Relations et conflits interethniques

"Theoretical background and objectives This project aims to shed new light on the causes and consequences of ethnic residential segregation, i.e. ""the degree to which two or more [ethnic] groups live separately from one another in different parts of the urban environment"" (Massey and Denton 1988: 283). While the number of papers dealing with this classic research question is large, the debate whether, to what extent and for whom ethnic residential segregation matters is far from resolved. This project addresses two issues in particular, namely interaction effects between individual and context characteristics, and the question to what extent segregation results from immigrants' deliberate choices to live among co-ethnics, or from such homphily preferences on the side of members of the majority population. Surprisingly, empirical studies investigating the prevalence and causes of immigrants' residential preferences remain scant. Guided by the preference model of residential choices (Charles 2003), we examine under which conditions and how the residential preferences of ethnic minority and majority members reflect a desire for self-segregation and avoidance of other ethnic groups or not. This study is likely to yield critical findings for both theory and applied initiatives, given that investigating the prevalence and the sources of segregation preferences is of key importance for understanding macro-level patterns of ethnic residential segregation. Research design, data and methodology In a first study, we applied multilevel generalised linear regression techniques to individual level survey data from a large metropolitan area (Duisburg) in Germany, supplemented with contextual measures of ethnic residential segregation on the neighbourhood level. We examined whether patterns of segregation were related to rates of interethnic contact, and whether this relationship differed for respondents of different socio-economic status. In a second study, we used factorial survey methodology to address majority members' preferences. One key advantage of this design is that it avoids the notorious problem of collinear contextual variables when investigating neighbourhood settings. In two within-subjects experiments conducted over the internet (total N = 1032), participants evaluated schools or residential areas with different levels of ethnic diversity (i.e. proportions of immigrants). In the vignettes describing schools and areas, we additionally varied factors that are ecologically related to diversity (i.e., neighbourhood socio-economic status and crime in residential areas, and quality of education at schools). At the person level, we measured intergroup contact and prejudice and used these variables to predict the level 1 effect of diversity on preferences for residential or school choice. We estimated a two-level random coefficients model with latent variables to explain preferences. In a third study, we will employ also an experimental factorial survey design, but this time to investigate immigrants' residential preferences. We will use quota samples of different ethnic minority groups living in Germany (e.g. Turks). Respondents will evaluate vignettes describing different residential areas which, in addition to the size of the ethnic in-group, vary systematically along additional dimensions known to affect residential choices such as neighbourhood SES, ethnic infrastructure or crime risk. Findings The first study has been completed, the second is ongoing and the third will be started in early 2011. Controlling for individual characteristics, results from the first study bring new evidence that friendships of immigrants with host society members are less prevalent in residential areas with greater degrees of ethnic segregation. The strength of this negative association, however, proves to be contingent on immigrants' educational attainment: The lower one's educational attainment, the stronger the negative association between ethnic residential segregation and immigrants' interethnic friendships. In other words, residential segregation is in particular detrimental for those sections of immigrant population for whom interethnic contacts are likely to be most important as a source of social capital, namely those of low socio-economic status. Preliminary results of the second study show that diversity had negative effects on evaluations of schools and residential areas, over and above the effects of infrastructure, crime, or quality of education. Furthermore, results indicate that intergroup contact reduced bias against diverse schools or residential areas, mediated by prejudice, but it did not produce a preference for diversity, except for people with prejudice scores as low as the sample minimum."

"Theoretical background and objectives The group threat hypothesis states that the perception by members of the majority group that an outside group threatens their group's prerogative is positively associated with prejudice against the out-group. The population share of the immigrant population is the most-often used indicator to compare group threat across spatial units. However, the application of multilevel techniques for the analysis of spatial data relieson the arbitrary fragmentation of a spatial context into discrete units disconnected from one another at a higher hierarchical level. Moreover, the effects of space are continuous so that people might be affected by the macro-social conditions not only of their area of residence but also of the context beyond these administrative boundaries, such as the surrounding areas. In order to overcome these shortcomings, this project applies spatially weighted regression to the analysis of the electoral success of the NPD, an extreme right-wing political party, during the 2009 German federal election. Findings The results do not support the group threat hypothesis: the immigrant rate remains insignificant in large areas of West Germany while it shows a negative and significant relationship with NPD electoral success in most localities in East Germany as well as in Northern Bavaria. The latter finding fits the contact hypothesis: a higher percentage of immigrants within an electoral district implies larger interethnic contact opportunities and this in turn leads to a lower proportion of votes for the NPD. Methodologically, the findings illustrate the importance of spatial variability and make the case for a broader research agenda dedicated to exploring the mechanisms underlying spatial non-stationarity."

"Theoretical background and objectives This project comprises two studies that use two different data sets to examine the influence of ethnic diversity on interethnic contacts and attitudes towards immigrants by drawing on insights from group threat and inter-group contact theory. The project advances over earlier research by a) opening the black box of the mediating mechanisms via which ethnic diversity – operationalised as the population share of immigrants – affects citizens' immigration policy preferences and interethnic contacts as well as b) testing competing propositions derived from contact and group threat theory at different individual and contextual levels of analysis. In the first study, we examine which role the size of the immigrant population plays in explaining immigrant derogation within and between European regions and consider the following question: does a larger size of immigrant population increase perceived group threat and thereby lead to greater immigrant derogation? Or does it increase intergroup contact and thereby ameliorate immigrant derogation? In the second study we derive competing hypotheses on the role the size of the immigrant population plays for explaining the anti-immigrant attitudes of Dutch citizens. Research design and methodology The first study uses regionalised European Social Survey 2002 and official data, which were analysed by means of multilevel structural equation modelling. The second study uses structural equation modelling with robust standard errors on nationally representative Dutch survey data enriched with official municipality-level statistics. Findings Both studies converge in demonstrating that ethnic diversity exerts dual effects in promoting interethnic contact, but also to produce prejudice. Perceived group threat is associated with immigrant derogation. However, intergroup contact reduces perceived group threat and thereby amends such derogation of immigrants. Between regions, our findings show that a larger size of the immigrant population increases both greater perceived group threat and intergroup contact. At the same time, the effects of perceived group threat and intergroup contact on immigrant derogation resemble those found within regions. In sum, these results lend evidence to the generalisability of both group threat and contact effects."

Armenia first came to know the painful phenomenon of the refugee and IDP population in the course of its recent history, in 1998. It was at the end of this year that people escaping from the Armenian pogroms in the Azeri city of Sumgant arrived in Armenia. Given the deepening interethnic conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh, the refugee problem further intensified, resulting in an inflow that became massive in scope. From 1988-1991, Armenia received a total of more than 360 thousand refugees from Azerbaijan, not only of Armenian nationality but also of minority nationalities who had been living in the territory of Azerbaijan. At the same time, because of the sharp increase in interethnic distrust and tension from 1989-1991, approximately 170 thousand ethnic Azeris who had been living in Armenia were forced to flee the country.

The project NATIVE INQUISITION will investigate the accusations and proceedings against the indigenous peoples and their descendants in Brazil sent to the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Portugal during the eighteenth century. The project NATIVE INQUISITION intends to investigate the accusations, seeking to understand the lived experience of indigenous peoples of distinct Native Brazilian tribes that were incorporated into the Portuguese America colonization. The central objective is to gain an understanding of the social-cultural and religious practices of resistance and adaptation adopted by the natives of Portuguese America, as well as the inclusion of those indigenous peoples in a society marked by cultural hybridism and miscegenation in colonial Brazil. Thus, taking an ethnohistorical approach, NATIVE INQUISITION attempts to interpret the cultural dilemmas in religious and interethnic contact of these populations with the colonizer. This project will provide a description and examine inquisitorial accusations against the indigenous and “mestizos”, producing a cartography of the ethnic groups involved, the reasons and regions. The study report will also developed an inventory of related historical sources with a view to promoting further research on the Native Peoples involved with the Portuguese Inquisition. NATIVE INQUISITION will particularly focus on analysing and building knowledge of the rich and diverse world of indigenous cultures, which constitute the root and essence of Latin America. Drawing on the continuing struggle of these peoples for their rights, autonomy and access to resources this research aims to contend and show that their political, cultural, economic and social expressions are instrumental to understanding the present of Latin America.

The EIRENE project’s purpose is to think afresh 20th-century post-war transitions by taking into account a gendered perspective. Namely, the historiographic consideration of gender thoroughly alters the understanding of social dynamics in multi-ethnic areas during the post-war transitions. They will be observed in the North-Eastern Adriatic region, an overlooked European space, marked by border redefinitions, changes of political systems, and high interethnic conflict intensity, but also by genuine cooperation among ethnic groups. The region has all the qualities of a “laboratory environment” for the study of gender positions and interrelations after World Wars I and II and after the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. The project will differ substantially from previous attempts to analyse post-war transitions in these aspects: a) longitudinal approach, comparing three post-war periods in order to detect their specifics and (dis)continuities; b) transnational approach, by overcoming nation-centric frameworks of analysis; c) by combining conceptual political and social sciences with historiography; and finally, d) by examining post-war transitions through the prism of gender. Focusing on four research-fields (politics, political violence, work, family), the project will validate innovative analytical concepts of the “inclusion-exclusion paradox” of women in post-war transitions, and women as “cross-boundary mediators”. Within the category of gender, focal attention will be given to women as they are often invisible in historical accounts and remain neglected in historicizing. By aggregating empirical sources, the project will approach the proposed subject matter by investigating the processes of identification across the lines of ethnic origin, class, generations, marital status, profession/occupation, language of use, migratory processes, etc. The project’s added value is its novel conceptual applicability to other comparable geopolitical areas.

This project is a study of the regulation of ‘mixture’(‘interracial’ sex, relationships and marriage) in Europe’s past and present. Informed by critical race and critical mixed race studies, it challenges the common assumption that Europe never had ‘anti-miscegenation’ laws comparable to those in the United States. In exploring if, when, how and why forms of regulation aiming to prevent or restrict ‘interracial mixture’ developed in Europe in certain times and places, the project delivers a vital contribution to our knowledge of the development of racial thinking in Europe. The concept of ‘mixture’ provides an eminently suitable approach to the construction of ‘race’, since ‘mixture’ confuses and destabilizes racialized categories that seem fixed and essentialized in specific times and places, such as ‘black/white’. The project consist of a historical and a contemporary part. The historical part looks at the regulation of ‘mixture’ in four European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, in their African colonies, and wartime Europe. The contemporary part explores whether and how, in spite of norms of formal equality and colour-blindness, ‘race’ and ‘monoracial family norms’ still play a part in European law and the lived experiences of ‘interracial’ couples with law in their everyday lives. Through archival research, legal analysis and interviews with modern-day ‘mixed’ couples and families, this approach helps us understand what lawmakers and enforcers believed ‘race’ was, what they believed ‘mixture’ was, how this was translated into legal practices, and how targeted couples responded. Theoretically, the project delivers a groundbreaking contribution to the genealogy of racial thinking in Europe, especially in addressing the understudied role of law and legal scholarship in the social construction of ‘race’ and ‘mixture’ in a increasingly diverse Europe.

One of the current challenges faced by European societies is understanding and managing increased cultural diversity and complex intercultural dynamics. Within this context, mixedness (i.e., mixed couples and individuals across ethnocultural boundaries) constitutes one of the most important tests for revealing the societal structure and intergroup relations. A significant amount of information is now available on immigrant / native mixing. However, we know very little about processes of mixedness involving national ethnic minorities, particularly in the case of the Roma, (Rrom or Romani) population, the most numerous ethnic minority in Spain and Europe. The Roma population has been completely overlooked in all the studies on interculturalism, which contributes to this group’s invisibility within discussions on diversity. This four-year multi-method and participatory project aims to contribute to fill this gap, by studying dynamics of mixedness among the Roma population of Spain. Specifically, we explore attitudes towards inter-ethnic mixing; individual and family negotiations; acculturation processes; multiethnic identity processes; multicultural capital; experiences of discrimination and also strategies of resistance and reappropriation. Particular attention is given to gender, employing an intersectional and dialogical feminism perspective that is also informed by Romani feminism. The project includes a plan of knowledge transfer activities done in collaboration with policy-makers, frontline community workers and civic associations, to increase its social impact and transformative potential. The ultimate goal of the project is to encourage values of interculturalism and to promote diverse and inclusive societies.

Increased international migration had brought the integration of immigrants to the forefront of sociopolitical topics. Although the economic and political aspects of immigrant integration have been scrutinized, little is known about immigrants’ social interactions with the native population. Interethnic marriages have been posited as a factor that undermines racial barriers and, thus, contribute to the integration between immigrants and natives. The scant studies of divorced couples comprised of immigrants and natives found that mixed couples are more likely to divorce that homogeneous couples and explained this gap by individual and mainly cultural factors. Nevertheless, these studies were conducted in single countries and thus, they did not investigate the effect of environmental factors such as national integration models and immigration policies. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing factors affecting the survival of international marriages (i.e., couples in which the spouses come from different countries) in Europe and North America. I will employ the concept of the ‘liability of foreignness’ to build a model in which micro (individual), meso (cultural) and macro (immigration policies) level factors interact to predict the differential rates of international marriage survival across immigrant groups and host countries of the Old and New Worlds. A set of empirical studies will be conducted in selected European and North American countries - such as Spain, Greece, Germany, Sweeden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States - to test this model. The comparison between European and North American countries will allow me to analyze the potential effect of different immigration histories and policies on the integration between newcomers and local people. The selection of countries depends on data availability and differences in immigration policies and integration models in the Old and the New Worlds.