Does European citizenship breed xenophobia? European identification as a predictor of intolerance towards immigrants
Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2002 papers
Abstract
Abstract The European Union is generally perceived as endorsing universalistic and multi‐cultural values. However, social identity and self‐categorization theories predict that, when certain conditions are met, a negative relation between ingroup identification and tolerance towards outgroup members should be observed. We argue that the creation of the status of ‘Citizen of the Union’ in Maastricht may contribute to meeting those conditions and therefore to increase intolerance towards resident foreigners. If that is the case, a paradoxical situation could emerge, in which people's levels of tolerance towards foreigners would contradict group values. We examined the relations between values associated with Europe, European and national identification, and tolerance towards foreigners through a survey study with a—non‐representative—sample of undergraduate French‐speaking Belgian students. Results show that Europe was generally associated with humanistic values. But they also reveal that strong European identifiers tended to express more xenophobic attitudes than weak European identifiers, whilst national identification was not related with such attitudes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Related Papers
- → Minimal‐group membership influences children's responses to novel experience with group members(2012)38 cited
- → Who Do We Inform? The Role of Status and Target in Intergroup Whistle-blowing(2009)13 cited
- → The Effect of Ingroup vs. Outgroup Members' Behavior on Charity Preference: A Drift-Diffusion Model Approach(2022)4 cited
- → Contexts and conditions of outgroup influence(2023)1 cited
- → Favored outgroup can eliminate the ingroup reference effect(2021)