United or divided in diversity? The heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity on European and national identities
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211063770 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Author | Dominik Schraff,Ronja Sczepanski |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
United or divided in
diversity? The
heterogeneous effects of
ethnic diversity on
European and national
identities
Dominik Schraff
Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Aalborg,
Denmark
Ronja Sczepanski
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland
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 opportun-
ities for contact to varying degrees. Geocoded survey data from the Netherlands sug-
gests 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 cultur-
ally distant immigrant groups.
Keywords
Ethnic diversity, Euroscepticism, identity, immigration, neighbourhood
Corresponding author:
Dominik Schraff, Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Fibigerstraede 3, 9220 Aalborg,
Denmark.
Email: dosc@dps.aau.dk
Article
European Union Politics
2022, Vol. 23(2) 236–258
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211063770
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Introduction
Rising geographical inequalities in public opinion and voting have attracted a lot of
attention (e.g. Carreras et al., 2019; Chalmers and Dellmuth, 2015; Huijsmans et al.,
2021; Mason, 2016). While the geographical polarization of political behavior has
been documented in various settings, we still lack an understanding of the contextual
factors that can drive geographic divides in preferences. Cultural accounts emphasize
the role of immigration and cultural threat perceptions to explain geographical polariza-
tion in political preferences (Carreras et al., 2019; Dinas and Van Spanje, 2011; Hopkins,
2010; Patana, 2020). The underlying socio-psychological explanations based on social
identity theory diagnose a cultural geographical cleavage emerging along the lines of
local immigration patterns. This paper speaks to this account and questions the
uniform effect local ethnic diversity has on geographical political polarization.
We argue that not only the size,but also the types of immigrant populations in people’s
residential surroundings shape the extent of out-group threatperception. We conceptualize
people’s in- and out-group perceptions via the development and strengthening of an exclu-
sive national identity (ENI), which we define by whether people hold a European identity
next to their national identity (Brewer and Pierce, 2005; Hooghe and Marks, 2009; Roccas
and Brewer, 2002). European citizens’layeredidentities are powerful antecedent causes of
manifold political preferences, such as opinions on immigration or international cooper-
ation (Clarkand Rohrschneider, 2021;Curtis, 2014; Dalton, 2021).We argue that exclusive
national identities are strongly activated under the local presence of large and culturally
distant immigrant groups. Contrarily, highly diverse areas with culturally more proximate
immigrant groups provide a potential for contact that weakens out-group thinking. These
heterogeneous effects of local ethnic diversity on the degree of out-group thinking shape
the activation of more inclusive or exclusive national identities.
We test this argument with geocoded data from a representative survey conducted with
1800 Dutch citizens in 2020. The data capture respondents’national and European iden-
tities on a local level. A protected remote access option allows identifying the specific
area of residence via the Dutch four-digit postcodes. We combine this geocoded
survey data with geographical information about immigrant populations in Dutch post-
code areas, provided in the Dutch neighbourhood and districts (Wijk- en Buurtkaart)
database.
i
The Wijk- en Buurtkaart database offers spatial data on the population structure
of 4000 postcode areas, specifically with respect to immigrant populations. With the com-
bination of these two geocoded datasets, we can investigate how local immigration struc-
tures and identities relate.
Findings from regression models of ENI show strong compositional effects of the
local ethnic context. Highly diverse contexts with many immigrants from Western and
non-Western countries are associated with more inclusive identities. In contrast, the pres-
ence of only non-Western immigrants is associated with strong exclusive national iden-
tities. This means that exclusive national identities are especially pronounced in locations
where there is a high share of non-Western migrants and an absence of Western migrants.
Highly diverse areas with similarly large shares of Western migrants, in contrast, are
associated with more inclusive identities. These findings hold even if we control for
Schraff and Sczepanski 237
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