Dokument

Summary:
Collective action is any action that is done by a group member in order to favor the group interests or to enhance the collective status of a disadvantaged group, which does not necessarily exclude the individuals’ interests or status enhancement. Independent from the initial motivation, collective action occurs when at the end a collective gain is reached. As ingroup identification with a disadvantaged group is one of the crucial factors affecting collective action, we measured ingroup identification with country of origin as well as with Ausländer in the present work. Based on SIT conceptualization, we assume that if immigrants perceive the intergroup boundaries between immigrants and Germans as impermeable and the intergroup relations as insecure (illegitimate and unstable), then it is more likely for them to engage in collective action. Other important factors affecting collective action are perception of discrimination, relative deprivation (RD) and causal attribution of these grievances (system-blame). Consequently, in the present research we assume that the behavioral component of ingroup identification positively mediates between perceived discrimination and collective action, whereas the affective component of ingroup identification positively moderates this relationship. Moreover, in our model we think of perceived grievances (perceived group discrimination and group RD) to affect collective action of immigrants via attribution process (system-blame): The more an immigrant attributes the reasons of perceived grievances to system the more that person engages in collective action. We also assume that belief system of the immigrants (perception of less permeable intergroup boundaries, perception of less legitimate status of Germans, and perception of less stable intergroup relations) is moderated by citizenship status of them. We conducted two cross-sectional studies in order to test our hypotheses. The first study involved a secondary analysis of the data from German Youth Institute. It was plausible to do the first analyses with this data set (Ausländersurvey97) because this data had been conducted with a relatively large sample of young immigrants from Turkey living in Germany, and it involved a set of variables that were of relevance to our research. The participants were young adult immigrants (N = 829) who were in the age range between 18 to 25 years. In the second study, we included further variables as relative deprivation, system-blame and belief system (perceived permeability, legitimacy, and stability) which were assumed to have effects on collective action. The second study involved immigrants (N = 193) in the age group of 18-31 years. The findings of Study 1 and 2 revealed differences. For example, we showed the behavioral component of identification with country of origin mediates between perceived personal religious discrimination and collective action in the first study. However, in the second study, this mediational relationship was not confirmed when we inserted perceived group discrimination into the relationship. In order to identify the resource of the difference, we suggest measuring both personal and group levels of discrimination simultaneously with more appropriate measures. Furthermore, in the second study, we found that immigrants who weakly identify with their country of origin participate more in collective action when they have a Turkish citizenship. On the contrary, strong identifiers with their country of origin participate more in collective action when they hold a German citizenship. We discuss our results regarding social psychology theories that we base ourselves in this research.

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