Suchergebnisse

Under what conditions does in-group pride facilitate out-group tolerance? What are the causal linkages between intergroup tolerance and socialization in religious rituals? This book examines how Muslims from Russia's North Caucuses returned from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca both more devout as Muslims and more tolerant of out-groups. Drawing on prominent theories of identity and social capital, the authors resolve seeming contradictions between the two literatures by showing the effects of religious rituals that highlight within-group diversity at the same time that they affirm the group's common identity. This theory is then applied to explain why social integration of Muslim immigrants has been more successful in the USA than in Europe and how the largest Hispanic association in the US defied the clash of civilizations theory by promoting immigrants' integration into America's social mainstream. The book offers insights into Islam's role in society and politics and the interrelationships between religious faith, immigration and ethnic identity, and tolerance that will be relevant to both scholars and practitioners.

ObjectiveThe study investigates sources of asymmetry between individual attitudes toward nationalist inclusion and exclusion—focusing on why public support in Russia for deporting all migrants remained about the same from 2005 to 2013, while support for admitting all migrants significantly declined.MethodsData from surveys based on multistage random sampling of the adult population of the Russian Federation in 2005 (N= 579) and 2013 (N= 805) are subjected to multiple (OLS) regression analysis, in which support for deportation and admission of migrants are dependent variables and survey measures (with different specifications) of intergroup threat, competition, bias, contact, and the immigration security dilemma, as well as education and media exposure are the independent variables.ResultsOnly two predictors consistently explained support for both inclusion and exclusion of migrants in Russia in both 2005 and 2013—perceived state strength and economic vulnerability. In every test, support for exclusion nonrandomly related to more predictors in the same model than support for inclusion.ConclusionIn changing political and socioeconomic contexts exclusionist views are more persistent than inclusive views. Both measures need to be used in research on intergroup relations and nationalism. Otherwise, one is more likely to accept false positives while underestimating some significant enduring predictors.

The societal security theory posits that extreme anti-migrant hostility – such as demands to deport all migrants unconditionally – emerges when host communities see migration as a threat to the survival of their group identity. An alternative interpretation – the immigration security dilemma – attributes extreme hostility to the human tendency to prepare for the worst under uncertainty when central authority weakens. Does extreme intergroup hostility relate more to threats framed in terms of group survival or to those framed in terms of uncertainty about government capacity and migration effects? I investigate this question empirically with the Russian national survey data (2005, N = 680) asking who in Russia supports the deportation of all internal and external migrants, legal and illegal, and their children to their places of origin – an extreme and widespread view that would require forced population movements not seen in the region since Stalin's Great Terror. In multivariate tests, agreement with the societal security (survival) rhetoric explained about five percent of variation in support for unconditional, wholesale deportation of migrants; agreement with the security dilemma (uncertainty) rhetoric – about 20%. A comparison of attitudes in the same survey to Armenian, Uzbek, Chechen, and Chinese migrants and the association of each ethnic group with different types of security threat further support this finding. Hostility toward ethnic groups viewed as a weak security threat was more diagnostic of public support for wholesale deportation of migrants than hostility toward groups viewed as a strong security threat.

Alexseev reviews CROSSING NATIONAL BORDERS: Human Migration Issues in Northeast Asia edited by Tsuneo Akaha and Anna Vassilieva.