- Title
- Ethnic diversity, ethnic threat, and social cohesion: (re)-evaluating the role of perceived out-group threat and prejudice in the relationship between community ethnic diversity and intra-community cohesion
- Creator
- Laurence, James; Schmid, Katharina; Hewstone, Miles
- Relation
- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 45, Issue 3, p. 395-418
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1490638
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research frequently demonstrates diverse communities exhibit lower intra-community cohesion. Recent studies suggest there is little evidence perceived ethnic threat plays a role in this relationship. This paper re-examines the roles of ethnic threat and prejudice in the diversity/cohesion relationship. First, we test threat/prejudice as conceptualised in the literature: as mediators of diversity’s effect. Second, we test a reformulation of the roles of threat/prejudice: as moderators of diversity’s effect. Applying multi-level models to cross-sectional and longitudinal data of White British individuals across England and Oldham (a unique English town case-study) we find neighbour-trust lower in diverse communities. However, perceived-threat/prejudice does not mediate this relationship. Instead, we find perceived-threat/prejudice moderate diversity’s impact on neighbour-trust. The result is diversity only reduces neighbour-trust among individuals who already viewed out-groups as threatening. Longitudinal analysis confirms the importance of out-group attitudes in the diversity/neighbour-trust relationship. In diverse communities, residents whose out-group attitudes improve, or worsen, become more, or less, trusting of their neighbours. However, in homogeneous communities, changes in out-group attitudes are not linked to changes in neighbour-trust. We therefore argue and demonstrate that perceived-threat emerges from other societal processes (such as socio-economic precariousness) and it is when individuals who already view out-groups as threatening experience diverse neighbourhoods that local cohesion declines.
- Subject
- ethnic diversity; social cohesion; communities; trust; perceived out-group threat
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1470365
- Identifier
- uon:48447
- Identifier
- ISSN:1369-183X
- Language
- eng
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