University of Groningen Intergroup structure and identity management among ethnic minority and majority groups

This paper is an examination, in a natural setting, of the interactive effects of perceived stability, legitimacy, and group permeability on group identification, stereotypes, and group feelings among Turkish-Dutch and ethnically Dutch participants. The findings strongly support predictions derived from the social identity perspective. For the Turkish-Dutch, a legitimate interethnic structure meant rather unstable relations and permeable group boundaries. For the Dutch, the same structure implied stability and impermeability. For the Turkish-Dutch, a response pattern of individual mobility was found: if they viewed ethnic intergroup relations as legitimate and stable, permeability was negatively related to Turkish identification as well as to less stereotyping on the dimension defining Turkish identity. It was also related positively to Dutch identification and in-group bias in relation to other ethnic minority groups. For the Dutch participants, higher perceived legitimacy was associated with stronger in-group identification and more positive in-group evaluation. Additionally, in a legitimate context, stability was, for them, related to a lower stereotyping of the Turkish out-group on statusrelevant dimensions and more negative feelings towards ethnic out-groups in general. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Social identity theory (SIT, Tajfel & Turner, 1979) provides a contextual framework for understanding intergroup relations among highand low-status groups. The theory proposes that the operation of cognitive and motivational processes depends on ideological and structural features of the social world (Reicher, 2004; Turner, 1999). The cognitive process of social categorization and the striving for positive distinctiveness that motivate identity management strategies can explain why people show, for example, competitive in-group favoritism but do not explain when people show such favoritism, and how people show social competition (Rubin & Hewstone, 2004). SIT specifies three sociostructural variables that, interactively, would influence people’s responses to status hierarchies. Specifically, beliefs about the stability and legitimacy of the status system and the nature of the group boundaries of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 2, NL-3584 CS Utrecht, . nl s, Ltd. Received 31 August 2005 Accepted 8 July 2006 Ethnic intergroup structure and identity management 107 would affect people’s responses and strategies for group differentiation. Stability refers to the extent to which group positions are considered to be changeable, and legitimacy refers to the extent to which the status structure is accepted as legitimate. Permeability refers to the extent to which individual group members can leave one group and join another. Perceived stability, legitimacy, and permeability would, interactively, determine the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to the intergroup context and the strategies to pursue positive distinctiveness. However, Tajfel (1981) emphasized that these sociostructural variables and processes always manifest themselves within a specific historical, political, and ideological context. The way that people see themselves and others around them cannot be understood without taking the broader social context into consideration (Turner, 1999). The research described in this article examines the interactive associations of the three sociostructural variables with group identification, stereotypes, and ethnic group evaluations among ethnic minority and majority group students living in the Netherlands. In the 1980s, this country adopted a policy of multiculturalism. However, since the beginning of the 21st century much has changed (Entzinger, 2003). Multiculturalism has, increasingly, become highly controversial, and has been defined in public debates as a ‘‘debacle,’’ ‘‘outdated,’’ and ‘‘dead’’ (Scroggins, 2005). In the last 5–6 years, there has been a clear shift away from multiculturalism to assimilation of minority groups (see Joppke, 2004: Verkuyten & Zaremba, 2005). The ideology of multiculturalism that offers ethnic minority groups the possibility of cultural maintenance and obtaining higher social status has been replaced by increased assimilationist thinking which provides intellectual and moral justification for the superiority and unchanging character of the dominant identity and culture (Fredrickson, 1999). The study focuses on high-status majority (ethnically Dutch) and low-status minority group members (Turkish-Dutch). The Turks together with the Moroccans are the least accepted of all ethnic groups in Dutch society (Hagendoorn, 1995) and have on average the worst socio-economic and educational positions. In addition, research has consistently found statistically significant stronger support for multiculturalism among ethnic minorities (predominantly Turkish-Dutch participants) than among the Dutch majority group. The scores for the former group indicate a clear positive attitude towards multiculturalism whereas the latter group members display a more neutral attitude toward multiculturalism and tend to favor assimilation (e.g., Arends-Tóth & Van de Vijver, 2003; Breugelmans & Van de Vijver, 2004; Van Oudenhoven, Prins, & Buunk, 1998; Verkuyten & Brug, 2004; Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2006). Hence, both groups have a different position in the social structure and differ in terms of the favored ethnic group-based ideology. This particular intergroup context allows us to go beyond a ‘‘mechanistic’’ reading of SIT in which perceived sociostructural characteristics are ‘‘simply’’ taken to lead to identity management strategies, independently of the content of group identities and the way that the intergroup situation is understood. A social identity account, however, means that predictions regarding relations among sociostructural characteristics, group identification, stereotypes and group evaluations have to take the particular ideological situation into consideration (Turner & Reynolds, 2001). We examined whether the two ethnic groups differ in how they perceive and understand these sociocultural characteristics. We further examined whether perceived stability, legitimacy, and permeability predict identity management responses of the two groups of participants. There is a lack of research that simultaneously examines the role of these sociocultural characteristics among different groups (see Bettencourt, Dorr, Charlton, & Hume, 2001, for a review). Research has not yet been done to examine the higher order interactions among perceptions of these characteristics and among different status groups. Furthermore, empirical studies have examined the impact of the perceived sociostructural variables on in-group identification (e.g., Ellermers, Van Knippenberg, & Wilke, 1990), stereotypes (e.g., Stott & Drury, 2004), and group evaluations (e.g., Lalonde & Silverman, 1994), but few, if any, have examined these dependent variables simultaneously. In addition, to our knowledge no studies have focused on out-group identification and on the evaluation of multiple out-groups. Therefore, this study examines the Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38, 106–127 (2008)