Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Most of the research that finds a negative relation between racial or ethnic diversity and social cohesion is either based on observations of one country or uses just one attitudinal aspect of social cohesion. In this article, we expand earlier research on this relationship by combining attitudinal measurements from the European Social Survey (2002) with OECD data on migration patterns to include 20 European countries. Thus more detailed measurements of both social cohesion (including generalized trust and ethnocentrism) and diversity (including type and rise of diversity over time as well as the legal status of immigrants) are utilized in multilevel models. At the individual level, most of the familiar relations between individual characteristics and trust and ethnocentrism were confirmed. At the country level, on the other hand, and contrary to findings with US census tracts or neighborhoods, hardly any indicators for migration or diversity proved to be significantly related to social cohesion. Our paper contributes to theoretical insights on the development of generalized trust and other civic attitudes and suggests that the pessimistic conclusion about ethnic diversity’s negative effects on social capital might have been drawn too early.