Open political dialogue is regarded as foundational to democratic health and our social fabric. Here, we study political dialogue by examining with whom we prefer to talk about politics and why. In so doing, we develop and test hypotheses about what random encounters (e.g., meeting similar versus dissimilar others, meeting friends or colleagues) foster political dialogue, pose and test conjectures about what features of extended networks facilitate political debate, and present a new unique factorial survey experiment to answer our questions. We incorporated this factorial survey experiment within the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study 2022 (NELLS) and presented to a large sample of Dutch citizens – including Dutch ethnic majority members as well as minoritized Dutch with a Turkish or Moroccan heritage – a choice to engage in political talk or not. Hierarchical linear models reveal that relationship strength, rather than identity similarity (e.g., gender, ethnic), is the primary driver of opting for political dialogue. However, in encounters lacking prior relationship history, gender similarity increases the willingness to engage, and similar political views do relate to engaging in substantive debate modeled dichotomously. Ethnic diversity within extended networks fosters political discussion, while network size has a nonlinear association – medium-sized networks are more conducive to dialogue than very small or very large ones. These findings contribute to debates on political polarization by highlighting the relational conditions that encourage political exchange. • Political conversations are key to democratic health and our social fabric. • We hypothesize that dyadic similarity, tie strength, network size, and network diversity facilitate political conversation. • We study political conversations through a unique survey experiment. • Political conversations are more likely among strong ties, medium-sized extended networks, and with more ethnic diversity. • These findings have implications for our understanding of choice homophily, extended network structure, and polarization.

Intergroup, Intragroup, and Changing Best Friendships: Implications for Prejudice and Attitudes Toward Integration in Ethnic Majority and Minority Adolescents.

ABSTRACT Creating cultural change within large organisations is a complex process that involves action across all levels of the institution. In the context of incomplete and uneven processes of marketisation, ‘top-down’ managerial approaches pose further challenges for organisational change in the UK Higher Education sector. Drawing on a study exploring the implementation of ‘good practice’ recommendations for addressing BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) or GEM (Global Ethnic Majority) awarding and continuation gaps at a post-1992 institution in England, we suggest that individual and peer-driven initiatives might be more effective at driving change within HE, rather than external ‘top-down’ approaches that risk demotivating staff. Through our discussion of what drives equality work in universities, we highlight the power of harnessing the autonomy, innovation and commitment of HE staff and aligning equality work with their own existing personal values and identities.

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigates how ethnically diverse youth in Southwest China negotiate digital cultural citizenship through the co-creation of multimodal artefacts focused on ethnocultural maintenance. Drawing on a semester-long cultural project in a university English course, the research employs a unified framework of belonging, capabilities, and being to analyze 21 EFL learners’ collaborative production of TikTok-mediated digital stories. Findings reveal two distinct pathways: for ethnic minority students, co-creation enabled the reclamation and maintenance of cultural heritage, fostering empowerment and agency; for ethnic majority (Han) students, the process cultivated intercultural responsibility and ethical engagement. The study demonstrates that collaborative co-creation transforms digital cultural citizenship from an individual act into a shared, dialogic practice, building a more inclusive cultural sphere. This work contributes a cyclical model of digital cultural citizenship, illustrating how pedagogies centered on multimodal co-creation can effectively support ethnocultural maintenance and meaningful language learning in diverse societies.

Abstract This article develops the concept of meritocratic nationalism to unpack the online backlash surrounding the rise to fame of a Tibetan cyberstar, Tenzing Tsondu (Ding Zhen), on Chinese social media. Meritocratic nationalism not only embeds ideals of individual achievement, education attainment, and productivity within narratives of national identity and regime legitimacy, but also sustains structural inequalities through racialized and gendered assumptions about who is capable of merit and whose success is ‘deserved’. First, critics frame state media’s endorsement of the internet celebrity as a betrayal to the meritocratic ideal the state is supposed to safeguard. However, this does not lead to a critique of meritocratic legitimacy itself but rather its reaffirmation. Secondly, the reproduction of a Han-centric and masculine-coded ideal of merit is integral to the construction of majority male victimhood, which denies and normalizes structural violence. Thirdly, we note the multifaceted representation of the international in the backlash, where users deploy the figure of ‘white American men’ as fellow victims of ‘political correctness’ to animate a racialized imagination of shared majoritarian grievance. The article contributes to nationalism studies and broader debates on meritocracy, racism, and the grievance politics of ethnic majority men.

Political science has no shortage of theories to explain ethnic majority support for radical right parties. This article enriches political psychology literature on the radical right by combining two prominent approaches – relative deprivation and social dominance theories. Evidence using data from a representative survey in the United Kingdom shows for the first time that feelings of group relative deprivation for White Britons are associated with an increase in social dominance orientation. Afterwards, as suggested by the established literature, social dominance orientation influences anti-immigrant prejudice, which then increases radical right support. This article contributes to the literature on political psychology and the radical right. It indicates that relative deprivation and social dominance theories can be used together rather than separately to explain why people support radical right parties.

Adolescence is a crucial period for political socialization in which attitudes toward politics and political engagement develop. Yet, research examining how youth envision their future political engagement in early adolescence is limited. Against the backdrop of persistent societal inequalities and discrimination across Europe, this study examined how ethnic minority and majority youth in Germany envisioned their future political engagement, and to what extent envisioned action or inaction coincided with perceptions of discrimination and unfairness. The sample consisted of 3033 youth (in the 7th grade, Mage = 12.59, SDage = 0.67, 52% girls, 48% boys), 16.8% of which were classified as “ethnic minority” youth based on themselves or both of their parents not having been born in Germany. Using a person-centered approach (Latent Class Analysis), four latent classes of youth with qualitatively different patterns of envisioned political participation were identified: “voters” (47%), “unengaged” (26%), “engaged” (20%), and “undecided” (7%). In line with expectations, subsequent multinominal logical regression analysis showed that perceptions of systematic and/or group-based discrimination and unfairness robustly predicted membership in the engaged class over other classes, suggesting that such perceptions can promote envisioned political engagement among youth. While descriptive findings suggested that ethnic minority youth were more often unengaged and less often engaged than ethnic majority peers, multinominal logistic regression results showed that these differences were largely explained by other socio-economic factors.

Intergroup contact plays a central role in fostering positive intergroup attitudes; yet, factors promoting intergroup contact are less understood. Using three waves of data from a nationally representative UK household panel study (N = 18,807), we applied longitudinal multilevel models to examine how individual‐ and objective neighbourhood‐level indicators jointly predict cross‐ethnic friendships. At the individual level, higher openness and agreeableness, stronger neighbourhood belonging and a left‐leaning political orientation were associated with more cross‐ethnic friendships. At the contextual level, intergroup friendships were more common in neighbourhoods with more structural opportunity for contact (i.e., areas with a lower proportion of same‐ethnic residents), and in areas with lower anti‐immigration norms (as indicated by local Brexit ‘Leave’ vote share). Crucially, cross‐level interactions highlighted the interplay of person and place: neighbourhood diversity fostered more cross‐ethnic friendships, especially among those with strong neighbourhood belonging, suggesting that people who feel embedded in their community are more likely to translate diverse surroundings into meaningful intergroup ties. Differences between the ethnic majority and minority groups also emerged. For example, higher objective area‐level racial hate crime incidence predicted more intergroup friendships among majority members, suggesting a possible repair response, but showed no association for minority members. Findings underscore the multilevel and group‐specific pathways to sustained intergroup friendships.

Lifestyle modification interventions among women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) history have shown to be effective on preventing or delaying the onset of diabetes, however, the differentiating benefits of lifestyle interventions due to socioeconomic inequalities have remained understudied. The Intensive LifeStyle Modification Program (ILSM) was tailored for women with a history of GDM in low-resource rural areas of China. The current study aimed to examine the effect of the ILSM intervention on physiological and behavioral outcomes between subgroups of women from different socioeconomic backgrounds. This study used the baseline, 3-month, 6-month, and 18-month data from a cluster randomized controlled trial in rural women with GDM history in Hunan Province of China. The lifestyle program consisted of a combination of in-person group sessions and telephone consultation sessions on dietary intake, physical activity, and stress management. Using generalized estimating equation, we conducted several subgroup analyses based on indicators of socioeconomic status, including age, ethnicity, income, employment, and education. A total of 320 women were analyzed. The ILSM intervention showed a consistent significance on reducing fasting blood glucose across subgroups. On the contrary, women with full-time employment and high income (≥3000RMB, approximately 425 dollars, per month) were reported to have greater benefits on intentions to eat low-glycemic foods, BMI and waist circumference, and diabetes risk. Women with younger age (≤35 years) or high education (15 years of education or above) were more likely to benefit on improving higher intentions to eat low-glycemic foods and lowering diabetes risk. Interestingly, compared to ethnic majority, ethnic minority women were more likely to increase intentions to eat low-glycemic foods. The ILSM program demonstrated a consistent significance on reducing fasting blood glucose across women from different socioeconomic backgrounds along with an increase of intentions to eat low-glycemic foods for ethnic minority women, despite of showing ineffective in lower socioeconomic status women on intention to have healthy diet, BMI, waist circumference, and diabetes risk. To fully address health disparities from socioeconomic inequalities, lifestyle interventions should be tailored for individuals with older age, lower education levels, and lower income without full-time employment. Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2000037956), registered on 3rd Jan 2018.

In contemporary higher education, teachers and administrators must make choices about how best to allocate resources for maximum benefit. In many STEM fields, this has led to closer scrutiny of many costly offerings, such as laboratory and field experiences. In response, several investigators have highlighted the many educational benefits these high-impact practices provide, while also shedding light on concerns related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Field courses are especially notable for disproportionately engaging students from high socioeconomic backgrounds, racial and ethnic majorities, and-in some disciplines-men. To address inequities in STEM, field courses should therefore be investigated to better understand students who are underrepresented in the disciplines-whether based on their nationality, language proficiency, socioeconomic background, race or ethnicity, their gender identity or sexuality, etc. Here we report on findings from a series of interviews in which students in an international, graduate-level field course discussed which of their identities, either visible or hidden, were most salient in the field-course context. Respondents reflected on how these identities served as either promoters or barriers to engagement in the course, and shared course interactions that intersected with these identities in either positive or negative ways. Our analysis of these interviews allowed us to identify several key themes, among them the idea that the interviews themselves are a type of pedagogical intervention that instructors could adopt to promote inclusion. By identifying how student identities interact with course practices to impact engagement, we can begin to outline best pedagogical practices for field courses. Thus, we can ensure investments in these experiences benefit all students and help to make STEM diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

With the collapse of the post-Cold War bipolar world order, religious institutions regained their public role in the socialist and people’s republic states of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Religion not only regained its social influence, but also once again became a decisive factor in shaping national identity. During the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, religion did not merely attempt to fill the ideological void left by the crisis of the socialist value system; it also actively contributed to the reconfiguration of national values, culture, identity and political discourse. This study examines the religious factors that contributed to the sacralisation of national identity; the consolidation of the ‘Us’, ‘Them’, and ‘Us versus Them’ narratives; and the justification of wartime violence during the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). In this context, ‘Us’ refers to the dominant religious/ethnic community of a given member republic, while ‘Them’ denotes the ethnic majority and their confessional affiliations living in other member republics. This mainly refers to the three largest religious/ethnic communities, Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims. The ‘Us versus Them’ confrontation escalated tensions and ultimately played a central role in the disintegration of the SFR of Yugoslavia. The study concludes that religion played a dual role: on the one hand, it supported the preservation of community identity and social cohesion; on the other hand, it fostered exclusion, the ethnicisation of loyalty, the political instrumentalisation of religion, and the legitimisation of war discourses on the other.

Are there similarities or differences in economic status between two ethnic groups in coastal India that live near one another and are exposed to environmental stressors? The study investigates this primary question in the context of two ethnic groups – one Scheduled Tribe group that is a minority and one non-tribe group that is a majority – in the Sundarbans of West Bengal in the eastern part of India. We study the economic status of the two groups by collecting and analysing survey data on household income and expenditure patterns as well as different types of asset ownership. Our findings highlight that the non-tribe majority group is economically better positioned as compared to the Scheduled Tribe minority group. We demonstrate that the two groups have differential access to resources and support structures, which in turn amplifies economic vulnerabilities, especially in the context of climate change and extreme weather events. This creates a cyclical pattern of economic grievance that is especially burdensome among members of the minority Scheduled Tribe community relative to the non-tribe group. We provide insights into these findings and discuss their implications in the context of challenges associated with climate change.

Discrimination leads equally productive workers to receive unequal treatment in the labor market. Our study examines gender and ethnicity-based employment discrimination in Ethiopia. We conducted a field experiment using résumés drawn from a pool of real job applicants balanced by gender and ethnicity, which were randomly assigned to evaluators for hiring decisions. The results reveal that women and ethnic minority candidates have lower employment opportunities compared to men and the ethnic majority candidates. Gender and ethnicity have additive effects on employment outcomes, rather than interacting to generate a compounding disadvantage. The findings provide valuable insights for policies aimed at closing gender and ethnic hiring gaps. In particular, our study emphasizes the importance of robust anti-discrimination policies in effectively addressing these inequalities.

ABSTRACT Using the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in Norway, linking survey data from upper-secondary school to register data on educational outcomes in early adulthood, we explore how religious affiliation, religious salience, and religious practices are associated with various integration outcomes for immigrant-origin youth. We find that religiosity – particularly among Muslims – has a dual relationship to integration. On the one hand, religiosity is associated with more conservative views on gender and homosexuality and fewer friendship ties with ethnic majority peers. On the other, it is largely decoupled from national identity, and religious practices are positively associated with secondary school completion and tertiary-education enrollment. Results suggest that although religiosity can be a barrier to sociocultural integration, it may simultaneously be a positive resource driving educational attainment. Whereas the negative association between religiosity and sociocultural integration is most prominent for girls, the positive association between religiosity and education is most prominent for boys.

Abstract Previous research in the ethnic and migration studies domain made little scientific attempts to understand willingness for integration. This study aimed to identify factors that shape ethnic minority's willingness for collective and individual integration and factors that shape ethnic majority's willingness to collectively and individually integrate members of ethnic minority. Data were obtained from the 2021 "Still Playing by the Rules" nationwide survey conducted in Israel (N Jewish = 1,501; N Arab = 697) and analyzed using linear regression models. The results show that better image of the counter population, higher perceived quality of interethnic relations, and a frequent obtaining of instrumental help from members of the counter population were associated with greater willingness for each type of integration in both Jewish and Arab samples. The results provide support for the intergroup perspectives employed in the study. The results imply that the willingness for integration (from the minority side) or willingness to integrate members of ethnic minority (from the majority side) might be predicted by the cognitive (perception the other), cognitive-affective (evaluation of the quality of contact between groups), and behavioral (engaging in a positive contact with the other) factors.

Abstract This article investigates whether virtual contact, initiated through a documentary film, can promote interethnic harmony. We carried out a cluster-randomized field experiment involving over 3,300 households across 121 multiethnic villages in Bangladesh. We find that a documentary film, designed to humanize the ethnic-minority Santals and evoke empathy among the ethnic majority Bengalis, increased the ethnic majority’s prosociality toward minorities, though the strength of the evidence varies by treatment arm and outcome. Using emotion-detecting software to analyze facial expressions during the film viewing suggests that the documentary elicited emotional responses consistent with empathy. We do not find evidence that the intervention reduced the prevalence of negative stereotypes and discriminatory opinions toward minorities. In villages assigned to target network-central people, we find positive behavioral effects on untreated individuals, including Santals, and village-level administrative data suggest a reduction in police complaints in those villages. About five months after the intervention, we conducted a casual-work field experiment involving 720 participants from the main intervention. In this task, pairs of ethnic-majority and minority participants jointly produced paper bags for a local supplier under a piece-rate compensation scheme. We find positive treatment effects on productivity for both ethnic groups, with effects concentrated in villages where network-central people were treated. For the ethnic majority, increased prosociality, and for the ethnic minority, reciprocity or peer pressure may have contributed to increased productivity. Overall, our findings suggest that virtual contact and social networks may help promote harmony in multiethnic communities.

Despite extensive research on prejudice reduction in schools, the motivational processes underlying students’ regulation of prejudice remain relatively understudied, even though they may provide a novel perspective for improving intergroup attitudes. The present study addressed this by examining the role of teachers in elementary school students’ internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice (RWP), building on insights from Self-Determination Theory and the so-called extended attachment perspective. Specifically, this cross-sectional questionnaire study investigated how students’ perceptions of the student-teacher relationship and teachers’ perceived anti-prejudice norms were associated with RWP motivations among both ethnic minority and majority students. The data were collected among 1101 ethnic majority and minority students (80.2% majority, 51.3% girls, Mage = 9.8 years, SD = 0.5) from 59 classrooms in the Netherlands using self-report questionnaires, and analyzed with multilevel regression models. Results showed that closeness and conflict were associated with, respectively, stronger and weaker internal RWP motivations. Negative expectations were associated with a stronger external RWP motivation. These findings were consistent for both ethnic majority and ethnic minority students. The teachers’ anti-prejudice norm also did not seem to alter the associations between relational quality and RWP motivations. Hence, our findings suggest that regardless of the classroom environment, student-teacher relationships may be a valuable tool for promoting intergroup relations.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11218-026-10196-z.

Media influences on ethnic majority attitudes toward ethnic minorities: A systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT While scholarship exists on the study of propaganda in China, less attention has been paid toward visual propaganda in the ethnic minority areas of northwest China. How does the Chinese government propaganda portray ethnic minority culture? Which forms of culture does the government support and which aspects are discouraged? Our paper provides an analysis of propaganda from Xining and Ürümchi from the years 2016–2019, where the propaganda reflects the unique sociopolitical context of the two cities. The language and visuals of the propaganda promote values and behaviours for the development of a ‘civilized’ city. We argue that propaganda perpetuates the established hierarchies between the ethnic majority as superior and minority groups as inferior. On the one hand, cultural representations celebrate minorities and tokenize them as ‘exotic’ and ‘different’. On the other hand, the messages encourage minorities to embrace patriotism and a Chinese national identity.

ABSTRACT In a multiethnic society, it is usually ethnic minorities confronting ethnic language loss. However, in Taiwan, even the ethnic majority group faces the same crisis. Since the 1950s, education policies in Taiwan promulgated compulsory elementary school education in Mandarin. It was extended to junior high school education in 1968, followed by the higher education expansion in the late 1990s. Gradually, Mandarin has become the home language of the Minnan people, the ethnic majority in Taiwan. Under these circumstances, this study aims to understand the language use of Minnan teenagers. Findings reveal a trend of language shift from Minnan to Mandarin. Minnan language use by parents and grandparents with teenagers plays a crucial role in determining teenagers’ Minnan language proficiency. The Mandarin ability of parents does not significantly reduce teenagers’ Minnan language ability. Furthermore, native language courses in elementary and junior high schools do not increase teenagers’ Minnan language proficiency.