In this study, we investigated how perceived ethnic discrimination is related to attitudes towards the national majority group and willingness to confront injustice to promote the social standing of a minority group. We examined this relationship via two mediating factors; national (dis)identification from and out-group (dis)trust of the national majority group. The Rejection-Disidentification Model (RDIM) was refined, first, to account for willingness to confront injustice as a consequence of perceived rejection, and second, intergroup (dis)trust was examined as an additional mediating mechanism that can explain attitudinal and behavioural reactions to perceived rejection simultaneously with national disidentification. The model was tested in a comparative survey data of Russian-speaking minority in Estonia (N = 482), Finland (N = 254), and Norway (N = 219). In all three countries, the more Russian-speakers identified as Russians and the more they perceived ethnic discrimination, the more negative were their attitudes toward the national majority groups and the more willing they were to engage in action to confront group-based injustice. Whereas disidentification from and distrust of national majority group accounted for the discrimination-attitude link to a large extent, both factors had demobilizing effects on willingness to confront injustice, making Russian-speaking immigrants more passive but hostile. The findings are discussed in relation to the risks involved in politicization of immigrants struggling with perceived inequalities.
Research on social cohesion and immigrant integration has shown the mutuality of the integration process. As
This study aims to specify the attitudinal and behavioural intentional consequences of perceived ethnic discrimination among Russian-speakers in three neighbouring countries: Estonia, Finland, and Norway. At a policy level, immigrant integration is understood in all these countries as the possibility of immigrants to live as active, full members of the society (
At a theoretical level, this study approaches integration as a psychological contract established between minority and majority group members. It shows that perceived ethnic discrimination violates this contract and has attitudinal and behavioural consequences for minority’s integration and relations with the national majority. The concept of psychological contract is commonly used in organizational psychological literature on employees’ organizational behaviour. A psychological contract (PC) consists of individuals' beliefs regarding the terms and conditions of an exchange agreement between themselves and their organizations (
In a similar vein, in acculturation research, expectations of positive intercultural contact are central to the understanding of intercultural relations between acculturating groups (
In our theoretical model, we combine social and organizational psychological research on the consequences of perceived social disadvantage and psychological contract violation. We aim to complement and extend the Rejection-Disidentification Model (RDIM;
Social psychological research on contact hypothesis (
Moreover, research informed by the social identity approach (
The reason why minority identity is often sensitive to justice concerns (
It has been suggested that for ethnic minority activism, alongside minority subgroup identification (
Recent research is, however, increasingly pointing at the controversial or so-called ironic effects of common or superordinate identification on minorities’ motivation to take direct action for social change. Namely, as outlined by common in-group identity model by
For example,
The above line of research suggests that while strong subordinate minority identification seems to pinpoint at unfair disparities and promote collective action, superordinate national identification could, in some contexts, be responsible for making disadvantaged group members more positively oriented toward the majority and accept inequality. National identification can increase minority members’ expectations to be treated fairly and help them believe in social change (
Recent research has, however, largely neglected the interrelatedness between perceived disadvantage and willingness to identify with the superordinate national community in the first place. While perceived disadvantage and high minority subgroup identification often accompany or reinforce each other, perceived discrimination jeopardizes minority group members’ identification with national superordinate group. Such an effect is captured by RDIM (
In this study, we apply RDIM (
To the best of our knowledge, there is only one previous study conducted by
In this study, we take the assumptions of RDIM even further and argue that national disidentification is not the only mechanism potentially explaining attitudinal reactions and willingness to confront injustice when group-based rejection is experienced. Previous research has emphasized the role of emotional mediators, such as anger (e.g.,
By definition, “trust in a collective entity represents the extent of trust that an individual places in a collectivity with which she deals” (
Intergroup contact literature suggests that besides reducing prejudice directly, positive intergroup contact increases out-group trust and that way leads to more positive intergroup relations (
Research on PCV (e.g.,
As regards the hypothesized ramifications of (dis)trust in this study, there is no reason to assume other than positive effects of trust on attitudes towards the majority group. The effects of trust on collective action intentions could, however, have not only mobilizing but also demobilizing effects, just as like in the case of superordinate national identification (
Based on the research presented above, in this study, we aim to refine the RDIM and argue that as a reaction to perceived ethnic discrimination, national disidentification is accompanied by out-group distrust, with both having further attitudinal and behavioural ramifications (i.e., out-group negativity and willingness to confront injustice, respectively).
To sum up the previous research, perceived discrimination accompanied by strong identification with one’s ethno-cultural subgroup has been linked to willingness to participate in social action promoting the rights and social status of immigrants. Although identification with the larger society has been emphasized by many integration ideologies and models of collective action as a necessary element for engagement in social change, empirical research shows that it has both mobilizing and demobilizing effects on collective action intentions among minorities. The phenomenon is even more complex when considering that disadvantage and discrimination may be associated with national disidentification among ethnic minority group members. Although the consequences of national disidentification for negative attitudes toward the national majority group have been proven in research based on the RDIM, the model has not been tested using willingness to confront injustice as an outcome. Intensifying negative out-group attitudes, national disidentification may disarm minorities and discourage them from willingness to confront injustice, or, in contrast, mobilize them to look for possibilities for intergroup confrontation aimed at social change. Finally, as shared identities presuppose mutual trust and reciprocal cooperation (
The assumptions of the study are summarized in
The refined RDIM was tested in three culturally close but historically and politically different countries sharing the same diasporic community: Russian-speakers in Estonia, Finland, and Norway. All three countries share borders with Russia, and all have, to some extent, been influenced culturally, demographically, economically, and politically by Russia. As described below, the degree of Russian influence may be a result of the size of Russian-speaking population in the different countries and the degree of current and previous political relationships with Russia.
The major peculiarity of Estonia, as compared to Finland and Norway, is that as many as one third of the current population is of Russian origin. During the Soviet occupation (1944-1991) the percentage of Russian-speakers in Estonia grew from 26,000 to 602,000 (
In Finland, in turn, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Russian-speaking population was quite small. Russian-speakers currently represent the biggest immigrant group with around 22% of those speaking a foreign language as their mother tongue. Nevertheless, Finland is still characterized by a relatively small immigrant population (6%) (
Norway inhabits the smallest community of Russian immigrants as compared to Estonia and Finland. Prior to 2000, there were less than 2000 Russian-speakers living in Norway. However, a decade after the break of the Soviet-Union the numbers of Russian speakers in Norway started to increase. There are over 20,000 Russians living in Norway, making them the 12th largest national group in the country (as of 2016 –
The data from three countries were from the collaborative MIRIPS-FI and DIMA projects, with both being members of a larger international MIRIPS research network. Data from Estonia was collected among Russians living in Estonia in May 2015 and the random sampling was done based on the previous 2011 census data from Estonia. The majority (81%) of the participants represented second or third generation of Russians. Data from Finland was collected in 2012 and the survey was sent to a representative sample of Russian-speaking immigrants by postal mail. The selection criteria were: Russian as the mother tongue of participant, currently living in Finland but born in the Soviet Union/the Russian Federation and moved to Finland before 2008. The Norwegian data was collected between November 2015 and January 2016. The participants were sampled from the Norwegian data registry that contains the names and addresses of all legal residents in Norway. Individuals who identified themselves as Russians and were between the ages of 18 years and 60 were randomly selected and individually invited by phone to take part in the study. Upon agreeing to participate in the study, an email with a link to the electronic questionnaire was sent to them.
The response rate was 61% for Estonia, 39% for Finland, and 33% for Norway. In the final sample, only participants who either reported their ethnic background as Russian or reported their mother’s and/or father’s ethnic background as Russian were included. The number of participants that did not have a Russian background, and hence were excluded, was 19 in Estonia, 60 in Finland, and 33 in Norway. The final sample included 955 participants (
The measures used in this study were partly derived from the survey instrument developed for the international MIRIPS project or specifically developed/adapted from existing sources by Finnish, Estonian and Norwegian collaborators of that project to enable the three country comparisons.
Due to the demographic differences between the three samples and their possible effects on the dependent variables studied, participants’ age, gender, and education were included into the analyses as covariates. The survey also included other scales not utilized in this study: satisfaction with life, support for multicultural ideology, self-esteem, use of Russian language at home, appreciation of Russian culture, own and perceived acculturation preferences, intergroup anxiety, and perceived socio-economic status of the in-group (one item). A part of the data (using the Finnish and Estonian samples only) has been previously analysed and reported by
In order to test our predictions, we utilised SEM approach with robust maximum likelihood estimator in the Mplus software (Version 7.3). Alongside the Chi-square statistics, the model fit was evaluated by referring to widely used fit indices known as CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR (
Before proceeding with a multi-group analysis, multi-variate measurement invariance tests were performed to see if the five-factor solution model holds across the three countries: Estonia, Finland, and Norway. Finally, in order to explore whether the expected direct and indirect paths vary across the three countries, we conducted an additional multi-group analysis in which we included country as a moderator.
A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted by accounting for five latent constructs; national identification formed by four items, ethnic identification formed by four items, trust by three items, perceived discrimination by three items, and willingness to confront injustice by two items. The model had a good fit: χ2(94,
Latent Construct / Items | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Ethnic Identification | – | ||||||
I feel that I am Russian | 4.56 | .71 | |||||
I am proud to be Russian | 4.21 | .97 | |||||
I am glad to be Russian | 4.26 | .89 | |||||
It is important for me to be Russian | 4.13 | 1.02 | |||||
2. National Identification | -.12** | – | |||||
I feel that I am a member of Finnish/Estonian/Norwegian society | 3.73 | 1.05 | |||||
I am proud to be a member of Finnish/Estonian/Norwegian society | 3.45 | 1.09 | |||||
I am glad to be a member of Finnish/Estonian/Norwegian society | 3.69 | 1.06 | |||||
It is important for me to be a member of Finnish/Estonian/Norwegian society | 3.75 | 1.09 | |||||
3. Perceived Discrimination | .07 | -.42*** | - | ||||
In my opinion native Finns/Estonians/Norwegians have treated Russian immigrants/minority unfairly or otherwise negatively | 2.60 | 1.13 | |||||
I think that native Finns/Estonians/Norwegians don’t accept Russian immigrants/minority | 2.89 | 1.19 | |||||
Native Finns/Estonians/Norwegians have something against me because I am a Russian immigrant/minority | 2.49 | 1.16 | |||||
4. Trust in the majority group | -.11** | .42*** | -.56*** | - | |||
In my opinion most of the native Finns/Estonians/Norwegians are trustworthy | 3.70 | 1.06 | |||||
I think that most native Finns/Estonians would treat me fairly even if they had a chance to take advantage of me | 3.56 | .98 | |||||
Native Finns/Estonians/Norwegians won’t take advantage of me if I trust them | 3.52 | .98 | |||||
5. Willingness to confront injustice | .25*** | .10* | .06 | .16** | - | ||
[I would] defend the rights of Russian immigrants/minority in a public debate | 2.84 | 1.11 | |||||
[I would] intervene verbally in discrimination situations in which I notice discrimination of Russian immigrants/minority | 3.31 | .86 |
*
In order to see whether the five-factor model holds for the three countries, we proceeded with measurement invariance tests across the Estonian, Finnish, and Norwegian samples. Firstly, we tested for configural invariance: χ2(292,
In our suggested mediation model (
Theoretical model and hypotheses.
*
The model was tested with and without the control variables (age, gender, and education), but as the majority of the significant results remained with controls included, for the sake of clarity, we only discuss the results of the model without any control variables, and report changes in the significance level of some paths when controls were added.
The model fit was very good, χ2(105,
To assess the mediating roles of national identification and trust on out-group attitudes and willingness to confront injustice, a bootstrap analysis with 1000 replications and with 95% confidence intervals was conducted. A mediation is considered significant when zero does not fall in-between the confidence interval (
Predictors / Effects | Out-group Attitudes |
Willingness to Confront Injustice |
||
---|---|---|---|---|
Effect Size | CI (95%) | Effect Size | CI (95%) | |
Ethnic Identification | ||||
Total Effect | 1.81 | 1.54, 5.17 | .51*** | .27, .67 |
Direct Effect | 4.21** | 1.31, 7.32 | .58*** | .32, .75 |
Total Indirect Effect | -2.41** | -4.16, -.84 | -.07* | -.12, -.02 |
Indirect Effect via National Identification | -1.31* | -2.56, -.23 | -.02 | -.05, -.00 |
Indirect Effect via Trust in the Majority Group | -1.10* | -2.29, -.19 | -.05 | -.09, -.01 |
Perceived Discrimination | ||||
Total Effect | -8.18*** | -9.73, -6.68 | .04 | -.04, .16 |
Direct Effect | -2.21* | -3.96, -.28 | .23*** | .09, .31 |
Total Indirect Effect | -5.97*** | -7.40, -4.82 | -.19*** | -.24, -.10 |
Indirect Effect via National Identification | -2.49*** | -3.36, -1.73 | -.05* | -.09, -.01 |
Indirect Effect via Trust in the Majority Group | -3.47*** | -4.61, -2.45 | -.14*** | -.19, -.07 |
*
As regards the associations between ethnic identification and dependent variables studied, the results showed very similar patterns as was for perceived discrimination. While the direct effect of ethnic identification on out-group attitudes was positive, indicating that identifying more with the ethnic group is associated with more positive out-group attitudes, it was inhibited by national disidentification and distrust. In other words, higher levels of ethnic identification were indirectly related to more negative out-group attitudes due to national disidentification and distrust of the majority group. Similarly, the effect of ethnic identification on willingness to confront injustice followed a dual path: while its direct effect was positive, identifying more with the ethnic group was also responsible for less willingness to confront injustice due to its simultaneous association with lower levels of trust in the majority group. The path between ethnic identification and willingness to confront injustice was the only one not mediated by national disidentification (
The model was later on tested controlling for gender, age, and education by including these covariates one at a time. When the model was tested controlling for gender and education, all significant results remained the same. When age was added as a control to the model, the indirect effect of ethnic identification on out-group attitudes via national identification, and the indirect effect of perceived discrimination on willingness to confront injustice via national identification lost their statistical significance. A further look at the role of age in our model revealed that age was intercorrelated with perceived discrimination (
Lastly, the proposed mediation model was rerun, this time including country as a moderator in order to see if the proposed associations are identifiable across the three countries. The model fit of the multigroup model was appropriate: χ2(361,
This three-country comparative study of Russian-speaking immigrants in Estonia, Finland, and Norway aimed at testing and further developing the Rejection-Disidentification Model (
From the perspective of an individual immigrant, identifying with and trusting the national superordinate group promotes integration and positive intergroup relations, which potentially help in combatting negative intergroup experiences, and motivates ethnic activism.
To our knowledge, only
The results of this study showed a consistent pattern across the three contexts studied. The only statistically quite marginal but theoretically notable differences between countries were observed in the directions of the associations between ethnic identification, trust in the majority group and willingness to confront injustice. Ethnic identification and trust in the majority group were positively related to each other in Estonia and Norway, but negatively related to each other in Finland. Likewise, trust in the majority group and willingness to confront injustice were positively related to each other in Estonia and Norway. First, this suggests that these small country differences are not attributable to the differences in the immigrant status of the participants in the three countries studied. In Estonia, Russian-speakers clearly represented an ethno-cultural minority, but the results for the Estonian sample were identical to those in the Norwegian sample of recent immigrants. Second, these results suggest a possibly contextual role of trust in the majority group in the relationship between minority group identification and collective action intentions: while in some contexts (Estonian and Norwegian in this study) trust in the majority group may assist the minority groups to express their demands for equality, in other (Finland in this study) it could rather be a distrust of the majority group that accompanies high minority group identification and willingness to confront injustice. The lack of trust between the Finnish majority and Russian immigrants in Finland has been seen as a regrettable characteristic of the intergroup relations between these groups. Lack of trust has been previously found to explain the relationship between perceived cultural discordance (i.e., disagreement between majority and minority groups about the importance of cultural maintenance for minority members) and support for collective action benefiting the minority (
This study is not without limitations, with the most significant relating to the cross-sectional design. As a strong sense of attachment to host society has been found to undermine concern for one’s disadvantaged in-group (
It should also be noted that the magnitude of the observed effects was not big. Furthermore, while gender and education had no effect on the associations studied, the indirect effects of ethnic identification on out-group attitudes via national identification, and of perceived discrimination on willingness to confront injustice via national identification were lost once the model was controlled for the age of the participants. The results showed that age correlated with out-group attitudes, with the younger immigrants having slightly more negative attitudes towards the majority group than the older immigrants. Age also intercorrelated with other predictors in the model, and so using it as a covariate clearly diminished the strength of the two indirect paths mentioned above. There was, however, no evidence showing that the suggested mediation model was age-specific. In other words, national disidentification and distrust seem to be reactions to perceived disadvantage regardless the age of immigrants.
As a further limitation, perceived ethnic discrimination was assessed with only three items and willingness to confront injustice with only two items. Both scales were adapted from previous research with more items. Our focus on the willingness to confront injustice instead of a more traditional approach to collective action intentions that typically accounts for more active forms of action such as signing petitions and participation in protests and demonstrations has been justified by the characteristics of the contexts studied. In Nordic countries, Russian-speakers are not a unified group with clear political agenda and collective will to actively demand their rights. Instead, what unifies them is the shared experience of every day discrimination that brings along the need to find a civic courage to publicly confront it. Thus, in the expense of the more contextually appropriate scale is our limited possibility to directly compare the results of this study with other studies on collective action among immigrants in other contexts. In addition, not all measures used in this study have previously been validated in all three contexts studied. Namely, the measures of perceived discrimination, national identification, ethnic identification, and out-group attitudes have also been previously used in studies on Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland (e.g.,
Finally, given the theoretical broadness of the concepts of collective action and intergroup attitudes —the dependent variables of the present study—it is plausible that many other factors outside of those studied here may account for their variations. For example,
As regards demographic variables used often in studies on immigration and intergroup relations, we were not able to control for the length of stay or the immigrant generation of our participants. Due to differences in the situations of Russian-speakers in Finland and Norway as compared to Estonia, where Russian-speakers represent nowadays rather linguistic ethnocultural group than immigrants, the immigration status of the participants studied overlapped with their country of residence. As a consequence, we did not have equivalent indicators of the length of stay of the participants in the country of residence and could not include immigration status and country as simultaneous moderators of the relationships investigated. This has implications for the interpretation of the results of this study. Namely, the fact that the theoretical model was robust in all three countries suggests that it could be similarly stable across immigrant generations.
Besides the above-mentioned limitations related to the current empirical research design, we also have more theoretically oriented suggestions for future research. In addition to national identification and trust in the majority group, other potential mediators should be included for further testing and development of RDIM. As one interesting possibility, the role of collective efficacy as highlighted in SIMCA (
Regarding the practical and political implications of this study, we would like to point out the need to raise awareness of intergroup inequalities and the importance of the active societal position of immigrants and ethnocultural minority groups. To avoid exacerbating intergroup tensions and to assist societal participation, ethnic and national identities of immigrants would, however, not be seen as opposite to each other as it was the case in the contexts of this study. Moreover, our study shows that perceived discrimination and heightened ethnic identity undermine the potential of the development of superordinate national identities among Russian-speakers to serve as a means to build positive intergroup relations and to engage in collective action to promote social equality in the society. Thus, the positive potential of superordinate national identification and intergroup trust should be harnessed for intergroup dialogue that could give a voice to immigrants facing discrimination and pave a way for political mobilization of ethnic minority group members within the prevailing political system.
The Finnish part of this research was supported by the Academy of Finland (SINI project 1267981) and KONE Foundation (SOPU project 4704917) of Prof. Jasinskaja-Lahti. The Estonian and Norwegian parts of the research were supported by the EEA funding through the Research Council of Norway (Grant EMP 168).
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers and the action editor for their constructive comments during the review process.