Ethnic diversity and extremist attitudes in soccer teams: A multi-level investigation

Ann-Cathrin Coenen,Jonas R Kunst

doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2020.07.003

Abstract

It has been argued that sports contexts may be suitable venues for reducing intercultural hostility, including its more extreme forms, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. The present study investigated the main and interactive influence of two sets of factors on support for violent extremism: (a) ethnic diversity of teams, that is, the heterogeneity of the team members’ ethnic origins, and (b) team members’ intercultural perceptions, including perceived social capital, contact experiences and diversity ideologies within the team. Individual-level data from 257 players nested within 36 German soccer teams were combined with assessments of the ethnic diversity of each team based on a genealogical database. Multi-level analyses were conducted. Some evidence suggested that higher ethnic diversity within a team and frequent inter-ethnic contact between its players were associated with more extremism. However, cross-level moderation analyses showed that ethnic diversity was associated with less support for violent extremist groups when inter-ethnic contact quality was high. Perceptions of colorblind team ideologies that focus on minimizing/ignoring differences between groups were associated with lower threat perceptions and extremism. While social capital generally played little of a role, one social capital indicator, norms of behavior, was unexpectedly associated with higher threat perceptions. Overall, the present findings suggest that increasing ethnic diversity in sports teams may in itself not reduce extremist attitudes and sometimes may even backfire. Rather, how intercultural relations are managed within these contexts seems decisive. Prioritizing venues for positive contact experiences between soccer players of different backgrounds seems essential.

Highlights

Since the beginning of the refugee “crisis” in 2015, Germany, similar to other countries, has experienced a new increase in right-wing and Islamist extremism (Koehler, 2018)
Based on the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner, Mann, Murrell, & Dovidio, 1989), Dovidio et al (2016) proposed that color-blindness may result in lower inequality perceptions and subsequently more positive intergroup attitudes among minority members. Based on these mixed findings and predictions, we investigated how perceptions of color-blindness and multiculturalism in soccer teams would relate to extremism support and threat perceptions, and whether these effects would be moderated by whether players belong to ethnic majority or minority groups
In terms of individual-level interactions, we examined whether the associations of interethnic contact within a team with support for extremism would be moderated by the quality of this contact, and whether the associations of perceived multiculturalism and color-blindness with support for violent extremism would differ depending on whether players belonged to the ethnic majority or minority group (Figure 1 )

Summary

Introduction

Since the beginning of the refugee “crisis” in 2015, Germany, similar to other countries, has experienced a new increase in right-wing and Islamist extremism (Koehler, 2018). The number of Islamist extremists grew to 24,400, many of whom are willing to resort to violence (BfV, 2017). Both right-wing and Islamist extremists tend to be predominantly male and in their late teens or early adulthood (Bakker, 2006; BKA et al, 2016; Kailitz, 2013). J.R. Kunst / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 80 (2021) 285–306 extreme right-wing attacks (Götschenberg, 2018) and 79 % of the Islamist extremists who traveled to Syria (BKA et al, 2016)

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