Relational Diversity and Neighbourhood Cohesion. Unpacking Variety, Balance and In-Group Size

Abstract

Ethnic diversity is typically measured by the well-known Hirschman-Herfindahl Index. This paper discusses the merits of an alternative approach, which is in our view better suited to tease out why and how ethnic diversity matters. The approach consists of two elements. First, all existing diversity indices are nonrelational. From the viewpoint of theoretical accounts that attribute negative diversity effects to in-group favoritism and out-group threat, it should however matter whether, given a certain level of overall diversity, an individual belongs to a minority group or to the dominant majority. We therefore decompose diversity by distinguishing the in-group share from the diversity of ethnic out-groups. Second, we show how generalized entropy measures can be used to test which of diversity's two basic dimensions matters most: the variety of groups, or the unequal distribution (balance) of the population over groups. These measures allow us to test different theoretical explanations against each other, because they imply different expectations regarding the effects of in-group size, out-group variety, and balance. We apply these ideas in an analysis of various social cohesion measures across 55 German localities and show that both in-group size and out-group diversity matter. For the native majority as well as for persons of immigration background, the variety component of diversity seems to be more decisive than has formerly been acknowledged. These findings provide little support for group threat and in-group favoritism as the decisive mechanisms behind negative diversity effects, and are most in line with the predictions of theories that emphasize coordination problems, asymmetric preferences, and network closure.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Education and Individual Student Development: Understanding the Full Picture in the Era of School Choice

“…As work moves forward in this area, scholars have proposed novel approaches to conceptualizing and measuring contextual diversity. Koopmans and Schaeffer (2013), for instance, advocate for assessing out-group diversity (that is, not including an individual’s own racial or ethnic group) alongside measures of own-group representation, thereby reducing collinearity between traditional measures of diversity and proportion of same-race/ethnicity peers. Additionally, several researchers have recognized the utility of assessing youth’s own perceptions of diversity and own-group representation in their schools and classrooms, which may be particularly meaningful for their psychological development (Ghavami et al, 2020; Morales-Chicas & Graham, 2017; Syed et al, 2018).…”

With Time We Learn to Trust Others? Long-Standing Ethnic Diversity, Recent Immigration, and Out-Group Trust in Russia

“…Meanwhile, long-standing diversity deriving from historical processes involving migrations, border changes, and conquest is different from diversity arising from immigration (Kymlicka 1995;Bessudnov and Shcherbak 2020). Long-standing diversity may be regarded as "indigenous" (Koopmans, Lancee and Schaeffer 2015), with different ethnic groups living side by side for generations and, thus, developing a shared memory of long-term coexistence. In Eurasia, examples of such diversity can be found in Spain, where Castilians, Basques and Catalans have historically coexisted, Belgium, where the Flemish and the Walloons are the two indigenous ethnic groups, or Russia, where indigenous ethnic groups, ethnic Russians, and members of old diasporas have coexisted for centuries.…”

“…As a recent meta-analysis showed, ethnic diversity tends to be negatively related to different types of individual trust (Dinesen, Schaeffer and Sønderskov 2020). However, existing studies have focused on immigrationdriven diversity (Koopmans, Lancee and Schaeffer 2015;Dinesen, Schaeffer and Sønderskov 2020), while largely neglecting the "old" ethnic heterogeneity stemming from the historical coexistence of established ethnic groups.…”