Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust

Abstract

In this paper we argue that residential exposure to ethnic diversity reduces social trust. Previous within-country analyses of the relationship between contextual ethnic diversity and trust have been conducted at higher levels of aggregation, concealing substantial variation in actual exposure to ethnic diversity. In contrast, we analyze how ethnic diversity of the immediate micro-contextwhere interethnic exposure is inevitableaffects trust. We do this using Danish survey data linked with register-based data, which enables us to obtain precise measures of the ethnic diversity of each individual's residential surroundings. We focus on contextual diversity within a radius of 80 meters of a given individual, but compare the effect in the micro-context to the impact of diversity in more aggregate contexts. The results show that ethnic diversity in the micro-context affects trust negatively, while the effect vanishes in larger contextual units. This supports the conjecture that interethnic exposure underlies the negative relationship between ethnic diversity in residential contexts and social trust.

Immigration Attitudes Before and After Tragedy in Copenhagen: The Importance of Political Affiliation and Safety Concerns

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Contextual factors and prejudice at the beginning of the migrant influx: The Moroccan case in Seville, Spain

“…Thus, a wealth of academic literature reveals a positive relationship between out-group size and manifestations of prejudice (e.g., Blalock, 1957;Coenders, 2001;Gorodzeisky & Semyonov, 2015;Quillian, 1995Quillian, , 1996Scheepers, Gijsbert, & Coenders, 2002;Semyonov, Raijman, & Gorodzeisky, 2006), whereas other literature finds no such evidence (e.g., Coenders, Lubbers, & Scheepers, 2005;Hjerm, 2007Hjerm, , 2009McLaren, 2003;Semyonov et al, 2004) and even identifies a negative relationship (e.g., Lubbers, Coenders, & Scheepers, 2006). This controversial discussion can be tackled if we take into account aspects such as the scale of the scope of study (Kaufmann & Harris, 2015;Pottie-Sherman & Wilkes, 2017;Rodon & Franco-Guillén, 2014;van Heerden & Ruedin, 2017), the opportunities that the receiving society offers for meaningful interethnic contact (Dinesen & Sønderskov, 2015), and other contextual variables to help interpret the results obtained.…”

Market Activities and Trust of North Korean Refugees

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