Abstract
Europe has witnessed a polarization of intergroup attitudes and action tendencies in the context of the refugee crisis of 2015 and the rise of right-wing populism. Participation in both pro-minority collective action and right-wing nationalist movements has increased among members of ethnic majority groups. We analyzed these collective action intentions toward Roma people and Muslim immigrants in Hungary related to concepts of citizenship. In an online survey relying on a probabilistic sample that is demographically similar to the Hungarian population (N = 1069), we tested whether relying on the concept of ethnic citizenship predicted higher intentions to engage in pro-majority collective action, and lower intentions to engage in pro-minority collective action, and whether the connection was mediated by fear and empathy. We expected that the connections would be the opposite for civic citizenship. Our results supported the hypotheses, but we found that the ethnic definition was a stronger predictor of intergroup action intentions toward the immigrant group, and the civic definition a stronger predictor in case of the Roma minority group. In a second study (N = 320) we collected experimental evidence to show that civic and ethnic citizenship affected both types of collective action tendencies. We found that the manipulation had an effect on the concept of citizenship only in the ethnic dimension. Nevertheless, it influenced pro-minority collective action intentions especially in the presence of high empathy and low fear in the expected direction, that is, pro-minority collective action intentions were higher in the civic citizenship condition than in the ethnic citizenship condition. The effect was not found with regard to pro-majority collective action intentions. These findings highlight the potential consequences of nationalist rhetoric on intergroup action intentions and point out both the scope and the limits of influencing its effect.
Highlights
The way in which high status, privileged, ethnic majority members of society act toward minorities has a huge impact on the situation of disadvantaged groups, and on society as a whole
Correlations between variables suggest that in connection with the remaining two items were correlated more strongly (Roma) outgroup the acceptance of the civic definition was associated with higher empathy, lower threat, higher prominority and lower-pro-majority action intentions, while in connection with the immigrant outgroup the rejection of the ethnic definition showed the same pattern of connections
All of our hypotheses were confirmed by the data, that is, the endorsement of an ethnic definition predicted lower pro-minority and higher pro-majority collective action and this connection was mediated by higher fear and lower empathy, TABLE 2 | Indirect effects of civic vs. ethnic identity on collective action intentions mediated by empathy and threat toward immigrants and the Roma in Study 1
Summary
The way in which high status, privileged, ethnic majority members of society act toward minorities has a huge impact on the situation of disadvantaged groups, and on society as a whole. There has been a rise in intolerance (Pew Research, 2016), open hostility and hate crimes (Williamson, 2016; Pew Research, 2017), and protests of nationalist white supremacy groups both in Europe and in the United States (Muis and Immerzeel, 2017) These changes can be explained by the increasing acceptability of these attitudes and behaviors (Crandall et al, 2018). The aim of the current study is to understand how different definitions of the nation can predict and influence intergroup behavioral intentions of majority group members toward minorities, with regard to the Roma ethnic minority group and Muslim immigrants in Hungary We consider this issue important in the current social and political context of Europe where Roma people are treated as second rate citizens, and terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists have almost all been committed by second or third generation immigrants, pointing to substantial problems with the social inclusion of immigrants in the national ingroup
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