Ethnic Hostility among Ethnic Majority and Minority Groups

8. Conclusion | Questions, results and conclusions of Part 1
cohesion (e.g. it fosters contact with neighbours) but deteriorates others (e.g. residents are less
likely to volunteer when mobility rates are higher).
Putnam (2007) reports that, in the United States, ethnic heterogeneity has a negative
impact on all forms of social cohesion. I come to a radically different conclusion for the
Netherlands; the impact of ethnic diversity depends on the specifi c indicator of social cohesion
under investigation. Social cohesion cannot be reduced to one single indicator, let alone simply
aggregating different indicators. Contrary to previous fi ndings in the US, for the Netherlands I did
not fi nd a consistent negative effect of ethnic heterogeneity on indicators of social cohesion.,
neither among the native Dutch nor among ethnic minority groups.
Just as Chapter 3, Chapter 4 applies a multi-ethnic group perspective. This time I
investigated to what extent ethnic groups differ in ethnic hostility towards one another and
in other indicators of social cohesion. I also explored to what extent ethnic diversity within
the locality affected indicators of social cohesion differently across ethnic groups. I tentatively
conclude that, in general, non-Western ethnic minority groups have more contact with their
neighbours than native Dutch, less opposition to neighbours from a different race, lower levels of
generalised trust, and volunteer less. Ethnic diversity within the locality did not affect indicators
of social cohesion differently for native Dutch than for ethnic minority groups.
Conclusion of Chapter 4
The local living environment not only affects ethnic hostility, as already shown in Chapter 3, but
other indicators of social cohesion too. It is however not ethnic or economic diversity which is
consistently related negatively to indicators of social cohesion, as could be expected on the basis
of the homophily principle, but economic deprivation within neighbourhoods. Within economically
deprived neighbourhoods, neighbours have less contact with each other, volunteer less and have
lower levels of trust.
Different indicators of social cohesion are affected differently by both individual-level
characteristics and contextual characteristics. This is in contrast with the results of Chapter 3,
where I found that explanatory models for different indicators of ethnic hostility are more or less
similar. We should go back to the drawing board to design a theoretical framework that explains the
differential impact of locality characteristics on different indicators of social cohesion. Admittedly,
in Chapter 4 I ‘only’ investigated a limited selection of indicators of social cohesion, but note that
this is an improvement over many previous works in which only one indicator is being investigated
or different indicators are simply aggregated. This said, other indicators of social cohesion should
be investigated as well in order to discover – or more ideally, to test theoretically deduced
– patterns in explanatory models for indicators of social cohesion. Since social cohesion refers to
ties between individuals, a step forward would be to theorise on how the local living environment
affects (ego-centered) networks. As long as the diversity within one’s living environment remains
below a certain threshold, this diversity may not be refl ected in the diversity of one’s own network
and therefore not lead to a reduction in indicators of social cohesion that refer to associate life
with members of the ethnic ingroup. Unfortunately, with the data used in Chapter 4, I was unable
to investigate these ‘who-with-whom’-like questions.
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