Salience Of Ethnicity Research Articles

Party Politics and Change of Ethnic Salience in Post-Conflict Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Sierra Leone and Liberia

Extensive research has been conducted on the influence of ethnicity on conflicts. Conversely, research on how conflict affects ethnicity has been more limited, tending to indicate that conflicts basically ‘harden’ ethnicity. Moreover, existing research suggests that the impact of ethnicity is gradually diminishing. This study revealed that these arguments are not necessarily true. Reviewing ethnic salience in Sierra Leone and Liberia revealed that the post-civil war situation in both countries can be considered a reemergence of pre-civil war party politics. Hence, civil wars may not invariably exert a significant impact on post-conflict party politics, and the impact of ethnicity can persist over time.

The long-term consequences of power-sharing for ethnic salience

Does power-sharing reduce or increase ethnic salience? Drawing on social psychology, I identify two countervailing mechanisms that help reconcile previously opposed findings. First, prolonged power-sharing practices attenuate between-group inequalities. Thereby, they gradually reduce the usefulness of ethnic identities as ‘rules of thumb’ and decrease their salience. Second, extended periods during which individuals live under ethnically differentiated power-sharing institutions render ethnic identities more accessible and thereby increase their salience. To test these expectations, I rely on the most extensive collection of mass surveys used in the empirical literature on ethnic salience so far, encompassing more than 900,000 respondents from a total of 132 countries. I show that power-sharing affects individuals’ self-identification and vote intentions in accordance with my arguments. As my findings are based on specifications that incorporate fixed effects at the group- and group-year levels, they are unlikely to be endogenous to the provision of power-sharing to groups whose identities are most salient in the first place. My findings have important implications for efforts to institutionalize peace in divided societies and for the literature on ethnic conflict.

Ethnic preferences, domestic audiences and military coalition formation

Ethnically motivated domestic pressure can incentivize leaders to support co-ethnics via military cooperation during international crises. When a leader requires the support of an ethnic group to retain office, she may face pressure to support foreign co-ethnics involved in an international crisis. Supporting co-ethnics can bolster a leader domestically, but constraints on the executive limit a leader's ability to respond to ethnically motivated pressure. Using data on 257 international crises from 1949–2001 and two case studies, we find robust evidence for the conditional relationship between co-ethnicity, the domestic political salience of ethnicity, executive constraints, and the likelihood of military coalition formation.

Ancestral institutions and the salience of African ethnicity: Theory and Evidence

Abstract This paper advances a pre-colonial institutional thesis to explain the variation in the salience of ethnicity in African societies. It posits that pre-colonial political centralization facilitated the accumulation of economic and institutional advantages, positioning descendants of centralized ethnic groups to benefit from these advantages within postcolonial states. Social identity choices are rational; therefore, descendants of centralized ethnic groups, who enjoy greater advantages within the nation, find less incentive to choose their ethnicity over their national identity. Examples from Ethiopia and Ghana as well as the evidence from combining individual-level survey data from the Afrobarometer with historical data on pre-colonial political centralization support the theoretical claim. In particular, the paper presents both theory and evidence indicating that individuals with ancestors from politically centralized pre-colonial societies are less likely to favour their ethnic identity over their national identity . These findings underscore the importance of considering pre-colonial legacies when promoting national unity.

The State of Political Ethnic Mobilisation among Kenyan Communities in Postcolonial Era, 1963 to 2007 A Case Study of Bukusu People

There is a growing body of scholarly work on political behaviour in Africa that accords much credence to the salience of ethnicity as a rallying point during electoral processes. Yet at the country level, we still understand very little about the interactions between ethnicity and voting behaviour and what demographic groups are more likely or less likely to be susceptible to the effects of ethnic cues, if at all, when voting or expressing support in other ways for political parties. Such features are dominant in Kenyan politics and are characterized majorly through ethnic-based politics where the formation of political parties and coalitions are motivated ethnically. Taking Bukusu as a case example, it is clearly seen how political game and electoral mobilisation is largely contested ethnic terrain. This explains why the majority of the leaders in Bungoma are Bukusu who have had a defining moment and significant effect on political leadership and electoral politics since independence. This paper focused on the state of political ethnic mobilisation among Kenyan communities in postcolonial era, 1963 to 2007with reference to Bukusu people of Bungoma District. The study examines ethnic politics as an instrument for political mileage among the Bukusu people. It is noted herein that since the migration and eventual inception of imperialism, the Bukusu people just like other communities in the country resisted colonisation which eventually cemented them together up to date. Karly Popper’s instrumentalism theory and AchilleMbembe’s postcolonial theory were the two theories used in the study. This study relied heavily on archival materials, oral interviews, and a review of linked secondary literature. Convergence and divergence were produced after thoroughly reviewing, analysing, and compiling all the data. Ex-post facto as a research design was used with purposive and snowball as sampling techniques. Elderly men and women were target population and the sampling size was guided by historical principle of not less than twenty eight participants. It is argued that this data will be useful to policymakers in formulating and comprehending the factors that affect political patterns and behaviour both at the national and local levels. The study should be of importance to historian scholars and more specifically on those who have an interest in state of political ethnic mobilisation among Kenyan Communities.

Understanding the educational disparities between Han and Muslim Chinese: The roles of gender, ethnic salience, and residential concentration

This study, using a 10% sample from China’s 1% inter-census population surveys for 2015, examines patterns of educational disparities between Han and Muslim Chinese. I use enrollment rates among children aged 6–15 and completion of junior high school among children aged 16–19 to capture access to education, and completed years of schooling and completion of tertiary education among adults aged 25–55 to measure educational attainment. To reflect the interplays between individual and contextual factors in shaping ethnic variations in education, I explore the moderation effects of gender, Islamic heritage, and residential concentration. Findings show that Muslim girls are not necessarily subject to double disadvantages in education. The only negative interactions between gender and ethnicity are among inland Muslims in inland northwestern China. Islamic heritage and region also lead to varied patterns. Compared to the Han majority, Muslims have unfavorable educational outcomes in northwestern China and comparable educational outcomes in non-northwestern China. This study highlights the importance of understanding China’s educational stratification mechanisms drawing on the interplays between socioeconomic and ideational contexts.

Third Party Presence and the Political Salience of Ethnicity in Survey Data

Third Party Presence and the Political Salience of Ethnicity in Survey Data

The Ethnic Lens: Social Networks and the Salience of Ethnicity in the School Context

The Ethnic Lens: Social Networks and the Salience of Ethnicity in the School Context

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

How does inequality within and between ethno-religious groups influence the likelihood and frequency of communal riots? Using evidence from India, this article finds that low within-group and high between-group inequality dampens the likelihood and frequency of communal riots. Theoretically, the article suggests that the instrumental logic, which posits that ethnonationalist politicians use violence to stoke ethnic cleavages and mobilize support, best accounts for this finding. We argue that to be politically competitive, ethnonationalist politicians need their supporters to identify foremost with their ethnic identity. When inequality within groups is high and/or inequality between groups is low, citizens are less likely to focus on ethnicity as their primary identity. In such contexts, politicians may use communal riots to improve their electoral prospects by reinforcing the salience of ethnicity. Empirically, the article relies on a time-series cross-district analysis of inequality and Hindu–Muslim riots in India to test the instrumental argument against theoretical alternatives. To illustrate the causal logic, the article also uses the analysis of a communal riot that occurred in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Analyzing three aspects of the riot – background conditions, timing, targets of propaganda – we evaluate the different predictions of the instrumental argument. The article concludes with the suggestion that communal riots are distinct from cases of mass violence – such as civil wars, genocide, and ethnic cleansing – and could be conceptualized, along with other types of small-scale political violence, as a separate class of events with their own internal logic.

Populism, Anti-establishment Politics, and Dimensions of Political Competition

This article analyzes the nature of populism in the Czech Republic, which was until recently described as centrist and moderate. It uses an approach that views populism as associated with empty policy space: that is, with (previously) secondary issues on which the established parties have unclear positions. The empirical analyses presented in this article show that in the Czech Republic, where political conflict has traditionally been based on disputes over economic distribution, the migration crisis that started in 2014 increased the salience of ethnicity and gave rise to an ethnopopulist reaction that led to a transformation of the party system and the dimensionality of political conflict in the country. Ethnicity thus became linked with populism and, as a result, transformed the dimensionality of political conflict by adding another (ethnic) layer to the political conflict in the country. This article contributes to the discussion of populism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by describing the transformation of the nature of populism based on the dimensionality of political conflict.

Tribeless and democratic youth? Political attitudes of Kenyan university students toward ethnicity and democracy

ABSTRACT University students have often played a critical role in shaping political dynamics across sub-Saharan Africa. This article situates the expressed political attitudes of students at the University of Nairobi (UoN) within the context of current Kenyan politics. Given the high saliency of ethnicity in the latter, we are particularly interested in how university students define themselves, how they view and engage with the politicization of ethnicity, and how they view members of other communities. Using original survey data from the UoN collected in 2018, this article fills a gap in the existing literature on Kenyan politics, which seldom concentrates on youth or students. Our findings demonstrate that although Kenyan university students aspire to move beyond ethnic politics, ethnicity often shapes their view of their fellow citizens and government action. Overall, we do not find strong evidence that university students will alter the underlying dynamics of Kenyan politics.

Ethnic Ties, Organized Opposition and Voter Defection in Authoritarian Elections

AbstractExisting studies of ethnic voting mainly focus on democratic elections. In electoral autocracies, politically subordinate ethnicity can help citizens coordinate against the incumbent. However, we argue that collective action will be constrained when the group grows large, as it becomes costly for its members to form common behavioural norms and carry out effective sanctions through shared ethnic ties under authoritarian repression. Drawing on unique historical surveys in Taiwan, we study how Taiwanese ethnicity and local ethnic demography jointly induced voters' defection against the hegemonic KMT regime. We find that the pro-defection or anti-incumbent effect of Taiwanese ethnicity fell as the share of Taiwanese citizens in a township increased. However, the relative size of the Taiwanese group no longer undermined pro-defection ethnic voting after the KMT lifted the ban on opposition parties. Our results illustrate that formal organizations play a critical role in sustaining the informational salience of ethnicity in the elections.

Unequal From the Start? Poverty Across Immigrant Generations of Hispanic Children.

Recent cohorts of U.S. children increasingly consist of immigrants or the immediate descendants of immigrants, a demographic shift that has been implicated in high rates of child poverty. Analyzing data from the 2014-2018 Current Population Survey and using the U.S. Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, we describe differences in child poverty rates across immigrant generations and assess how these disparities are rooted in generational differences in the prevalence and impact of key poverty risk factors. Our estimates show that poverty rates among Hispanic children are very high, particularly among first-generation children and second-generation children with two foreign-born parents. Low family employment is the most significant risk factor for poverty, but the prevalence of this risk varies little across immigrant generations. Differences in parental education account for the greatest share of observed intergenerational disparities in child poverty. Supplemental comparisons with third+-generation non-Hispanic White children underscore the disadvantages faced by all Hispanic children, highlighting the continued salience of race and ethnicity within the U.S. stratification system. Understanding the role of immigrant generation vis-à-vis other dimensions of inequality has significant policy implications given that America's population continues to grow more diverse along multiple social axes.

The Salience of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity for High-skilled Indian Immigrant Women in the Workplace

ABSTRACT What are the everyday experiences of highly skilled, Indian immigrant women in predominantly white- and male-dominated workplaces? This article uses an intersectional framework to answer this question by drawing on interviews with 26 women who work primarily in the field of information technology in the Research Triangle Area of North Carolina. Findings suggest that while participants acknowledge the presence of gender barriers throughout their careers, race and ethnicity assume greater salience for them earlier in their careers. Gender gains in importance over time. Participants’ experiences are gendered in that they face pressure to prove themselves, are not taken seriously and are expected to conform to stereotypical behaviours associated with women. Gender and cultural differences also hinder networking efforts. This article highlights the shifting salience and fluidity of race, ethnicity, and gender for participants over time, and underscores that bias and intersectionality are not static facts in the lives of professional women of colour. Ultimately, it appears that the experiences of these women share many similarities with other high-skilled women, including white women, in these sectors, particularly as they advance in their careers.

Electoral Rules, Social Structure, and Public Goods Provision: Outcomes, Spending, and Policies

Does proportional representation (PR) lead to broader public goods spending? Past literature has overwhelming shown that it does, but the empirics underlying these findings have mostly relied on ethnically homogenous Western countries. Categorizing countries along three dimensions of ethnic structure—ethnic fractionalization, ethno-income crosscuttingness and ethno-geographic dispersion—I argue that in some types of societies, PR has the positive effect on fiscal spending type predicted by past models, but not in others. Specifically, in countries with high ethnic salience (ethnically heterogeneous, low crosscutting) where ethnic groups are geographically intermixed, PR leads to narrower fiscal spending; in high ethnic salience societies where ethnic groups are geographically isolated, neither PR nor majoritarian electoral rules lead to broader fiscal spending. I test this socio-institutional theory in a sample of 70 developing democracies using life expectancy and illiteracy as proxies for public goods provision.

The Influence of Culture, Social, and Religious Support on Well-Being in Breast Cancer Survivorship

ObjectiveLatina and African American breast cancer survivors (BCS) are affected by health disparities that have negatively impacted their health outcomes and quality of life more than other BCS. Examining the relationships among social support, culture, and well-being in underserved groups may help clarify critical factors that influence health disparities in cancer survivors.MethodologyEthnic salience (impact of ethnicity on identity), religious support, social support, and well-being were examined in African American and Latina breast cancer survivors using archival data. Participants included 320 breast cancer survivors (28% African American and 72% Latina) ranging from 26-89 years old and one to five years post breast cancer diagnosis.ResultsEthnic salience was positively associated with well-being (p < .001). African American breast cancer survivors endorsed greater well-being, social support, religious support, and ethnic salience than Latinas (ps < .05). Religious support was associated with well-being even after controlling for the effects of general social support [ΔR2 = .02, p = .005; F(5, 298) = 23.67].ConclusionEthnic salience and religious support are important factors in understanding health disparities and should inform survivorship care plans for underserved populations.

Personal network analysis from an intersectional perspective: How to overcome ethnicity bias in migration research

AbstractThrough qualitative personal network analysis from an intersectional perspective, this article contributes to the debate on the salience of ethnicity as a defining, yet essentialized, category in transnational migration research. The article includes a theoretical and methodological discussion of qualitative personal network analysis as a means to alleviate the risks of overemphasizing ethnicity over other categories, which provides the background to the empirical analysis. Drawing on 20 personal networks and qualitative interviews with Chinese international students who were studying in the United States, the findings of this study indicate that ethnicity, as a precursor to culture, along with gender and class, is important in friendship formations but not necessarily for job‐relevant issues. Moreover, through an intersectional personal network analysis, transnational family ties were problematized based not on their ethnicity but on gendered expectations and social norms.

Getting ahead while retaining ethnic salience: educational mobilities, class, and empowerment of a Tibetan student in China

ABSTRACT Adopting empowerment as a theoretical lens, this paper examines how a combination of structural (particularly class background) and individual factors (particularly empowering agents and a strong personal will to achieve) have contributed to school success and ethnic identity formation of minority students in China. Our longitudinal study on a Tibetan student (Dolma) from middle-class background who completed seven-year dislocated secondary schooling and four-year undergraduate studies in China’s interior (Neidi) suggests the complexity and lack of institutional empowerment in every-day schooling. Although the implementation of preferential policies has expanded educational opportunities for ethnic minorities, the systemic failure to acknowledge the ethnic capital of minority groups at large accounts for the struggles along Dolma’s educational mobilities. Thanks to two teachers who acted as empowering agents, Dolma’s school adaptation in neidi was made less bumpy. While parental involvement was largely missing during the dislocated secondary schooling, her middle-class background greatly facilitated Dolma’s social adaptation and educational success in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. With a strong will to represent Tibetan culture appropriately to the mainstream society, Dolma gradually learned to get ahead while retaining her ethnic salience. This study calls for more culturally reflexive policy changes to achieve institutional empowerment of ethnic minority students.

Geodesic Distance as Metric of Cross-Group Networks in Migration History

Abstract This article is based on a longitudinal study of migrants living in a tenement block of the Paris area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that the geodesic distance between spouses’ and witnesses’ exact birthplaces, which are easier to retrieve than ever before, is a valuable metric for a quantitative analysis of marriages and friendships, with a view to assessing the salience of ethnicity. In that particular case, the analysis results in a general exogamy increase over time, which only partially corresponds to a greater demographic diversity. It also suggests that if and when identifications based on origin were given relevance in people’s affinities, local solidarity was generally more operative than a broadly conceived ethnicity. However, differences emerge between various groups of inhabitants. When looking out of their micro-community, only the Spanish occupants seemed inclined to choose a spouse or a witness among their fellow nationals over someone from another origin entirely.

Status-quo or Grievance Coalitions: The Logic of Cross-ethnic Campaign Appeals in Africa’s Highly Diverse States

This paper explains how presidential candidates in Africa’s highly diverse states appeal across ethnic lines when ethnic identities are salient, but broader support is needed to win elections. I argue that election campaigns are much more bottom-up and salience-oriented than current theories allow and draw on the analysis of custom data of campaign appeals in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, as well as interviews with party strategists and campaign operatives in Ghana and Kenya to demonstrate clear patterns in presidential candidates’ cross-ethnic outreach. Where ethnic salience is high, incumbents offer material incentives and targeted transfers to placate supporters, challengers fan grievances to split incumbents’ coalitions, and also-rans stress unity and valence issues in the hope of joining the winner. The research contributes to our understanding of parties’ mobilization strategies in Africa and further clarifies where and how ethnic divisions are politicized in elections in plural societies.