Die Ethnische Hierarchie in Deutschland und die Legitimierung der Ablehnung und Diskriminierung ethnischer Minoritäten. Über den Konsens in den individuellen Vorurteilen von Mitgliedern einer Gesellschaft.

The present study investigates the ethnic hierarchy in Germany, its background and its impact. It aims to explain the interindividual consensus on the prejudices of members of a society towards different ethnic minorities. Following Louk Hagendoorn (Hagendoorn, 1993, 1995) ethnic hierarchy is interpreted as the social representation of the status of ethnic minorities within a society. Combining the model of ethnic hierarchy with other approaches (Devine, 1989; Miles, 1992; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Major, 1994; Terkessidis, 1998; Ridgeway, 2001; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001) the study hypothesises that the social stereotypes of the groups associated with the ethnic hierarchy can legitimate the real position of ethnic majority and minorities in a society. It is assumed that the ethic hierarchy provides an orientation for individual prejudices and stereotypes of members of a society. Thereby the existing social inequality between ethnic groups is stabilised and maintained. Until now, German research on prejudices neglected the concept of ethnic hierarchy. In the present study the ethnic hierarchy in Germany is analysed for the first time in detail. The study investigates both, the hierarchy itself, as well as the relationship between the hierarchy and the objective social position of ethnic groups, the social stereotypes, and prejudices and discrimination. The ethnic hierarchy of five ethnic groups was assessed by means of a questionnaire that was sent to the 552 respondents living in Berlin. It showed that, expectedly, the German majority was at the top of the hierarchy, followed by German Jews, Italians, Turks, and at last asylum seekers. This ethnic hierarchy reflects the objective legal rights of these groups in Germany, and also their real socio-economic situation (graduation, vocational position, income, unemployment rate). Furthermore, it could be shown that the attribution of certain very negative stereotypes to an ethnic group increases and that the attribution of positive stereotypes decreases with a lower rank of this group in the ethnic hierarchy. This effect is especially pronounced in the attribution of positive German autostereotypes that reflect competence and ‘progressiveness’. These are attributes, which in particular are suitable to justify the different social status of groups within society. In addition, the respondents’ affective and cognitive prejudices to the ethnic groups reflect the ethnic hierarchy as well, with significant differences between the two groups at the top of the hierarchy and the two at the bottom. However, there was no correlation between the ethnic hierarchy and the perception of individual members of the five groups, which was investigated in an impression formation experiment. In contrast to impression formation, the ‘deserved incomes’ and ‘deserved welfare rates’ reflected the rank-order of ethnic hierarchy (these judgements are used as indicators for institutional discrimination). Significant differences in the distribution of these two goods toward members of the different ethnic groups were found between (non-jewish) Germans and German Jews compared to (former) asylum seekers. This means that the respondents follow in their individual judgements the existing institutional discrimination of asylum-seekers in Germany’s welfare system and transfer this institutional discrimination to other areas (income). When we asked for the respondents’ denial of welfare payments to the four minority groups, we found even greater differences between the groups, which were in line with the ethnic hierarchy. The ethnic hierarchy is also reflected in the influence of individual attitudes towards the ethnic groups on the judgements of distribution of goods. For example, negative stereotypes are used to legitimate small incomes of the three immigrant groups. According to Major (1994) and Jost & Banaji (1994) a negative image of a minority group can therefore legitimate discriminating judgements towards individual members of this group. In summary, the results of the present study corroborate the basic assumption of this thesis: Ethnic hierarchy conduces to legitimisation and stabilisation of social inequality.