Suchergebnisse

While assimilation theories implicitly assume that immigrants' acceptance as "one of us" derives from their high levels of socioeconomic attainment in destination countries, little is known about the subjective experience of national belonging among the new immigrant elite in Western Europe. In this article, I assemble an analytical framework to study perceived acceptance within the national imagined community among immigrant-origin individuals who have already achieved high socioeconomic attainment at destination. Empirically, I look at subjective experiences of stigma and national belonging through in-depth interviews with forty-two professionals of North and Sub-Saharan African origins in France. How do these high-status individuals experience stigma, and how do they negotiate and claim inclusion as worthy members of the French imagined community? Respondents generally perceive only moderate levels of racial stigma in their daily lives, and I find that upper-middle-class culture empowers them to use cultural elitism to deflect racism as intellectually backward and illegitimate. However, I also find that self-identified Muslim respondents face widespread religious stigmatization that cast them as outsiders to French society. They respond to this stigmatization by distinguishing themselves from "undesirable" Muslims, rather than by denouncing anti-Muslim prejudice per se. These divergent experiences suggest that acceptance within the French nation is shaped by religious difference and remains actively negotiated after the achievement of social mobility. Overall, the paper suggests that cultural repertoires play a key role in enabling immigrant-origin individuals to claim national belonging in everyday life.

The diversity induced by migration flows to Western societies has continued to generate scholarly attention, and a sizable new body of work on immigrant incorporation has been produced in the past ten years. We review recent work in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. Despite differences between the United States as a settler society and Western Europe as a composite of classic nation states, we find an overall pattern of intergenerational assimilation in terms of socioeconomic attainment, social relations, and cultural beliefs. We then qualify this perspective by considering sources of disadvantage for immigrants on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the lack of legal status is particularly problematic; in Europe, by contrast, religious difference is the most prominent social factor complicating assimilation. We proffer several general propositions summarizing mechanisms embedded in purposive action, social networks, cultural difference,and institutional structures that drive the interplay of blending and segregating dynamics in the incorporation of immigrants and their children.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to widespread worries that the health crisis is resulting in generalized hostility towards minorities and reduced support for a diverse society. Relying on a large survey of diversity attitudes in Germany fielded before and during the pandemic, we employ a quasi-experimental design to evaluate whether such a trend has occurred among the general public. Past work suggests two competing expectations–one anticipating a rise in hostility grounded in threat theories, and one anticipating stability grounded in public opinion research and theories of longer-term value change. Empirical results reveal generally high assent to socio-demographic diversity and minority accommodation, and remarkable stability during the pandemic period. Additionally, survey vignettes show strong and equally stable anti-discrimination norms that are inclusive of Asian-origin populations. Overall, results suggest that surges in racist incidents during the pandemic do not reflect analogous surges in hostility within the population at large.

The purported spatial segregation of Muslim populations in Western Europe constitutes a longstanding policy and scholarly concern, yet little spatial data exists for purposes of empirical study. The MAPISLAM dataset is a research effort aimed at bridging this gap for the French empirical context. MAPISLAM is a spatial dataset built from publicly available, online repositories of addresses for places of interest destined to the Muslim communities of France's major cities.

How do people living in contemporary Germany react to diversification in their every-
day life? What undergirds pro-diversity perspectives among those who live in rapidly
diversifying cities? Conversely, what are their limits, and what groups are excluded? The
Diversity Assent (DivA) project was designed to understand the foundations and mechanisms underlying the acceptance of socio-demographic heterogeneity on multiple dimensions in cities located both in West and East Germany. Two core motivations underlie
the project. So far, we insufficiently understand what motivates those who oppose right-
wing positions – usually a majority among inhabitants of cities in Germany and other
Western European countries. Second, this project builds on a previous large-scale project
of the Socio-Cultural Diversity department at MPI-MMG, "Diversity and Contact". In
particular, it explores to what extent attitudes and patterns of interaction have changed, or
remained constant, in the decade from 2010 to 2020, which was a time of major ruptures
and political polarization. We designed a large telephone survey of 2,917 respondents
asking a set of interrelated questions on dispositions towards diversity, everyday experiences and diversification dynamics. This includes a set of survey experiments designed to
tap and measure social norms of tolerance.