Differential Associational Involvement of Successive Ethnic Immigrations: An Indicator of Ethno-Religious Factionalism and Alienation of Immigrants

Abstract

In response to loss of prestige and awareness of limited opportunities for regaining higher social positions and prominence, status-discrepant immigrants are likely to engage intensively in voluntary association activities of a distinct status-group character. The negative status discrepancy resulting from pressure of forces outside the control of status-discrepant immigrants will most probably lead to political conservativism. While membership in status groups provides status-discrepant immigrants with identification and shields them from psychic reaction to the loss of prestige, it also represents alienation from their ethnic group as well as from the larger society. This report presents partial findings of a survey concerning factionalism in the Serbian ethnic group, which recently experienced a schism in its church which serves as the primary source of Serbian historical identification. The schism occurred over the question of whether the supreme body of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Yugoslavia had the right to suspend and to divest Bishop Dionysius and to divide the single Serbian Orthodox diocese in the United States and Canada into three dioceses. The supporters of the bishop insisted that the Mother Church functions under the pressure of the Yugoslav communist regime. The bishop argued in one of his Epistles (Dionysius, 1963) that the formation of three new dioceses demanded and desired by Tito's regime, which hinders the work of this diocese, and which desires to subjugate also this part of the free Serbs through bishops loyal to it. After the bishop's repudiation of the Mother Church, the Serbian religioethnic community began splitting into two hostile factions, with the majority of members in 20 out of 59 parishes in the United States declaring loyalty to Bishop Dionysius. For reasons of alleged conspiracy of the Yugoslav Communists against America, the schism came to the attention of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (Congressional Record, Senate, 1963:24114-24115). The factional cleavage among Serbs in America occurred along certain lines of internal group differential. On the local level, the schism deeply affected the interpersonal relationships among American Serbs and broke many friendships. This study is based on the proposition that predominantly immigrant ethnic groups cannot be treated as undifferentiated social entities (Lewin, 1948:194). The differential behavior of various segments of an immigrant group may reflect their sociocultural and political differences including their differential motives for emigration. Therefore, any study of predominantly immigrant ethnic groups (Anastasi and Foley, 1956:704-705) should take into consideration background factors which have affected the immigrant's self-perception, expectations, aspirations, and the direction of his emotional reactions to his social position. The ethnic group is a social system through which its members satisfy many of their social needs and express frustration resulting from unsatisfied expectations and aspirations in the larger society. An immigrant must make two kinds of adjustment: (1) to his own ethnic group, and (2) to the larger society. An immi* This manuscript was presented at the annual meeting of the Ohio Valley Sociological SocietyRace and Ethnic Relations and the Minority Community Section-at Cleveland, April 1971.