrants are more likely to naturalize when they have German friends and that this difference accounts for this group’s higher proneness to change flags. While these analyses are preliminary, they suggest that it would be worthwhile to look into the relationship between migrants’ social assimilation and the intention to naturalize for minority groups that differ with regard to their social status. Such detailed analysis would have to show that findings remain stable when the models are recalculated for less selective subgroups than the SOEP sample and that it applies not only to migrants’ intention to naturalize, but also to their actual naturalization behavior.
Conclusion Even though our analyses are preliminary in nature and partly suffer from a lack of suitable data and indicators, they have yielded some rather clear-cut and stable results. Turkish origin migrants plan to naturalize more often than migrants from the former Yugoslavia or from EU-15 member states and a higher share of them is already naturalized. For the first time, we could replicate this finding – so far known from aggregate statistical data only – by using official individual level Microcensus data. Furthermore, we could demonstrate that Turkish migrants’ higher proneness to naturalize does not reflect higher shares of eligible migrants in this group. In a second step, we specified a legal incentive model including indicators for the degree to which an individual migrant gains legal advantages by naturalizing. Doing so, we could confirm our hypothesis that younger third country nationals with higher educational degrees are particularly prone to naturalize. However, group differences in naturalization rates of Turks and Yugoslavs become even more pronounced when these individual characteristics are taken into account. This shows that tangible naturalization incentives are not responsible for the higher naturalization rates of Turks as compared to migrants from the former Yugoslavia. We thus tried to estimate a model that takes into account that naturalization is, beyond the possible legal advantages, a form of “ethnic boundary crossing” of migrants from low status groups who have achieved a high degree of individual assimilation. For these individuals, naturalization may offer an opportunity to change their formal group belonging. Social ties to natives play an important role in this regard because they protect minority members from becoming socially marginalized, e.g., when group norms against renouncing homeland citizenship are strong. Several of our findings
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334 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm suggest that it is worthwhile to look into this explanation more closely. First of all, the link between individual upward mobility (measured by higher occupational status) is stronger for Turkish migrants than for other migrants considered here. Secondly, analyses based on SOEP data show that only Turks are more likely to have an intention to naturalize when they have close ties to natives. Due to low case numbers and a lack of suitable indicators, our results cannot yet be considered as a direct and strict test of this argument. But there is strong evidence that naturalization not only affects migrants’ rights, but their identity as well.
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336 Claudia Diehl and Michael Blohm Hoffmann, L. (1994). Einwanderungspolitik und Volksverständnis. [Immigration policy and national identity.] Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 23, 253–266. Hoffmann, L. (1998). Staatsangehörigkeit und Bürgerrechte. [Citizenship and civil rights.] Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 43, 1421–1426. Jasso, G., & Rosenzweig, M. R. (1990). The new chosen people: Immigrants in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Koopmans, R., Statham, P., Giugni, M., & Passy, F. (2005). Contested citizenship: Immigration and cultural diversity in Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kristen, C., & Granato, N. (2004). Bildungsinvestitionen in Migrantenfamilien. [Educational investment in migrant families.] In K. J. Bade & M. Bommes (Eds.), Migration-Integration-Bildung [Migration-integration-education] (pp. 123–141). Osnabrück: IMIS. Kristen, C., & Granato, N. (2007). The educational attainment of the second generation in Germany: Social origins and ethnic inequality. IAB Discussion Paper Nr. 04/2007. Nuremberg: IAB. Kühnel, S., & Leibold, J. (2007). Islamophobie in der deutschen Bevölkerung: Ein neues Phänomen oder nur ein neuer Name? [Islamophobia in the German population: A new phenomenon or just a new name?]. In M. Wohlrab-Sahr & L. Teczan (Eds.), Soziale Welt – Sonderheft Islam (pp. 135–154). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Kultusministerkonferenz. (2002). Ausländische Schüler und Schulabsolventen 1991 bis 2000. [Foreign students and graduates from 1991 to 2000.] Statistische Veröffentlichungen 163. Bonn. Leggewie, C. (2000). Integration und Segregation. [Integration and segregation.] In K. J. Bade & R. Münz (Eds.), Migrationsreport 2000 (pp. 85–108). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Lüttinger, P., & Riede, T. (1997). Der Mikrozensus: Amtliche Daten für die Sozialforschung. [The microcensus: Official statistics for social research.] ZUMA-Nachrichten, 41, 19–43. Mau, S. (2007). Transnationale Vergesellschaftung. [Transnational association.] Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Mehrländer, U., Ascheberg, C., & Ueltzhöffer, J. (1996). Repräsentativuntersuchung ’95: Situation der ausländischen Arbeitnehmer und ihrer Familienangehörigen. [Representative study ’95: Situation of foreign employees and their family members.] Berlin: Forschungsinsitut der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Ögelman, N. (2003). Documenting and explaining the persistence of homeland politics among Germany’s Turks. International Migration Review, 37, 163–193. Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. G. (1996). Immigrant America: A portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prümm, K. (2004). Einbürgerung als Option. [Naturalization as an opportunity]. Münster: LIT Verlag. Salentin, K. (2000). Ziehen sich Migranten in ethnische Kolonien zurück? [Do migrants withdraw into ethnic colonies?] In K. J. Bade, M. Bommes, & R. Münz (Eds.), Migrationsreport 2000 (pp. 97–116). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Salentin, K., & Wilkening, F. (2003). Ausländer, Eingebürgerte und das Problem einer realistischen Zuwanderer-Integrationsbilanz. [Foreigners, naturalized
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citizens and the problem of a realistic description of immigrant integration.] Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 55, 278–298. Santel, B. (1998). Auf dem Weg zur Konvergenz? Einwanderungspolitik in Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten im Vergleich. [Heading for convergence? Comparing immigration policy in Germany and in the US.] Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik, 1, 14–20. SOEP Group. (2001). The German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) after more than 15 years: Overview. Vierteljahreshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung, 70, 7–14. Statistisches Bundesamt [Federal Statistical Office]. (2006). Leben in Deutschland: Haushalte, Familien und Gesundheit – Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2005. [Life in Germany: Households, families, and health – Results of the Microcensus 2005.] Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden. Statistisches Bundesamt [Federal Statistical Office]. (2007). Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit: Einbürgerungen. [Population and employment: Naturalizations.] Topic Series 1, 2.1. Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden. Steinbach, A. (2004). Soziale Distanz: Ethnische Grenzziehung und die Eingliederung von Zuwanderern in Deutschland. [Social distance: Ethnic boundaries and integration of immigrants in Germany.] Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag. Tajfel, H. (1978). The social psychology of minorities. London: MRG. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thränhardt, D. (1998). Einwanderung und Einbürgerung in Deutschland. [Immigration and naturalization in Germany.] Münster: Lit Verlag. Tucci, I. (2004). Konfliktuelle Integration? Die sozialen Konsequenzen der Lage der türkischen Bevölkerung in Deutschland und der nordafrikanischen Bevölkerung in Frankreich. [Conflictual integration? The social consequences of the situation of the Turkish population in Germany and the North African population in France.] Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 3, 299–317. Wasmer, M., & Koch, A. (2003). Foreigners as second class citizens? Attitudes toward equal civil rights for non-Germans. In R. Alba, P. Schmidt, & M. Wasmer (Eds.), Germans or foreigners? Attitudes toward ethnic minorities in the post-reunification Germany (pp. 95–118). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wobbe, T., & Otte, R. (2000). Politische Institutionen im gesellschaftlichen Wandel: Einbürgerung in Deutschland zwischen Erwartungen von Migranten und staatlicher Vorgabe. [Political institutions in societal change: Naturalization procedures between immigrant expectations and institutional specifications in present-day Germany.] Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 29, 444–462. Worbs, S., & Wunderlich, T. (2002). Die Integration der zweiten Migrantengeneration in Deutschland. [The integration of second-generation migrants in Germany.] Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik, 22, 395–400. Wunderlich, T. (2005). Die neuen Deutschen. [The new Germans.] Stuttgart: Lucius and Lucius. Yang, P. Q. (1994). Explaining immigrant naturalisation. International Migration Review, 28, 449–477. Zolberg, A. R., & Long, L. W. (1999). Why Islam is like Spanish: Cultural incorporation in Europe and the United States. Politics and Society, 27, 5–38.
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Confronting the Past to Create a Better Future The Antecedents and Benefits of Intergroup Forgiveness Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin
True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, November 30, 1995) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has gained world recognition as an example of how restorative forms of justice such as government appointed truth telling commissions can facilitate the difficult task of reconciliation between groups previously involved in violent conflict (Tutu, 1999). According to the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act (1995), the South African TRC had four main objectives: (1) to bear witness to and record as accurately as possible human rights violations, including both perspectives of the victims and the persons responsible for the violations; (2) to grant amnesty to those who fully disclosed human rights violations that were committed in the name of some authority; (3) to restore the dignity of victims by allowing them to give their account of what happened; and (4) to compile a comprehensive record of findings which included recommendations of how to avoid human rights violations in the future. Although the Act was met with a great deal of criticism by those who believed retributive justice should be a prerequisite to reconciliation, one of the main aims of this restorative approach was to confront the ugly collective history of South Africa so
Preparation of this chapter was supported by an award from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research to the first author.
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that the nation could heal and the groups involved could coexist peacefully in the future. An implicit goal, but just as important, was to encourage an apology–forgiveness cycle between perpetrators and victims during the recounting of events. The hope was that repentance expressed by perpetrators, and forgiveness granted by victims, would take the place of the revenge cycle and decrease the potential for the intergroup conflict to become intractable. According to Tutu (1999), to achieve these goals, it was necessary that the TRC engage in a painful process of truth telling to facilitate former enemies seeing themselves in each other – as equally capable of both goodness and atrocity. Recounting and systematically recording the painful histories of victims, along with the atrocities that perpetrators admitted committing, was believed to serve this end. Voice was given to victims who were otherwise silenced and invalidated through denial. Further, an official record made it impossible for those who were culpable to later deny their past actions. Throughout the recounting process, expressions of apology and forgiveness did indeed take place in a powerful way among participants of the TRC. Tutu (1999) asserts that the principle of ubuntu, or the belief among South Africans that “my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours (p. 31),” may account for participants’ willingness to forgive such horrible atrocities. Because dehumanizing others by engaging in revenge would dehumanize the self, to forgive was thought to unburden and grant mercy to those who were victimized. Such valuing of public truth commissions as a means of promoting healing in victims, promotion of human rights following conflict and assistance with the development of democracy has been found in a variety of cultural contexts (see Kadima Kadiangandu & Mullet, 2007; Long & Brecke, 2003; Minow, 1998; Mullet, Neto, & Pinto, 2008). The South African TRC, even with its flaws, is considered the working model of restorative justice in contexts where disparate groups must live together peacefully, and where equitable status relations between groups need to be established (see also Gibson, 2006). Utilizing Tutu’s account of the South African TRC as an example, we explore the definition of reconciliation – what it is and what it is not – and consider when a restorative approach to conflict might be useful (see also Nadler, Malloy, & Fisher, 2008). The antecedents of reconciliation will also be discussed – specifically, the importance of truth telling processes, as well as when perpetrators are likely to feel guilty and express remorse, and when victims are likely to grant forgiveness for gross human rights violations. We review the burgeoning literature on reconciliation, guilt, apology, and forgiveness, as well as the role of superordinate categorization in facilitating reconciliation among groups with a conflictual past. We conclude by considering the costs and benefits associated with the reconciliation approach.
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340 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin
Reconciliation: What It Is and What It Is Not Reconciliation entails emotional processes that are quite distinct from conflict resolution (Long & Brecke, 2003). Agreements that are often used to resolve an intergroup conflict are not sufficient for promoting peaceful relations, particularly when the adversarial groups must coexist post-conflict, and when the conflict has lasted a long time or involved extensive violence (Bar-Tal, 2000; Kelman, 2008; Nadler et al., 2008). For reconciliation, the intergroup relationship must undergo a transformation, such that group members must think, feel, and behave toward each other differently than when they were bitter enemies (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004). Thus, reconciliation involves removal of the psychological barriers that are obstacles to peaceful coexistence (Nadler & Shnabel, 2008). It is important to note that reconciliation cannot occur among groups that are still engaged in violence; indeed, people would be hard pressed to forgive an adversary who continues to engage in harmful behavior (Tavuchis, 1991). Certainly, the reconciliation model utilized in South Africa is likely to prove ineffective were it imposed on other groups, such as Israelis and Palestinians, where violence continues. It is also important to note that the proponents of the reconciliation approach are in no way encouraging forgetting, or letting “bygones be bygones,” which is a form of denial. In fact, an integral part of the reconciliation process is to recount and reconstruct the past so that the voices of the victims are heard, validated, and accounted for in historical texts (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Minow, 1998; Tutu, 1999). Such official reconstruction of collective history should prevent collective forgetting, what many argue is the ultimate root of repeating history (Barkan, 2000; Pennebaker, Páez, & Rimé, 1997). As Tutu observed, “Unless we look the beast in the eye, we find that it has an uncanny habit of returning and holding us hostage” (1999, p. 28).
The Importance of Reconciling With the Past Public truth telling can help ensure that the conflicting groups agree on the standards of justice that should be used to judge people’s actions (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004; Miron & Branscombe, 2008). To foster a democratic society that honors human rights requires agreement on what constitutes human rights violations, and what standard of justice is to be used to judge people’s past and future actions. When group members categorize victims as members of a group different from themselves, a pro-in-group bias will be activated, which will result in use of more “in-group serving” definitions of injustice. Those who are highly identified with their group may be tempted
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to use higher confirmatory standards of justice (e.g., they will require more evidence of wrong-doing) when judging the harmful actions of their group, but employ lower confirmatory standards (e.g., they will require less evidence of wrong-doing) if the harmed group has been re-categorized as part of an inclusive superordinate group (Miron & Branscombe, 2008). Therefore, when people judge in-group actions toward an out-group, they can shift their standards of justice in such a way that more confirmatory evidence is required before they will decide their in-group members’ actions were unjust. However, when a former out-group has been re-categorized into a more inclusive superordinate national group that includes both the in-group and the out-group, confirmatory standards used to judge behavior are likely to be lowered (i.e., in-group justice standards will be applied). Public truth telling as occurred during the TRC hearings should encourage agreement on standards of justice and prevent the standards from being shifted based on racial group membership. Setting a common stringent standard of justice is a critical aspect of reconciliation, for it can result in greater collective guilt about the in-group’s actions toward the out-group (Miron, Branscombe, & Biernat, 2010). There may also be benefits associated with truth telling reconciliation processes for groups in power who are usually perceived to have caused the most harm during violent intergroup conflicts. First, and most obviously, a nation’s failure to acknowledge mistakes of the past only exposes them to the risk of repeating history (Barkan, 2000). Second, members of groups who have committed gross human rights violations on a massive level may carry with them deeply felt guilt associated with their groups’ actions, even if they were not directly responsible for those actions (for a review, see Branscombe, 2004). Thus, participation in a reconciliation process may help members of perpetrator groups to unburden themselves from the guilt associated with their groups’ illegitimate past actions, and to restore their sense of worth within the moral community (Branscombe & Doosje, 2004; Nadler & Shnabel, 2008; Tavuchis, 1991). Research has supported the idea that individuals who communicate their thoughts and feelings about traumatic events through writing or social sharing are better able to make sense of their past and construct a life narrative that is meaningful to them. At the group level, Rimé, Philippot, Boca, and Mesquita (1992) suggest that confronting and talking about past traumatic events allows people to elaborate and assimilate their emotional experiences, as well as to construct a more nuanced account of events that allows for less extreme evaluations of what happened. Adversarial groups who share their experiences with each other about the past may be able to arrive at less extreme attitudes on past events by making sense of it together, and by coming closer to a consensus regarding their collective history, its meaning and its lessons (see Marques, Páez, & Serra, 1997; Pennebaker et al.,
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342 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin 1997; Páez, Basabe, & González, 1997; Staub, 2004). It is also the case that perpetrator groups who express guilt and provide a sincerely felt apology are likely to evoke forgiving attitudes among victims in comparison to confession without expressions of remorse (Tavuchis, 1991). Nonetheless, the process of giving voice to victims’ suffering and the reality of the past can sometimes be sufficient to promote less extreme attitudes about the past and its perpetrators (see Pennebaker et al., 1997). On this issue, the 1998 report from the South African TRC hearings noted: Making a statement to the Commission brought relief to some. The experience itself helped to break an emotional silence, started the process of integrating experiences that had been repressed or shut out for years, alleviated feelings of shame, and, in an atmosphere of acceptance, began to restore dignity and selfrespect. (p. 367, Vol. 1)
Victims’ disclosure of their experiences of suffering gave voice officially and publicly to the reality of their experiences of dehumanization and shame, which may serve to elicit a heightened sense of remorse and responsibility from the wrong-doer, bringing greater willingness to make reparations symbolically (through apology) and/or financially (Barkan, 2000; Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004; Branscombe & Doosje, 2004; Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Tutu, 1999). Also important in the process of recounting history is the change in societal beliefs that is thought to take place; the more perpetrators are exposed to victims’ stories of unjust suffering, the more difficult it becomes to legitimize or rationalize past actions. Collective memories of the out-group are made known as victims recount their experience and perpetrators admit to their past misdeeds. Thus, history is reconstructed in such a way as to reflect all parties’ perspectives (Bar-Tal, 2000; Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Kelman, 2008; Tutu, 1999). The South African TRC (1998), difficult as it was, tried hard to systematically account for and describe all parties’ perspectives in the official report, while recognizing the power differential that existed between the groups: Perhaps most significantly, it is vital to state that, although the Commission recognizes perpetrators from all sides, it simultaneously recognizes that it was not an equivalent struggle – in terms of forces deployed, members, or justice. To be even-handed in understanding the motives of perpetrators also requires full recognition that violence of the powerful, the South African state, was not necessarily equal with violence of the powerless, the disenfranchised, oppressed and relatively voiceless black majority. While each side may put forward reasonable and quite understandable explanations or justifications for such actions, the task of the third perspective, that of the Commission, is to recognize that these accounts are not necessarily equivalent. This non-equivalence
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means that protagonists in the thirty-year conflict were motivated by quite different political perspectives. (p. 276, Vol. 7)
According to Kelman (2008), reconciliation does not require that all parties arrive at complete consensus regarding the revised historical account, but it does require an admission of the other’s historical experience in the overall narrative. The result should be a newly negotiated narrative of the past that overrides any previous narratives that gross human rights violations were minimal or legitimate (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004; Miron & Branscombe, 2008). The South African TRC’s main goal was to encourage both victims and perpetrators to come forward and tell their stories. Public confessions opened the door to expressions of remorse and guilt by perpetrators over what was done, as well as to vicarious examination of past deeds on the part of those who did not attend the hearings (and who may or may not have directly participated in human rights violations). Committee members’ accounts of the South African TRC hearings indicate that perpetrators did often express remorse about their past actions (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Tutu, 1999). Public disclosure also empowered victims who participated directly or who were watching to forgive when expressions of remorse and guilt were offered. The fact that there were perpetrators and victims on all sides of the conflict allowed participants and witnesses the opportunity to realize that all groups involved are equally human and just as capable of committing atrocities as the other (Tutu, 1999). When victim group members are explicitly taught that genocide is pervasive and can be found in many human groups, they are more willing to reconcile and their trauma symptoms decline after doing so. Staub, Pearlman, Gubin, and Hagengimana (2005) illustrated this process experimentally among Tutsi survivors of genocide in Rwanda. The Tutsi survivors who categorized the perpetrators of genocide as humans like themselves and who perceived genocide as pervasive in human groups expressed greater forgiveness toward Hutus, the perpetrating group, and showed reductions in trauma symptoms.
Antecedents to Reconciliation Encouraging reconciliation between groups with an extremely violent history begs the question: how can symbolic forms of reparation such as giving voice and receiving an apology be effective when gross human rights violations are involved? According to Nadler, Malloy, and Fisher (2008), both victims and perpetrators experience identity threat as a result of violent intergroup conflict; victims suffer a threat to their identity as powerful
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344 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin actors, while perpetrators suffer a threat to their identity as moral actors. The resulting negative feelings of powerlessness, shame, and inferiority can motivate revenge-seeking behavior on the part of the victim (to regain power and esteem) and avoidance on the part of the perpetrator through denial or rationalization (Branscombe & Miron, 2004; Halbwachs, 1992). Allowing victims and perpetrators an interactive space in which they can recount history and constructively ameliorate these threats through an apology–forgiveness cycle increases people’s willingness to reconcile because they are able to move beyond the emotional barriers of feelings of powerlessness and shame on the victim side and moral inferiority and guilt on the perpetrator side. To test the assumptions that perpetrators’ experience threat to their identity as moral actors, and victims experience threat to their identity as powerful actors, Shnabel and Nadler (2008) randomly assigned experimental participants to either the role of victim or perpetrator and then measured their sense of power and moral image. They also compared participants’ power and moral image ratings to those who were in the control group where no direct victimization episode was presented. They found that participants assigned to the role of perpetrator did indeed indicate a decrease in their ratings of moral image; decline in moral image was in turn associated with the need for social acceptance and the desire for the other group to understand their perspective and view them as decent people. In contrast, participants assigned to the victim role reported decreases in their sense of power, which was associated with an increased desire for power and social justice. These findings were replicated in a study where participants were asked to remember a real event in which they had either inflicted harm on an out-group member, or suffered harm due to the actions of an out-group member (Nadler & Shnabel, 2008). These studies provide evidence that perpetrators are more willing to reconcile when they receive a message from the adversarial group that validates their moral social standing, and victims are more willing to reconcile when they receive a positive message from the adversarial group regarding their competence as social actors. Based on these findings (Nadler & Shnabel, 2008), as well as commission members’ accounts of the South African TRC (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Tutu, 1999), it is clear that the preferred method for achieving reconciliation will fundamentally depend on group membership. Encouraging the apology–forgiveness cycle may be effective in certain intergroup contexts involving peace-building among former adversary groups because it addresses the psychological needs of each group that normally act as barriers to intergroup reconciliation. Otherwise, these psychological needs would more likely promote revenge-seeking behavior in victims or avoidance behaviors in perpetrators, both of which would almost certainly contribute to a cycle of hostility.
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Importance of Perpetrator Guilt Guilt can motivate transgressors to offer an apology and thereby serve an important restorative social function. Guilt signals that a relationship between oneself and another has been damaged and that steps need to be taken to repair the broken relationship (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994). Findings concerning collective guilt (see Branscombe & Doosje, 2004; Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 1998) have demonstrated that people can feel guilty for the harmful, illegitimate actions of their in-group, even if they were not directly responsible for those actions. When people selfcategorize as members of an advantaged group, they can experience collective guilt if they perceive their own group’s advantages to be illegitimately gotten at the expense of another group. Miron, Branscombe, and Schmitt (2006) measured the relationship between men’s collective guilt over their advantaged group status and the perceived illegitimacy of the existing intergroup inequality between men and women. They found an increase in the experience of collective guilt among men who perceived gender inequality as unfair and illegitimate. In contrast, men who perceived gender inequality to be legitimate reported experiencing less collective guilt. Collective guilt predicts support for a variety of forms of reparations. Among white Australians, collective guilt resulted in greater support for formal apologies issued by the government to the Indigenous people of Australia (McGarty et al., 2005). Likewise, white Americans’ support for affirmative action as compensation for harm to African Americans (Branscombe, Slugoski, & Kappen, 2004; Iyer, Leach, & Pedersen, 2004; Swim & Miller, 1999) and Dutch citizens’ support for apology and compensation for their nation’s harm to Indonesia (Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 2006) are greater as a function of collective guilt. White South Africans who feel collective guilt regarding the past injustices their group inflicted on black South Africans are also more supportive of redistributive policies such as affirmative action (Klandermans, Wener, & van Doorn, 2008). Facilitating an apology–forgiveness cycle requires that perpetrator groups take responsibility for having committed illegitimate harm, which are the central antecedents of collective guilt (Branscombe, 2004). However, expressions of guilt on the part of perpetrators and forgiveness on the part of victims are unlikely to occur among groups that view the other side as the adversary. An implicit goal of the South African TRC was to encourage people engaged in the hearings, either as witnesses or directly as participants, to categorize each other in more inclusive terms. Consistent with the claims of self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) and the common in-group identity model (Gaertner, Dovidio, Anastasio, Bachman, & Rust, 1993), re-categorizing members of
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346 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin an out-group (them) in terms of a more inclusive superordinate group (us) does indeed have beneficial consequences for the in-group’s willingness to forgive an out-group that previously committed grave harm (Wohl & Branscombe, 2005).
Importance of Apology Tavuchis (1991) argues that apology is a painful, self-punishing, symbolic gesture that can serve several purposes. The main purpose of the violator offering an apology is to restore legitimacy to a claim of membership within the moral community. Apology by a social transgressor reiterates the reality of the offense and acknowledges the suffering brought on by the moral violation; this is a painful experience for apologizers because they are forced to relive and retell regretful events that have rendered claims to membership in the moral community suspect (Tavuchis, 1991). Apology may also be a painful experience for the transgressor because it involves the risk of humiliation and retaliation should the offended party decline to grant forgiveness (Tavuchis, 1991). Apology also places agency and power squarely into the hands of the offended, who now has the power to either grant or not to grant forgiveness. Ultimately, restoration of the transgressor’s membership in the moral community is now in the hands of the victim who has been asked to forgive the transgression (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Nadler & Shnabel, 2008; Tutu, 1999). By apologizing, offenders are publicly acknowledging responsibility for the harm they have done and admitting that there are no justifications or excuses that would legitimate their behavior. According to Tavuchis (1991), when people resort to excuses or justifications for behavior, they are attempting to distance themselves from their actions so that they may deny responsibility and accountability. Such justifications that serve to legitimate human rights violations might fuel more anger, moral outrage, and retaliation from victims. However, when perpetrators sincerely express regret, oftentimes, even in the context of gross human rights violations such as those that were uncovered during the South African TRC hearings, they are met with forgiveness from their victims (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Tutu, 1999). Although the past cannot be undone, apology can serve to restore social order in the moral community for the present and future. Essentially, apology serves the function of symbolic social exchange: the transgressor offers an admission of guilt and responsibility as well as an implicit commitment that such behavior will not occur again in the future. In exchange, the victim agrees to release any feelings of ill will or desire to seek revenge. Empirical research supports the assumption that sincere, heartfelt apologies encourage
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the victimized party to forgive (Weiner, Graham, Peter, & Zmuidinas, 1991). In fact, some argue that apology is an essential antecedent (although arguably, not always; see Zechmeister & Romero, 2002) to forgiveness and should be regarded as an extremely important element to successful outcomes from restorative strategies of peace-building processes. For example, receiving an apology was the best predictor of forgiveness among torture victims by the former communist regime in the Czech Republic (David & Choi, 2006). Another interesting and important point by Tavuchis (1991) regarding apology is that when transgressors apologize, they are verifying the legitimacy of the rules and norms established by the moral community, as well as establishing a shared representation of what good group membership within that community entails. Essentially, during the apology–forgiveness social exchange at the intergroup level, the groups need to agree on what constitutes injustice (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004; Miron & Branscombe, 2008). In line with this reasoning, truth telling commissions serve the function of redefining moral norms within societies where violence had been largely normalized in the past.
The Importance of Forgiveness At the interpersonal level, forgiveness is thought to occur when victims release angry or resentful feelings about the transgression (Baumeister, Exline, & Sommer, 1998) and forgo opportunities to engage in revengeseeking behavior (Exline & Baumeister, 2000; Noor, Brown, Gonzalez, Manzi, & Lewis, 2008). Ultimately, forgiveness permits parties in the adversarial relationship to move forward (Zechmeister & Romero, 2002). Further, overcoming feelings of hostility toward those who have wronged them tends to be beneficial to people who perceive themselves to have been victimized. Overcoming hostile feelings toward others via forgiveness is associated with reduced depression and anxiety (Freedman & Enright, 1996; Hebl & Enright, 1993), heightened self-esteem (Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerker, & Kluwer, 2003), less turmoil and more positive affect (McCullough, Bellah, Kilpatrick, & Johnson, 2001), and improved life satisfaction (Karremans et al., 2003). At the intergroup level, forgiveness is associated with a release of negative feelings toward the adversarial group (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008; Tutu, 1999), lessened negative emotions such as fear and anger (Takaku, Weiner, & Ohbuchi, 2001; Tam et al., 2007), greater reconciliation intentions (Noor et al., 2008), and increased prosocial behavior and willingness to have contact with members of the adversarial group (Wohl & Branscombe, 2005).
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348 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin Very few studies have examined the efficacy of the South African TRC process in encouraging forgiveness and reconciliation among victims that have suffered human rights abuses. However, Gibson (2002) found that truth telling, apologies offered by perpetrators, and financial compensation of victims made the amnesty strategy of the TRC more acceptable to the public. Further, the TRC process seems to have promoted reconciliation, tolerance, and a culture of human rights (Gibson, 2004). Reparatory justice that empowers victims can also lessen victims’ desire to seek retributive justice and lower the likelihood of violence re-occurring. In a study that surveyed former political prisoners in the Czech Republic, David and Choi (2006) found that both symbolic and financial reparatory measures decreased victims’ desire for retributive revenge. These findings suggest that in some contexts, facilitating government entities such as truth and reconciliation commissions may have a positive role to play in assisting with the development of forgiveness among such populations. According to Freedman and Enright (1996), cognitive shifts that facilitate forgiveness can only occur once hostile emotions such as anger have been sufficiently acknowledged. At the intergroup level, negative emotions associated with past conflict can persist for a long period of time after the conflict has ended. In the context of the South African TRC, it may have been particularly important to address negative feelings on the part of victims before they festered and produced behaviors that would only escalate the conflict. The TRC was particularly sensitive in its efforts in creating an atmosphere in which victims could publicly talk about their experiences, confront the perpetrators and deal with the deep emotional wounds incurred through past conflict (see Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, 1995). In fact, a qualitative study of forgiveness attitudes among South African TRC participants reported that victims who participated in the hearings had forgiving attitudes toward perpetrators, particularly when they had been given substantial opportunity to talk in detail about the nature of the human rights violations (Kaminer, 2006). Seeing the perpetrator as similar to self is an important predictor of willingness to forgive at the interpersonal level. Research on interpersonal forgiveness has shown that people are more forgiving of transgressors if they see themselves as capable of committing similar offenses (Exline, Baumeister, Zell, Kraft, & Witvliet, 2008; Takaku et al., 2001). For example, Takaku and colleagues (2001) found that when participants were primed to remember a time in which they had caused harm to someone else, they were especially likely to accept an apology from a classmate and forgive the transgression. Similarly, Exline et al. (2008) found that perceiving oneself as similar to the transgressor mediated the effect of remembering a personal transgression on willingness to forgive.
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At the intergroup level, negative emotions associated with past conflict can persist for a long period of time after the conflict has ended. Wohl and Branscombe (2005) experimentally illustrated the importance of inclusive categorization for forgiveness of past harm-doing by another group. In a series of studies, historical victim groups were induced to re-categorize the perpetrator group as “humans” like themselves, in contrast to thinking about the perpetrator and their own group as distinct groups. Increasing category inclusiveness – from the distinct groups level to the maximally inclusive human level – leads to greater forgiveness of the historical perpetrator group and decreased collective guilt assignment for its harm doing. Specifically, Jewish North Americans and Native Canadians showed greater forgiveness and less collective guilt assignment to their historical perpetrator groups (Germans and White Canadians, respectively) when human inclusive categorization was used. Indeed, inclusive categorization resulted in greater willingness to have contact with contemporary members of the historical perpetrator group than when distinct group identities were salient. Consistent with the TRC process, what seems to be needed is an ability to see outgroup members as human like the self for the giving up of revenge motives (i.e., reduced collective guilt assignment which indicates a lessening of the desire for the out-group to feel negatively about their group and its past). Such shifts to a more inclusive level of categorization can lead to improved evaluations of, and approach behaviors toward, contemporary members of a perpetrator group. Inclusive categorization where all members of a society, regardless of subgroup membership, are perceived as part of the “human family,” appears to be crucial for intergroup forgiveness and the creation of a more peaceful future. As Wohl and Branscombe (2005) argue, seeing a perpetrating group as sharing humanity with the in-group might encourage perception of the harmful actions as ones that all humans are capable of, not just the former out-group. According to both Gobodo-Madikizela (2008) and Tutu (1999), South Africans’ perceptions that we are all human, and capable of acting as perpetrators, enhanced the ability to forgive perpetrators of gross human rights violations. The South African TRC’s rhetoric emphasized a superordinate inclusive identity. The main page of the South African TRC website states: “The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to help deal with what happened under apartheid. No section of society escaped these abuses.” Further, the final report (1998, Volumes 1–7) attempted to describe the gross human rights violations uncovered during the hearings in such a way as to point out all South Africans’ involvement in the conflict. So, in essence, when victims are able to re-categorize at a more inclusive level, they are more likely to see the similarities between themselves and the perpetrating group members, and they are more willing to forgive the former
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350 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin out-group’s past actions. Recent research has substantiated the positive relationship between superordinate national categorization and attitudes toward the perpetrating group, as well as willingness to forgive that group, in Lebanon, which is a nation with a long conflictual history between religious groups. Licata, Saade, Klein, Branscombe, and Azzi (2009) found that subgroup identification (in this research context, Maronite Christian Lebanese) negatively predicted attitudes toward the out-group (Muslim Lebanese); however, identification with the superordinate national category (Lebanese) predicted more favorable attitudes toward Muslims. These effects were mediated by the attributions that were made for the past conflict, and by the way people perceived contemporary Muslim out-group members. In other words, superordinate categorization produced these effects because Lebanese participants were able to differentiate Muslims of the war generation from contemporary Muslims, and because they were more likely to shift blame for the conflict to another superordinate outgroup – foreign powers (e.g., Syria, Israel). The underlying premise of the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) is that under the right conditions, contact between individuals of different groups can reduce prejudice and increase positive, cooperative feelings toward outgroups. Hundreds of studies spanning five decades of research have lent support to the effectiveness of contact in reducing prejudice (for a metaanalytic review, see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Applying the contact hypothesis to predict forgiveness and reconciliation intentions among historically victimized groups, Tam and colleagues (2007) found that among the Northern Irish, contact predicted greater forgiveness indirectly through lessened infra-humanization, lessened anger, more positive feelings toward outgroup members, and increased empathy. Cehajic, Brown, and Castano (2008) found that contact predicted forgiveness among Bosnians indirectly through increased out-group trust, perceptions of out-group heterogeneity, and increased out-group empathy. Although among the Bosnian sample surveyed by Cehajic, Brown, and Castano (2008) contact and superordinate categorization seem to be independent predictors of forgiveness and less desire for social distance from the out-group, contact that occurs without changed perceptions of the outgroup (e.g., perceived similarity to in-group and self) seems unlikely to foster empathy. In fact, according to Gaertner and Dovidio (2000), when contact is viewed in a favorable light, re-categorization processes at the superordinate level can emerge. When people re-categorize others who were formerly seen as out-group members, their previous negative attitudes toward the out-group can become more positive. They argue that the processes that lead to in-group favoritism are now extended toward members of the former out-group and, as a result, intergroup contact should be positively related to superordinate categorization. One study has shown a positive relationship between superordinate national categorization and
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empathy toward members of the victimized subgroup (Noor et al., 2008), and another study has found that intergroup contact and superordinate categorization are positively related in a context of intergroup reconciliation (Cehajic et al., 2008).
The Costs of Forgiving Although perceiving that the perpetrator group is similar to one’s own group will lead to greater willingness to forgive, too much similarity can be experienced as threatening and evoke in-group bias (social identity theory; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Thus, the extent to which individuals identify with the victimized subgroup will determine whether or not they are willing to forgive the perpetrator subgroup – highly identified group members should be less willing to forgive. Indeed, subgroup identification is negatively associated with willingness to forgive and reconcile with the perpetrator group (Licata et al., 2009; Noor et al., 2008). If subgroup identification must be lowered so that inclusive categorization is effective in promoting forgiveness, one potential risk to encouraging superordinate categorization is that individuals who are highly identified with their subgroup may object to recategorization and respond to such efforts defensively. There is evidence, however, that when subgroup members are assured that they are not expected to assimilate, or to completely merge within the superordinate group identity, they are much less defensive in response to such efforts (Hornsey & Hogg, 2000). One criticism of reparative strategies aimed at promoting harmony among groups with a conflictual history is that improving intergroup attitudes may undermine the anger and group identification necessary for collective action by disadvantaged groups to address existing inequities (see Wright & Lubensky, 2009). When group boundaries are salient and negative evaluations of the disadvantaged group’s status occurs, disadvantaged group members begin to assess the legitimacy of the intergroup situation which serves as an impetus to collective action. Collective action requires intergroup comparisons that result in a clear recognition of the group’s disadvantage (see Taylor & Moghaddam, 1994; Walker & Smith, 2002) – and superordinate categorization and contact strategies serve to undermine such processes. Studies on collective action have also shown that anger in response to illegitimate disadvantage is an important impetus to collective action (Miller, Cronin, Garcia, & Branscombe, 2009; Smith, Cronin, & Kessler, 2008; van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). Thus, reconciliation strategies aimed at promoting forgiveness among historically victimized groups may undermine their ability to recognize existing inequities and to feel angry about the current situation.
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352 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin Wright and Lubensky (2009) suggest that the focus of prejudice reduction strategies as tools for increasing harmony and cohesion has a price. Positive and admirable outcomes such as harmony and reconciliation could be had at the expense of conflict that can lead to challenge and social change. However, in considering this argument in the context of intergroup situations in which extreme violence and conflict are involved, the more important immediate goal would be to restore a sense of peace among groups who must now learn how to get along without resorting to vengeful tactics and creating an intractable situation. During such periods of transition, as detailed by the TRC, the goal of harmony must trump all others for the sake of everyone’s basic needs for safety, and to create group norms for what is acceptable behavior when future conflict ensues. This is not to say that recognition of current inequities should be ignored – instead, it may be possible to encourage people to recognize existing injustice and re-direct people’s angry feelings away from outgroups and individual members of those groups and to focus on the cultural artifacts and governmental systems that serve to perpetuate injustice (Kurtis¸, Adams, & Yellow Bird, 2010; Tutu, 1999). One major criticism of the South African TRC, which was particularly driven by the practice of granting amnesty to violators of gross human rights, is that although one of the goals of the TRC was to restore justice to a nation in a vulnerable, transitional phase, violators of human rights were apparently not being punished (TRC Report, 1998; Tutu, 1999). Further, although it seemed as if the TRC made an honest attempt at healing the nation’s wounds, it may have inadvertently poured salt into the wound when victims realized that perpetrators would be pardoned, and in some cases, that they would continue to hold positions of power. In response to such criticisms, Verwoerd (1999), in his essay defending the efforts of the South African TRC, openly admits that from a retributive justice perspective, where punitive consequences are applied to those who violate sanctioned laws, amnesty is unjust. However, the goal of the TRC was not to achieve retributive justice, as such a goal becomes problematic in a context in which human rights violators’ actions were sanctioned by the previous law of the land. The main goal of the TRC was rather to restore a justice system in which moral values inform what the rule of law itself sanctions. He argues that although granting amnesty was certainly unfair, it was a necessary sacrifice for the common good of the nation to restore democratic values and respect for the rule of law. Tutu (1999) argued that trials aimed at punishing individuals such as the Nuremberg Trials would not have been effective in South Africa because such retributive justice measures would only serve to fuel more hatred between groups. Utilizing the TRC process, in contrast to an approach resembling the Nuremberg Trials, shifted focus from rehabilitating individuals via punitive measures to transforming social institutions. The intention was to restore a
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national moral conscience in which public sanctions of human rights violations would be agreed upon and such violations would no longer be tolerated. As the South African TRC is regarded as an excellent restorative justice model implemented at a fragile time during that nation’s transition to democracy, future research will need to address the applicability of that model to other groups with a conflictual history.
Conclusions The South African TRC was built on a psychotherapeutic model of healing where engaging in the painful and difficult task of recounting the horrors of the past will, in the long run, have psychological and health benefits to participants and witnesses. The South African TRC was modeled on the idea that developing a shared view of the past among adversarial groups fosters a shared collective memory of events in which groups accept responsibility for their role in the injustice and come closer to convergence on a shared representation of what actually happened (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004; TRC Report, 1998). It was thought that the TRC hearings would be transformative in that group members’ thoughts, feelings, and actions toward each other are changed. While the apology and forgiveness processes that occurred during the TRC affirmed the shared humanity of former enemies, it did not require “turning the other cheek” or forgetting what happened (Minow, 1998). Indeed, we presented evidence that the crucial factors built into the TRC process predict reconciliation in South Africa and a variety of other social groups with a history of human rights abuses. Reparation strategies that utilize truth and reconciliation hearings such as the South African TRC can be effective in promoting guilt, and therefore motivating apology among the perpetrators, as well as promoting forgiveness among the victims. The TRC is effective because it addressed the psychological needs of both perpetrators and victims and utilized re-categorization strategies that are important in promoting increased willingness to reconcile. The psychological need of the perpetrators to re-establish their standing in the moral community can be addressed through public admission of responsibility and through apology. The psychological need of the victims to regain a sense of power and agency can be addressed through the symbolic power of forgiveness. Tutu (1999) argues that perpetrators and victims must see the other as human participants in a moral community where dehumanization of the other has implications for their own humanity. He further argues that the TRC led to superordinate categorization and this ultimately encouraged apology and forgiveness among participants and witnesses to the process (Tutu, 1999). Because it soon became clear during the TRC hearings that
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354 Nyla R. Branscombe and Tracey Cronin atrocities were committed by humans, rather than members of a particular immoral group, it became difficult for any one group to take the “moral high ground,” and claim innocence for their group, which would escalate the intergroup aspects of the conflict. Social psychological research has obtained support for the importance of human re-categorization for forgiveness and reconciliation with former perpetrator group members, and supports the underlying assumptions that guided the South African TRC in furthering the goals of reconciliation and creation of a more stable, democratic society.
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Conclusion
From Identity and Participation to Integration or Radicalization A Critical Appraisal Assaad E. Azzi This book with its four parts provides a multidisciplinary overview of recent theories and empirical investigations examining the conditions under which individuals and groups living in culturally diverse societies engage in identity politicization processes that could lead either to integration or to radicalization. Without repeating what was said in the general introduction and the various part introductions, I would like to use this concluding chapter to draw a few lessons from a transversal and critical reading of the book. I do not pretend to provide a fully integrated synthesis of all the chapters. Nor do I aim to present a faithful representation of the complexity of each chapter’s arguments and data. My aim is simply to develop a few challenging questions and hypotheses about the main concepts analyzed in this book and about the links between them. I will do so with one basic question in mind: is there something specific about cultural, ethnic, and national identities that produces particular stakes when they happen to coexist within a single political entity, stakes that would then drive their politicization in the direction of either radicalization or integration?
About Identity It is evident that identity is the core concept of the book, a concept that is widely used in different social science disciplines. Our book’s focus is on a particular type of identity, a group identity that has cultural dimensions. Almost all of the chapters deal essentially with national, ethnic, or religious identities, all of which share a cultural dimension; hence, the relevance of the concept “culturally diverse societies.” So what are the characteristics of these identities and societies on which the various chapters converge and which are analyzed extensively in the first part of the book? And what are the questions that the book raises for future investigations and analyses of these identities?
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360 Assaad E. Azzi One of the questions that is raised across the book and analyzed extensively by Chryssochoou and Lyons, and by Wiley and Deaux, is whether multiple identities could be represented as compatible or incompatible, or could be experienced and performed simultaneously or alternately (that is, in different settings). The two chapters emphasize the crucial role of mutual constructions of compatibility and incompatibility. In other words, the authors converge on the idea that the experience of harmonious or conflicting multiple identities, at the individual level, is primarily mediated by interactive social dynamics and stances. Thus, an individual does not merely and subjectively experience compatibility and incompatibility between an ethnic or religious identity and a national “superordinate” identity. If there is such a subjective experience, it is mostly because of the political stances and identity performances expressed within and between groups. Hence the interesting convergence between this part, on the one hand, and the second and third parts of the book, both of which emphasize the concept of politicized collective identities. Clearly, then, different authors from different disciplines converge on the idea that these identities are socially constructed, performed, affirmed, and negotiated in a public political arena. Whereas one could argue that these ideas about identity dynamics would in principle apply to all types of group identities, a closer look at the chapters indicates that there may be something specific about cultural, religious, and national identities, which could produce the potential for perceived incompatibilities between them. It is possible that what is specific about these identities is actually what drives the scientific interest in investigating issues of integration and radicalization. A hint at a possible specific characteristic can be seen in Chryssochoou and Lyons when they note that claims of incompatibility between identities seem to emerge in “groups who do not share kinship and history” with the national group. Implicit here is the idea that national identities, on the one hand, and subnational religious, ethnic, and cultural identities, on the other, are constructed as based on kinship and/or having a history (i.e., a past and a future). In other words, these types of groups and their identities appear to be socially construed as ontological entities that are continuous over time and that have the right to continue their existence as an entity and community in the future. Some political entrepreneurs may even go further in their construal and imagine these identities as essentialized, which could lead (as will be seen below) to irreconcilable claims or hegemonic tendencies. In light of this specific characteristic, the arguments presented by Branscombe and Cronin in the last part come to the fore: reconciliation between these types of groups, which is a requirement for their integrated and peaceful coexistence within the same superordinate political entity, requires a careful reconstruction of each group’s history (as well as their common history), in a way that avoids unilateral own group victimization
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and/or blaming other groups, and that eventually includes a dose of recognition of and forgiveness for past misdeeds or mistreatments. In the particular case of relations between minority migrant communities and national majorities, one could extend Branscombe and Cronin’s argument on the basis of the idea proposed by Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking that citizenship regimes may have a greater impact on the minorization of migrants than migration or colonial history. Thus, this extension would argue that (a) prejudice and discrimination may become important variables that produce the minorization and then the politicization of subnational identities, and (b) dealing with past (and present) prejudice and discrimination would be important in the construction of a common superordinate identity and history. One may add that it would be easier to construct a common superordinate identity and history if neither national nor subnational identity is essentialized. The social construction of culture or an ethno-cultural group as a possible ontological and socially bounded entity greatly resembles the social construction of the nation. And there is a predictable trend, not only in migrantnational relationships, but also in interethnic relations, for the social and political construction of these identities as incompatible to arise mainly in the context of a single political entity, namely the nation-state. This is consistent with the common observation made across the book that different national immigration and citizenship policies influence the experienced or expressed compatibility or incompatibility, as well as the identity strategies chosen by individual migrants and by migrant groups (cf. Berry; Chryssochoou and Lyons; Diehl and Blohm; Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking). In order to fully investigate and test the preceding arguments, it would be interesting to heed Ireland’s argument about the institutional level at which these identity stances are played out. In his chapter, Ireland points out that in many European states, and perhaps also beyond Europe, a certain degree of decentralization is taking place, which could mean that these intergroup relations can be played out at a local level (banlieue, city, commune, region) or in a possible future even at the supra-national level (Koopmans and Statham show that in Europe this is not yet the case). One could investigate whether, indeed, these identity dynamics are more strongly expressed when played out on a national level than on a local level (on the condition that the latter is not defined in ethnic or national terms as is, for instance, the case of Flanders in Belgium). It is also interesting to point out the convergence between Ireland’s and Simon’s chapters with regard to the gradual transformation of migrants’ claims, having been predominantly socio-economic and redistributive until recently, and becoming increasingly focused on identity and recognition issues. This recent trend is consistent with Berry’s and Kinnvall and NesbittLarking’s emphasis on the study of youth (or post-diasporic generations) in
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362 Assaad E. Azzi order to understand these new identity dynamics and claims. An important characteristic of these young generations is their potential to get involved, to engage in political participation and to become the actors of political identity claims. This point leads us to the discussion of participation and the role of dual identities in generating the process of politicization of collective identities.
About Participation and Politicization Like identity, participation is a concept used across all chapters, with an indepth analysis provided in the second part. According to Simon, while participation means political engagement, it should not be equated with radicalization. Indeed, he argues that political participation could have an integrative function or a disintegrative function, implying that both radicalization and integration are mediated by the politicization of collective identities. While some chapters do not make this distinction clear and use the terms politicization and participation as indicators of the beginning of radicalization, and other chapters use them as indicators of integration, a careful reading of these chapters indicates a general convergence on Simon’s argument. For example, Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking point out that the combination of engagement (i.e., participation) and essentialism (i.e., search for and construction of an essentialist identity) opens up the path to integration and at the same time to radicalization. The argument that identification and political participation are necessary for both outcomes is at least implicitly present in most chapters in the last two parts of the book, which deal with radicalization and integration. Similarly, there is a convergence on the idea proposed by Simon that dual identities are necessary for participation. In the radicalization part, most authors insist on the importance of dual identification as a mediator of polarization and radicalization by pointing out the counter-intuitive weight of identification with the national entity. Common sense (and majority perceptions) usually assumes that minority migrant radicalization implies a stance that upholds ethnic or religious identity in opposition to host national identity. Research presented in this book shows that, on the contrary, the path to radicalization starts with strong identification with the national entity (Verkuyten; Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking; van Stekelenburg and Klandermans; de Koning and Meijer). One possible explanation that emerges across the book is the possibility that integration and radicalization share a common initial path. Thus, several chapters suggest that the immediate step after politicization is more likely to be integration, while radicalization would require a few additional steps. First, dual identification, which mediates politicization,
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implies the presence of an integration identity orientation, by definition. Second, according to Simon, participation involves the politicization of collective ethnic identity but also, paradoxically, the adoption of political, ideological, and legal values provided by the host nation. It follows then that identification with the host nation’s identity and values may be a precondition for the politicization of ethnic identity. According to Verkuyten, in order to claim the right of a group to express its identity in public, one has to believe in the notion of “rights,” a notion that is strongly associated with the concepts of citizenship and democracy advocated by most European and American host societies. Finally, most chapters on radicalization argue and demonstrate that the path to radicalization starts when ethnic or religious collective identities are threatened, implying at least that the initial step involves strong attachment to these identities. Thus, dual identification a.k.a. integration becomes inevitable in the initial common path of politicization. Interestingly, while most chapters in the integration part also emphasize the role of dual identities, they tend to emphasize the counter-intuitive weight of ethnic (or subnational) identity. This emphasis clearly shows that, seen from the minority perspective, integration is not assimilation. Could it be, then, that the slide to the radicalization path starts when the majority explicitly or implicitly hampers or rejects minorities’ attempts at integration? In other words, could it be that identity claims or performances that express the desire to uphold both identities (that is, integration), when dissatisfied (as a function of the majority’s reaction; e.g., through direct or indirect discrimination), steers minority political actors and their supporters towards radicalization? These questions lead us to the last point I would like to analyze, namely whether we should extend the definition of integration and radicalization in order to take into account both ends and means. In other words, can we simply stick with a definition of integration that is implicitly focused on ends (types of claims) and of radicalization that is implicitly focused on means (extreme forms of action)?
About Integration and Radicalization Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans present the staircase metaphor introduced by Moghaddam to illustrate the path from politicization to polarization and then to radicalization. While it contains the distinction between means and ends, the staircase model emphasizes radicalizing ends (claims) as a phase that precedes the radicalization of means (endorsement and engagement in extreme violence). However, it does not provide a clear distinction between the integration step and the radicalization steps. Should we consider integration mostly in terms of ends (the types of claims that are put forward) and then radicalization as a slide, first towards moderately
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364 Assaad E. Azzi extreme ends, then towards more extreme ends and then, at the most extreme step, towards the radicalization of means? These are not easy questions, and I do not intend to provide answers for them. But I will try to combine disparate ideas from the various chapters and some of my own reflections, in order to present some arguments and hypotheses that could be examined by future research. One difficulty that remains in charting the path from identity and participation to integration or radicalization may have to do (once again) with the particular nature of national, ethnic, and cultural identities. Is there something specific about these identities that constrains the politicization process in the direction of specific claims? What form would take, for instance, an “integrative” or a radicalized identity claim? We have a few examples in the book, but without a clear theoretical model to put them together. For instance, the analyses by Chryssochoou and Lyons, and by Wiley and Deaux, suggest one type of claim: claims of identity incompatibilities (whether introduced by national majorities or migrant minorities). Should they be classified as radical ends? Ideologically, these claims share similarities with separatist claims and, at the most extreme end, with hegemonic, imperial, and genocidal discourses. One could therefore imagine a gradation scale for similar ends with various degrees of extremity. These similar claims, regardless of their degree of extremity, affirm that multiple subnational ethnic or religious identities cannot be integrated together within a single superordinate identity (and hence political entity). They also express doubts about the viability of multicultural societies, doubts that are similar to those that emerged among scholars, politicians, and journalists who analyzed the emergence of post-colonial states in Africa and Asia after World War II, and observed the immediate slide of some of the new states into perpetual coups d’états and civil wars, many of them construed in ethnic terms by political entrepreneurs and some still observable today. Considering the ideological tone and nature of these expressed doubts and the socially constructed nature of the mobilized identities, future research could investigate the extent to which, when integration is difficult to achieve or when it fails, this is due to opposing, socially and ideologically constructed, political stances, as opposed to real differences in values, cultures, and civilizations. For this, researchers need to address the content of integration claims, which are supposed to come first, that is, before radicalized claims. Do these claims consist mainly of identity compatibility claims? The answer would be affirmative if we heed the argument that dual identities, in the sense of maintaining subnational ethnic identities alongside the adoption of national identity, are important mediators of integration. However, to my knowledge, this question has rarely been investigated. Although integration has been analyzed at the individual level by social psychologists (i.e., how individuals experience, value, or evaluate their multiple identities), and at the
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socio-structural levels by sociologists and political scientists (i.e., structural integration, social networks, political participation), there is little research on the characteristics and content of integration claims (that is, politicized integrated identities) and whether they are construed as moderate or radical by various political actors. Consequently, there is also little research on how these claims are expressed, how they are interpreted by the majority, and whether the form of their expression produces predictable patterns of majority reactions. A full answer to the question would also require the investigation of the content of counter-claims made by the majority, the way they are expressed or politicized, and then the relation between content and form of expression, on the one hand, and the reaction to them by minority political actors, on the other. Exactly at which point does the slide towards politicized radicalization and the waning of politicized integration start? While I think these are important questions, I understand the difficulty of investigating them, a difficulty that is simultaneously conceptual and methodological. Given that within the context of a single political entity majorities and minorities are de facto interdependent (at least politically and economically), it would be difficult to develop a non-equivocal and objective (i.e., scientific) classification of claims. Thus, the process could start with an integration identity strategy that is subjectively experienced (as Berry argues) and yet could be performed implicitly, individually, and without collective politicization; this subjective and implicit willingness for integration could somehow be detected by the majority, interpreted in a certain way (and possibly in a predictable specific way), and then accepted or rejected, either implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly. Both the minority’s “action” and the majority’s “reaction” could therefore be difficult to observe, because they could be carried out with or without an explicit discourse, with or without politicization, with or without collective organization or coordination. And even if politicized and organized, they could still be carried out through an ambivalent discourse. The majority could, for instance, explicitly refuse or accept to grant minorities full citizenship rights; or in case it accepts, it could do so without a clear stance on whether it expects assimilation or integration; or it could explicitly or implicitly signal its expectation of assimilation; yet it could signal its doubt about the possibility that certain groups (because of their perceived difference) could be assimilated or integrated. So many possible reactions, some or many of them could actually be construed by the minority as signaling the majority’s belief in the incompatibility between national identity and the minority’s identity. It is possible that, since the object of the book is to provide explanations for integration and/or radicalization, most authors focus mainly on politicized collective identities because they possess powerful explanatory power, but also because they are visible and observable, and rarely on non-politicized
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366 Assaad E. Azzi identities, on ambivalent claims, or on the exact process whereby a nonpoliticized identity is transformed into a politicized one. Hence the absence of theoretical models about the different ways in which ethnic, national, religious, and cultural identities could be performed and whether they produce predictable specific claims. Is it possible that these (majority or minority) identities could be performed without politicization purposes or motivations, even in public? And if so, could they be interpreted by members of other groups as if they carry a political message, and could such an interpretation then effectively lead to their politicization? Under what conditions are these interpretations likely to emerge? In contrast, should we consider that there is something specific about these identities that makes it unlikely that their performance could be non-political, and that therefore predisposes people to always perform them or interpret their performance in a politicized way? That it is possible for national and ethnic identities to be enacted without political purpose or politicization is suggested at the beginning of the historical analysis provided by Papadopoulos of the emergence of GreekAmerican identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. He provides archival evidence to the effect that when they arrived as migrants to the USA, people of Greek origins resided and worked in social networks composed mainly of people from the same origin. He argues that their initial identification was more relational than categorical. It is therefore possible that for large chunks of their everyday life, they were immersed in Greek language, behaved according to Greek norms and scripts, practiced Greek Orthodox rituals, and in the remaining chunk learned and practiced English, learned and worked according to pre-established American or local norms, and did all of this, for a while (or for a generation), without developing explicit categorizations or politicizations. Only later and under the influence of political entrepreneurs, different politicization paths were debated with one interesting outcome: the emergence of a hyphenated “Greek-American” identity (by the way, one could consider this outcome as an example of an integration claim). Verkuyten makes a similar argument in his analysis of the performance of Muslim identity in migrant communities in Western Europe. After pointing out the need for researchers to attend to the specific nature of certain group identities, he points out the specificity of religious identity, the performance of which could take two forms: the first in terms of content and the place of religious beliefs and practices in everyday life, and the second in terms of politicization, that is, the public performance of the identity with a political purpose. The latter form emerges especially under conditions when people perceive that they are excluded because of the non-politicized performance, or not recognized as having the right to engage in such performance.
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De Koning and Meijer describe the process of radicalization in a case study of a small Salafite Muslim group in the Netherlands. They observe that this group initially organized for religious and philosophical purposes. Some of its members had a political purpose, but which was not religious; namely, to facilitate the mobility and integration of Dutch Muslims. After 9/11 and the rise of strong anti-Islamic opinions and discourses among (majority) political actors, the movement was driven by some of its members in the direction of extreme radicalization. Although the idea of content-focused, non-politicized forms of identity expression may appear to be specific to religious identities, one wonders if cultural identities can be displayed in a similar fashion. The argument presented at the beginning of this chapter with regard to the specific nature of cultural identities does not clearly allow for this possibility. Cultural identities may be implicit in the anthropological sense of actions rooted in cultural meanings and rituals. Such meanings are not directly and consciously represented and therefore could not be “performed” with the purpose of displaying (except if one considers the organization of some indigenous people to enact a cultural display for a tourist audience). Living in a culture does not involve such a display. Thus, for cultural, national, and ethnic identities, it is probably more reasonable to assume that when they are displayed it is with a politically motivated and performative purpose. This hypothesis is in line with Simon’s and Chryssochoou and Lyons’ arguments. But it adds a new object for future investigations: aside from investigating the politicization of these identities, is there a difference between ethnocultural and national identities, on the one hand, and religious identity, on the other, in the probability (and the way) they could be performed without being politicized?
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Name Index
Aarts, P., 221 Abraham, S., 73 Abrams, D., 71 Abu-Rayya, H. M., 72–73 Abu-Rayya, M. H., 72–73 Adams, G., 352 Adang, O., 167 Ahmad, F., 33 Ahmadzadeh, V., 288 Alba, R., 33, 56, 115, 321–322 Alden, L., 284 al-Ghazi, H. B. I., 127 Allport, G. W., 83, 350 Amiot, C. E., 51, 63 Anagnostou, Y., 24–26 Anastasio, P. A., 345 Anderson, B., 172 Anderson, K., 257 Andriol, A. M., 128 Anil, M., 316 Antoniou, A. A., 265 Anutei, A., 345 Appleby, R. S., 40 Arends-Tóth, J., 61, 292 Arnett, J. J., 199 Aron, A., 81 Aron, E. N., 81 Ascheberg, C., 323 Ashforth, B. E., 43 Ashmore, R. D., 34, 44, 51, 53, 64 Averill, J. R., 265 Azzam, M., 240, 243
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Azzi, A., xi, 1, 3, 275, 350–351, 359 Bachman, B. A., 345 Back, L., 130 Bade, K. J., 147 Bailey, B., 60 Baillergeau, E., 123 Baines, D., 14 Bakhtin, M., 200 Balibar, E., 202 Balistreri, K. S., 320 Bals, C., 120 Banaji, M. R., 55, 74 Baraulina, T., 147 Barkan, E., 340–342 Barnes, S. H., 192 Barras, C., 123, 126 Barrett, J. R., 26 Barreto, M., 54, 61–62 Barrows, S., 161 Bar-Tal, D., 188, 265, 268, 340, 342–343, 347, 353 Bartlett, S. J., 265 Basabe, N., 268, 342 Bauböck, R., 115, 316 Bauman, Z., 188 Baumeister, R. F., 345, 347–348 Beach, S. W., 226, 227 Beale, J., 165 Beck, U., 188 Beishon, S., 35
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Name Index Bellah, C., 347 Benet-Martínez, V., 49–50, 57, 61, 64, 287 Benford, R., 182 Bengtsson, B., 301, 306 Bennink, G. H., 340, 342–343, 347, 353 Benschop, A., 221 Berger, M., 297–298, 302–303 Berry, J. W., xi, 50, 82, 148, 152, 275, 279–288, 292, 361, 365 Berthoud, R., 35 Berting, P., 258 Bevelander, P., 332 Biernat, M., 341 Bikmen, N., 43 Billig, M., 71 Bjørgo, T., 244, 249 Blain, N., 203 Blair, T., 202, 203 Blazak, R., 247 Blee, K. M., 178–179, 239, 242–245, 247, 257 Blohm, M., xii, 276–277, 315, 316, 361 Boca, S., 341 Bochner, S., 283 Bodnar, J., 23 Böltken, F., 322 Bond, R., 74 Bonilla-Silva, E., 241 Borjas, G., 320 Bouchard, G., 286, 293 Bourhis, R., 85, 286 Bousetta, H., 118, 130 Boutry, V., 292 Branscombe, N. R., xii, 277, 338, 340–347, 349–351, 360, 361 Brecke, P., 339–340 Breinlinger, S., 144 Brewer, M. B., 50, 54, 63, 80, 151, 187–188, 262 Brown, R., 55, 85, 137, 151, 350–351 Brubaker, R., 11–12, 26, 55, 316, 320 Brug, P., 56 Brüggemann, M., 94 Buijs, F. J., 33–34, 36, 40, 45, 208, 221 Bujaki, M., 285
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Bultheel, I., 129 Burgess, M., 243, 245 Burgess, T., 16 Burke, P. J., 53 Buruma, I., 221 Bvirdee, S., 35 Caglar, A., 318 Caiani, M., 187 Cairns, E., 347, 350 Calhoun, C., 94 Campbell, D. E., 190 Caporaso, J., 96 Cardash, S. L., 240, 247 Carlbom, A., 213, 214 Carlsmith, J. M., 151 Cassidy, C., 159 Castano, E., 350–351 Castles, S., 320 Cehajic, S., 350–351 Cesari, J., 211, 215 Chavous, T. M., 34, 44 Cheryan, S., 55, 59, 60 Chiu, C., 49, 57, 64 Choi, S. P., 347–348 Chryssochoou, X., viii, 1, 5–7, 12, 69, 72–73, 76, 79, 81, 256, 277, 360, 361, 364, 367 Cilluffo, F. J., 240, 247 Cinalli, M., 301 Çinar, D., 117 Clément, R., 59, 62 Cocking, C., 164, 165 Coleman, H. L. K., 50, 64 Contopoulos, M., 16 Converse, P. E., 246 Conzen, K. N., 23, 26, 28 Creasap, K., 239 Crenshaw, M., 247 Cronin, P., 54, 58, 167 Cronin, T., xii, 277, 338, 351, 360, 361 Crosby, L., 63 Crul, M., 117, 130 Cunningham, K. J., 243 Cuperus, R., 208 Cyrus, N., 130, 132
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370 Name Index Dagevos, J., 35 Dähne, D., 37–38 Daniels, J., 242 Dasen, P. R., 282 Davar, E., 240 Davegos, J. M., 117 David, B., 259 David, R., 347–348 Davis, N., 162 Davy, U., 117 Deaux, K., viii, 6, 7, 34, 49, 51, 53, 59, 60, 62, 70, 74, 87, 360, 364 Dede, E., 73 De Koning, M., x, 35, 39–40, 45, 178, 189, 220–222, 224–225, 227, 230, 232, 257, 264, 362, 367 Della Porta, D., 184, 185, 187, 189, 191, 192, 231, 240, 244, 248 Demant, F., 36, 40, 45, 208 De Regge, M., 122, 123, 126, 127 de Rivera, J., 188 Devich-Navarro, M., 50, 56, 58, 61, 64 Devos, T., 55, 74, 265 De Weerd, M., 142 De Wit, T. D., 145, 146 DeWitte, H., 243 Diakolambrianou, E., 83 Diani, M., 301 Dicarlo, L., 14 Diehl, C., xi, 276–277, 315–316, 322, 361 Doomernik, J., 130 Doosje, B., 34, 37, 44, 51, 58, 59, 64, 71, 340, 342–343, 347, 353 Dovidio, J. F., 56, 61, 83, 151, 345, 350 Dozier, R. W., 268 Drury, J., x, 90, 91, 160, 163–165, 168–171 Duffek, K. A., 208 Durham, M., 242 Durkheim, E., 139 Dustmann, C., 323 Dutton, J. E., 309 Duyvendak, J. W., 97, 123, 126, 142, 190
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Edelstein, W., 249 Eder, K., 98 Edmondson, A. C., 309 Eidelson, R., 51, 64 Einwohner, R. L., 184 Eisenstein, M. A., 41 Ekholm Friedman, K., 215 El Hamel, C., 205 Ellemers, N., 54, 58–59, 61–62, 71, 141 Elshof, D., 126 Emerson, M. O., 39 Emler, N., 54 Enright, R. D., 347–348 Erbe, J., 97 Erikson, E. H., 199 Ernst, D., 71 Essed, P., 241 Esser, H., 322–323 Etty, E., 190, 256 Exline, J. J., 347–348 Eyerman, R., 221 Fairchild, H. P., 16 Faist, T., 316 Farwick, A., 123 Favell, A., 116–118, 202, 204 Fear, J., 63, 140 Felix, C., 126 Feltzer, M., 286 Fennema, M., 224, 296–303, 311 Ferguson, N., 243, 245 Fermin, A., 223 Ferrell, J., 249 Festinger, L., 151 Fetzer, J. S., 130 Fichter, M., 240 Finchilescu, G., 83 Fine, M., 34, 43, 82 Fischer, A., 351 Fischer, A. H., 158, 265 Fisher, J. D., 339, 343 Fitzgerald, T. E., 14 Fligstein, N., 94 Foner, N., 56 Forbes, D., 203
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Name Index Foucault, M., 26 Fox Tree, E., 221 Francis, M., 235 Fraser, N., 142, 143 Freedman, S. R., 347–348 Freeman, G. P., 117 Freytag, P., 153 Friedman, D., 141 Friedman, J., 215 Furnam, A., 283 Gabaccia, D. R., 14 Gaertner, S. L., 56, 61, 83, 137, 151, 345, 350 Gaines, S., 239 Galonska, C., 302–303 Gamson, W. A., 141, 221, 227–229, 232, 234, 235 Garagozov, R., 74 Garcés-Mascareñas, B., 118 Garcia, A. L., 351 García, M., 286 Geddes, A., 118, 202 Gerber, D. A., 23, 26, 28 Gerdes, J., 316 Gerges, F., 229 Gerhards, J., 96, 182 Gerlach, L., 221 Gerton, J., 50, 64 Gestring, N., 146 Gibson, C. J., 49 Gibson, J. L., 339, 348 Gijsberts, M., 35–36, 38, 44 Gilbertson, G., 320 Gilliat-Ray, S., 203 Giorguli, S., 60 Giugni, M. G., 97, 142, 189, 215, 301, 316 Gobodo-Madikizela, P., 340, 342–344, 346–347, 349 Goetz, K. H., 96–98 Goldberg, A., 146 Goldberg, D. T., 241 Gong, L., 72 González, J. L., 342 González, R., 151, 347
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González-Castro, J. L., 268 Goodin, R. E., 144 Gordijn, E., 54 Gordon, L. J., 10 Gordon, M., 283 Gorman, A., 63 Grabow, O., 150, 151 Grace, D. M., 258 Graham, S., 347 Granato, N., 322–323 Graves, T., 281 Green, N. L., 11 Green, P., 168–171 Green Cowles, M., 96 Grillo, R. D., 130–132 Gropas, R., 72 Gubin, A., 343 Güngör, D., 34, 41–42 Gurin, P., 271 Habermas, J., 94 Habig, C., 148–151 Hagedorn, H., 316 Hagendoorn, L., 35–36, 38, 44, 190, 298, 305 Hagengimana, A., 343 Halbwachs, M., 344 Halevy, N., 51, 64 Halm, D., 146 Halperin, E., 188, 265 Hamdy, A., 36, 40, 45, 221 Hammar, T., 320 Hanson, C., 165 Haritatos, J., 50, 64, 287 Hartman, D., 39 Haslam, N., 71, 259 Haslam, S. A., 146, 163 Haug, S., 147, 315, 322 Häussermann, H., 126 Heatherton, T. F., 345 Hebl, J. H., 347 Hegarty, P., 261 Heijnen, P. M. M., 123, 127 Heitmeyer, W., 146, 310, 322 Helms-Lorenz, M., 286 Herriot, P., 33, 39
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372 Name Index Herskovits, M., 281 Hervik, P., 210 Hewstone, M., 347, 350 Higham, J., 9 Hine, V., 221 Hinrichs, W., 323 Hirschman, A. O., 148 Hirzallah, F., 221 Hix, S., 96–98 Hjerm, M., 117 Hobsbawm, E., 162 Hochschild, J. L., 62 Hoffmann, L., 316 Hogg, M. A., 38, 71, 137, 151, 258–259, 345, 351 Hollywood, I., 243 Holm, U., 209 Holy Trinity Church, 14 Hong, Y., 49, 57, 64 Honneth, A., 142 Hooghe, M., 312 Hopkins, N., 11, 12, 78, 159 Horgan, J., 240, 243, 247 Hornsey, M. J., 151, 351 Howard, M., 63 Huckfeldt, R., 298 Hundeide, K., 249 Huntington, S. P., 40, 69, 281 Huo, Y. J., 64 Hurenkamp, M., 190 Hussain, M., 209, 211, 212 Imig, D., 96 Inglehart, R., 41–42 Ireland, P. R., ix, 89, 90, 114, 118, 119, 125, 361 Itzigsohn, J., 55, 60 Iyer, A., 345 Jacobs, D., xi, 119, 276, 296, 298, 300, 302–303 Ja’far, Z., 36 Janßen, A., 146 Jasper, J. M., 228 Jasso, G., 321 Jenkins, J. C., 191
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Joffé, G., 240 Johnson, J. L., 347 Jose, P. E., 265 Kaase, M., 192 Kadima Kadiangandu, J., 339 Kahani-Hopkins, V., 78 Kahn, W. A., 309 Kalin, R., 285–286 Kalter, F., 322 Kaminer, D., 348 Kampmeier, C., 137, 140, 141 Kandel, J., 208 Kanoutas, S., 14, 16 Kaplan, M. M., 248 Kappen, D. M., 345 Karpozilos, K., 26 Karremans, J. C., 347 Karsten, S., 126 Kastoryano, R., 205 Katsiaficas, D., 43 Kearney, M., 23 Keck, M. E., 191 Kedourie, E., 190 Kelley, B., 208 Kelly, C., 142, 144 Kelman, H. C., 340, 342–343 Kemper, F., 40 Kenworthy, J., 347, 350 Kepel, G., 206 Kessler, T., 351 Kilpatrick, S. D., 347 Kim, U., 282, 385 Kinnvall, C., x, 178, 185, 189, 195, 199, 200, 215, 256, 361, 362 Kiourktzian, M., 81 Kipiani, G., 74 Kitroeff, A., 18, 24–25 Kivisto, P., 205 Klandermans, B., x, 1, 37, 39, 64, 83, 140–145, 147, 150, 172, 177–179, 181–182, 188–191, 225–227, 232, 235, 239, 240, 243, 245, 256–259, 270–271, 274, 345, 362–363 Klausen, J., 130
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Name Index Klein, L., 249 Klein, O., 37, 45, 51, 53–54, 56, 59, 350–351 Kleinen-von Königslöw, K., 94 Kleinnijenhuis, J., 257 Klingemann, H.-D., 144 Klingholz, R., 146–147 Kluwer, E. S., 347 Knott, K., 235 Koch, A., 322 Koliopoulos, J. S., 19 Konaev, M., 182 Koonz, C., 243 Koopmans, R., ix, 89, 90, 93, 95, 97, 99, 106, 108–109, 142, 145, 146, 185, 189, 215, 298, 303–304, 316, 361 Kourtoumi-Hadzi, T., 9, 18 Kourvetaris, G. A., 14 Kraft, A. J., 348 Kreiner, G. E., 43 Kriesi, H., 97, 99, 106, 142, 186, 191 Kristen, C., 322–323 Kröhnert, S., 146–147 Kuhn, H. P., 240 Kühnel, S., 323 Kultusministerkonferenz, 323 Kurtis, T., 352 Kymlicka, W., 146 Laclau, E., 160 Lacquer, W., 190, 191 La Due Lake, R., 298 LaFramboise, T., 50, 64 Lakey, J., 35 Laliotou, I., 10, 17–18, 25 Lalonde, R. N., 141 Lambert, P.-Y., 128 Larsson, G., 213 Lassen, S., 209 Lawrence, B., 73 Leach, C. W., 34, 44, 51, 64, 265, 345, 351 Leavitt, P. A., 59, 62 Ledoux, G., 126 Lee, F., 50, 61, 64
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373
Leggewie, C., 322 Leibold, J., 323 Lennon, E., 49 Lens, S., 280 Leonardelli, G. J., 262 Leu, J., 50, 61, 64 Leuschner, P., 122, 125, 126, 128 Levin, S., 56 Levine, M., 54, 159 Lewis, C. A., 347 Lewis, P., 36, 38 Licata, L., 350–351 Lindberg, L., 93 Linden, A., 243, 245 Lindén, J., 215 Lindner, L., 122 Linton, R., 281 Liu, J. H., 73 Livingstone, A., 167 Long, L. W., 33, 42, 321–322 Long, W. J., 339–340 Lopez, G., 271 Louis, W., 249 Loza, W., 243 Lubensky, M. E., 351–352 Lüttinger, P., 324 Lyons, E., ix, 6, 7, 69, 74, 277, 360, 361, 364, 367 Mackie, D., 158, 265 Maio, G., 347, 350 Major, B., 310 Malafouris, B., 24 Malloy, T. E., 339, 343 Mandaville, P., 197, 199 Manolis, P. G., 28–29 Mansell, T., 345 Manstead, A. S. R., 37, 158, 345 Manzi, J., 347 Maraffi, M., 296 Marcia, J., 289 Marketos, B. I., 24–25 Marks, G., 98 Marques, J., 341 Martin, D., 53 Mau, S., 319
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374 Name Index Maussen, M., 208 Mayer, N., 188, 240, 243 McAdam, D., 98, 141, 191 McCauley, C., 240 McCullough, M. E., 347 McFadyen, A., 235 McGarty, C., 258–259, 265, 345 McLaughlin-Volpe, T., 34, 44, 51, 63 McLoughlin, S., 235 Mehrländer, U., 323 Meijer, R., xi, 178, 189, 220–222, 224, 234, 257, 264, 362–367 Melotti, U., 202, 205 Melucci, A., 190 Mesquita, B., 341 Messina, A. M., 118 Metanasteusis, 9, 17 Meuleman, B., 281 Meyer, C. O., 94 Meyer, D. S., 182, 257 Meyer, M. F., 97 Miller, D. A., 345, 351 Minde, T., 282 Minow, M., 339–340, 353 Mir, M., 43 Miron, A. M., 340–341, 343–345, 347 Mirza, M., 36, 204 Modood, T., 33, 35, 202–203 Moghaddam, F. M., 177, 179, 181–183, 187, 188, 190, 240, 252, 257, 259–260, 265, 351 Moise, C., 85, 286 Mok, A., 57 Mok, D., 282 Molina, L. E., 64 Monin, B., 55, 59, 60 Morales, L., 301 Morawska, E., 23, 26, 28 Morgenstern, A., 208 Morris, L., 119 Morris, M., 49–50, 57, 61, 64 Moscovici, S., 71 Moskalenko, S., 240 Mouritsen, P., 209 Moussaoui, A. S., 205 Müller, J., 310, 322
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Mullet, E., 339 Mummendey, A., 144 Munson, Z. W., 248 Myrberg, G., 301 Nadler, A., 339–341, 343–344, 346 Nagda, B. R., 271 Naji, H., 208 Navas, M., 286 Nazroo, J., 35 Nesbitt-Larking, P., x, 178, 185, 189, 195, 199, 200, 215, 256, 361–362 Nesser, P., 221 Neto, F., 339 Newton, K., 296 Noels, K. A., 59, 62, 280 Nonini, D., 221 Noor, M., 347, 351 Norris, P., 41–42 Nye, R. A., 160 Oakes, P. J., 71, 82, 142, 146, 258–259, 345 O’Brien, L. T., 310 Oegema, D., xi, 177, 179, 190, 225, 256–257 Ogbu, J., 43 Ögelman, N., 316 Ohbuchi, K., 347 Oltmer, J., 147 Olzak, S., 188, 215 Østergaard, K., 209 Østergaard-Nielsen, E., 11 Otte, R., 316 Otterbäck, J., 214 Ouwerkerk, J. W., 34, 44, 51, 64, 347 Özcan, V., 147 Ozouf, M., 159 Páez, D., 268, 340–342 Pandey, J., 159 Papadopoulos, Y. G. S., viii, 5, 7, 9, 366 Papastergiadis, N., 10 Park, R. E., 49
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Name Index Parkinson, B., 158 Passy, F., 189, 316 Pastors, M., 130 Paulhus, D., 284 Pavlenko, V., 74 Paxton, P., 299 Pearlman, L. A., 343 Pederson, A., 345 Pehrson, S., 55 Peng, T., 271 Pennebaker, J. W., 340–342 Pennekamp, S. F., 34, 44, 51, 64 Penninx, R., 118 Perreault, S., 85, 286 Peter, O., 347 Peters, B., 94 Peters, R., 221 Pettigrew, T. F., 139, 350 Pew Research Center, 33 Phalet, K., 34, 36, 38, 41–42, 44, 298, 300, 303, 305 Philippot, P., 341 Phinney, J. S., 38, 50, 56, 58, 61, 64, 279 Pierce, R., 246 Pinto, M. da C., 339 Polat, A., 146 Poortinga, Y. H., 282 Poppe, E., 35 Portes, A., 43, 316 Postmes, T., 53, 160, 171 Pourtois, J.-P., 123, 126 Power, S., 285 Pozzetta, G. E., 23, 26, 28 Pratto, F., 56, 261 Price, C., 221, 224 Prins, B., 272 Prümm, K., 316, 320 Pumares, P., 286 Putnam, R., 296–297, 299, 300, 305, 311 Rapley, F., 165 Rath, J., 33–34, 208 Rawls, J., 143, 151, 153 Ray, B., 128
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375
Redfield, R., 281 Reeskens, T., 281 Reicher, S., x, 11–12, 37, 51, 53–54, 58, 71, 72, 76, 78, 81, 90–91, 137, 158, 160, 163–166, 169–171, 258, 274, 345 Reitz, J., 197 Reynolds, K. J., 37 Riazanova, T., 74 Richardson, L., 240 Riede, T., 324 Riesling-Schärfe, H., 123 Rimé, B., 340–342 Risse, T., 94, 96 Rivera, J., 265 Robinson, L., 203 Roccas, S., 50–51, 54, 63–64, 80 Rochford, E. B., 182 Roeleveld, J., 126 Rogstad, J., 301 Rojas, A. J., 286 Romero, C., 347 Roseman, I. J., 265 Rosenzweig, M. R., 321 Roth, R., 141 Rothschild, L., 71 Rowley, S. A. J., 34, 44 Roy, O., 36, 39, 44–45 Rucht, D., 139, 141, 146, 182, 191, 192 Rudé, G., 162 Rudmin, F. W., 288 Ruhs, D., 38, 40, 64, 82, 148–151, 185, 188 Rumbaut, R. G., 316 Rust, M. C., 345 Ryder, A., 284 Rydgren, J., 210 Sabatier, C., 73 Sabatier, S., 284, 286, 292 Sablonnière, R. de la, 51, 63 Saade, W., 350–351 Saeed, A., 203 Sagiv, L., 51, 64 Saguy, T., 56, 61 Salentin, K., 315, 322
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376 Name Index Saloutos, T., 16, 22, 24–25, 28 Sam, D. L., 279, 280, 282, 288 Samad, Y., 205 Sandelands, L. E., 309 Sander, Å., 212 Santel, B., 320 Schaefer, R. T., 23 Scheepers, D., 37 Scheffer, P., 221 Scheingold, S., 93 Schlesinger, P. R., 95 Schmidt, C., 240 Schmidt, G., 211 Schmitt, M. T., 345 Schnell, R., 322 Scholten, P., 118 Schreiber, M., 167 Schröder, H., 310, 322 Schrover, M., 131 Schwartz, S., 51 Scourby, A., 22 Scroggins, D., 35 Segall, M. H., 282 Sellers, R. M., 34, 44 Sen, F., 146 Sen, K., 205 Senecal, S., 85, 286 Senthilkumaran, A., 36, 204 Serpe, R. T., 53 Serra, A. F., 341 Seul, J. R., 34 Shadid, W. A. R., 207 Shahinper, K., 54, 61–62 Shelton, J. N., 34, 44 Shnabel, N., 340–341, 344, 346 Sidanius, J., 56 Sifft, S., 94 Sikkink, K., 191 Silke, A., 240, 247 Silverman, R. A., 141 Simon, B., ix, 1, 37–40, 46–47, 82–83, 88–91, 137–138, 142–145, 147–153, 172, 175, 182, 185, 188, 226, 235, 249, 257, 259, 271, 277, 361–363, 367 Simon, P., 117
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Sinclair, S., 56 Sindic, D., 78, 81, 165 Singer, A., 320 Singh, P., 159 Sippel, L., 146–147 Sirin, S., 34, 43, 82 Slijper, B., 272 Slivanov, V., 74 Slooter, L., 42 Slootman, M., 221, 309, 310 Slugoski, B., 345 Smith, E., 158 Smith, E. R., 265 Smith, H. J., 265, 351 Smith, J. R., 51, 63 Smith, M. A., 34, 44 Smith, P., 35 Smollan, D., 81 Sniderman, P., 35, 44, 190 Snow, D., 182 SOEP Group, 325 Sollors, W., 11 Solomos, J., 130 Sommer, K. L., 347 Soper, J. C., 130 Soysal, Y., 98 Spahlinger, P., 137, 141 Spears, R., 34, 37, 44–45, 51, 53–54, 56, 58, 61–62, 71, 265, 345, 351 Staggenborg, S., 182, 257 Statham, P., ix, 89, 90, 93, 95, 98–99, 108–109, 142, 145, 146, 189, 215, 298, 301, 316, 361 Statistisches Bundesamt, 318, 325 Staub, E., 342–343 Steinbach, A., 322 Sternberg, K., 267 Stets, J. E., 53 Stillwell, A. M., 345 Stonequist, E. V., 289 Stott, C., 163–164, 167, 170 Straw, B. M., 309 Strohmeier, K. P., 126 Strömblad, P., 306 Stryker, S., 53 Stürmer, S., 142, 144, 145
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Name Index Sullivan, J. L., 41 Swim, J. K., 345 Swyngedouw, M., 298, 300, 302–303 Taarnby Jensen, M., 212 Tajfel, H., 37, 71, 137, 162, 257–259, 322, 351 Takaku, S., 347–348 Tam, T., 347, 350 Tarrow, S., 96–97, 140, 183, 185–186, 189, 191, 215 Tausch, N., 347, 350 Tavuchis, N., 340–342, 346–347 Taylor, C., 32, 286, 293 Taylor, D. M., 249, 285, 351 Taylor, V., 190 Terry, D. J., 51, 63 ter Val, J., 209 Thijs, J., 73 Thompson, E. P., 161 Thränhardt, D., 137, 316 Tichenor, D. J., 9 Tillie, J., xi, 119, 221, 224, 276, 296–305, 309–311 Toch, H., 137 Togeby, L., 302–305 Toribio, J., 60 Touraine, A., 257 Transue, J. E., 41 Tredoux, C., 83 Trenz, H.-J., 94 Triandafyllidou, A., 72 Tropp, L. R., 81, 83, 350 Trötschel, R., 37–38 Tsoukalas, C., 20 Tucci, I., 315 Turiel, E., 41 Turner, J. C., 37, 71, 137, 162, 215, 257–259, 345, 351 Tutu, D. M., 338–340, 342–344, 346–347, 349, 352–353 Tyler, T. R., 137, 144 Ubillos, S., 268 Ueltzhöffer, J., 323 Uitermark, J., 126
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377
Valencia, J., 74 Van der Graaf, P., 123 van der Toorn, J., 64, 188 Van Deth, J., 296 van de Vijver, F. J. R., 61, 286, 292 van Doorn, M., 345 Van Dyke, N., 184 van Heelsum, A., 297 Van Hoof, A. M. J., 257 Van Hook, J., 320 van Knippenberg, A., 141 Van Lange, P. A. M., 347 Van Londen, M., 298, 305 van Praag, C., 35 van Stekelenburg, J., x, 64, 177–179, 181, 188, 190, 225, 227, 232, 237, 239, 256, 258, 270, 274, 362, 363 van Zomeren, M., 34, 44, 51, 64, 265, 351 Vazquez, O., 60 Vecoli, R. J., 14, 23, 26, 28 Vedder, P., 279 Veenman, J., 332 Veenstra, K., 146–147 Velasco González, K., 35 Veldboer, L., 123 Veremis, T. M., 19 Verkuyten, M., viii, 6, 7, 32–36, 38, 40–44, 48, 56, 72–74, 362, 363, 366 Vermaat, E., 221 Vermeulen, F., 298 Vermeulen, H., 117 Vertigans, S., 242 Verwoerd, W., 352 Vidino, L., 221, 227, 234 Vink, M., 97, 207 Virchow, F., 249 Vliegenthart, R., 189, 223 Vliek, M. L. W., 34, 44, 51, 64 Vogel, D., 130, 132 von Gostomski, C. B., 147 Waddington, D., 160 Wagner, U., 83
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378 Name Index Waldrauch, H., 117 Walker, I., 265, 351 Waller, J., 345 Walzer, M., 41 Ward, C., 73, 282–283, 291 Wasmer, M., 322 Waters, M., 60 Weber, M., 146 Weesie, J., 35 Weil, F., 11 Weiner, B., 347–348 Wenzel, M., 144, 146 Werbner, P., 203 Werner, M., 345 Wetherell, M. S., 71, 144, 345 White, R. W., 240, 247 Whitehead, A. J., 240, 247 Whitely, P., 296 Wiley, S., viii, 6, 7, 49, 58–60, 62, 70, 74, 258–259, 360, 364 Wilke, H., 141 Wilkening, F., 315 Wimmel, A., 94 Witvliet, C., 348
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Wobbe, T., 316 Woellert, F., 141 Wohl, M. J. A., 346–347, 349 Wolff, R., 297 Worbs, S., 323 Worden, S. K., 182 Wright, S. C., 81, 141, 351–352 Wunderlich, T., 316, 323 Yang, P. Q., 320 Yellow Bird, M., 352 Yildiz, A. A., 34, 35, 38, 40–44, 56, 67, 72–73, 88 Young, M., 285 Zaal, M., 43 Zagefka, H., 55, 85 Zebel, S., 34, 44, 51, 64 Zechmeister, J. S., 347 Zein, J., 204 Zell, A. L., 348 Zeskind, L., 242 Zhou, M., 43 Zmuidinas, M., 347 Zolberg, A. R., 321–322
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Subject Index
acculturation, 73, 82, 85–88, 116, 148, 219, 275, 280–290, 292–293 strategies, 148, 283–285, 287–288, 292 adaptation, 29, 35, 73, 276, 279, 281–284, 287–288, 291–292 agency, 51, 143, 165, 172, 173, 221, 227, 228–230, 232, 235, 236, 346, 353 Albanians, 14, 73, 318 Armenians, 81, 82 assimilation, 10, 22, 23, 26, 27, 56, 81, 82, 115, 189, 195, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 207–209, 212, 215, 216, 221, 223, 225, 226, 235, 236, 276, 283–285, 289–293, 316, 320–324, 327, 329, 331–334, 363, 365 Basque identity, 75–79 Belgium, 33, 114, 120–123, 132, 300, 304, 361 bicultural(ism), 1, 6, 42, 49–64, 70, 74, 81, 287, 293 categorization, 6, 37, 51–52, 54, 55, 58–60, 63, 64, 71, 85, 137, 141, 167, 170–171, 195, 241, 258–261, 267, 270, 339, 345, 349–351, 353–354, 366
bindsub.indd 379
citizenship, 2, 3, 19, 23, 40, 41, 55, 72, 117, 125, 131, 146, 147, 149, 168, 178, 186, 187, 189, 195–198, 201, 203, 204, 207–209, 213, 215, 276, 315–322, 324–329, 331, 333–334, 361, 363, 365 civil society, 89, 95, 98, 100–111, 119, 125, 304 claim-making, 33, 35, 37, 39, 44, 45, 62, 69, 71, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 95–108, 110, 145, 148, 151, 188, 189, 199, 214, 216, 226, 232, 259, 346, 360–366 collective action, xii, 37–38, 43, 54, 83, 97, 142–143, 145, 158, 182, 188, 226–229, 232, 259, 351 conflict/conflictual situations, 3, 13, 17, 21, 41, 43, 50, 52–54, 59, 69, 72–73, 75, 83, 85, 114, 117, 120, 122, 124–126, 128, 132, 143–144, 151, 162, 166, 168, 181–182, 184, 186, 188–191, 199–200, 207–208, 228, 235, 241, 251, 256–258, 260, 262, 264–265, 267, 270–272, 277, 280, 287, 310–311, 316, 332, 339–341, 343, 348–350, 352–354 democracy, ix, xi, 1, 33, 40–43, 45, 93–95, 97–98, 103, 109, 111, 122,
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380 Subject Index democracy (cont’d) 126, 130, 150, 153, 171, 186, 189–190, 192, 204, 211, 223, 225, 229–230, 233, 272, 300–301, 312, 339–340, 352–354, 363 Denmark, 177, 178, 195–198, 209–212, 214, 215, 260, 300, 302–304 disempowerment, see empowerment Dutch identity, 34–43, 60–61, 73, 75–78, 84, 93, 120, 125–126, 128, 131, 178–179, 182, 185, 197, 202, 207, 208, 220–228, 230–235, 256–272, 296, 297, 345, 367 empowerment, 93, 105, 111, 123, 143, 171, 232, 343, 348 engagement, 41, 44, 64, 90, 126, 137, 138, 140, 145, 146, 148–153, 197–216, 229, 290, 296, 305, 310, 362, 363 Europe, 5, 6, 9, 11, 32–37, 39, 43–45, 55, 69, 72, 89, 93–111, 114–120, 124, 127, 129–132, 145–147, 177, 178, 182, 186–192, 195–199, 201, 204, 208, 212–216, 222, 241, 256, 263, 276, 280–281, 286, 291–292, 296–297, 300–302, 311, 317, 321, 331, 361, 363, 366 Europeanization, 89, 93, 95–99, 101, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 119, 186–189, 192 extreme right/right-wing groups, 41, 146, 177, 185, 189, 191, 197, 210, 213, 256, 265 forgiveness, 277, 338, 339, 341, 343–350, 353–354, 361 Germany, 33, 40, 55, 95, 96, 99, 114, 116, 118, 120–124, 127, 129, 132, 145–152, 185, 189, 209, 276, 277, 300, 304, 315–321, 323–325, 327, 329, 331, 332 globalization, viii, x, 5, 138, 153, 168, 177, 186–188, 190–192, 199, 206 Greece, 10–29, 73, 74, 81–83, 121
bindsub.indd 380
Greek Americans, 19, 24, 31, 366 history/historical background, viii, xi, xii, 1–3, 5, 9, 10, 13, 16, 25, 29, 33, 50, 53, 58–59, 69, 71, 73, 90–91, 115, 120, 161, 163, 165, 167, 173, 195–198, 201, 204, 206, 208–209, 212, 215, 232, 242–243, 246, 277, 280, 288, 311, 319, 323, 338–344, 349–351, 353, 360–361, 366 Hosftad network, 178, 220–222, 225–236, 264 identification, x, 5, 6–7, 11–13, 23, 25–26, 33–35, 37, 42–44, 51–53, 58–59, 62, 70–86, 90, 93–94, 126, 138, 140–141, 144–146, 148–153, 158, 166, 182, 184, 187–188, 203, 205, 227–228, 234, 256, 258–262, 266–267, 269–271, 276, 310, 317, 319, 350, 351, 362–363, 366 bicultural, 50, 52, 64 dual, 40, 148–153, 277, 362–363 ethnic, 6, 26, 56, 72–73, 75–79, 83, 85, 277 minority, 7, 79–80 national, 6, 56, 70, 72–73, 75–79, 84–85, 277 religious, 6, 13, 42, 76–77, 84, 148, 151 identity collective, 1, 2, 7, 10, 23, 51–54, 64, 83, 89–91, 137–145, 147, 148, 158, 178, 182, 184, 226, 258, 259 cultural, 57, 190, 205, 275, 285 dual, 5, 40, 82, 90, 138, 150, 153 ethnic, 3, 10, 23, 56, 59, 61, 62, 74, 77, 276, 277, 289, 291, 363 European, 187 national, 55, 56, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 89, 289, 362, 364, 365 performance, 33, 36, 37, 49–54, 56–64, 360, 363, 366
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Subject Index politicized collective (PCI), 83, 90, 138, 143, 144, 145, 147, 360, 365 religious, 6, 7, 32–39, 41–45, 75, 203, 360, 362, 366, 367 social, 33, 37, 50, 51, 58, 71 threat, 35, 58, 64, 177, 186, 188, 190, 259, 261–262, 265, 269–270, 272, 309–310, 343–344, 363 ideology, 11–12, 16, 44, 62, 131, 168, 220, 226–227, 235, 239–248, 251–252, 286–287, 292 immigrants, 2, 3, 7, 9–29, 33, 35, 39, 40, 43, 49–64, 73, 83, 96, 100, 102, 104, 127–128, 146, 188–190, 196, 198, 201–202, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211–212, 222, 264, 266, 268, 269, 271, 275–277, 279–281, 285, 287–293, 296, 297, 300–302, 308, 309, 311–312, 315–320, 323, 325, 327 immigration, ix, xi, 9, 13, 18, 29, 33, 49, 52, 55, 63, 95, 97, 100, 102, 104, 131–132, 145–147, 189–190, 195–198, 201, 204–207, 209, 212, 257–258, 263–264, 266, 275, 277, 280–281, 290–292, 315, 361 injustice, xi, xii, 221, 227, 229, 232–233, 235–236, 340, 345, 347, 352, 353 see also justice integration, 1–3, 7, 10, 11, 26, 29, 32, 40, 50, 64, 82, 89, 90, 93–96, 98–100, 105–111, 114–132, 138, 142, 146–153, 186–187, 189, 191, 195, 197, 198, 201–202, 204–205, 207–209, 212–216, 223, 257, 263, 275–277, 280, 281, 285, 297–298, 301, 304, 305, 311–312, 315–316, 322, 323, 359, 360, 362–367 justice, viii, xi, 7, 77–78, 80, 103, 137, 169, 186, 203, 228, 279, 338–342, 344, 348, 352–353 marginalization, 123, 125, 178, 184, 199, 213, 284–285, 289–290, 292
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381
media, ix, xi, 32, 41, 69, 89, 114, 144, 147, 172, 186–187, 189–191, 206, 210, 221, 223, 225, 261, 272, 298, 309 minority, 7, 32, 35, 38, 40, 43, 45, 56, 70–77, 79–85, 90, 115, 143, 146, 148, 150, 170, 188, 197, 199, 202, 205, 206, 208, 210, 213, 215–216, 239, 265, 297–300, 302, 308, 311–312, 315, 316, 322, 324, 333, 334, 361–363, 365, 366 mobilization, 6, 12, 16, 26, 33, 37–39, 44, 45, 63, 94, 96–98, 108, 110, 122, 124, 126, 138, 141–143, 145, 150, 168, 171, 172, 178, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 203, 215, 221, 304, 305 Moroccan identity, 32, 34, 36, 73, 130–131, 178–179, 182, 208–209, 225, 228, 230–231, 234, 256, 261–265, 267–270, 297, 304, 306–308 movement social/collective, 26, 37, 96, 97, 126, 138, 140–145, 147, 152, 172, 178, 182–187, 189–192, 197, 221, 224–227, 230, 234–236, 240, 242, 244–247, 257, 268 multiculturalism, 32–35, 189, 195, 197–198, 202, 223, 225, 280, 284–287, 293 Muslims, 6, 32–45, 55, 62, 73, 75–78, 84, 90, 114, 115, 122, 127–131, 152, 177–178, 182, 185, 188–191, 195–216, 220, 223–236, 256–258, 260–262, 264–265, 268–272, 309–311, 322, 350, 366, 367 neo-Nazi groups, 241, 242, 246, 247, 250 Netherlands, the, 33–35, 38, 40–43, 61, 62, 73–78, 84, 95, 99, 114, 116, 118, 120–124, 132, 177, 178, 189, 195, 196, 198, 206–209, 215–216, 220, 223–236, 256, 260, 263, 291, 298, 300, 304, 311, 332, 367
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382 Subject Index network(s), ix, xi, 3, 11, 14, 16–17, 26–27, 50, 53, 57, 94, 119, 126–127, 178, 183–184, 190, 220–222, 224–232, 240–242, 247–248, 276, 285, 296–301, 305–309, 311–312, 322, 324–325, 327, 329, 365–366 participation, 1–3, 5–7, 19, 20, 32, 33, 44, 45, 69, 74, 82–84, 86, 89–91, 93, 95, 101, 109, 117, 119, 121, 123, 126, 127, 138–146, 148, 149, 158, 159, 166, 171–172, 186, 190, 203, 244, 252, 262–264, 270, 272, 276, 277, 280, 286, 296–306, 308, 309, 311–312, 315, 359, 362, 363, 365 polarization, 128, 177, 179, 181–184, 209, 256, 257, 259, 260, 271–273, 362 police, 160–161, 164–172, 185, 189–190, 202, 205, 212–213, 220, 222, 228, 230, 251, 321 policy, ix, 2, 11–13, 18, 20, 33, 55, 89, 93–99, 103, 107–111, 114–119, 121–129, 132, 145–146, 202, 204, 207–209, 212, 215–216, 223, 228, 233, 269, 272, 275, 276, 279–281, 283, 285, 287, 292–293, 301, 331, 345, 361 politicization, 2, 7, 138, 144–153, 178, 181–184, 220–221, 225–227, 232–233, 235–236, 239, 253, 257, 260, 269, 271, 359, 361–367 power, ix, 5–7, 12–13, 17, 23, 26, 37, 44, 51, 56, 70–72, 74, 78, 80, 83, 85, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103, 105, 110–111, 126–127, 130, 137–138, 141–144, 147, 149–150, 164–168, 170–171, 181–182, 184, 195, 197–198, 201–202, 212, 235, 239, 241–242, 248–249, 271, 310, 341–342, 344, 346, 353, 365 racism, xi, xii, 24 United States, 239–251
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radicalization, 1, 2, 138, 144, 150, 152–153, 167, 177–179, 181–188, 190–192, 204, 208, 220–221, 223, 225–227, 233, 235, 236, 239, 240, 256–260, 264, 267, 268, 270–273, 275–276, 359, 360, 362–365, 367 recognition, 7, 26, 32, 36, 38, 44, 51, 55, 61, 81, 85, 142–144, 146, 198, 204, 212–213, 216, 361 reconciliation, 3, 235, 277, 338–341, 343, 344, 347–354, 360 redistribution, 98, 109, 142 rights, 3, 5, 7, 15, 18, 32–34, 37–42, 71, 74, 81, 83–84, 108, 117–119, 124–126, 140, 161, 166, 168, 170, 177, 184, 201, 203, 204, 207, 211, 213, 224, 264, 280, 315– 316, 318, 320–321, 329, 332, 334, 338–341, 343, 346, 348–349, 352, 353, 360, 363, 365, 366 Salafi movement, 220–222, 224–226, 230, 231, 233, 235–236, 367 Scottish identity, 74, 78 self-categorization, 6, 37, 51–52, 57, 64, 71, 137, 141, 167, 258, 345 separation, 43, 81, 215, 284, 285, 289, 290, 292 social capital, 3, 89, 114, 116, 119, 121, 123, 126, 127, 131, 132, 276, 296–302, 304–306, 308, 309, 311–312 social change, 38, 137, 138, 140–141, 143–144, 178, 184, 191, 352 South Africa, 277, 339, 340, 352, 353 Spanish identity, 56, 58, 60, 75–78, 84, 325 tolerance, 33, 41, 42, 202, 292, 310, 348
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Subject Index Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 277, 338, 349 Turks, Turkish identity, 10, 13, 16, 24, 34, 40–41, 60–61, 73, 130–131, 146–149, 151, 182, 208–209, 297, 302–304, 306–308, 316–334
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welfare state, 89, 114, 116, 118–121, 131–132 youth, 63, 77, 178, 195–199, 202–206, 208–210, 213, 224–225, 228, 230–232, 236, 275, 279
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