Het is belangrijk hoe wij met de verscheidene groepen in ons land willen mee omgaan en onze houding nu zal de gevolgen voor later inhouden. Remediëring kunnen wij vermijden door op voorhand de zaken juist te onderzoeken en zo goed mogelijk trachten aan te pakken.
Oude tekst deel 1
LIVING APART TOGETHER? ON ETHNIC IDENTITY DYNAMICS AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS BETWEEN ALLOCHTHONS AND AUTOCHTHONS
Boris Snauwaert, Norbert Vanbeselaere, Bart Duriez,
Filip Boen, and Dirk Hutsebaut
Introduction
The challenging character of a society is often pushed to extremes when it comes to the
relationship between autochthons and immigrants. A crucial concept to grasp this relation seems to be
ethnicity, which constitutes an increasingly vigorous dimension in everyday life. It is quite clear that the
ethnic identities of both autochthons and immigrants will influence their relation. At the same time, this
relation itself will influence these identities.
In this chapter we will study the ethnic identity dynamics that come into play in the context of
immigrants in a host society. Moreover, we will demonstrate that ethnicity is often strongly interwoven
with religiosity. Roosens has offered a vast amount of empirical research in this domain. We will
briefly present some aspects of his work that are relevant to our topic here. Then, we will present a
social-psychological framework to analyze the topic. The objective of this chapter can be interpreted as
a presentation and comparison of two approaches to ethnicity dynamics: an anthropological and a
social-psychological approach. The social-psychological theorizing offers a conceptual framework that
allows to systematize certain anthropological findings. On the other hand the anthropological insights
constitute a healthy counterweight for the, occasionally, abstract and strict social-psychological
theorizing. We will argue that both approaches are complementary. The integration of both approaches
will eventually lead to more profound insights into the role of ethnic identity dynamics in intergroup
relations.
Roosens on ethnicity The creative character of ethnicity
Throughout his work, Roosens has elaborated on the dynamic and creative character of ethnicity
(1982, 1988, 1989, 1994, 1998). From the start, he has reacted against the concept of ethnic groups as
being merely passive bearers of differing cultures. In this vision the persistent contact between these
ethnic groups would gradually result in the disappearance of cultural differences. As stated above, we
LiberAmicorum E. Roosens 2
are however confronted with a rise in the salience of ethnicity. Roosens finds an explanation for this
tendency in the instrumental function of ethnicity in the contemporary world: ethnicity has become a
strategic tool to pursue economic interests in a more effective way than e.g., class, nation or religion.
Due to the dominant ideology of equality, no government can refuse an ethnic group the right to its own
identity without being branded as racist. ‘If they refuse to favor the less economically advantaged or the
members of a trade union, they are, at best, ‘capitalists’ or ‘conservatives’” (Roosens, 1989). Thereby,
Roosens joins Barth’s (1969) emphasis on the distinction between the ethnic group and the ‘objective’,
perceivable culture. An ethnic group is a type of social organization in which the participants
themselves make use of certain traits from their past, a past which may or may not be historically
verifiable. Roosens distinguishes two constituting features of an ethnic group, and as a consequence of
ethnic identity.
Two aspects of ethnic identity
An important purpose of the process of self-definition by selecting traits out of the totality of the
observable culture, is to create a social border between oneself and similar groups by means of a few
cultural emblems and values and, by this, making oneself distinct from others (Barth, 1969). For the
interpretation of this process Roosens goes back to a more psychological analysis of identity (De Vos,
1975; Epstein, 1978). In this respect the identification with an ethnic category is said to provide the
person with psychological security, a feeling of belonging. Of course, each individual belongs to
several social units at the same time: humankind, a continent, a nation, an ethnic group, a religious
group, a family, and so on. The individual is at least cognitively aware of his membership of different
categories. This is not to say that s/he values them all in the same way: some of these memberships will
be more important for him/her than others and consequently s/he will identify with them more strongly.
One can say that there is a hierarchy of identities for each person, e.g., a man or woman can see
him/herself in the first place as a parent, secondly as a Catholic, Flemish, and so on. This hierarchy has
a dynamic character: it can change in the course of time or one social identity can simply be more
relevant than others in a specific context. Depending on the social identity that is relevant in a particular
situation, one will feel similar to others who belong to the same unit and different from others who are
members of comparable, but different units. In this way, ethnic identity creates an ingroup as well as an
outgroup: it combines the source of differentiation with an internal source of identification.
In his more recent work Roosens (1994, 1998) stresses that the creation of a social border is not the
sole source of an ethnic identity: the role of the reference to one’s origin needs to be considered as well,
moreover it should be considered as the prime source of ethnic identity. The ethnic border creates a
distinction between people, while the origin creates similarity for people within a group. In this respect
Roosens uses the ‘family-origin metaphor’: belonging to an ethnic group is like being rooted in a
Living apart together? 3
family. This sense of continuity with the past logically precedes the ethnic border as a foundation of the
ethnic identity. What a person is in ethnic terms has more to do with this reference to one’s origin than
with ethnic borders. It is exactly this genealogical dimension which differentiates an ethnic group from
other social groups like linguistic or religious groups.
The intergroup context of immigrants
Roosens (1994) states that both sources can be, in turn, more important than the other, depending
on the historical circumstances and situations. At the same time he suggests a primordial position for
the idea of the reference to the origin in the conceptualization of ethnicity. The dialectic relation
between these two sources of ethnicity can be illustrated clearly in the context of an immigrant group in
a host society. Both groups, the immigrants and the natives, can be said to refer to the origin or use the
family-origin metaphor in their relations, each in their own specific way.
Roosens states that in the immigrant group the family metaphor will be more important than the
creation of social borders. Some patterns of immigrant culture which function as ethnic markers and as
elements of an ethnic boundary do so only in a secondary fashion: their primary meaning and function
is to be understood from the perspective of the relationship between immigrants and their homeland or
own immigrant communities (Roosens, 1994). In our opinion, these statements seem to apply mainly to
the first generation immigrants. As far as the second generation is concerned, the boundary dynamics
fully come into play, for the ties with the family in the country of their parents and with its culture have
been diluted considerably (Roosens, 1994).
In this way, Roosens demonstrates the importance of the construction of origins and their
maintenance in the hearts of the allochthons. At the same time he demonstrates that origins are also
considered important by the natives for they determine the status ascribed to various groups of
immigrants. Let us focus on the immigrant situation in Belgium. An interesting observation with respect
to this matter is the dominant restriction of the label ‘migrants’ (which automatically implicates the idea
‘migrant-problems’) to non-European immigrants, more specifically Turks and Moroccans. This
linguistical custom reveals the intergroup attitude of the natives: ‘they’ are different from ‘us’, in this
respect ‘us’ also incorporates the European persons living in Belgium (Italians, Spaniards, etc.). This
can only be understood by the reference to their own origin: as Europeans and Christians they are seen
as ‘totally different’ from ‘the Muslims.’ Reference to one’s origin (both the immigrant’s as their own)
functions in this way as a ground for representing cultural, and especially religious differences as
absolute: social borders are created. In this way the creation of ethnic boundaries can be considered as
emanating rather from the natives than from the (first generation) immigrants.
LiberAmicorum E. Roosens 4
A social-psychological approach: Social identity theory
It is interesting to compare these ideas, as they were developed from an anthropological point of
view, with a social-psychological approach. In the next paragraphs we will outline one of the most
influential (judging from the amount of research it has instigated) social-psychological theories of the
last decades: the social identity theory. We will show that these different lines of thinking, who are
traditionally not bound to cross, can be put in a dialogue which will reveal an interesting picture: they
are compatible and at the same time they form a critical counter-weight for each other. More
specifically, social identity theory gives a clear and systematic analysis of the different psychological
processes involved in the creation and the dynamics of the existence of social groups. This analysis can
be considered as a profound elaboration of the social-psychological foundation of ethnicity, which
Roosens touches upon only briefly. At the same time, social identity theory elaborates on the
implications of group membership for intergroup relations. On the other hand, the anthropological
approach offers important insights and observations to complement the rather abstract theorizing of the
social identity theory.
Hij vervolgt:
Following the theoretical insights developed by
Tajfel (1978, 1981) and by Turner (1981, 1982), Brown (1988) arrived at the following definition: ‘a
group exists when two or more people define themselves as members of it and when its existence is
recognized by at least one other. The ‘other’ in this context is some person or group of people who do
not so define themselves.’ According to this definition, a group becomes a social-psychological reality
when a number of people share the perception that some of them belong to the same social unit while
others do not belong to that unit. Furthermore, these perceptions of differential group membership do
have important and predictable consequences for the attitudes and behavior towards ingroup and
outgroup members. More specifically, the mere fact of belonging to one social group rather than to
another does easily result in ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination. The social identity theory
(Tajfel & Turner, 1979) has been developed in order to explain why people become attached to the
groups they belong to and why these group memberships afflict the relationships with other groups
within the social environment.
The social identity perspective departs from the observation that people do spontaneously perceive
their social environment as consisting of a relatively limited number of mutually exclusive categories
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