Ethnic Minorities Flashcards
1
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
What is Political Integration?
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
Exclusion and Lack of Integration:
- Political exclusion may involve the exclusion of ethnic minority members from becoming MPs or local councilors or the exclusion of ethnic minority interests and concerns from mainstream party politics.
- A lack of integration may involve a minority being hostile or in active conflict with the state, or where members of a particular minority disproportionately withdraw from any form of political engagement either in conventional politics or in protest politics.
- Political integration might be a consequence of the same kind of exclusion that has already been demonstrated in the labour market, but exclusion is not the only process that might be at work in generating withdrawal or alienation. Orientations towards the home country might lead to lack of interest in British politics and voluntary withdrawal from active participation
Positive Political Integration:
- One version would be engagement in conventional mainstream politics as individual citizens, similar to the white British majority group, turning out to vote in general elections and engaging in the standard repertoire of legal political action.
- Another version would be collective action by the minority, either in the form of pressure-group activity or the formation of separate (minority) parties aiming to advance minority interests. In this case, the minority might engage in British politics but in ways that are different from those practised by the majority group. Moreover, different minorities might well follow different models of political integration.
2
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
Does Social Cohesion/Multiculturalism affect political integration?
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
On the one hand, minorities choosing to remain within separate ethnic communities may have adverse implications for political integration. In the account given by the Cante report, disorder and support for extremism is seen to grow out of social and cultural segregation, with minorities choosing or being encouraged to live separate lives and to maintain values, attitudes, and identities that are at odds with those of the British mainstream. The report emphasised that the formation of separate communities might not be a simple matter of choice but might also reflect exclusionary practices in the housing market and constraints imposed by the wider society and that the importance of grievances over economic deprivation and disadvantage as a powerful ingredient in the sense of alienation among some ethnic communities.
On the other hand segregation could be an (indirect) source of political integration rather than an obstacle.
3
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
Data/Methodology
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
They draw on a major new survey (funded by the ESRC) conducted immediately after the 2010 general election. The aim of the survey was to provide a comprehensive resource covering the social and political attitudes, the electoral behaviour, and political integration, broadly defined, of the major established ethnic minorities in Britain—namely people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, black Caribbean, and black African background.
4
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
Findings - Change in Behavior Over Generations
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- There is a major decline across generations in levels of interest in homeland politics, and a convergence towards British patterns.
- The first generation is highly committed to the duty to vote, even more so than the typical British citizen, although there is some convergence with British norms across generations, albeit from the opposite direction.
- The central finding is of convergence across the generations towards the white British profile, the first generation showing markedly greater satisfaction with democracy and trust in parliamentary institutions than does the second generation. But there is one very important exception to this pattern of convergence, and there is one important group whose voices are even less heard or recognized than usual by elites. Our evidence shows clearly that young second-generation people of black Caribbean or mixed heritage are notably more disaffected from British democracy and institutions than are other minorities or other British citizens, and this disaffection is clearly linked to feelings of exclusion and unfairness in the allocation of rewards. Just as the second-generation black groups are the ones who suffer the largest ethnic penalties in the labour market, so they are the ones who feel most alienated from the political process.
- Democratic norms stronger among 1st gen, knowledge stronger among subsequent generations
5
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
Findings - Participation/Political Integration
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Adult migrants do show quite high levels of interest in the politics of their homeland, while their interest in and knowledge of British politics is rather lower than that of the British majority group. But interest in homeland and British politics are not either/or alternatives. Instead, we find that they often go together, and that membership of ethnic organizations often goes with increased interest in politics generally.
- Britain’s ethnic minorities are just as likely as their white British fellow-citizens to identify with a political party
- Citizenship is not a major barrier in Britain to political incorporation. Registration, however, does prove to be a barrier, with registration rates ten points lower than among the white British. Even in the second generation, rates of registration among those eligible are markedly lower than among the white British. They attribute this to the socio-economic marginalization of some members of minority communities
- among those who are registered, minority rates of turnout (measured by the official registers) were very similar to white British ones, and we find no evidence for the common assumption that black people of Caribbean background are less likely to go to the polls than are other minorities.
- The profile of minority in terms of non-electoral forms of participation (eg organizational activity, petitions, protests and demonstrations, donations to political causes, and participation in boycotts)non-electoral participation looks very similar to that of other British citizens. As with the white British, the most prevalent option is non-participation, but among those who do take part minority and majority profiles are, as far as we can detect, very similar, just as they were in patterns of political interest, political engagement, and electoral turnout.
- we could find no evidence of especially negative consequences of cohesive ethnic communities; rather, we incline to the view that ethnic communities typically play positive roles in fostering engagement in the political process.
6
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Dancygier (2017)
When are Muslims incorporated into European parties?
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- The incorporation of Muslim candidates into European parties is primarily driven by votes. Only when parties—on the Left and the Right—calculate that the net vote gains from inclusion exceed losses, will they incorporate Muslim candidates and voters.
- Once net vote gains are no longer negative, but minority votes are not yet critical, parties engage in symbolic inclusion: They select a small number of minority candidates that please cosmopolitans who value diversity, but that do not necessarily appeal to a large number of minority voters. Symbolic inclusion signals that the party is mindful—but not too mindful—of the minority electorate and of the need to diversify its ranks.
- When the minority grows large enough that it outnumbers its detractors and becomes a pivotal electoral player, parties enter the next phase of minority incorporation and pursue vote-based inclusion: Parties privilege minority candidates who can attract sizable portions of the minority electorate.
- Not only do Europe’s Muslims actively participate in elections, however; embeddedness in traditional ethnoreligious communities actually enhances their chances of becoming central players in subnational party politics. Parties of all stripes operating in different national contexts have recognized the usefulness of these cultural ties and ethnic linkages in the electoral sphere.
- Hard-nosed electoral calculations drive parties towards inclusion or exclusion and determine the salience of ethnoreligious electoral recruitment, no matter the policy regime
7
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Dancygier (2017)
Predicaments of Inclusion
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Muslim inclusion presents the Left with an added challenge: On a range of issues, the socially liberal views of cosmopolitans are incompatible with those of Muslims
- Several predicaments emerge when parties go for vote-based inclusion, and they are most vexing for the Left: First, the types of candidates that maximize minority vote shares and the minority electorates that sustain electoral coalitions do not generally embrace socially liberal values and therefore undermine the Left’s ideological coherence. Second, though vote-based inclusion leads to religious parity, it diminishes gender parity. Third, seduced by the quick and effective delivery of ethnoreligious bloc votes, the Left misses its opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions and thereby contributes to its own defeat.
8
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Pérez (2014)
Argument
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- There is a positive correlation between xenophobic rhetoric and heightened political engagement within ethnic minorities
- Xenophobic rhetoric is “political communication that raises the salience of ethnic identity while devaluing it’s worth”
- Members of ethnic minority groups who are less socially integrated may be more focused politically on issues that are more related to ethnicity but are not less engaged politically than those who are more integrated and acculturated.
- Xenophobic rhetoric in politics can limit the incorporation and integration of immigrant groups into political and cultural mainstream
9
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Pérez (2014)
Data/Methodology
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Pérez tests this claim in the realm of Latino politics in the US. The issue of illegal immigration makes ethnic identity salient for many Latinos, as they have been the focus of immigration discourse in the US, much of it centred on illegal immigrants
- Pérez embeds an experiment in a nationally representative survey of Latino adults that randomly assigned them to a control group or one of two treatments. In the non-xenophobic treatment, a politician simply draws attention to illegal immigration, whereas in the xenophobic treatment, the politician focuses on the same issues and makes negative allegations about illegal immigration
10
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Pérez (2014)
Findings
Political and Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Xenophobic rhetoric induces Latinos to adopt stances that bolster their ingroup
- The political effects of xenophobic rhetoric are stronger among less acculturated Latinos who have a greater distance from the mainstream public. These high-identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and more supportive of policies that assert their identity’s worth by intensifying and reinforcing in-group pride
11
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
How do Minorities differ in the priority they assign to issues?
Policy Preference/Vote Choice of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Minorities share many of the concerns of white British voters, especially on issues like the state of the economy
- Even on the mainstream agenda, minorities on average differ from the majority in the priority that they assign to various issues.
- Minorities assign a greater priority to unemployment, but are less concerned to maintain government spending; are somewhat more concerned to protect the rights of the accused and to help asylum-seekers; and are on average more supportive of the war in Afghanistan.
- There are very substantial differences between minorities on some of the issues, especially on asylum (on which the black African groups tend to be most supportive) and Afghanistan (where Muslim groups tend to be most opposed). These differences between minorities are sometimes much larger than those between the majority and the minority overall, with some minorities being more ‘progressive’ and some much less ‘progressive’ than the majority.
- There is a distinct and dramatic majority/minority difference on the issue of securing equal opportunities for ethnic minorities and redress for racial discrimination. This is an issue that unites all the different minorities, but on which their views are not shared by their white British fellow-citizens, raising the crucial question of whether this central minority concern is excluded from the mainstream political agenda. (Despite the increasing number of ethnic minority candidates, neither the Labour nor Conservative manifestos for the 2010 general election made any explicit new commitments for redressing ethnic inequalities or addressing racial discrimination).
12
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2013)
Difference in Party Support of Ethnic Minorities
Policy Preference/Vote Choice of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Minorities still perceive Labour as being much more supportive of their concerns than the Conservatives, quite possibly because of the legacy of previous Labour legislation.
- Minorities continue to show much higher levels of allegiance to Labour than does the rest of the electorate, while black groups show even higher levels of Labour allegiance than do South Asian groups. These differences cannot be explained by differences in socio-economic status or ideology: minorities’ allegiance to Labour is much higher than that of other disadvantaged groups, while ethnicity trumps class in the sense that middle-class blacks show the same high levels of support for Labour as do working-class blacks. This remarkable level of Labour allegiance can best be explained by enduring collective norms, and sentiments that ‘Labour is the party of ethnic minorities’
13
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Bergh and Bjorklund (2011)
Data/Methodology
Policy Preference/Vote Choice of Ethnic Minorities
A
- The Norwegian Local Election Survey from 2007 and a survey of immigrant voters
- To determine whether differing ideology explains immigrants’ support of left-wing parties they use a survey in which respondents are asked to place themselves on a scale from 1 (left) to 10 (right)
However: Not all issues can be placed on a left-right dimension, and it is subjective what different placements on the scale represent in terms of policy and ideology.
14
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Bergh and Bjorklund (2011)
Findings
Policy Preference/Vote Choice of Ethnic Minorities
A
- There is little evidence to suggest that immigrants’ support for left-wing parties is explained by the composition of immigrant population in terms of social background or the ideological views of the immigrant population
- In Norway the overall difference in support for left-of centre parties between immigrants and natives was 35%; if this could be explained by social background then controlling for social background effects should reduce this difference. However, after controlling for these variables the differences remain
- Data also suggests that differing ideology is not a sufficient explanation for immigrants’ support of left-wing parties
- In Norway, immigrant voters support ballots with immigrant candidates to a greater extent than other voters (86 per cent compared to 75 per cent for all voters). a majority (62 per cent) of immigrant voters, who had the opportunity to do so, voted for a ballot with a candidate of their own ethnic background. These numbers point towards a preference for ethnic voting.
- One factor that does have a significant impact on the immigrant vote is what we have called ‘ethnic voting’. Immigrant voters engage in ethnic voting in the sense that they support candidates who have the same ethnicity as themselves. Most minority candidates are on left-of-centre party ballots, so this contributes to immigrants voting for these parties.
15
Q
Ethnic Minorities
Heath et al (2011)
Argument
Policy Preference/Vote Choice of Ethnic Minorities
A
- Ethnic differences in turnout are much larger than those of class, housing tenure or religion.
- Age, educational qualifications, social class and organisational involvement are not the strong predictors of turnout among minorities that they are among the majority.
- Membership of the petty bourgeoisie is not associated with support for the Conservatives among minorities in the same way that it is among the majority
- Nor is council housing generally associated with stronger Labour support among minorities.
- There was no evidence of a distinctive general Muslim effect either on turnout or on vote choice.
- But generational differences are important among minorities for both outcomes, with first generation immigrants being less likely to vote but more Labour if they do than 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants.
