Page 174 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 8: Race and Ethnicity

majorities. Results show that for both ethnic and national identification, the difference was Notes
significant.
Mediation
Finally, if there is an overlap in ethnic and national identifications for majorities, we would expect
ethnic identification to support national identification. In order to test the final prediction that
ethnic identification mediates the impact of national identification on xenophobia for majorities,
but not for minorities, two mediation analyses were performed, with xenophobia as the dependent
variable, national identification as the independent variable, and ethnic identification as the
mediating variable.
Discussion

Overall, the findings of this study demonstrate that asymmetry between ethno-national subgroups
within national categories plays an important role in shaping in group identification and outgroup
attitudes. In line with predictions, we have first shown that ethnic majorities tended to identify
more strongly with the nation than ethnic minorities, although a number of exceptions to this
trend were also observed. The pattern concerning ethnic identification was more variable. In
Canada and the U.S., minorities were more attached to their respective ethnic groups than majorities.
In the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Russia and West Germany, however, the inverse pattern was
observed : ethnic majorities were more identified with their respective groups than minorities. In
addition, it is worth noting that majorities of small countries (e.g., Bulgaria, Czech Republic,
Slovenia) tended to express a stronger sense of ethnic identity than majority citizens of large
countries made up by a variety of ethnic subgroups (U.S., Canada, Russia).
Subgroup asymmetry was also evidenced in the analysis of the relationship between ethnic and
national identification. As expected, we found that for all but one majority group (in Canada), this
relationship was significantly positive, whereas it was negative for U.S. and Canadian minorities,
unrelated for German, Czech and Slovak minorities, and positive for Bulgarian and Russian
minorities. In five out of seven national contexts, the prediction of a significant difference of the
ethnic-national relationship between minorities and majorities was confirmed.
The two native groups, the American Indians and the Maoris, expressed similar patterns of
identification as the respective majority groups. They can therefore clearly be distinguished from
other ethnic minority groups. Although it is difficult to know the exact reasons for this discrepancy
between native and other minority groups, one important possibility seems to be that native
groups feel a strong attachment to their ancestral homeland which they see as “theirs”. Hence,
much like majorities, native groups are likely to link their identities to territories, and lay claim to
ownership of the nation (Brubaker, 1996). Contrary to majorities, however, a native sense of
ownership is mostly symbolic, since natives have only limited or no control over national institutions
(see Herrera, 2004, for another comparison between natives and minority and majority group in
the Canadian context).
Further results indicated that overall majority groups were more xenophobic than minority groups,
although this difference was significant in only 6 out of 11 national contexts. Yet, minorities were
never more hostile against immigrants than majorities. Controlling for the effects of national
membership, both ethnic and national identification predicted xenophobic attitudes for majorities
only. For minorities, the reverse pattern was found, albeit with less powerful effects : the more
minority members identify with their ethnic group or their nation, the more positive their attitudes
towards immigrants.
We also found that ethnic identification was a stronger predictor of xenophobia for majorities.
This finding suggests that ethnic subgroup identification was more relevant than national
identification in the prediction of negative intergroup attitudes. The results of the mediation

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