| 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? 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? This research project tackles these issues by offering two solutions. First, I consider trust and participation as relational concepts, distinguishing between trust in and participation with different (ethnic) groups. Second, I conceptualize and test various environments in which ethnic diversity may have a negative effect: namely the current and former neighbourhood, as well as associational life. By conducting open interviews and mixed method surveys amongst five ethnic groups in the Netherlands, the research project aims to formulate and tests new (complementary and rivaling) theoretical expectations on the ethnicity and diversity effects. Consequently, it carries important theoretical and empirical implications for current debates amongst scholars, policy makers and journalists on the merits and pitfalls of the multicultural society, social inequality between ethnic groups, and social cohesion in modern society. |
