“Us Against Them” or “All Humans Are Equal”: Intergroup Attitudes and Perceived Parental Socialization of Muslim Immigrant and Native Dutch Youth

Abstract

Intergroup attitudes of Muslim immigrant youth and native youth in the Netherlands were examined in relation to perceived parental socialization. Our aim was to gain insights into parent-child (dis)similarity in antagonistic and egalitarian attitudes and to understand differences between these two groups in this respect. Data come from qualitative interviews with 22 Turkish Dutch, Moroccan Dutch, and native Dutch youth (aged 16-22) who were prone either to intergroup antagonism (i.e., held hostile and negative attitudes toward out-groups) or to egalitarianism (held egalitarian attitudes). Interviews were analyzed using the constant comparison method. Results show that in the majority youth group, egalitarianism as well as intergroup antagonism were quite comparable across two generations. The attitudes of Muslim minority youth diverged more from those of their parents and appeared to be related to the pedagogic relationship between parents and children. Minority youth prone to antagonism perceived a lack of adequate parental responses to their negative experiences in the context of Islamophobia. Egalitarian minority youth reported that their parents were quite sensitive to their communications about perceived exclusion and that they responded with advice and support. Findings are discussed with reference to the social learning theory and the ethnic socialization strategies identified by Hughes et al.

Externalizing behaviours of Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch youth: The role of parental cultural socialization

“…Similarly, researchers in Europe (Phalet & Schönplug, 2001) find that Turkish and Moroccan immigrant parents consider it critical that their children maintain their ethnic ties, and this is reflected in the socialization practices through which they aim to transmit their culture. By teaching their children positive views of what it means to be Turkish or Moroccan, parents want their children to build strong ethnic identities, which may help them to cope with their minority status and with their perceived low-status in Western European societies (Van Bergen et al, 2016). In this way, Turkish and Moroccan immigrant youth can be expected to have better psychosocial development and engage in fewer externalizing behaviours.…”

“…Over the past decade, many Western European countries, including the Netherlands, have developed political contexts in which the loyalties of Muslim immigrants (e.g., Turks and Moroccans) and their children to their ethno-cultural in-groups are openly questioned and increasingly seen as a hindrance to their socio-cultural integration (Van Bergen, De Ruyter & Pels, 2016). In such climates, parental cultural socialization, which is the verbal and non-verbal communication from parents to their children about culture, heritage, ethno-cultural pride, traditions and language (see Hughes et al, 2008), is a contested aspect of immigrant youth socialization.…”

Perceived discrimination against Dutch Muslim youths in the school context and its relation with externalising behaviour

“…In many Western countries a socio-political context has developed in which particularly Muslims, who are the largest minority group, are portrayed as 'negative others', i.e. those who have religious convictions that are incompatible with Western values (Savelkoul et al, 2012;Van Bergen et al, 2017). In combination with media and political attention to externalising behaviours in this group, Muslim youths (males in particular) suffer a double jeopardy (Paalman et al, 2013).…”

“…The present study's data come from a larger multimethod project on intergroup relations and precursors of ethnoreligious antagonisms carried out among minority and majority youth (ages 14-22) in the Netherlands (Van Bergen et al, 2017). For the quantitative survey, 75 schools were approached through a letter, and we contacted 50 principals through follow-up phone calls.…”

“…We used a purposeful sampling strategy for interviewing and focusing on contrasting cases (Teddlie & Yu, 2007), i.e. only participants who had scored either the maximum high or low on two or more of the following survey items were invited for an interview: engagement in conflicts for ethnic/religious reasons; engagement in physical fights for ethnic/religious reasons; a favourable attitude towards violence in defence of the in-group; feelings of in-group superiority, and a social distance with out-groups (Van Bergen et al, 2017). Although approximately 30% of the school-survey participants and 50% of the online-survey participants said they were willing to be interviewed, our criteria narrowed our pool to about 15% of all respondents.…”