United or divided in diversity? The heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity on European and national identities

Dominik Schraff and Ronja Sczepanski
Additional contact information
Dominik Schraff: Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Ronja Sczepanski: Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

European Union Politics, 2022, vol. 23, issue 2, 236-258

Abstract: In this article, we argue that the size and cultural proximity of immigrant populations in people's residential surroundings shape national and European identities. This means that the type of migrant population activates cultural threat perceptions and opportunities for contact to varying degrees. Geocoded survey data from the Netherlands suggests that large non-Western immigrant shares are associated with more exclusive national identities, while mixed contexts with Western and non-Western populations show more inclusive identities. These results suggest that highly diverse areas with mixed immigrant populations hold a potential for more tolerance. In contrast, exclusive national identities become strongly pronounced under the presence of sizeable culturally distant immigrant groups.

Keywords: Ethnic diversity; Euroscepticism; identity; immigration; neighbourhood (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165211063770 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:23:y:2022:i:2:p:236-258

DOI: 10.1177/14651165211063770

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().