Popular Nationalism, Intergroup Attitudes and the Moderating Role of Immigrant Origins: Evidence From Five National Contexts

Abstract

Research in social and political psychology suggests that widespread attachments to the nation can breed unity in multiethnic societies. The present study complicates this view by theorizing how associations between national identification and intergroup attitudes will move in different directions and vary in magnitude depending on (1) how an individual demarcates the bounds of nationhood; and (2) whether an individual has immigrant roots. As I explain, these cross-level interactions are informed by—and give symbolic force to—boundary-making processes. Specifically, interactions between immigrant status, national identification, and national membership criteria shape the boundary-making strategies individuals deploy to organize affective space in diverse immigrant societies. To subject this proposition to empirical scrutiny, I draw on longitudinal and cross-sectional data from five national contexts; competing operational treatments of popular nationalism (i.e., derived using person-centered and variable-centered techniques); and a series of mixed-effects regressions predicting variation in intergroup attitudes. Ultimately, I find that thicker sets of nationalist beliefs tend to be exclusionary for “natives” but inclusionary for the children of immigrants. Conversely, thinner sets of nationalist beliefs map onto exclusionism among second generation respondents and inclusiveness among their native peers. Taken together, these results suggest that similar attitudinal patterns can signal substantively different membership claims—and visions of us and them—along the native, non-native divide.