Who owns the land? Territorial ownership understandings and intergroup relations in a settler society

Abstract

Conflicts over the ownership of territory have shaped intergroup relations between indigenous and nonindigenous groups in settler societies. Using latent profile analysis, we found four different subgroups of individuals among a sample of European New Zealanders based on their perceived ingroup (NZ European) and outgroup (Māori) ownership. Most people (75.9%) perceived shared territorial ownership, but there were also individuals predominantly recognizing ingroup ownership (8.2%), outgroup ownership (6.4%), or no territorial ownership (9.4%).These subgroups differed in meaningful ways in their support for principles of ownership, perceived rights and responsibilities, compensation for Māori, and support for strict immigration policies. | INTRODUCTIONPeople can have a perception of ownership which involves the sense that a certain object or place belongs to them (Pierce et al., 2003). Just as one can feel to personally own something ("mine"), one can also think that something belongs to one's group ("ours"). This is referred to as collective psychological ownership (Pierce & Jussila, 2011), such as ownership of territories like "our beach" (Due & Riggs, 2008), "our neighborhood" (Toruńczyk-Ruiz & Martinović, 2020), and "our land" (Nijs, Martinović, Verkuyten et al., 2021). Importantly, people not only have a sense of what belongs to their ingroup, but can also recognize outgroups as owners (Nooitgedagt, Martinović et al., 2021; Storz et al., 2021). Collective psychological ownership perceptions can have important implications in settler societies that were colonized by predominantly European settlers, and where disputes and conflicts over the ownership of territory have shaped intergroup relations between indigenous and nonindigenous (settler) groups (Alfred & Corntassel, 2005). However, not much is known about the distinct ways in which individuals subjectively combine perceptions of ingroup and outgroup territorial ownership in these settings. | The current studyThe first and primary aim of the current study is to examine qualitatively different understandings of territorial collective ownership that nonindigenous people can have by considering three related key aspects of collective ownership: who is seen as the owner, why is that group seen as the owner, and what ownership implies in terms of perceived rights and responsibilities.The first aspect of collective ownership ("who") refers to the question which group is considered to own a territory, and we will examine different ways in which ingroup and outgroup territorial ownership beliefs can be subjectively combined. In contrast to examining associations between variables (a variable centered approach, e.g., Storz et al., 2021), we will use a person-centered approach to examine the possibility

Territorial ownership perceptions and reconciliation in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: A person‐centred approach

“…Interestingly, our findings within the context of a territorial conflict differ from those in settler societies. Nooitgedagt and colleagues (2022) studied ownership profiles in New Zealand, from the perspective of European New Zealanders and in relation to Māori land ownership. Most of the European New Zealanders fell into the Shared Ownership Profile (about 76%), followed by groups that perceived no ownership (about 9%, note that we identified a similar group in the five‐profile solution, see Table S3 and Figure S1.2 in the supplementary materials), ingroup ownership (about 8%) and outgroup ownership (about 7%).…”

“…Model fit was assessed using Schreiber's (2008) cut‐off criteria for fit indices (acceptable fit when Satorra‐Bentler scaled χ 2 ( p) > .05, RMSEA < .06, CFI and TLI ≥ .90, SRMR ≤ .08). Second, we performed a Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) based on the two latent variables ingroup and outgroup ownership for Jews and PCI separately, following the approach of Nooitgedagt and colleagues (2022). Different profile solutions were estimated and the decision for the most suitable one was based on model fit (lowest AIC and BIC; LMR and BLRT < .05), entropy values (values > .8 representing high quality of classification), membership distribution in the profiles (> 5%), and theoretical plausibility (Osborne & Sibley, 2017).…”

“…Different profile solutions were estimated and the decision for the most suitable one was based on model fit (lowest AIC and BIC; LMR and BLRT < .05), entropy values (values > .8 representing high quality of classification), membership distribution in the profiles (> 5%), and theoretical plausibility (Osborne & Sibley, 2017). Third, we assessed correlates of profile membership (i.e., ownership principles and group identifications) in a multinomial logistic regression, allowing us to investigate the likelihood of being in a profile relative to a reference profile, without the correlates influencing the profile estimation (Nooitgedagt et al., 2022). We choose this approach as it allows us to obtain the net effects of the different characteristics while controlling for the effect of other somewhat related predictors.…”

“…First, instead of considering ingroup and outgroup ownership as independent predictors of intergroup attitudes, we employ a person‐centred approach to identify profiles of people with different combinations of ingroup and outgroup ownership perceptions. To date, only one study used this approach in the relatively peaceful context of New Zealand (Nooitgedagt et al., 2022). However, perceptions of territorial ownership vary across contexts and by understanding how configurations of ingroup and outgroup ownership perceptions are organized in territorial conflicts , the present study advances theoretical understandings of collective ownership.…”

Majority grievance in Germany: The role of entitlement beliefs and ingroup threat.

“…The organization "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West" (PEGIDA) is one such group that organizes protests expressing discontent about the immigration of mostly Muslim communities. Support for the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland also has increased after a series of anti-immigrant protests in the city of Chemnitz (Neuman, 2018). These developments point to a need for more research on majority group grievances which may be contributing to increased support for anti-immigrant policies and far-right politicization in Germany.…”