This paper is an examination, in a natural setting, of the interactive effects of perceived stability, legitimacy, and group permeability on group identification, stereotypes, and group feelings among Turkish-Dutch and ethnically Dutch participants. The findings strongly support predictions derived from the social identity perspective. For the Turkish-Dutch, a legitimate interethnic structure meant rather unstable relations and permeable group boundaries. For the Dutch, the same structure implied stability and impermeability. For the Turkish-Dutch, a response pattern of individual mobility was found: if they viewed ethnic intergroup relations as legitimate and stable, permeability was negatively related to Turkish identification as well as to less stereotyping on the dimension defining Turkish identity. It was also related positively to Dutch identification and in-group bias in relation to other ethnic minority groups. For the Dutch participants, higher perceived legitimacy was associated with stronger in-group identification and more positive in-group evaluation. Additionally, in a legitimate context, stability was, for them, related to a lower stereotyping of the Turkish out-group on statusrelevant dimensions and more negative feelings towards ethnic out-groups in general. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Social identity theory (SIT, Tajfel & Turner, 1979) provides a contextual framework for understanding intergroup relations among high-and low-status groups. The theory proposes that the operation of cognitive and motivational processes depends on ideological and structural features of the social world (Reicher, 2004;Turner, 1999). The cognitive process of social categorization and the striving for positive distinctiveness that motivate identity management strategies can explain why people show, for example, competitive in-group favoritism but do not explain when people show such favoritism, and how people show social competition (Rubin & Hewstone, 2004). SIT specifies three sociostructural variables that, interactively, would influence people's responses to status hierarchies. Specifically, beliefs about the stability and legitimacy of the status system and the nature of the group boundaries

In European Union (EU) countries, public debates about immigrants and citizenship are increasingly framed in cultural terms. Yet, there is no agreement within the citizenship literature on whether a cultural citizenship representation can be distinguished from the more established ethnic and civic representations and on how its measures relate to anti‐immigrant attitudes. The present study tested measures of citizenship representations among high school students (N = 1476) in six EU countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Factor analyses favored a three‐factor model of citizenship representations (i.e., ethnic, cultural, and civic factors), which showed partial metric invariance. Across countries, ethnic and cultural scales correlated positively with each other and negatively with the civic scale. Moreover, ethnic and cultural scales related positively and the civic scale negatively to anti‐immigrant attitudes. However, when analyzed simultaneously, relations of the ethnic scale with anti‐immigrant attitudes were no longer significant, while those of the cultural and civic scales proved to be robust. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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Citizenship representations within national populations have mainly been deduced from state policies on migration. Yet, at the individual level, no studies have investigated whether citizenship representations are reliably associated with preferences for specific migration policies (i.e. the underlying assumption for deducing citizenship representations from state policies). Because several studies have shown that state policies may not reflect understandings of citizenship within national populations, it may be more relevant to study citizenship representations at the individual level, in relation to personal preferences regarding migration policies. This study examined how ethnic, cultural and civic citizenship representations relate to migration policy preferences at the individual level among majority group high-school students (N = 1,734) in seven EU countries. Findings add to the understanding of citizenship representations and may have implications for the implementation of migration policies.

ABSTRACT. Research shows that the more people identify with a national in-group, the more their citizenship representation becomes in line with the citizenship discourse attached to this national-identity. However, although national identification may lead to a preference for a specific citizenship representation, national identification might itself depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences. In line with this, a longitudinal study among Flemish-Belgian high-school students (N = 275) showed reciprocal relations between national identification and citizenship representation. A second study among Flemish-Belgian high-school students (N = 407) then showed that strength of national identification does not simply depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences but on the (mis)match between such preferences and the citizenship representation perceived to be attached to a national-identity. In addition, results showed that the relation between national identification and out-group attitudes depends on the national-identity under consideration.