Unity in diversity: analyses of the effects of ethnicity and ethnic diversity on social capital

Programmegroup Challenges to Democratic Representation

In this NWO funded Veni project, researchers conduct open interviews and mixed method surveys amongst five ethnic groups in the Netherlands, and aim to formulate and test new (complementary and rivaling) theoretical expectations on the ethnicity and diversity effects.

NWO funded VENI project.

Period: 01/2011-01/2014

In recent years multiculturalism has become the focal point of intense societal, scholarly and political debates. The merits of the multicultural society, in which ethnic groups live amongst each other in shared environments, are increasingly contested: Multiculturalism would undermine social cohesion. But which claims in these debates can be empirically substantiated, and which are no more than popular myths?

Two puzzles 

This research project focuses on two puzzles. First, scholars have put forward the claim that living in an ethnically diverse environment would cause citizens to trust each other less and have less contact with each other. However, despite extensive theoretical attention, empirical support for this claim remains rather inconclusive. The second puzzle revolves around a reverse problem. Empirical studies consistently show that ethnic minorities have less trust and participate less than the native majority group. However, these strong ethnicity effects lack theoretical explanation. Why do we not find the theoretically expected contextual effect of ethnic diversity? And why do ethnic minorities show lower levels of trust and participation than ethnic majorities?

Two solutions 

This research project offers two solutions. First, it considers trust and participation as relational concepts, distinguishing between trust in and participation with different (ethnic) groups. Second, it conceptualizes and tests various environments in which ethnic diversity may have a negative effect: namely the current and former neighbourhood, as well as associational life. 

Published by  AISSR

26 June 2013