Disentangling the relation between young immigrants’ host country identification and their friendships with natives

Abstract

Immigrants who strongly identify with the host country have more native friends than immigrants with weaker host country identification. However, the mechanisms underlying this correlation are not well understood. Immigrants with strong host country identification might have stronger preferences for native friends, or they might be more often chosen as friends by natives. In turn, having native friends or friends with strong host country identification might increase immigrants' host country identification. Using longitudinal network data of 18 Dutch school classes, we test these hypotheses with stochastic actor-oriented models. We find that immigrants' host country identification affects friendship selections of natives but not of immigrants. We find no evidence of social influence processes.

The Effects of Ethnic Minority Adolescents' Ethnic Self‐Identification on Friendship Selection

“…Ethnic majority students' preference for dual over heritage‐country identifiers suggests that they accept some maintenance of heritage country identification as long as this is accompanied by host country identification. Accordingly, by tendency, ethnic majority adolescents also preferred ethnic minority peers with host country identification to those with heritage country identification, which confirms earlier findings (Leszczensky et al., ). Our findings thus differ from Boda and Néray () who found that non‐Roma Hungarian ethnic majority adolescents disliked ethnic minority Roma adolescents, irrespective of the Roma students' ethnic self‐identification.…”

“…Overall, our results imply that in the domain of adolescent friendship relations there are benefits to an ethnic self‐identification that includes the host country and that there are costs to an ethnic self‐identification based exclusively on ethnic heritage. While the finding that ethnic majority adolescents prefer ethnic minority peers with host country identification is in line with previous research (Leszczensky et al., ), the drawbacks of heritage country identification for relations to other ethnic minority peers represent a novel finding. This finding is particularly important given that inter‐minority relations (i.e., relationships between different ethnic minority groups) are still an under‐researched topic (Koops et al., ).…”

“…In a study with Dutch adolescents, Leszczensky et al. () found support for the assumption that ethnic majority adolescents prefer to befriend ethnic minority adolescents with a strong host country identification. However, they found no support for the idea that ethnic minority adolescents with a strong host country identification also prefer ethnic majority adolescents.…”

“…From a similarity–attraction perspective (Byrne, ; Lazarsfeld & Merton, ), ethnic minority adolescents who identify with the host country can be expected to have stronger preferences for ethnic majority peers because they feel more similar to them. The same goes for ethnic majority adolescents, who should prefer ethnic minority adolescents who identify with the host country because they perceive them to be more similar to themselves (Leszczensky et al., ). In addition, similarity–attraction may also explain differential effects of self‐identification on friendship selection within the group of ethnic minority adolescents.…”

“…We assumed that ethnic majority adolescents prefer to befriend other ethnic majority adolescents because they perceive them as being most similar to themselves and will show ingroup favoritism toward their own group. When distinguishing between differently identifying ethnic minority adolescents, they, accordingly, should view ethnic minority adolescents who identify with the host country as more similar to themselves (Leszczensky et al., ), followed by dual‐identifying and heritage country–identifying adolescents. We expect a preference for ethnic minority adolescents with a host country rather than a dual or heritage country identification, because research suggests that ethnic majority adolescents often expect ethnic minority members to give up their ethnic heritage in favor of a host country identification (Celeste, Meeussen, Verschueren, & Phalet, ; Pfafferott & Brown, ; van Oudenhoven, Prins, & Buunk, ).…”