E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century - Putnam - 2007 - Article

Preface

In many countries there is an increase in ethnic and social heterogeneity. This creates a certain pressure on the companies that are not used to it, but it also brings new opportunities. This chapter looks at a number of implications of this transition for social capital. Social capital is defined as social networks and the associated standards of reciprocity and reliability. Three points are discussed. Firstly, that ethnic diversity will increase in the coming decades, partly as a result of immigration. Secondly, in the short term, immigration and ethnic diversity will limit social solidarity and social capital. And finally, in the long term, immigration societies will develop new forms of social solidarity and counteract the negative effects of diversity.

The benefits of immigration and ethnic diversity

It is important to realize that immigration and ethnic diversity are not the same. Immigrants do not have to be ethnically different from the indigenous population (think of Dutch immigrants in the United States). Immigration and diversity have different benefits for societies: creativity seems to be increasing due to immigration and diversity, immigration is associated with faster economic growth, immigration can help to cope with financial costs in countries with aging, and immigration often leads to better development in the countries where the immigrants come from by sending back money and spreading knowledge and technology.

Social isolation due to immigration and diversity

There are two conflicting theories about the effects of diversity on social relationships. According to the contact hypothesis, diversity leads to more interethnic tolerance and social solidarity. Diversity would reduce ethnocentric attitudes and increase confidence in the out-group. According to the conflict theory, diversity puts more pressure on the distribution of resources and that would cause more out-group distrust and more in-group solidarity. These two theories have the same assumption in common, in-group trust and out-group trust are negatively correlated. However, this is not correct. Apart from the fact that scientific research does not pay attention to measuring in-group attitudes, in-group trust and out-group trust do not exclude each other.

"Bonding' and 'bridging' and social capital

The above assumption leads to an underestimation of the positive effects of diversity. Social capital can be divided into ' bonding' capital and 'bridgin ' capital. Bonding capital connects people with other people who are equal in a certain way. Bridging capital connects people with other people who differ in a certain way. By assuming that in-group and out-group trust are negatively correlated with each other, the same as saying that bonding and bridging capital are negatively correlated with each other. This is not true, and one does not exclude the other.

The influence of diversity on social capital

Now a number of scientific results are discussed that say something about how diversity (and immigration) influences social capital. We look at the level of the community/neighborhood. The results show that diversity of a community is linked to the average level of social capital in that community. When looking at the degree of confidence, the first results are in accordance with the conflict theory. There appears to be a strong positive relationship between inter-ethnic trust and ethnic homogeneity. However, this result is misleading. Because further research shows that not only does trust in other ethnicity decrease in more heterogeneous neighborhoods, but it also reduces trust for people with their equal ethnicity. Both the conflict theory and the contact hypothesis are not representative of social reality. Diversity seems to cause a separation between members and all other members, regardless of their ethnicity, and thereby stimulate social isolation. This is called the 'constrict' hypothesis.

Scientific confirmations

There are several scientific confirmations that certain aspects of social capital are negatively correlated with ethnic diversity. For example, higher ethnic diversity seems to correlate with less trust in local government and local media, less confidence in their own political influence, lower expectations that people will work together to solve collective problems, lower chance of working in a community project, lower chance of giving donations to charities and having less good friends. So it does not seem that diversity encourages having bad relationships, but rather that people withdraw from the community sooner and have less faith in others, regardless of their ethnicity.

Methodological problems

In the first instance, two methodological problems arise. Firstly, because it looks at the level of the neighborhood and not at the individual and it is not clear whether there is a composition effect or a contextual effect. This can be solved by looking at the level of the individual. Then one can try to predict what the social connection of an individual is of both his own personal characteristics and the personal characteristics of the neighbor.

The second problem lies with the diversity of the neighborhoods themselves. Neighborhoods with high ethnic diversity often have more inhabitants, more crime, less mobility, etc. The individuals who live in these neighborhoods are different in different ways than the individuals who live in less heterogeneous neighborhoods (often poorer, lower educated, speak less often English, etc.). More factors must therefore be checked. Both problems can be solved through a multivariate analysis. Checks are carried out for age, ethnicity, education, poverty, language, residential mobility, citizenship, travel time, home ownership, area in the country, gender, financial satisfaction, working hours, population density, income inequality and crime. Yet it is confirmed that a higher ethnic diversity is associated with less trust in the neighbors.

Other issues

The first problem is a possible selection bias. For this research, however, that would mean that people who are already less confident and less social choose to live in a neighborhood with a high ethnic diversity, and that is considered very unlikely by the authors. A second problem concerns interaction effects (does the relationship between diversity and mistrust differ between men and women, or between rich and poor neighborhoods, or between young and old people?). The relationship seems to vary a bit, but the same pattern remains. A third problem concerns the definition of neighborhood. People's daily experience of what their 'neighborhood' is may differ from how neighborhoods were measured in the study. The research has been repeated and areas that are larger than just the neighborhood have been looked at, and the results are the same. A final limitation that unfortunately could not yet be resolved concerns the fact that it concerns comparative statistics, and the dynamics of the neighborhood could not be taken into account. The effect of diversity on trust in the long term remains to be investigated.

Social identities

People trust other people more easily when the distance between them is less. A smaller social distance leads to higher feelings of a shared identity and shared experiences. When there is a lot of social distance, people often feel that the 'other' belongs to a 'different' category. This social distance is partly dependent on social identities (who am I and who is he?). Social identities are subject to change and, therefore, people's behavior. This relationship needs to be investigated better. Because those you interact with influence your social identity. And your social identity influences who you interact with.

Diversity as a social construction

Diversity can only exist in the presence of socially constructed identities. And the way people are assigned to groups has changed over time. In order to better deal with ethnic diversity, social identities should be reconstructed.