The Routledge International Handbook of Discrimination, Prejudice and Stereotyping [1 ed.] 0367223694, 9780367223694

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
About the editors
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Towards a new sociological social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination
PART I: Prejudice, social structure and social justice
2. Beliefs about the interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism and responses to racial inequality
3. Mental health prejudice, discrimination and epistemic injustice: Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance
4. Between hope and dread: Unaccompanied children, discrimination and the uncertainties of the asylum application process
5. The subtlety of gender stereotypes in the workplace: Current and future directions for research on the glass cliff
PART II: Targets of prejudice
6. Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe
7. Roma prejudices in the European Union: Responses to structural
inequality
8. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people: Prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination and social change
9. Anti-muslim sentiments in western societies
10. Explaining the Jew-hatred: The structure and psychological antecedents of antisemitic beliefs
PART III: Discrimination, stereotypes and bias in the field
11. Discrimination and intergroup contact
12. Discrimination in education
13. Stereotypes: In the head, in language and in the wild
14. Implicit bias
PART IV: Prejudice, intergroup relations and emotions
15. Beyond prejudice as antipathy: Understanding kinder, gentler forms of discrimination
16. The politics and history of numbers in intergroup relations and conflict research
17. Sentiments of the dispossessed: Emotions of resilience and resistance
PART V: The language of prejudice
18. Elite political discourse on refugees and asylum seekers: The language of social exclusion
19. Interactional approaches to discrimination and racism in everyday life
20. Censure and management of racist talk
PART VI: Looking to the future
21. Future directions of research on prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination
Index

Citation preview

THE ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF DISCRIMINATION, PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING

This handbook explores prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination primarily as phenomena embedded in the social organization of societies and connected to structural factors and larger societal systems. It offers a unique critical and cross-disciplinary approach to the study of contemporary manifestations of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. New socio-psychological analyses of the most pressing social problems of our age bring into view future directions of research on prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination oriented to social change and collective action and that engage with wider systems of norms and discourse. The editors draw on social psychology, sociology, social policy, clinical psychology, cultural studies and feminist, antiracist and decolonizing social science to show how social psychology can successfully rekindle its intellectual dialogue with kindred social science fields to create broader foundations for the exploration of the paradoxes at the heart of the social expression of prejudice in liberal democracies. This is essential reading for anyone interested in prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes.The handbook will be of interest to academics and researchers exploring both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of discrimination, inequality and social exclusion, as well as students undertaking masters or doctoral studies in social psychology, political psychology and political science. Cristian Tileagă is Reader in social psychology at Loughborough University, UK. Martha Augoustinos is Professor of psychology at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Kevin Durrheim is Professor of psychology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

THE ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF DISCRIMINATION, PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING

Edited by Cristian Tileagă, Martha Augoustinos and Kevin Durrheim

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Cristian Tileagă, Martha Augoustinos and Kevin Durrheim; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Cristian Tileagă, Martha Augoustinos and Kevin Durrheim to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-22369-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04957-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-27455-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558 Typeset in Bembo by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

CONTENTS

About the editors List of contributors Acknowledgements

viii ix xiv

Introduction 1 1 Towards a new sociological social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination 3 Cristian Tileagă, Martha Augoustinos and Kevin Durrheim PART I

Prejudice, social structure and social justice 11 2 Beliefs about the interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism and responses to racial inequality 13 Julian M. Rucker and Jennifer A. Richeson 3 Mental health prejudice, discrimination and epistemic injustice: Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance 26 David J. Harper and Kian Vakili 4 Between hope and dread: Unaccompanied children, discrimination and the uncertainties of the asylum application process 42 Jack Aldridge Deacon and Jo Aldridge 5 The subtlety of gender stereotypes in the workplace: Current and future directions for research on the glass cliff 58 Leire Gartzia and Michelle Ryan v

Contents PART II

Targets of prejudice 73 6 Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe 75 Ulrich Wagner, Patrick F. Kotzur and Maria-Therese Friehs 7 Roma prejudices in the European Union: Responses to structural inequality 90 Salomea Popoviciu and Cristian Tileagă 8 Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people: Prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination and social change 104 Elizabeth Peel, Sonja J. Ellis and Damien W. Riggs 9 Anti-muslim sentiments in western societies 118 Maykel Verkuyten 10 Explaining the Jew-hatred: The structure and psychological antecedents of antisemitic beliefs 136 Michał Bilewicz PART III

Discrimination, stereotypes and bias in the field 151 11 Discrimination and intergroup contact 153 Katy Greenland 12 Discrimination in education 167 Josephine Cornell and Shose Kessi 13 Stereotypes: In the head, in language and in the wild 184 Kevin Durrheim 14 Implicit bias 197 Iain Walker and Susie Wang PART IV

Prejudice, intergroup relations and emotions 211 15 Beyond prejudice as antipathy: Understanding kinder, gentler forms of discrimination 213 John Dixon and Darren Langdridge

vi

Contents

16 The politics and history of numbers in intergroup relations and conflict research 231 Philippa Kerr 17 Sentiments of the dispossessed: Emotions of resilience and resistance 244 Colin Wayne Leach and Fouad Bou Zeineddine PART V

The language of prejudice 259 18 Elite political discourse on refugees and asylum seekers: The language of social exclusion 261 Katarina Pettersson and Martha Augoustinos 19 Interactional approaches to discrimination and racism in everyday life 273 Jessica S. Robles and Natasha Shrikant 20 Censure and management of racist talk 287 Stephen Gibson PART VI

Looking to the future 301 21 Future directions of research on prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination 303 Cristian Tileagă, Kevin Durrheim and Martha Augoustinos Index

311

vii

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Cristian Tileagă is Reader in social psychology at Loughborough University. He is the author of several publications on social and political psychology, prejudice and discrimination and interdisciplinarity. His publications include The Nature of Prejudice: Society, Discrimination and Moral Exclusion (2015, Routledge), Psychology & History: Interdisciplinary Explorations (2014, Cambridge University Press, with Jovan Byford) and Discursive Psychology: Classic and Contemporary Issues (2015, Routledge, with Elizabeth Stokoe). Martha Augoustinos is Professor of psychology at the University of Adelaide. She has published widely in the field of social psychology and discourse, in particular on the nature of racial discourse in Australia. More recently her work has been extended to analysing public discourse on asylum seekers and refugees. She is co-author of Social Cognition: An Integrated Introduction (2nd ed., 2006, Sage) with Iain Walker and Ngaire Donaghue, and co-editor with Kate Reynolds of Understanding Prejudice, Racism and Social Conflict (2001, Sage). Kevin Durrheim is Professor of psychology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He writes on topics related to racism, segregation and social change. His publications include Qualitative Studies of Silence (Murray & Durrheim (eds.), 2019, Cambridge), Race Trouble (Durrheim, Mtose, & Brown, 2011, Lexington Press) and Racial Encounter: The Social Psychology of Contact and Desegregation (Durrheim & Dixon, 2005, Routledge).

viii

CONTRIBUTORS

Jo Aldridge is Professor of social policy and criminology at Loughborough University. She is an internationally renowned expert in deriving impact from participatory research and designing interventions for vulnerable groups (Aldridge, 2015). Her research on children and families (Aldridge, 2016) has led to the design of impactful evidence-based responses to policy challenges. She has contributed research evidence to government committees (including Parliamentary Select Committees), think tanks and policy makers. Michał Bilewicz is an Associate Professor of social psychology at the University of Warsaw, Poland, where he chairs the Center for Research on Prejudice. His research concerns different aspects of intergroup and human–animal relations. He is also specializing in history-related intergroup processes, such as post-conflict moral emotions, explanations and representations of historical events. He served as a member of the Governing Council of the International Society of Political Psychology and a vice-President of the Polish Social Psychological Society. Josephine Cornell is a Researcher at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa and the South African Medical Research Council-University of South Africa’s Masculinity and Health Research Unit. Based on critical social psychology, Josephine’s research interests include identity, discrimination in higher education, visual methods and protests. Jack Aldridge Deacon is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. PhD is an ethnographic study of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children’s experiences of the asylum application process in the UK. John Dixon is Professor of social psychology at the Open University, having previously worked at Lancaster University, the University of Worcester and the University of Cape Town. A former editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology, his publications include Racial Encounter: The Social Psychology of Contact and Desegregation (2005, Routledge), co-authored with Kevin Durrheim, and Beyond prejudice: Extending the Social Psychology of Intergroup Conflict, Inequality and Social Change (2012, Cambridge University Press), co-edited with Mark Levine. He has also published numerous research articles on prejudice, intergroup contact and social change.

ix

Contributors

Sonja J. Ellis is an Associate Professor in human development at Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato/ The University of Waikato. She is an established researcher and scholar in the field of LGBTIQ Psychology, and is co-author of the textbook  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, and Queer Psychology: An Introduction (2020, Cambridge University Press). She is currently undertaking research in relation to the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in sexuality education; and around youth sexual health. Maria-Therese Friehs is Research Associate in psychology of the University of KoblenzLandau, Germany. Her PhD focusses on methodological advancements in social perception research. Her research interests include stereotype and prejudice research, intergroup contact and longitudinal data modelling. Leire Gartzia is a Professor of leadership and change management at Deusto Business School (University of Deusto, Spain). She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, US, focussed on the effects of stereotypical masculine roles on organizational functioning. Her work has been recognized by international awards such as the AOM Best Paper and the Dorothy Harlow distinction in Gender Studies, as well as European gender projects (e.g., Gearing Roles). With Michelle Ryan, she has critically examined the “think crisis-think female” association with emphasis on how stereotyping varies across sex vs. gender components. Next to her academic activities, she has combined research with the business world, giving lectures about organizational change to employees and managers. Stephen Gibson is Bicentennial Chair in research methods in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. He is a social psychologist with research interests in areas such as obedience, the representation of peace and conflict, citizenship and welfare, as well as racist discourse. He is the author of Arguing, Obeying and Defying: A Rhetorical Perspective on Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments (2019, Cambridge), and editor of Discourse, Peace and Conflict: Discursive Psychology Perspectives (2018, Springer). Together with Laura G.E. Smith, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Social Psychology. Katy Greenland is an applied social psychologist at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences. She works on the boundaries between psychology and the broader social sciences (sociology, ethnography, and social policy), and with particular emphasis on constructions of discrimination and inequalities. She uses both quantitative and qualitative methods as and when they are most appropriate to the research question. David J. Harper is Professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London (UEL). He worked as a National Health Service clinical psychologist for nearly a decade before moving to UEL in 2000. He has been the Programme Director (Academic) of the Professional Doctorate in Clinical Psychology since 2014. He co-authored Deconstructing Psychopathology (1995, Sage) and Psychology, Mental health and Distress (2013, Red Globe Press) and co-edited Qualitative Research Methods in Mental Health and Psychotherapy: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners (2012, Wiley). Philippa Kerr is a postdoctoral research fellow affiliated with the psychology department at Stellenbosch University. She has a PhD in psychology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and has published research on xenophobia and intergroup relations in South Africa, as well as, more recently, the casualization of academic labour in South African universities. x

Contributors

Shose Kessi is Dean of the faculty of humanities at the University of Cape Town; Associate Professor in the department of psychology; and co-director of the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa. Her research centres on political psychology, community-based empowerment and social change, exploring issues of identity, such as race, class and gender, and how these impact on people’s participation in transformation efforts. A key focus is the development of Photovoice methodology as a participatory action research tool that can raise consciousness and mobilize community groups into social action. Patrick F. Kotzur is an Assistant Professor in psychology of Durham University, UK. His work focusses on topics related to intergroup relations. He is interested in factors and processes that impact stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, with a focus on intergroup contact. Darren Langdridge is Professor of psychology and sexuality at the Open University (UK), and a United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy accredited existential psychotherapist working in private practice. He has also previously been Visiting Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark (2011–2018) and Seattle University, USA (2014). For many years Darren has researched and written on sexualities, health, phenomenological methodology, critical theory and psychotherapy, publishing numerous books, papers and book chapters. He is the author/co-editor of a number of books including Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy (published by Sage), Phenomenological Psychology: Theory, Research and Method (published by Pearson), Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism (with M.J. Barker, published by Palgrave Macmillan) and Understanding Non-Monogamies (with M.J. Barker, published by Routledge). Colin Wayne Leach is Professor at Barnard College of Columbia University and Senior Research Scientist and Graduate Faculty at the School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University. He is currently Editor of the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology (Interpersonal Relations & Group Processes) and an elected fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He has published widely on the ways that status and morality inform identity, emotion and social motivation. Elizabeth Peel is Professor of communication and social interaction and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (Doctoral College), Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Her research areas are within critical health and social psychology and focus on LGBTIQ psychology (especially heterosexism and relationships/families) and chronic illness (particularly dementia). Her latest books are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer & Intersex Psychology (with Sonja Ellis and Damien Riggs, 2020, Cambridge University Press), Psychologies of Ageing (2018) and Critical Kinship Studies (2016). Katarina Pettersson works as Lecturer in social psychology at the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include nationalist and radical right political rhetoric, hate-speech and political communication and persuasion in the online sphere. Methodologically, her expertise lies in qualitative research methods, particularly in discourse analytical and (visual) rhetorical analysis. Her work has been published in international, peerreviewed journals in the fields of social psychology, discourse studies, women’s studies and qualitative research methods. She is lead editor of the book The Far-Right Discourse of Multiculturalism in Everyday Talk: Reproduction and Contestation in the Nordic Region (forthcoming, 2021, Palgrave Macmillan, with Emma Nortio). xi

Contributors

Salomea Popoviciu is a social scientist working as a project manager at Ruhama Foundation, Romania, an organization that has more than 20 years’ experience of working closely with disadvantaged Roma communities and influencing policy-making on Roma issues in Romania. She is also Co-director of Ruhama UK, a community interest company, with a focus on providing services for migrants and other vulnerable people. She has received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Bucharest and a PhD in social psychology from the University of Loughborough. She has published extensively on issues related to prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping and migration. Jennifer A. Richeson is the Philip R. Allen Professor of psychology and a Faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. Her research considers the social psychology of cultural diversity. Specifically, she examines processes of mind and brain that give rise to both the benefits and challenges of navigating diversity. Much of her current research considers how people reason and respond to societal inequality and injustice. Damien W. Riggs is a Professor in psychology at Flinders University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He is the author of over 200 publications in the fields of gender, family and mental health, including Diverse Pathways to Parenthood: From Narratives to Practice (2019, Academic Press). Jessica S. Robles is a member of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG) at Loughborough University. She has received a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research uses discourse and conversation analysis to examine the social organization of difference and its relevance to how people interactionally manage ordinary moral troubles in their everyday lives. Michelle Ryan is a Professor of social and organisational psychology at the University of Exeter, UK and a (part-time) Professor of Diversity at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She currently holds a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to investigate how context constrains women’s careers choices. She is involved in a number of other research projects. With Alex Haslam, she has uncovered the phenomenon of the glass cliff, whereby women (and members of other minority groups) are more likely to be placed in leadership positions that are risky or precarious. Research into the glass cliff was named by the New York Times as one of the top 100 ideas that shaped 2008, and in 2016 the term “the glass cliff ” was shortlisted as Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary. Julian M. Rucker is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity. He is broadly interested in investigating the psychological factors shaping perceptions of, and motivations to reduce racial inequality across a number of societal domains. His primary lines of research examine how the lay beliefs regarding the relatively interpersonal or structural nature of racism influence beliefs about societal racial inequality. His work also examines perceptions of racial progress in the United States and namely, the psychological factors predicting and influencing vast over-estimates of societal progress toward Black–White economic equality. Natasha Shrikant is an Assistant Professor in the department of communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She uses ethnography and discourse analysis to analyze relational,

xii

Contributors

institutional and/or political ramifications of identity-negotiation in interaction. Her work focusses on negotiation of racial, ethnic, cultural, gender and political identities in institutional contexts. Kian Vakili is a clinical psychologist and family and systemic psychotherapist. She works in Adult Mental Health in the Community in North Somerset for Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust. She has been working in the National Health Service as a qualified Clinical Psychologist for 20 years and a qualified Family and Systemic Psychotherapist for two years. Maykel Verkuyten is Professor in interdisciplinary social science at the faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He also is the former academic director of the European Research Center on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) at Utrecht University. His main interest is in questions of ethnic and religious identity, cultural diversity and intergroup relations. Ulrich Wagner is a Professor Emeritus at the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. He is working on intergroup relations, especially in the field of migration, prevention of violence and evaluation of prevention programs. Iain Walker is a social psychologist, with broad interests in social and environmental sustainability and in social justice. He is the Director of the Research School of Psychology at the Australian National University. His PhD is from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and his undergraduate degrees are from the University of Adelaide and Flinders University. Susie Wang is a social and environmental psychologist with an interest in social cognition, social justice and climate change. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship on the neural underpinnings of social identity threat at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, and received her PhD at the University of Western Australia on the topic of what it means to care about climate change. Her undergraduate degree was from the Australian National University. Fouad Bou Zeineddine is a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Innsbruck. His interest lies in the psychology of resistance and resilience, and how these relate to social dilemmas. In this domain, he examines individual and contextual differences in resistance against social oppression, preferences for different strategies of political participation, and political psychological mechanisms for increasing individual and societal resilience and empowerment and socio-ecological sustainability. He also studies inequities in the systems of knowledge production, dissemination and consumption in social science.

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This handbook is the result of a concerted effort. As editors, working across three continents, and with colleagues scattered out and wide around the world, we encountered several challenges not least those brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these challenges and the dreadful circumstances of the pandemic have not lessened our, and contributors’, enthusiasm for this volume. We want to thank colleagues for their patience and flexibility especially during the particularly difficult and upsetting times of the pandemic. We would also like to thank Eleanor Reedy, Lucy Kennedy and Alex Howard at Routledge for their patience and support during the editorial process.

xiv

Introduction

1 TOWARDS A NEW SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PREJUDICE, STEREOTYPING AND DISCRIMINATION Cristian Tileagă, Martha Augoustinos and Kevin Durrheim

This handbook offers a unique, critical, and international approach to the study of contemporary manifestations of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Unlike other handbooks, we take a cross-discipline approach by drawing on social psychology, sociology, social policy, clinical psychology, and feminist social science.The intellectual core of the handbook is situated in social psychology although chapters also touch upon issues in cognate fields.This handbook showcases contributions that create broader foundations for the exploration of the numerous paradoxes lodged at the heart of the social expression of prejudice in liberal democracies.We aimed to strike a balance between an authoritative and synthetic review of current and emerging debates and a focus on state-of-the-art empirical work. Contributors discuss the social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination in the context of broader concerns with law, employment, public policy, mental health, education; underrepresented targets of prejudice; implicit prejudices in social context; prejudice, identity, and emotions; and language of prejudice.The handbook will be accessible to academics and researchers interested in both the quantitative and qualitative study of discrimination, inequality, and social exclusion, and students undertaking masters or doctoral studies in social psychology, political psychology, political science, peace studies, media and communication, sociology, or cognate disciplines. This handbook is also addressed to think tanks and non-profit ONGs active in the international fight against racism, as well as journalists, politicians, to advocates and researchers of key policy domains including education, employment, housing, healthcare, immigration, and crime. What unites contributions in this handbook is a concern with social structure and social justice in the context of what we describe here as a new sociological social psychology. We argue that a renewed concern with social structure and social justice can redefine a social psychology of prejudice as a sociological social psychology. Both socio-structural and social justice ideas are recurrent themes and have a long history in social psychology and cognate social science disciplines. Both subtle and blatant forms of prejudice would be “almost unintelligible” (Allport, 1950, p. 21) without re-engaging with these themes. A critical social justice perspective DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-1

3

C. Tileagă, M. Augoustinos and K. Durrheim

in social psychology and the social sciences has recently seen the affirmation of a new intellectual agenda (see, for instance, Hammack, 2018). Approaches to social structure and stratification (see, for example, Fiske, 2010; Ridgeway, 2014), including, but not limited to, exploring the metamorphosis of group stereotypes in relation to social structure, issues connected to status, and explorations of “ideological mechanisms responsible for the reproduction of racial privilege in a society” (Bonilla-Silva, 2013, p. 9), have also seen the affirmation of new voices. Contemporary research conducted in Western and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand draws attention to the need to understand prejudice flexibly, using approaches that move beyond perspectives based exclusively on cognition (see, for instance, Dixon & Levine, 2012; Tileagă, 2015). The growth of critical social justice perspectives in social psychology and the social sciences that are challenging established conceptual frameworks makes it especially timely to survey a diverse field in order to take stock of existing as well as emerging trends and debates. We begin by discussing the relevance of social structure concerns for contemporary psychologies of prejudice. We then turn to a discussion of some of the most important features of a sociological social psychology of prejudice that can drive new socio-psychological analyses of the most pressing social problems of our age. We close the chapter by addressing a central social psychological theme – the idea that problems of prejudice and hostility in society are not simply a matter of flawed reasoning, irrational propensities, and/or attitudinal negativity.

Social structure and a new sociological social psychology Influential research strands in social psychology see prejudice as “complex and multifaceted, as primarily affective, as motivationally driven and rooted in ideological beliefs, and as powerfully influenced by both individual differences and by intergroup social and power relations, particularly involving threat, competition, and inequality” (Duckitt, 2013, p. 39). Research on prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination in the last 30 years has perhaps seen the most significant broadening of perspectives in the discipline of social psychology. Each “wave” of research on prejudice offers an even more comprehensive view of the complexity of prejudice than the one that preceded it (cf. Dovidio, 2001). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to offer a historical analysis (but see Dovidio, 2001; Duckitt, 1992, 2013). The typical approach to addressing the contemporary complexity of prejudice is to do what Pettigrew (2013) suggested: connect “levels below (e.g. neuroscience) and above (e.g. organisational) the situational level. The micro-levels can clarify psychological processes … the macrolevels can connect these processes to the structural levels necessary to advance effective social policies” (p. 603). Social psychologists are not the advocates of a “single pet theory of prejudice” but following Allport, use and combine a variety of perspectives, “ranging from the macro, or socialstructural causes, to micro, or individual causes” (Dovidio, Glick, & Rudman, 2005, p. 1). When one researches complex subjects, one does not look for a unifying theory but for frameworks that incorporate systematic intellectual inquiry and eclectic borrowings from other fields. This brings into view the relevance of socio-structural arrangements that reproduce prejudice in society.These are ideas that in social psychology go back to the work of Myrdal (1944) and Allport (1954). Both Allport and Myrdal, albeit in different ways, concentrated on the social issues and social problems created by the prejudiced mind located in a discriminatory society. They both agreed that social problems brought about by the existence of prejudice are not exclusively a matter of prejudice. Prejudice thrives in society because it has a thoroughly social logic. This social logic does not simply refer to a conventional micro-meso-macro framework of causality (Pettigrew, 1996). Prejudice is part of a “collective language” (Memmi, 2000, p. 112) that society creates and 4

Towards a new sociological social psychology

then uses to talk about itself. Prejudice is “first of all a cultural atmosphere; one breathes it in with the air of the family and the society” (Memmi, 2000, p. 133). Although their analyses contained the seeds of universally generalisable lessons, they were also very much situated in a specific set of socio-structural and socio-historical arrangements. The issues that both Allport and Myrdal wrote about were concerning dilemmas deeply anchored in the socio-structural organisation of a particular society, the United States. Whereas Allport was trying to derive universalist conclusions from his analyses of American social structure, Myrdal, in contrast, was very much trying to particularize by writing about the tensions at the core of American moral creed. Whereas, for Allport, prejudice was as much a problem of “psychological causation” as one of “social causation” (Allport, 1950), in his seminal study of racism in America, Myrdal provided perhaps the most cogent example of the significance of moral dilemmas: the perceived tension between “the Creed of progress, liberty, equality, and humanitarianism” (vol. I, p. 80) and the reality of segregation. It is this very tension that turned (at least in Myrdal’s eyes) a national problem (the “Negro problem”) into a moral problem. Allport has had a “hegemonic impact on the main trajectory of research” (Jackman, 2005, p. 89). The universalist Allport is the hero of our field, whereas Myrdal seems to be the forgotten voice. It is argued that “Allport missed important aspects of the nature of prejudice” and that “his blindspots became the field’s blindspots for many years” (Dovidio et al., 2005, pp. 9–10). Contemporary social psychology of prejudice has aimed to redress the balance, to remedy some of the effects of those blindspots. As a consequence, we are more knowledgeable about the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural aspects of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination that we have ever been. Yet we still seem to be missing what is essential about prejudice – the puzzles and tensions that ordered and civilized societies bring to the prejudice problematic (Wetherell & Potter, 1992) and that are “ordinarily invisible” (Opotow, 2011). It is because of the “extreme complexity” of prejudice that “many theoretical problems are unsolved - and seem almost unsolvable” (Kramer, 1949, p. 389). This extreme complexity comes from seeing prejudice primarily as phenomenon deeply embedded in the social organisation of societies and connected to structural factors and larger societal systems such as education, poverty, employment, criminal justice (Tileagă, 2015). As Bar-Tal (2000) argues “social psychology cannot escape from dealing with larger societal systems if it desires to be social in the broad meaning of the term and to be relevant to real problems that preoccupy people in their social life” (p. 156, emphasis in original). There has also been growing realisation that the American experience was but one facet of a larger organisation of prejudice that extends back to imperialism and colonialism and that reaches across the globe. Each context has its own legacy of racism, sexism, and many other -isms but all arise in a context in which negative attitudes, hostilities, and unimaginable hurt and fear have been born of exploitation and the profit motive (Fanon, 1963). This connection was nowhere more evident than in the way in which the Black Lives Matter movement quickly spread from the USA to other countries where citizens also recognized the ongoing legacy of dehumanisation, injustice, and violence in their lives. If you address issues of prejudice structurally you are not interested in prejudice per se, but in collective ideological practices that reinforce racial and other kinds of ideological orders that keep people in their place. The advocates of a societal social psychology of prejudice (see for example, Howarth, Wagner, Magnusson, & Sammut, 2014) have made this point repeatedly. Racism itself “forms a structure, and accordingly, the struggle against racism must be fundamentally geared towards the removal of the practices, mechanisms, and institutions that maintain systemic white privilege” (Bonilla-Silva, 2013, p. 266).We sometimes mistakenly believe that it is human psychology that makes us prisoners of social structure. However, as Turner (2006) has argued, society is not a “psychological prison.” Instead, it makes us “capable of collective action” and helps us expand “human possibilities.” 5

C. Tileagă, M. Augoustinos and K. Durrheim

It may seem natural that the next wave of social psychology of prejudice should concern itself with structural issues. However, there is nothing natural about this move. A return to researching structural issues is a return to what social psychology has been studying all along. A new sociological social psychology can dispel some of the contemporary scientific myths about the immutable and dysfunctional quality of prejudice. As Brown (2010) argued, “it may well be … that much prejudice does have an apparently immutable and dysfunctional quality to it. But equally … to think of prejudice as being impervious to change, or as having no rational function for its adherents, is to fail to do justice to the variety and complexity of the forms it can take and to its surprisingly labile quality in many situations.” (p. 5). There is no evidence that suggests that multilevel approaches that marry the neuro, biological, and other strands of social science are more effective in guiding social policies than approaches that focus on specific social problems using targeted interventions. We know from other disciplines in social sciences that social problems can be approached by carefully diagnosing a specific situation and without peering into the neurological or physiological black box (see, for example, the chapter by Aldridge-Deacon & Aldridge in this volume). Sociological social psychology is usually caricatured as a historical legacy of social psychology. Influential social psychologists situate sociological social psychology in the 1930s and describe it as social psychology’s “earlier work” (Pettigrew, 2013). The purpose of this renewed focus is not to retrace old steps or unearth old debates but rather to reinstate the notion of society to its rightful place in the social psychology vocabulary. As Bar-Tal and Teichman (2005) argue, society “has almost disappeared from the vocabulary of mainstream social psychology” (p. 8). But more importantly, a sociological social psychology might help dispel the myth embraced by many a social psychologist that social processes are not governed by their own laws but “rather they are accounted for by psychological laws which can at the same time be based on hypothetical laws of physiology” (Moscovici, 1972, p. 35).

The structure of the handbook As social psychologists we should not look to sociology or cognate disciplines to fill the societal gap in our discipline.The task of a new sociological social psychology is to elucidate and promote a social theory of society that would create a rapprochement between the current psychological social psychology of prejudice and a contemporary sociological social psychology. The handbook is divided into five thematic sections that each reveals existing as well as new concerns with the ethos and practice of a new sociological social psychology. We were less concerned whether contributors defined themselves or belonged to either the psychological or sociological social psychology camp. We thought it was important the chapters were not written exclusively by social psychologists – regardless of discipline, as Myrdal rightly argued, “ideas concerning the larger society … determine the scientific treatment of a specific social problem” (Myrdal [1944] 1996, vol. I, pp. 1xxxv–1xxxvi). The chapters in Part I discuss institutional discrimination and social justice. Rucker and Richeson review recent psychological research on lay beliefs about the nature of racism in the United States and the preference for interpersonal explanations for racism rather than structural ones. As we have highlighted above, this is consistent with how the discipline of psychology has also constructed racism which has limited our understanding of this entrenched social problem and our efforts to achieve social justice. Harper and Vakili continue this theme, detailing the endemic nature of discrimination faced by people with mental health problems. Like in the previous chapter, they argue that most research has focussed specifically on interpersonal reasons for understanding mental health discrimination and prejudice, an approach that has failed to 6

Towards a new sociological social psychology

significantly change negative attitudes. The authors adopt Fricker’s (2007) notion of epistemic injustice and a psychosocial approach to understanding distress as an alternative approach to countering mental health discrimination and prejudice. Aldridge Deacon and Aldridge also focus on the theme of administrative and bureaucratic injustice as it applies to the processes that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) face in the United Kingdom to claim asylum. The authors describe how discrimination against UASC is institutionally embedded through both the language and rationale of policies and through the screening practices of frontline professionals who determine the legitimacy or otherwise of UASC. Gartzia and Ryan’s chapter reminds us that despite the social and political gains women have made in recent years, women continue to face subtle forms of discrimination in the workplace. They demonstrate this in their discussion of the “glass cliff phenomenon,” highlighting the precariousness that crisis situations pose for women leaders and how this subtle form of gender discrimination can negatively impact their health, well-being, and careers. Part II of the handbook shifts focus to the targets of prejudice and discrimination and includes chapters on anti-immigrant prejudice in Europe (Wagner, Kotzur & Friehs), Roma prejudice in the European Union (Popoviciu & Tileaga), LGBT prejudice (Peel, Ellis & Riggs), anti-Muslim prejudice (Verkuyten), and anti-Semitism (Bilewicz). Collectively these chapters demonstrate that despite avowals of equality and social justice, prejudice, and discrimination towards minority groups is on the rise in western societies, as are increasing levels of violence and hate crime. Each chapter discusses manifestations of prejudice in terms of the historical and socio-political context of these prejudices and reviews recent research on their various determinants. Chapters in Part III focus more specifically on stereotyping and bias – what has undoubtedly been the bread and butter of experimental social psychology over the past 50 years. Although this research has painted a rather bleak picture of the inevitability of stereotyping, the chapters in this section offer a critical reassessment of how and when stereotyping and bias are implicated in everyday interaction, such as intergroup contact (Greenland), education (Cornell and Kessi), communication (Durrheim), and in implicit perception (Walker & Wang).Together these chapters critically evaluate both the experimental social psychological literature in the field (Greenland; Walker & Wang) and more ethnographic, qualitative, approaches to stereotyping (Cornell and Kessi; Durrheim). Part IV of the handbook focusses on what many have argued to be a much under-examined area of prejudice research – emotions and intergroup relations. Dixon and Langdridge’s chapter highlights the limitations of reducing prejudice to deep-seated antipathy, arguing for a more complex and nuanced examination of emotions implicated in prejudice. Kerr also argues for a more complex historical approach to intergroup relations, moving beyond the simple two group paradigm that has dominated research in the field. Leach and Bou Zeineddine too challenge the standard story in prejudice research that the dispossessed and disadvantaged are despondent and damaged, demonstrating in their own work that, on the contrary, they are resilient and defiant. Part V examines the language of prejudice, how it is articulated in both formal institutional discourse and everyday talk. The chapters examine recent research on political discourse from the far-right and the political centre on refugees and asylum seekers (Petterssen & Augoustinos), everyday interaction and conversation (Robles & Shikrant), and how racist talk is rationalized and justified to deny prejudice (Gibson). Together these chapters highlight the growing research in discursive psychology and conversation analysis on the linguistic and rhetorical features of prejudice and discrimination. Last but not least, we end the handbook in Part VI with a concluding chapter that looks to the future. Here we suggest five directions for future research on social psychology’s and, indeed, the social sciences’ most enduring topic. 7

C. Tileagă, M. Augoustinos and K. Durrheim

Researching bias among the “well-intentioned” At a time when “individualism, with all its appearance of being reasonable, principled, and unbiased, becomes the new organizing principle for the defense of the status quo” (Jackman, 2005, p. 99), it becomes important to research the complex ideological mixtures that support the propagation of prejudice, racism, and discrimination in society. We live “in an age that is at once global, individualistic and more moral than we suppose” (Beck, 1998, p. 41) – this age and its “ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society. Choosing, deciding, shaping individuals who aspire to be the authors of their lives, the creators of their identities, are the central characters of our time.” (Beck, 1998, p. 28). This is the world of the supposedly principled and unbiased citizens of advanced nations that are prepared nonetheless to collude with organisations of control to stifle the emancipation, and demean the worth, of others in the name of individualistic values and moral creed of justice and liberty for all. The mechanism by which new issues (including racism) enter the political arena is related to shifts from materialist to post-materialist values (Welzel, 2009). As Welzel argues, “as modernisation advances, even more persons will be characterized by these orientations, making populations more open-minded and more secular, positivist, rational, activist, and achievement oriented” (2009, p. 186). The modernisation thesis depicts a world in which people have shunned their prejudices forever – social harmony can thus “become an unquestioned ideal to be promoted, social conflict an absolute evil to be vanquished” (Dixon & Levine, 2012, p. 326). The recent debates about racism and police brutality in America and other parts of the world are very much debates about society’s “well-intentioned” core. It is the “well-intentioned” middle that is perhaps most influenced by “the official morality of a nation” (Allport, 1960, p. 233). The persistence of historical prejudices such as antisemitism (see Bilewicz, this volume) and anti-Roma sentiments (see Tileagă, 2015 and Popoviciu & Tileagă, this volume) in the age of cosmopolitan identities points to the idea that racism continues be a majority group problem (cf. Lewin, 1946) and not only the agenda of emancipated or active minorities. Researching bias among the “well-intentioned” has been one of the triggers that shifted the field away from earlier perspectives based on psychopathology to perspectives based on normal psychological processes towards subtle, ambivalent, generally unintentional biases. This shift has meant that social psychologists were more interested in society and the norms and societal arrangements that shaped the expression of prejudice. If the original focus on symbolic (Sears, 1988; Sears & Kinder, 1971), modern (McConahay, 1986; McConahay & Hough, 1976), aversive and dominative (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977, 1986) racism has at least made an attempt to address the analysis of prejudice structurally, the more recent focus on implicit attitudes and perspectives that now incorporates the study of brain processes and nonconscious biases distance social psychology from structural issues (see also Walker and Wang, this volume). Although society is what is being talked about in contemporary social psychological analyses, society, its structure, the nature, and history of its arrangements are rarely part of analysis.

References Allport, G.W. (1950). Prejudice: A problem in psychological and social causation. Journal of Social Issues, 6: 4–23. Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Allport, G.W. (1960). Personality and social encounter: Selected essays. Boston: Beacon Press. Bar-Tal, D. (2000). Shared beliefs in a society: Social psychological analysis. London: Sage.

8

Towards a new sociological social psychology Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005). Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society. New York: Cambridge University Press. Beck, U. (1998). The cosmopolitan manifesto. New Statesman, 127 March 20: 28–30. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2013). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (4th ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Brown, R. (2010) Prejudice: Its social psychology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Dixon, J., & Levine, M. (2012). Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dovidio, J. (2001). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The third wave. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4): 829–849. Duckitt, J. (1992). Education and authoritarianism among English and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans. Journal of Social Psychology, 132: 701–708. Duckitt, J. (2013). Historical overview. In J. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, P. Glick, & V. Esses (eds.), The SAGE handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination (pp. 29–44). London: Sage. Dovidio, J., Glick, P., & Rudman, L. (2005). On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fiske, S. (2010). Interpersonal stratification: Status, power, and subordination. In S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed.) (pp. 941–982). New York: Wiley. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaertner, S.L., & Dovidio, J.F. (1977). The subtlety of white racism, arousal and helping behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35: 691–707. Gaertner, S.L., & Dovidio, J.F. (1986). The aversive form of racism. In J.F. Dovidio, & S.L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination and racism (pp. 61–90). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Hammack, P. (2018). The Oxford handbook of social psychology and social justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Howarth, C., Wagner, W., Magnusson, N., & Sammut, G. (2014). “It’s only other people who make me feel black”: Acculturation, identity and agency in a multicultural community. Political Psychology, 35(1), 81–95. Jackman, M. (2005). Rejection or inclusion of outgroups? In J. Dovidio, P. Glick, & L. Rudman (eds.), On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport (pp. 89–105). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kramer, B. (1949). Dimensions of prejudice. The Journal of Psychology, 27(2), 389–451. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2: 34–46. McConahay, J.B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence and the modern racism scale. In J.F. Dovidio and S.L. Gaertner (eds.) Prejudice, discrimination and racism. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. McConahay, J.B., & Hough, J.C. (1976). Symbolic racism. Journal of Social Issues, 32: 23–45. Memmi, A. (2000). Racism (translated and with an introduction by Steve Martinot, and foreword by Kwame Anthony Appiah). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Moscovici, S. (1972). Theory and society in social psychology. In J. Israel, & H. Tajfel (eds.), The context of social psychology: A critical assessment (pp. 17–68). London: Academic Press. Myrdal, G. ([1944] 1996). An American dilemma: The Negro problem and modern democracy. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Opotow, S. (2011). How this was possible: Interpreting the holocaust. Journal of Social Issues, 67: 205–224. Pettigrew, T.F. (1996). How to think like a social scientist. New York: Harper Collins. Pettigrew, T.F. (2013). Looking to the future. In J. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, P. Glick, and V. Esses (eds.), The SAGE handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. London: Sage. Ridgeway, C. (2014). Why status matters for inequality. American Sociological Review, 79: 1–16. Sears, D.O. (1988). Symbolic racism. In P.A. Katz, & D.A.Taylor (eds.), Eliminating racism: Profiles in controversy (pp. 53–84). New York: Plenum Press. Sears, D.O., & Kinder, D.R. (1971). Racial tensions and voting in Los Angeles. In W.Z. Hirsch (ed.), Los Angeles:Viability and prospects for metropolitan leadership (pp. 51–88). New York: Praeger. Tileagă, C. (2015). The nature of prejudice: Society, discrimination and moral exclusion. London: Routledge. Turner, J.C. (2006). Tyranny, freedom and social structure: Escaping our theoretical prisons. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45(1), 41–46. Welzel, C. (2009). Individual modernity. In R.J. Dalton, & H.-D. Klingemann (eds.), The Oxford handbook of political behavior (pp. 185–205). New York: Oxford University Press. Wetherell, M., & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

9

PART I

Prejudice, social structure and social justice

2 BELIEFS ABOUT THE INTERPERSONAL VS. STRUCTURAL NATURE OF RACISM AND RESPONSES TO RACIAL INEQUALITY Julian M. Rucker and Jennifer A. Richeson

A large body of social science research has provided evidence that egalitarian norms and principles regarding race have become widely endorsed throughout American society. The magnitude of this egalitarian shift in racial attitudes, during the past 50-some odd years, has been perhaps most significant among White Americans. For instance, during the course of the past half-century, White Americans have expressed increasing levels of comfort with racial integration and intermarriage, become much less likely to believe in the biological inferiority of racial minorities, and become much more likely to endorse the view that racial discrimination is unacceptable (Bobo, 2001). In 2008, this egalitarian shift ostensibly led to and was realized in the election of an African American President of the United States—a feat that seemed inconceivable just a decade earlier. Yet, despite this rapid endorsement of racially egalitarian principles and ideals, as well as the landmark civil rights legislative victories of the 1960s (e.g., the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964), many stark racial disparities persist in the United States. Indeed, in nearly every important domain of life, from education to wealth, substantial racial disparities exist in the nation. Relative to non-Hispanic White Americans, for instance, Black Americans have markedly elevated rates of HIV/AIDS, heart disease, diabetes, nearly every form of cancer, infant mortality and just about any other metric of poor health (Washington, 2006). Striking racial disparities in economic resources are also readily apparent. The median wealth of White households, for example, is between 10 and 20 times that of Black and Latino households, and this gap may be continuing to widen (Pew Research Center, 2011). Moreover, a disproportionate number of Black and Latino Americans tend to live in hyper-segregated, less affluent neighborhoods that, compared to more affluent, predominantly White neighborhoods, suffer from higher unemployment and crime rates, and have poorer quality schools and public services (Massey & Denton, 1993; Shedd, 2015). The obstinacy and ubiquity of these racial inequities, however, is difficult to reconcile with evidence of an apparently widespread ethos of racial egalitarianism in the United States. Indeed, social scientists from Du bois to Myrdal have long focused on this disconnect between the DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-2

13

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson

egalitarian ideals and profound racial inequalities of the United States (e.g., Du Bois, 1903; Myrdal, 1944).The present chapter continues in this tradition, focusing on how psychological science can help make sense of this clear disconnect between the widespread societal endorsement of racially egalitarian principles and persistent racial inequality throughout American society. Specifically, here we review social psychological literature on prejudice bearing on this disconnect, focusing primarily on the relationship between beliefs about the nature of racism—as either primarily interpersonal or primarily structural—and individuals’ tendency to perceive (or acknowledge) racial inequality as well as how they reason about it. Although we draw upon research largely conducted in and pertaining to the U.S. context, we believe that the principles and processes we review here are likely relevant to other national contexts (e.g., Billig, 1991; Tileagă, 2016; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Indeed, work in discursive psychology, much of which has been conducted outside of the United States, has illustrated the strategic employment of different conceptualizations of racism (often, the denial of racial prejudice) as a means of both justifying personally held negative attitudes toward outgroups and mitigating evidence of intergroup inequality (e.g., Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). Similarly, we expect many of the principles and processes we highlight to apply to dimensions of social identity and social stratification other than race.

Racism: Interpersonal or structural? Social scientific scholarship on the nature of racism (e.g., Allport, 1954; Duckitt, 1992; Jones, 1996; Richeson & Sommers, 2016) has long emphasized the roles of both personal-level processes and societal-level factors. Interpersonal racism can be defined as holding negative attitudes toward members of different racial and/or ethnic groups. Conceptually, interpersonal racism and racial prejudice can be viewed as one in the same and individuals’ prejudices, be they held explicitly or more implicitly, are thought to be the root cause of discriminatory behavior. Structural racism, in contrast, can be defined as a set of policies, practices and/or laws that have a disparate impact on members of particular racial or ethnic groups. Again, these practices can be intentional and explicit in their inclusion/exclusion of members of different groups, or, rather, can do so unintentionally or more subtly. Moreover, structural racism need not necessarily stem from the discriminatory beliefs or intentions of any individual or group of individuals. Evidence of racially disparate outcomes of a policy or practice, then, may suggest the potential presence of structural racism. Both interpersonal and structural forms of racism are of great concern, as either can be quite harmful to the livelihood of members of racial minority groups, and undermine both meritocratic and democratic societal principles. Because overt racially discriminatory laws have largely been deemed unconstitutional in the United States for the past 50 years, however, concern about the lingering role that structural forms of racism play in contemporary national racial disparities may be under-appreciated. Analyses of surveys examining the beliefs held by American adults are consistent with this idea (Rucker, Duker, & Richeson, 2020a). In one recent nationally representative survey (CNN & Kaiser Family Foundation, 2015), respondents were asked, “which is the bigger problem today?; individuals’ own beliefs and prejudices that cause them to treat those of other races poorly” (indicative of a relatively interpersonal racism view), or “discrimination that is historically built into our society and institutions” (indicative of a relatively structural racism view). In a second recent survey (Pew Research Center, 2016), respondents were asked “when it comes to discrimination against Black people in our country today, which do you think is the bigger problem?” Respondents were once again offered two response options: “discrimination that is based on the prejudice of individual people” (indicative of an interpersonal view of racism), or “discrimination that is built into our laws and institutions” (indicative of a structural 14

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism

view of racism). In both samples, respondents were more likely to indicate that interpersonal racism is a bigger contemporary problem in the United States than is structural racism (64% and 75% selecting “interpersonal” in the CNN/KFF and Pew samples, respectively). Despite this perception, there is considerable evidence to suggest that structural (or “institutional”) forms of racism continue play a significant role in maintaining societal racial inequality (e.g., Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Cogburn, 2019; Jones,1996; Massey & Denton, 1993; Richeson, 2018; Richeson & Sommers, 2016; Salter, Adams, & Perez, 2018). One recent example of structural racism found throughout the contemporary United States, for instance, is the passage of voter identification laws—the requirement that citizens produce official government-issued forms of identification in order to cast a ballot in elections for public office. Regardless of the intentions of the lawmakers, these laws often have a disparate negative impact on voter turnout among members of racial minority (and lower SES) groups (e.g., Hajnal, Lajevardi, & Nielson, 2017). Despite its importance and potential impact, there has been relatively little research in the social psychological literature examining either the antecedents or consequences of holding a structural, relative to interpersonal, understanding of racism. It stands to reason, however, that a greater tendency to understand racism as a product of unfair structures and institutions, rather than solely as a product of biased individuals, may play an important role in how an individual may reason about and respond to evidence of societal racial inequality. Imagine, for instance, an organization that has a pronounced racial disparity in the promotion rates of White employees and employees of color. A person with a largely interpersonal understanding of racism may only be concerned about this inequality if it appears to have resulted from racial biases among the managers involved in promotion decisions. A person with a relatively structural understanding of racism, by contrast, is likely to view this disparity as evidence that something is awry in terms of company policy regarding promotions or, perhaps even, disparities in the climate of the company for racial minority relative to White employees that must be addressed, regardless of the potential biases (or lack thereof) among the managers. Consistent with this logic, O’Brien and colleagues (2009) found that holding a more structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism predicted the extent to which White undergraduate students in the New Orleans area perceived racism as a cause of the racially disparate relief efforts and outcomes following Hurricane Katrina. In the balance of this chapter, we will briefly present work on a growing literature exploring the causes and consequences of holding a belief in, if not appreciation of, structural racism in contemporary U.S. society. Specifically, we will discuss evidence regarding the potential roles of both motivated reasoning and education in adopting an interpersonal rather than structural lay belief about the nature of racism. We will then review emerging literature on some of the implications of holding a structural, rather than interpersonal, lay belief; namely, holding a structural lay belief predicts the perception of, and more equity-enhancing responses to, racial inequality. We close the chapter with a discussion of needed directions for future research on both the roots and consequences of individuals’ lay beliefs about nature of racism.

What shapes individuals’ lay beliefs? Despite the ubiquity and gravity of structural racism in the United States, there is considerable variance in the extent to which Americans appear to be aware of and/or acknowledge its impact in contemporary society. One factor that is especially predictive of having an appreciation of structural racism is an individuals’ own racial group membership. White Americans, relative to Americans from racial minority groups and especially relative to Black Americans, tend to hold an interpersonal model of racism and largely reject more structural understandings (e.g., Bobo, 2001; Nelson, Adams, & Salter, 2013; Unzueta & Lowery, 2008). Consistent with this literature, in 15

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson

our analyses of the aforementioned nationally representative samples, we found clear differences in the extent to which respondents endorsed an interpersonal rather than structural model of racism as a function of their racial group membership (Rucker et al., 2020a). Specifically, whereas over two-thirds of White respondents tended to endorse an interpersonal, rather than structural, view of racism, the ratio was closer to fifty percent among racial minority respondents. Moreover, similar perceptual “gaps” have also been observed along other dimensions of identity, suggesting that this phenomenon may generalize across different social identity contexts. For instance, work by Blodorn and colleagues (2012) has found that women, relative to men, were more likely to recognize structural forms of gender discrimination. Of course, group membership is simply a proxy for individuals’ experiences within and beliefs about the world. It is these beliefs that are likely to shape subsequent perceptions of inequality. Next, we consider motivational and experiential factors that may help to explain these broad group differences.

Motivation While any number of factors may contribute to this racial group difference in the tendency to hold a structural, rather than interpersonal, lay belief about racism, motivations to protect the self, group, or even the societal hierarchical system are likely to play a role. For instance, several bodies of research document the role of self- and group-image protection in motivating members of relatively high-status, dominant groups (e.g., White Americans) to justify their societal status (see Knowles, Lowery, Chow, & Unzueta, 2014, for a review). At the individual level, for example, there is evidence that self-image concerns play a meaningful role in White Americans’ perceptions of racism and reactions to racial inequity. Central to this work are the insights of Self-Affirmation Theory (Steele, 1988), which posits that humans have a fundamental psychological drive to have an overall positive experience of the self. Allowing oneself to maintain a global perception of being good, moral and capable can safeguard against threats to specific domains of the self. Similarly, at the group level, Social Identify Theory (e.g.,Tajfel & Turner, 1979) offers an important perspective on the differential endorsement of structural vs. interpersonal racism beliefs among White and racial minority group members. Across a wide body of research, Tajfel and colleagues have not only demonstrated the relative ease with which individuals divide themselves into groups on the basis of (sometimes quite arbitrary) distinctions but also the important connections between positive views of the self and of one’s social groups (e.g., Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). And, further, they have demonstrated how threats to the image of the group as good, moral and competent can undermine individual self-esteem (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). Consequently, evidence of unearned group advantage or, worse, advantages/status accrued through intergroup aggression and discrimination, pose threats to the value and morality of the group for members of high-status racial groups (Phillips & Lowery, 2018).The potential for, if not experience of, group-image threat for dominant group members, then, could make it especially difficult to acknowledge the role that structural racism, relative to interpersonal racism, plays in current levels of racial inequality (e.g., Kluegel & Bobo, 2001; see also Phillips & Lowery, 2015). Consistent with this idea, Adams and colleagues (2006) found that White Americans’ own perceptions of racism, as well as their beliefs that other Whites Americans understate the extent of racism, varied as a function of self-image threat. Specifically, in this work, White and Latino participants went through an affirmation manipulation (e.g., Fein & Spencer, 1997) wherein they ranked 11 predesignated topics in terms of their personal importance. In the affirmed condition, participants were subsequently asked to describe their most important value and why it was important to them. In the no affirmation condition, participants were asked to describe their 16

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism

ninth most important value and write about why it might be of importance to a typical college student. After the affirmation manipulation, participants read 20 examples of race-related events/ situations (e.g., “Ballot initiatives that eliminate educational and medical services to undocumented immigrants”) and rated the extent they thought each example was attributable to racism. The researchers found that, among those who were not affirmed, White participants perceived significantly less racism compared to Latino participants. Among those who were affirmed, however, White and Latino participants did not perceive different levels of racism. Specifically, White participants who had been affirmed perceived or, perhaps, acknowledged more racism than White participants who had not been affirmed. In addition to a motivated denial of racism, in general, there is evidence suggesting that White Americans may be especially motivated to deny structural forms of racism (Bonam, Nair Das, Coleman, & Salter, 2018; Unzueta & Lowery, 2008). Unzueta and Lowery (2008) found that White Americans’ recognition of instances of structural racism varied as a function of the extent to which their identity and self-image had been threatened.White participants whose self-image had been threatened, that is, were significantly less likely to recognize specific practices (e.g., “A downtown renewal project results in the dislocation of a large number of racial minorities from their homes and communities”) as examples of racism, compared with control (i.e., nonthreatened) participants. Self-image threat had no impact, however, on the extent to which White participants considered specific instances of interpersonal discrimination as indicative of racism, suggesting that acknowledging interpersonal forms of racism may not be as threatening as acknowledging structural forms. Although there is some evidence that, in general, self-image maintenance may be an important motivator of racial differences in the acknowledgement of structural racism (e.g., Unzueta & Lowery, 2008), it is worth noting that acknowledgment of structural racism (or lack thereof) is not entirely reducible to a self-image maintenance process. Research in discursive psychology, for instance, suggests that a number of competing motivations can shape the complex interplay between desires to adhere to egalitarian social norms and efforts to justify negative attitudes toward outgroups (e.g., Augoustinos & Every, 2007). Moreover, to the extent to which selfimage maintenance is implicated, further research is needed to clarify whether particular types of self-image threats are especially likely to contribute to these group differences. To that end, some potential insights can be found in recent empirical and theoretical work investigating White Americans’ tendency to deny White privilege (e.g., Knowles et al., 2014). Knowles and colleagues (2014) offer a theoretical account of the relationship between White Americans’ selfimage concerns and the denial of White privilege, suggesting that the notion that one’s group is unfairly advantaged (e.g., benefitting from White privilege) is threatening to many White Americans’ self-image, even at the level of the personal self/identity (see also Phillips & Lowery, 2015). Moreover, Knowles et al. (2014) argue that White Americans are motivated to deny racial group privilege in order to assuage what they call meritocratic threat—the concern that one’s personal successes could be attributed to external factors, like unfair racial privilege, rather than purely internal factors, like hard work and skill (Knowles & Lowery, 2012; Knowles et al., 2014; Lowery, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2007). Consistent with this idea, Lowery and colleagues (2007) examined the relationship between meritocratic threat and Whites Americans’ acknowledgment that White privilege exists. They found that White participants who experienced a meritocratic threat to the personal self, via negative (rather than positive) feedback on a bogus intelligence test, were less likely to acknowledge the existence of White privilege, ostensibly as a means of affirming a global positive self-view. Based on this work, as well as evidence illustrating a link between perceptions of White privilege and acknowledgment of structural racism (e.g., Unzueta & Lowery, 2008), it seems 17

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson

possible that meritocratic threat may be a particularly impactful type of self-image threat, in affecting White Americans’ perceptions of and/or willingness to acknowledge structural racism. It is worth noting, however, the current literature examining the implications of meritocratic threat is somewhat unclear about whether it may be more influential than other types of selfimage threat, and, thus, future research is needed to consider this possibility. It is also important to note that, for White Americans, not only is the notion of White privilege threatening to their personal self-image but it may also pose a group image threat, in that it suggests that White Americans benefit from membership to a group that is unfairly advantaged. To this point, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the link between self-image threat and the denial of White privilege is strongest among White Americans who are more highly identified with their racial ingroup (e.g., Knowles & Lowery, 2012; Lowery et al., 2007). Given the compounding effects of both of these threats, when White Americans (particularly those highly identified with their racial group) are faced with the idea of their own privilege, or with evidence suggesting their group’s privilege (e.g., structural racial inequality), it seems likely that they would engage in strategies to mitigate these threats, including outright denial of structural forms of racism, if not denial of racial disparities all together. In addition to motivations to preserve both self- and group-esteem, other motivations are likely to support a relative lack of awareness of structural racism among members of the dominant racial group. According to Social Dominance Theory (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), for instance, despite the ubiquity of social hierarchies among human social groups, people are generally motivated to perceive society as fair and just (see Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006, for a review). Because structural racism is especially difficult to justify in the contemporary U.S. legal context, its denial is a necessary “legitimizing myth.” Consistent with this idea, Neville and colleagues (2013) posit that the denial of structural forms of racism is a core component of colorblind racial ideology, which ultimately serves to justify the existing racial status hierarchy (see also Kendi, 2016). Not surprisingly, then, this “colorblind racism” is more likely to be observed among individuals higher in social dominance orientation (SDO)—preference for social hierarchy (e.g., SDO; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Similarly, belief in a just world (e.g., Lipkus, 1991) also predicts the extent to which people endorse “colorblind racism”—and, thus, tend to deny the existence of structural forms of racial discrimination. This is consistent with System Justification Theory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), which posits that system-justifying tendencies alleviate the negative effects of societal inequality on well-being. Importantly, system justification may help to explain the circumstances under which members of lower status racial groups (e.g., Black and Latino individuals) may also deny the existence of structural racism.

Educational factors In addition to motivation, education is another potentially important antecedent of holding a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism that is likely to contribute to the racial group difference in such beliefs. One’s exposure to historical and contemporary racial discrimination in the United States, in other words, is likely to differ by racial group membership and contribute to the differential appreciation of structural racism. Consistent with this idea, research by Nelson and colleagues (2013) found that Black-White differences in perceptions of structural racism were, in part, mediated through group differences in historical knowledge. White participants, relative to Black participants, were less knowledgeable about historical instances of racism and, as a result, were less likely to acknowledge systemic, relative to interpersonal, forms of contemporary racism. 18

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism

Building upon this work, Bonam and colleagues (2018) found that Black-White differences in critical historical knowledge explained racial differences in the denial of structural racism, with White (relative to Black) participants showing greater denial of structural racism due to their having less historical knowledge. Moreover, when provided with an intervention designed to increase historical knowledge (i.e., learning about discrimination in U.S. housing policy), relative to a control condition, participants acknowledged greater levels of structural racism. Work by Adams and colleagues (2008) also suggests that the extent to which racism is understood as interpersonal or structural can be shifted with an educational intervention. Adams and colleagues found that a multi-day, classroom-based racism tutorial that discussed both interpersonal and structural aspects of racism increased the extent to which participants endorsed a structural understanding of racism and also increased support for policy initiatives designed to combat the effects of societal racial inequity (e.g., Affirmative Action programs), relative to a tutorial that only focused on interpersonal racial bias (what the authors called “the standard portrayal”).

Summary Taken together, this research suggests that a simple lack of relevant knowledge about the history of racial discrimination in society may contribute to the racial group difference in the tendency to endorse a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism. Indeed, the observed racial group gap in lay beliefs should not be especially surprising, given the known racial group differences in exposure to information about the history of racism at home, at school and through family and social networks. Indeed, racial socialization differs considerably for Black and White Americans (e.g., Lesane-Brown, 2006). Further, Adams and colleagues’ work suggests that the dominant discourse on racism in psychology and in society focuses on interpersonal prejudices (i.e., “the standard portrayal”), and, thus, supports the development of an interpersonal lay belief. Efforts to address this historical knowledge gap, however, would be wise to consider the roles of the psychological motivations (e.g., self-image threat, social identity threat, system justifying beliefs), reviewed previously, that lead higher status racial group members to be skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of information about structural racism.

Why does thinking structurally about racism matter? The extant research on the implications of structural racism beliefs has consistently shown that holding a relatively structural (vs. interpersonal) conceptualization of racism, in general, reliably predicts perceptions of societal racial inequality. For instance, in our research examining nationally representative surveys of American adults, we found that endorsement of a structural racism view predicted a wide constellation of ideas related to perceptions of racism (Rucker & Richeson, 2020). After controlling for respondents’ racial background and political ideology, thinking that structural racism was a bigger contemporary problem in the United States. (relative to interpersonal racism) predicted the extent to which they thought that more change needs to be made to ensure racial equality in the United States and perceiving more inequality between Blacks and Whites across several societal domains (e.g., income, education, and housing), both at the community and national levels. Moreover, we (Rucker et al., 2020a) found that the endorsement of a structural understanding of racism also predicted perceptions of racial inequality in the U.S. criminal justice system. Participants who endorsed a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism were also more likely to think that Black Americans, relative to White Americans, are disadvantaged in the criminal justice system. In fact, accounting for individual differences in lay beliefs significantly 19

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson

reduced the Black-White racial gap in perception of racial inequality in criminal justice, even after accounting for other relevant individual differences, including political conservatism. In other words, the tendency for White and Black Americans to hold differential beliefs about the nature of racism—as interpersonal or structural—may be one reason why they also tend to differentially perceive racial inequality. In a different line of research, we (Rucker, Kraus, & Richeson, 2020b) have also found evidence of a relationship between endorsement of a structural understanding of racism and the accuracy with which individuals perceive racial inequality in the economic domain. Specifically, we (Kraus, Rucker, & Richeson, 2017) found that Americans, both White and Black, overestimated the progress society has made toward achieving racial economic equality in the United States on a range of economic markers (e.g., wealth, wages, etc.). Further, the inaccuracy in perceptions of progress was due to over-estimates in perceptions of contemporary (i.e., 2016), rather than past, levels of economic equality (Kraus et al., 2017; see also Kraus, Onyeador, Daumeyer, Rucker, & Richeson, 2019). In follow-up work, we found that lay beliefs about the nature of racism—namely, the extent to which people recognize the role of structural racism in contemporary society—negatively predicted the extent to which participants overestimated current levels of Black-White racial equality in income and wealth (Rucker et al., 2020b).This relationship remained robust even after controlling for political ideology, an important predictor of both holding a structural lay belief and the perception/acknowledgment of the prevalence of racial inequality in contemporary society. Taken together, this work suggests that accounting for differences in beliefs about the structural nature of racism may be important in explaining the often vast discrepancies in the perception of racial inequality between members of racial minority groups and White Americans (e.g., Nelson et al., 2013; Rucker et al., 2020b). Whether the racial gap in structural understandings of racism is born of education and experiences or, rather, motivations that are correlated with racial group membership, holding such vastly disparate views of reality is not conducive to addressing racial disparities in contemporary society, so as to create a more just and equitable nation.

Structural racism beliefs and responses to racial inequality In addition to research demonstrating the relationship between holding a structural lay belief about racism and perceptions of racial inequality, there is also a body of work investigating the relationship between these lay beliefs and preferred policy responses to racial inequality. Again, in our research examining nationally representative surveys of American adults, the endorsement of a structural lay belief about racism also predicted a bevy of responses to racism (Rucker & Richeson, 2020). After controlling for participants’ racial background, thinking that structural racism (vs. interpersonal racism) was a bigger contemporary problem in the United States was associated with greater attribution of problems in the African American community to past and present discrimination, lack of educational opportunities and lack of jobs. Similarly, endorsement of structural (vs. interpersonal) racism as a bigger contemporary problem was associated with greater endorsement of the belief that the federal government should be responsible for ensuring racial equality in income, in schools and in the criminal justice system. Endorsement of the idea that structural (vs. interpersonal) racism is a bigger contemporary societal problem was also associated with several policy beliefs relevant to addressing racial inequality: greater belief that the Voting Rights Act is still necessary today, greater support for slavery reparations and greater support for considering diversity (rather than solely relying on “merit-based” criteria) in hiring and college admissions. Consistent with this work, we have also found that holding relatively structural (vs. interpersonal) understanding of racism also predicts the extent to which White Americans support 20

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism

policies that create and maintain mass incarceration, in general, and racial disparities in incarceration in particular, after exposure to statistics regarding racial inequality in the U.S. prison system. Our work builds from earlier research, examining the effect of exposure to information about racial disparities in mass incarceration (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2014). In their research, they found that White Americans who were exposed to starker, rather than more modest, racial disparities in their home state’s prison population expressed greater support for harsh criminal justice policies that are known to contribute to mass incarceration (e.g., habitual offender laws). Specifically, similar to the procedures introduced by Hetey and Eberhardt (2014), we found that it was primarily among White Americans with a relatively interpersonal understanding of racism that exposure to starker (vs. more modest) disparity information lead to increased punitive policy support. White participants with a relatively more structural understanding, in contrast, did not report differential levels of support for habitual offender laws as a function of the magnitude of racial disparity in the prison population to which they were exposed (Rucker et al., 2020b). Moreover, subsequent studies revealed that individual differences in SDO (Ho et al., 2015; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), coupled with racism lay beliefs, predict responses to exposure to racial disparities in incarceration, irrespective of the magnitude of those disparities. Specifically, among participants with more egalitarian attitudes regarding societal inequality (i.e., those lower in SDO), holding a relatively structural, rather than interpersonal, racism lay belief was associated with lower support for habitual offender laws after exposure to information about the racial demographics of the prison population. Among participants with relatively high levels of SDO, in contrast, racism lay beliefs were not related to support for habitual offender laws after exposure to the racial disparity information. In other words, these findings suggest that it may be the combination of concern about societal hierarchy, in general, and holding a structural lay belief about racism that leads people to respond to evidence of racial disparities (in incarceration, in this case) by reducing their support for policies that contribute to them and/or increasing support for policies that disrupt them. Importantly, these patterns were not observed among participants who were not first exposed to racial disparity information, suggesting that exposure to actual evidence of inequality (e.g., racially disparate prison demographics), rather than thinking about inequality in the abstract, may also have an influence in shaping the relationship between structural racism beliefs and responses to inequality. Taken together, then, this emerging research suggests that lay beliefs about the nature of racism may play an important role in both the perception of racial inequality and engendering equity-enhancing policy support upon exposure to evidence of racial disparities in important societal domains.

Structural racism beliefs and minority mental health Last, in addition to this emerging research on some of the correlates of holding a structural lay belief about racism among White Americans—members of the current dominant racial group, research suggests that these lay beliefs may also have important implications for racial minorities. Specifically, there is some evidence suggesting that, for members of marginalized racial groups, the relationship between perceptions of racism and mental health is, in part, associated with the type of racism they believe to be prevalent in society. Utsey and colleagues (2000), for example, found that, among African American college students, greater perceptions of interpersonal racism were associated with greater social withdrawal, whereas greater perceptions of structural racism were associated with greater social support seeking (see also, Williams, Lawrence, & Davis, 2019). Similarly,Tawa and colleagues (2012) found that, among Asian American college students, greater perceptions of interpersonal racism were associated with lower personal self-esteem, whereas greater perceptions of structural racism were associated with higher collective self-esteem. This 21

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson

work suggests the need for additional research to consider the broad consequences of holding a more interpersonal, rather than structural, understanding of racism for members of marginalized racial groups.

Summary In sum, the research surveyed in this section suggests that holding a structural lay belief about the nature of racism may shape individuals’ perceptions of societal racial disparities. For White Americans, further, perhaps coupled with strong egalitarian motivates, structural understandings of racism may be critical to decisions to support policies designed to reduce racial disparities in any number of important societal domains, including mass incarceration. For racial minorities, holding a structural rather than interpersonal lay belief about racism may be protective of mental and, perhaps also physical, health, at least for those who perceive and/or experience considerable levels of racial discrimination. All of these relationships, of course, are in need of additional investigation, so as to unpack the mechanisms that give rise to these extremely important outcomes for both individuals and society.

Implications and future directions Broadly speaking, this body of research suggests that considering how people tend to conceptualize racism—as relatively more interpersonal or structural—can shed new light on how they reason about racial disparities, which in turn, contributes to their support for efforts to reduce discriminatory laws and policies that contribute to the maintenance and/or exacerbation of racial disparities in any number of domains. Given that simply making people aware of even stark racial disparities does not automatically or even typically engender support for reparative policies (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2014, 2018), this work suggests that efforts to increase awareness of racial inequality may need to be directly coupled with efforts to highlight the structural causes of those racial disparities. Given how limited the social psychological research on these lay beliefs currently is, there are still many important questions in need of investigation. First, additional research is needed to shed light on other outcomes associated with, if not caused by, holding a structural racism view, for both members of dominant and members of marginalized racial groups. And, of course, it is important to investigate whether the emerging patterns that have been unearthed thus far, regarding inequality in just a few domains (criminal justice, education, natural disasters, etc.), may also be observed in other domains in which racial disparities are known to exist (e.g., health, housing, etc.). More research is also necessary to investigate the factors that explain exactly how these lay beliefs relate to the perception of and response to racial inequality. And, further, research must examine more thoroughly how people come to hold interpersonal and/or structural lay beliefs about racism, be it through early socialization as children, through the way history and/or psychology is taught in secondary and post-secondary education (Adams et al., 2008), and/or through the prevailing narratives that society holds dear regarding societal racial progress (Kraus et al., 2019). Shedding light on these questions will need to disentangle between the effects of merely receiving information that bolsters a structural view (e.g., Adams et al., 2008) and addressing underlying psychological motivations (e.g., Self-image Threat; Unzueta & Lowery, 2008) that influence individuals’ willingness to acknowledge structural racism. Although the limited existing research seems to attempt to shift structural beliefs through either education or motivation, it seems quite likely that education and motivation are inextricably linked and attention to both 22

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism

will be critical to increasing willingness to acknowledge structural racism. It seems likely, in other words, that the most effective interventions to promote a structural understanding of racism will have to address both deficits in knowledge about structural racism, as well as a motivated reluctance to even acknowledge racism in its structural forms. Last, research will need to examine whether beliefs about the structural nature of racism may co-occur with holding structural understandings of other forms of societal oppression, such as sexism, and visa-versa. It may be the case, for instance, that one’s relatively structural understanding of racism may “bleed over” into how they tend to think about discrimination along other dimensions of social identity (e.g., gender, SES, disability status). And, of course, holding structural understandings of discrimination along any dimension of identity may predict the extent to which people are skeptical of societal inequality/stratification along these various identity dimensions (Craig & Richeson, 2016).

Conclusion Although there is much to be learned about how lay beliefs about the nature of racism relate to responses to racial inequality, the evidence amassed in the field thus far suggests these lay beliefs are important to incorporate in our social psychological understanding of contemporary racial inequality. Given the obstinacy of racial, and other forms, of intergroup inequality in the United States and throughout the world, a more complete understanding of the factors that shape the perception of and reactions to these inequalities will be crucial in both advancing academic discourse on intergroup inequality and stratification, as well as creating effective interventions to galvanize broader support for equity-enhancing policies.

References Adams, G., Edkins, V., Lacka, D., Pickett, K.M., & Cheryan, S. (2008). Teaching about racism: Pernicious implications of the standard portrayal. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(4), 349–361. Adams, G., Tormala, T.T., & O’Brien, L.T. (2006). The effect of self-affirmation on perception of racism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 616–626. Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007). The language of “Race” and prejudice: A discourse of denial, reason, and liberal-practical politics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26(2), 123–141. Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. London: Sage Publications. Blodorn, A., O’Brien, L.T., & Kordys, J. (2012). Responding to sex-based discrimination: Gender differences in perceived discrimination and implications for legal decision making. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 15, 409–424. Bobo, L.D. (2001). Racial attitudes and relations at the close of the twentieth century. In N.J. Smelser, W.J. Wilson, & F. Mitchell (eds.), Racial trends and their consequences (Vol. 1, pp. 264–301). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Bonam, C., Nair Das, B., Coleman, B.R., & Salter, P. (2018). Ignoring history, denying racism: Mounting evidence for the Marley hypothesis and epistemologies of ignorance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2), 257–265. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield. Branscombe, N.R., Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (1999). The context and content of social identity threat. In N. Ellemers, R. Spears, & B. Doosje (eds.), Social identity: Context, commitment, content (pp. 35–58). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. CNN & Kaiser Family Foundation. (2015). Survey of Americans on race [data and codebook]. Retrieved from: http://kff.org/other/report/survey-of-americans-on-race/. Cogburn, C.D. (2019). Culture, race, and health: Implications for racial inequities and population health. The Milbank Quarterly, 97, 736–761.

23

J.M. Rucker and J.A. Richeson Craig, M.A. & Richeson, J.A. (2016). Stigma-based solidarity: Understanding the psychological foundations of conflict and coalition among members of different stigmatized groups. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 21–27. Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The souls of black folk. Chicago, IL: McClurg & Co. Duckitt, J.H. (1992). Psychology and prejudice: A historical analysis and integrative framework. American Psychologist, 47, 1182–1193. Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (2002). Self and social identity. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 161–186. Fein, S. & Spencer, S.J. (1997). Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 31–44. Hajnal, Z., Lajevardi, N., & Nielson, L. (2017). Voter identification laws and the suppression of minority votes. The Journal of Politics, 79(2), 363–379. Hetey, R.C. & Eberhardt, J.L. (2014). Racial disparities in incarceration increase acceptance of punitive policies. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1949–1954. Hetey, R.C. & Eberhardt, J.L. (2018). The numbers don’t speak for themselves: Racial disparities and the persistence of inequality in the criminal justice system. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 183–187. Ho, A.K., Sidanius, J., Kteily, N., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Pratto, F., Henkel, K. … Stewart, A. (2015). The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1003–1028. Jones, J.M. (1996). Prejudice and racism (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Jost, J.T., Banaji, M.R., & Nosek, B.A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881–919. Kendi, I.X. (2016). How to be an anti-racist. New York, NY: One World. Kluegel, J.R. & Bobo, L. (2001). Perceived group discrimination and policy attitudes: The sources and consequences of the race and gender gaps. In A. O’Connor, C. Tilly, & L.D. Bobo (eds.), Urban inequality: Evidence from four cities (pp. 163–198). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Knowles, E.D. & Lowery, B.S. (2012). Meritocracy, self-concerns, and Whites’ denial of racial inequity. Self and Identity, 11(2), 202–222. Knowles, E.D., Lowery, B.S., Chow, R.M., & Unzueta, M.M. (2014). Deny, distance, or dismantle? How White Americans manage a privileged identity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 594–609. Kraus, M.W., Onyeador, I.N., Daumeyer, N.M., Rucker, J.M., & Richeson, J.A. (2019). The misperception of racial economic inequality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 899–921. Kraus, M.W., Rucker, J.M., & Richeson, J.A. (2017).  Americans misperceive racial economic equality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 10324–10331. Lesane-Brown, C.L. (2006). A review of race socialization within Black families. Developmental Review, 26(4), 400–426. Lipkus, I.M. (1991). The construction and preliminary validation of a global belief in a just world scale and the exploratory analysis of the multidimensional belief in a just world scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 1171–1178. Lowery, B.S., Knowles, E.D., & Unzueta, M.M. (2007). Framing inequity safely: Whites’ motivated perceptions of racial privilege. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1237–1250. Massey, D.S. & Denton, N.A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma:The Negro problem and modern democracy. New York: Harper & Row. Nelson, J.C., Adams, G., & Salter, P.S. (2013). The Marley hypothesis: Racism denial reflects ignorance of history. Psychological Science, 24, 213–218. Neville, H.A., Awad, G.H., Brooks, J.E., Flores, M.P., & Bluemel, J. (2013). Color-blind racial ideology: Theory, training, and measurement implications in psychology. American Psychologist, 68, 455–466. O’Brien, L.T., Blodorn, A., Alsbrooks, A., Dube, R., Adams, G., & Nelson, J.C. (2009). Understanding White Americans’ perceptions of racism in hurricane Katrina-related events.  Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 431–444. Pew Research Center. (2011). Wealth gaps rise to record highs between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-betweenwhites-blacks-hispanics/. Pew Research Center. (2016). Racial attitudes in America III survey [data and codebook]. Retrieved from: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-blacks-andwhites-are-worlds-apart/.

24

Interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism Phillips, L.T. & Lowery, B.S. (2015). The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 12–18. Phillips, L.T. & Lowery, B.S. (2018). Herd invisibility: The psychology of racial privilege. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 156–162. Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., & Levin, S. (2006). Social dominance theory and the dynamics of intergroup relations: Taking stock and looking forward. European Review of Social Psychology, 17, 271–320. Richeson, J.A. (2018). The psychology of racism. An introduction to the special issue. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 148–149. Richeson, J.A. & Sommers, S.R. (2016). Race relations in the 21st century. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 493–463. Rucker, J.M., Duker, A., & Richeson, J.A. (2020a). Structurally unjust: How lay beliefs about racism relate to perceptions of and responses to racial inequality in criminal justice. Manuscript Under Revision. https:// psyarxiv.com/sjkeq/. Rucker, J.M., Kraus, M.W., & Richeson, J.A. (2020b). Lay beliefs about the nature of racism predict the misperception of racial economic inequality. New Haven, CT: Unpublished Data. Rucker, J.M. & Richeson, J.A. (2020). Lay beliefs about the nature of racism predict perceptions of and preferred responses to racial inequality. New Haven, CT: Unpublished Data. Salter, P.S., Adams, G., & Perez, M.J. (2018). Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A culturalpsychological perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 1–6. Shedd, C. (2015). Unequal city: Race, schools, and perceptions of injustice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sidanius, J. & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Steele, C.M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 261–302). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Tajfel, H. & Turner, J.C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole. Tawa, J., Suyemoto, K.L., & Roemer, L. (2012). Implications of perceived interpersonal and structural racism for Asian Americans’ self-esteem. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 34(4), 349–358. Tileagă, C. (2016). The nature of prejudice: Society, discrimination and moral exclusion. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Unzueta, M.M. & Lowery, B.S. (2008). Defining racism safely:The role of self-image maintenance on White Americans’ conceptions of racism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1491–1497. Utsey, S.O., Ponterotto, J.G., Reynolds, A.L., & Cancelli, A.A. (2000). Racial discrimination, coping, life satisfaction, and self-esteem among African Americans. Journal of Counseling and Development, 78, 72–80. Washington, H.A. (2006). Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. New York: Doubleday. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, D.R., Lawrence, J.A., & Davis, B.A. (2019). Racism and health: Evidence and needed research. Annual Review of Public Health, 40, 105–125.

25

3 MENTAL HEALTH PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION AND EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance David J. Harper and Kian Vakili

Introduction This chapter focuses on the way in which some people experience prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of their mental health. Concepts of mental health are contested and culturally specific and so it is important, at the outset, to draw attention to five aspects of this chapter’s context. Firstly, it is written from a European context and draws largely on research published in English in high income countries (e.g. Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand). Concepts of mental health vary considerably across cultures. For example, a study of local understandings in Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo identified some similarities but also significant differences in how problems seen by the researchers as ‘mental illness’ were construed in the different countries (Ventevogel, Jordans, Reis, & de Jong, 2013).The authors reported that causal attributions about problems ranged from the supernatural to the psychosocial and those in the natural world like infectious diseases. However, increasingly, Western constructs of mental health and of stigma are being exported across the world via diagnostic manuals and international ‘awareness’ campaigns (Mills, 2014; Watters, 2011). As a result, readers will need to determine which aspects of our argument, if any, have relevance in their own context. To facilitate this process, for studies we discuss, we will identify the countries in which they were conducted. Secondly, in a Euro-American context the dominant cultural construct of mental health is a biomedical psychiatric one – for example, the term ‘mental illness’ is often used. This assumes that such problems in living are best understood by drawing on a conceptual framework designed for understanding bodily illness and where causes of mental health problems are viewed as primarily biological in nature with psychosocial causes as secondary. The problems of this perspective will be a theme running through the chapter. Thirdly, this means that many studies use psychiatric diagnostic categories despite there being significant debate about their reliability and validity even in the Global North (Cromby, Harper, & Reavey, 2013). Though many of the studies reviewed in this chapter refer uncritically to diagnoses and terms like ‘mental illness’ we adopt a descriptive approach so when we refer to people as having been given certain diagnoses we do not intend to imply that such diagnoses are accurate or uncontested. Fourthly, 26

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-3

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

the concept of ‘mental health’ has historically developed to cover two quite different issues: both subjective experiences of psychological distress (which might attract diagnoses like ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’) and conduct which concerns and troubles others (which might, for example, attract diagnoses like ‘personality disorder’ and ‘schizophrenia’). Finally, stigma theory is currently the dominant frame for understanding mental health discrimination and prejudice. However, we will argue that a focus on injustice, particularly ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007) is likely to lead to more effective work to counter prejudice and discrimination. There are a range of ways in which those who attract psychiatric diagnoses experience social injustice. For example, evidence suggests that psychological distress is causally influenced by a range of forms of social inequality (Cromby & Harper, 2009; Cromby et al., 2013). Moreover, given the level of subjectivity involved in psychiatric diagnosis, social stereotypes about gender, ‘race’, class and so on may affect diagnosers’ judgements (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004; Harper, 2011). Thus, the higher levels of paranoia reported amongst African American undergraduates (Combs, Penn, & Fenigstein, 2002) could lead to an over-diagnosis of psychosis when, instead, this may reflect the ‘“healthy” cultural paranoia’ (Grier & Cobbs, 1992, p. 161) necessary for survival in racist societies. Once people come into contact with mental health services, social inequality affects the kinds of treatment they may receive. In the United Kingdom, for example, more socially deprived areas have higher rates of psychiatric medication (Anderson, Brownlie, & Given, 2009) and young black men are more likely to be treated compulsorily (Keating, Robertson, McCulloch & Francis, 2002). Of course, from an intersectional perspective, forms of social inequality, differential social sanction and the effects of cultural norms and stereotypes interact in complex ways. In this chapter, we will focus primarily on how psychological distress and troubling conduct become a target of discrimination. In the first section, we examine the extent of the problem, beginning by examining research on public attitudes and then reviewing evidence of discrimination experienced by those with psychiatric diagnoses. In the second section, we discuss some of the factors related to these attitudes and behaviours, including the role of the media, and briefly review the conceptual models drawn on to understand them. In the third section, we discuss the conceptual limitations of the stigma construct and explore alternative approaches, with epistemic injustice as a central focus. In the fourth section, we discuss some findings from a qualitative study research on how people with psychiatric diagnoses respond to prejudice and discrimination and the strategies they use to manage it. In the fifth section, we review interventions to address prejudice and discrimination and, in the final section, we discuss potential future avenues for research and practice.

Extent of the problem Attitudes about mental health Angermeyer and Dietrich (2006) reviewed 33 national studies and 29 local and regional studies of attitudes towards mental illness, mostly conducted in Europe. They reported that the majority of the public in these studies consider people with mental health problems as in need of help and show pro-social reactions.Yet they also reported that a substantial proportion of people perceive those with mental health problems as unpredictable and dangerous, reacting with fear and with a tendency to distance themselves. Attitudes about mental health, however, are also variable and can appear contradictory. They are also influenced by how questions are framed (Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). Angermeyer and Dietrich (2006) noted that attitudes about mental health appear to vary between and within countries and there were somewhat inconsistent associations with demographic variables though a generally consistent finding was that knowing someone with mental health problems or having experienced them oneself was associated with more positive attitudes. 27

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

Mental health discrimination Corker et al.’s (2013) interviews with psychiatric patients in England in 2011, revealed extensive discrimination across a range of areas of everyday life with 91% of participants reporting at least one experience of discrimination. The authors noted that ‘the most commonly reported sources of discrimination were family, friends and social life contacts, or a general report of being avoided or shunned’ (Corker et al., 2013, p. s61). Other areas of life where participants reported discrimination included: mental health staff (30.4%), welfare payments (24.9%), finding a job (18.6%), keeping a job (16.6%), the police (16.1%) and housing (13.3%). In a study in Scotland, Berzins, Petch, and Atkinson (2003) compared interviews with 165 people with severe and enduring mental health problems and 165 people from the general population. Whilst 15% of the general population reported experiences of harassment in the community, the figure for the mental health sample was twice as high (40%), consisting primarily of verbal abuse from teenagers and neighbours about the person’s mental health problems. In addition to harassment, people with psychiatric diagnoses are also more likely to be victims of crime. Khalifeh et al. (2015) found that, compared with a general population sample, a sample of London psychiatric patients were much more likely to report being a victim both of non-violent crime (14% versus 40%, respectively) and of violent assault (3% versus 19%, respectively).

Understanding prejudice and discrimination about mental health Following the pioneering work of Erving Goffman (1963), researchers have attempted to understand mental health prejudice and discrimination primarily by drawing on stigma theory. This focuses on how stereotypes about mental health are associated with negative attributes and social rejection. In a review of this literature Hinshaw and Stier (2008) note that studies of behaviour often reveal discriminatory attitudes and sometimes even punitive behaviour towards people seen as mentally ill.

Different attitudes towards different forms of distress? Angermeyer and Dietrich’s review (2006) concluded that attitudes differed by diagnosis such that people with diagnoses of schizophrenia and alcohol problems were seen as more unpredictable and more likely to be dangerous and violent than those with diagnoses of anxiety or depression. Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, and Rowlands (2000) reported, for example, that 71.3% of their U.K. respondents rated people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia as dangerous and 77.3% saw them as unpredictable. To some degree these negative attitudes appear to be related to public perceptions both of the causes of distress and of the level of control a person is felt to have over their problem. For example, Link, Phelan, Bresnahan, Stueve and Pescosolido’s (1999) U.S. study found that stressful circumstances were the most commonly endorsed cause of alcohol problems, depression, schizophrenia and cocaine dependence though the second most commonly endorsed cause differed: a chemical imbalance (depression and schizophrenia); how a person was raised (alcohol problems) and the person’s own ‘bad character’ (cocaine dependence). Crisp et al.’s (2000) U.K. study found that people with diagnoses of eating disorder, alcohol problems and drug addiction were both much more likely to be blamed for their problems and seen as needing to ‘pull themselves together’ compared with those with diagnoses of schizophrenia. In a German study, Schomerus, Matschinger, and Angermeyer (2014) examined the relationship between causal beliefs (biology, stress or childhood adversities) and social acceptance in 28

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

relation to schizophrenia, depression and alcohol dependence. They also studied the mediating effect of perceptions of perceived differentness, dangerousness, treatability and perceived responsibility both for developing problems and for recovering from them. They found that biogenetic beliefs were associated with lower social acceptance of schizophrenia and depression (because of perceived differentness and dangerousness) but higher social acceptance of alcohol problems. However, they reported a complex picture with different beliefs and attributions often counterbalancing each other.Thus, belief in a biogenetic cause of alcohol dependence was also associated with perception of dangerousness but this was outweighed by a perception of reduced responsibility for its onset, leading to more social acceptance on balance. Belief in current stress as a cause of schizophrenia was associated with more social acceptance, mediated by reducing perceived differentness and increasing perceptions of treatability and responsibility for recovery. However, belief in the causal role of childhood adversity in depression resulted in lower social acceptance mediated by increased perceptions of differentness and dangerousness. Of course, causal attributions are heavily influenced by local cultural constructions and there is a need for much more research studying the range of conceptualisations and causal models in different cultural contexts (e.g. Ventevogel et al., 2013). Moreover, researchers could usefully study the ways in which people may not just have one stable causal explanation for their own and others’ difficulties but may, instead, draw on a range of different understandings which they move between depending on the context.

Changes over time: The increasing influence of biomedical explanations A number of researchers have examined longitudinal changes in attitudes. In a systematic review of such studies from the United States, Europe and Australia, Schomerus et al. (2012) identified two major trends. Firstly, populations had become more accepting of a psychiatric conceptualisation of mental health: they were increasingly aware of diagnostic categories and adopted a biological explanatory model. Secondly, attitudes had not improved and, in some cases, had become worse. These results are of concern because, in many countries, there have been concerted efforts in recent decades to change attitudes about mental health via ‘anti-stigma’ campaigns based on an approach often summarized as ‘mental illness is an illness like any other’ (Read, Haslam, Sayce, & Davies, 2006). This proposes that, if the public are educated about diagnostic categories and biomedical explanatory models (so-called psychiatric or mental health ‘literacy’) then they will be more likely to seek psychiatric treatment themselves and less likely either to blame others for their problems or engage in prejudice and discrimination. Examples of this approach include the United Kingdom’s ‘defeat depression’ campaign (Paykel, Tylee, Wright, & Priest, 1997) and the Movement for Global Mental Health (http://globalmentalhealth.org/; Patel et  al., 2011). This movement builds on a longstanding tendency within psychiatry to see its constructs and treatments (primarily pharmaceutical) as culturally universal as seen within the World Health Organization’s (2018) International classification of disease (ICD-11) and the American Psychiatric Association’s (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5). DSM-5 is used in many countries outside of North America and has a major influence both on mental health research and on the development of the ICD.The Movement for Global Mental Health has been heavily criticized for the way in which biomedical constructs from the Global North are simply exported to other cultural contexts, in a neo-colonial manner, often with the support of pharmaceutical companies seeking to expand their markets (Clark, 2014; Mills, 2014; Watters, 2011). As we have noted, Schomerus et al.’s (2012) findings suggest that, whilst these campaigns have led to an increased adoption of a bio-psychiatric model, they have failed to change attitudes 29

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

and, in some cases, may even have worsened them. Why might this be? Read et  al. (2006) reviewed a range of studies examining the effect of causal beliefs on attitudes towards people with schizophrenia diagnoses. They reported that, in contrast to the assumptions of most antistigma programmes, biomedical explanations were overwhelmingly associated with a range of negative attitudes like perceived dangerousness, unpredictability, fear and desire for social distance. As Hinshaw and Stier (2008) note, simply implying people are not responsible for their problems – as anti-stigma campaigns often do – does not necessarily reduce prejudice since, as shown in the present volume, there is significant prejudice about issues over which people have no control like their gender, ethnicity and so on. Moreover, even if the cause of distress is seen as external and uncontrollable people can still be seen as having some responsibility for the onset of problems – for example, we might be perceived as weak or having committed some sin. Finally, biogenetic models can enhance feelings of differentness and genetic inferiority. For the public, the print, broadcast and increasingly online media are the most important sources of information about mental health. But biomedical research is often reported uncritically, and researchers note that it is based on a narrative of ‘genetic optimism’ (Conrad, 2001). However, in contrast to popular belief, many psychiatric drugs were ‘discovered’ serendipitously, and they alleviate symptoms rather than targeting specific – supposedly underlying – disorders (Moncrieff, 2008). Moreover, there is significant debate, even amongst psychiatrists, about the value of this research given that it has not led to any fundamental changes in mental health assessment or intervention in recent years and is unlikely to in the near future given the state of current knowledge (Kingdon & Young, 2007). However, here we will focus on the media’s influence on public attitudes to people with mental health problems via the shaping of social norms.

The influence of the media Goulden et al. (2011) sampled U.K. newspaper articles relating to a variety of psychiatric diagnoses in 1992, 2000 and 2008.They reported that, in 2008, 14% of articles presented people with mental health problems as a ‘danger’ to others and 13% as ‘strange, inept or burdensome’. There had been a reduction between 1992 and 2008 in the former but a slight increase in the latter. A U.K. survey by Shift (2006) suggested that articles relating to danger often concerned reports about particular cases of homicide and thus were highly variable over time. The Shift report authors interviewed media professionals who defended such articles on the basis of their newsworthiness. The authors concluded that ‘by concentrating on dramatic and rare incidents the media is feeding the audience’s interest in the unusual and the extreme’ (2006, p. 31).Their focus group research with audiences noted that, as with previous studies they ‘continue to take most of the messages they get from the media they favour more or less at face value – unless they have any personal experience of the topic being covered’ (p. 31). However, personal experience does not always outweigh the effects of negative media coverage. Philo (1994) reported that, in 21% of cases in his group’s study, audience members’ positive personal experiences of people with mental health problems were ‘overlaid’ by negative media messages.These people apparently traced their beliefs to violent portrayals in fiction or news reporting. Of course, when watching TV, people spend much more time watching fictional portrayals in dramas, ‘soaps’ and sitcoms, than news and current affairs programmes. A U.K. study by Time to Change (2014) reported that, of a sample of TV viewers, 45% said characters with mental health problems often posed a risk to others and that 39% said characters were often violent. This is, perhaps, not surprising given that Wilson, Nairn, Coverdale and Panapa (1999) noted that 15 out of the 20 characters in their New Zealand study were depicted as physically violent to themselves or others. However, in the Time to Change (2014) study 77% said characters often experienced 30

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

discrimination due to their mental health whilst 57% said characters were often likeable and the authors noted that there had been some reduction in the presentation of characters as violent. Indeed, in soap storylines concerning mental health there is the potential to change negative attitudes since they can focus on a well-known and well-liked character and their distress can be seen in the context of their biography and social context. However, a recent study found that ‘the “medical model” is prioritized in mainstream television drama and the causes of mental distress framed in biomedical terms’ (Henderson, 2018, p. 206). Henderson (2018) interviewed service user consultants to broadcasters as well as TV executives, producers and script-writers. She found that ‘storylines tend to emphasize the certain benefits of medication’ and that ‘medication provides a relatively simple on-screen solution to resolve complex stories’ (p. 206). She concluded that: Mental distress and stigma are addressed at an individual, not collective level. Debates within the survivor movement and public mental health concerning medication, treatment and recovery tend to be obscured. (Henderson, 2018, p. 206) With the rise of social media in the early twenty-first century, this has become an important vector to study and a recent study of Twitter has found that mental health is more stigmatized and trivialized than physical health conditions (Robinson, Turk, Jilka & Cella, 2019). This will become an increasingly important research topic in the future.

From stigma to discrimination: Mental health and epistemic injustice The stigma paradigm has become the dominant frame for understanding prejudice and discrimination in mental health. A search for all documents and all years on the Scopus database reveals that, at the time of writing (July 2020) there are twice as many publications on ‘mental health’ and ‘stigma’ (12,761) than there are on ‘mental health’ and ‘discrimination’ (7,049) and, increasingly, there are also publications on ‘mental health’ and ‘internalized stigma’ (582) or ‘self-stigma’ (587).Yet stigma is a concept with significant limitations as Sayce (1998) has noted. For example, it shifts the emphasis away from issues of power and justice, directing attention away from those who are engaging in prejudiced and discriminatory behaviour and, instead focusing on the victim. Moreover, this concept is used in relation to mental health but much less, if at all, in relation to other forms of discrimination where concepts of oppression or internalized oppression might be used. For example, we don’t talk about the ‘stigma’ of being a woman, or being a black person; we quite rightly talk about sexism and racism and we focus on the systems which facilitate such discrimination. This is not to say that all targets of prejudice and discrimination are the same but it is striking how dominant the stigma frame is in mental health, perhaps because it can be accommodated within the individualistic and intra-psychic focus of the psy-disciplines. If the concept of stigma is problematic, how might we think differently about mental health prejudice and discrimination? One approach might be to draw on Miranda Fricker’s (2007) notion of epistemic injustice. She delineates two specific forms of epistemic injustice: • Testimonial injustice occurs when ‘prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word’ • Hermeneutical injustice occurs ‘at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experience’ (Fricker 2007, p. 1) 31

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

Fricker’s work has been taken up in psychiatry though there tends to be more of a focus on testimonial as opposed to hermeneutical injustice. For example, Crichton, Carel, and Kidd (2017) give examples of the varied ways in which psychiatric diagnostic labels act to reduce a person’s credibility. Rogers and Pilgrim (2010) note that psychiatric labels tend to be given when a person’s actions do not seem intelligible according to social norms and then these labels act to reduce a person’s competence and credibility in the eyes of others. In the next section, discussing service users’ subjective experience of prejudice and discrimination, we will see that epistemic injustice is a key theme.

How people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia experience and respond to prejudice and discrimination: Examples from a qualitative study Quantitative research can describe trends in discrimination at the level of particular populations and identify relevant factors. Qualitative research can complement such findings with a richer insight into the subjective experience of prejudice and discrimination. Moreover, it can also show how mental health service users are not simply passive victims of discrimination. Rather they develop a range of skilful strategies to manage the discrimination they face and to construct a more valued identity. To illustrate this we will draw on data from a qualitative study of eight mental health service users with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, living in London in the United Kingdom (Vakili, 2003).1 Here, we take a critical realist perspective which, briefly, entails three assumptions (Pilgrim, 2020): that there is a potentially knowable world in which causal forces are at work (ontological realism); that our methods for investigating the world are imperfect (epistemological relativism); but that our knowledge is not arbitrary – rather, we can interpret and evaluate the data our methods produce by making reasoned judgements (judgemental rationality). In the extracts all names are pseudonyms. As we are presenting the material primarily for illustrative purposes, we will keep our interpretative comments brief and make reference throughout to relevant research and scholarship.

Strategies to manage the fear of exposure: Maintaining vigilance and passing as normal Mental health service users regularly encounter testimonial injustice but it is not just their rationality which is doubted. In addition, as we have noted, those with psychosis diagnoses face the challenge that others may perceive them as dangerous and unpredictable (Angermeyer & Dietrich’s, 2006; Crisp et  al., 2000; Read et  al., 2006). However, the situation is complex since mental health problems are generally not visible to others. Goffman (1963) observed that 1 The eight participants (six men and two women) were aged 29–50. All lived in the community and the length of time that they had had a diagnosis of schizophrenia ranged from 5 to 18 years. They were all recruited from NHS mental health services. Two were employed, two were engaged in voluntary work, three were unemployed and one was a student. They self-defined their ethnic backgrounds as: ‘white British’ (4 participants); ‘Indian born in Tanzania’ (1); ‘African Caribbean’ (1); ‘Greek Cypriot’ (1) and ‘British born Pakistani’ (1). The interviews focused on: participants’ perceptions of societal attitudes about schizophrenia; in what ways, if any, it had affected the way they saw themselves, their behaviour or the behaviour of others towards them; and what impact it had had on either their psychotic experiences or recovery. For this chapter, the transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis which, as Braun and Clarke (2006) note, can be conducted from a range of epistemological standpoints. The second author (KV) conducted, transcribed and coded the interviews and developed initial categories that were then reviewed and refined by the first author (DH), a process which continued in an iterative manner.

32

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

stigmatized conditions which were not visible could give rise to anxiety. As Hinshaw and Stier (2008) observe this can create concerns about whether one should disclose one’s mental health status to others and a fear about whether it may be inadvertently revealed. As Hamid, one of our interviewees, put it, ‘[o]nce you say you are schizophrenic people think you are a very, very bad person you know’. As a result, some participants were careful in deciding who to disclose their mental health status to and what to disclose. Andreas explained why, in the past, he had chosen not to tell people about his diagnosis. ANDREAS:  …

they would get worried you see? So you wouldn’t say it. I wouldn’t say it anyway, you know? … Because of because of the Jekyll and Hyde, you know, scenario.

The Jekyll and Hyde character neatly exemplifies public fears of unpredictability.The participants were often at pains to emphasize that these perceived risks were exaggerated: AZIM:  I’ve

met people over the years who’ve told me they were suffering from schizophrenia and they wasn’t dangerous at all you know, they were quite mellow people.

A recent review of qualitative studies reported that, since service users with psychosis diagnoses felt others feared violence and unpredictability, they felt shame and feared others, resulting in an understandable reluctance to disclose their mental health status to them (Wood et al., 2015). John described how he needed to remain vigilant in conversations with friends: JOHN:  [when

the] conversation gets onto the health service and patients and that sort of thing. I’m very wary about, when it spreads to mental illness you know that sort of uh, monitoring, really, of the debate, a-, a-, in a, in a laddy sort of group, that sort of thing, certain information comes out and you’re done for.

John highlights the influence of intersectionality here and how fears of exposure may be influenced by hegemonic masculinity. This vigilance also extended to a heightened awareness of the need to follow social conventions so as not to attract the attention of others. In his 1991 BBC TV series Madness, Jonathan Miller referred to how ordinary people were sensitive to the maintenance of social conventions in public space, what he referred to as a ‘constitution of conduct’: we can instantly and by a very subtle process recognize someone who is breaking that constitution. They’re talking to themselves; they’re not moving at the same rate; they’re not avoiding other people with skill that pedestrians do in the street. The speed with which normal users of public places can recognize someone else as not being a normal user of it is where madness appears. (Miller, 1991, cited in Rogers & Pilgrim, 2010, p. 31) Participants drew on their cultural knowledge of such conventions in order to navigate everyday life. Sam described how he sought to pass as ‘normal’ when using everyday public spaces: SAM: You

don’t stick out like a sore thumb and you look relatively normal and you’re not rocking anybody’s boat and you’re almost merging [laughs] … Yeah basically not to have eye-to-eye contact with people, keep your head to the ground as you pass somebody rather than eyeball them and stuff like that. 33

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

Sam’s description of the skills necessary to navigate public space is similar to Westwood’s (1990) description of young black men’s engagement in ‘streetwise’ practices whereby they needed to be constantly aware of their surroundings, remaining vigilant for signs of danger. Psychiatric diagnoses are associated in public discourse with a range of negative associations. In addition, psychiatric discourse is comprised, as Gergen (1990) has put it, of ‘vocabularies of deficit’. As a result, service users were faced with dilemmas about how to construct their identity and they drew on a number of different strategies of identification.

Strategies of identification: Distancing, emphasizing common humanity and embracing difference It appears likely that those who are visibly different in some way will attract more negative labelling from others (Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). The mental health status of service users can be made visible in a number of ways. For example, they may be so overwhelmed by ‘psychotic’ experiences that they may respond to them in a visible manner, for example, talking back to voices in public or acting in the way Jonathan Miller describes. Prescribed medication – like ‘anti-psychotic’ drugs – may include ‘side effects’ known as ‘movement disorders’ which might, for example, affect one’s gait, which can be noticed by others. One strategy described by participants was to distance themselves from those service users with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who visibly breached social norms. Courtney was asked whether he socialized with other people with the same diagnosis. COURTNEY: Not

really because those people are really crazy [half laughs] they’re not like me. Those ones like me, those ones that socialize with me well we get on well, your, see they’re all straight and take medication […] but we get along there are no problems, we’re not acting foolishly or not acting ill or unwell. We are getting along fine doing what the doctors say.

Like Sam, Courtney appeared to be aware of the importance of not appearing visibly different, of not ‘acting foolishly or not acting ill or unwell’. Practices of social distancing and downward social comparisons can increase self-esteem (Hinshaw & Stier, 2008) but, here, this strategy appears to have a protective function, enabling those who can pass as ‘normal’ to avoid indirectly exposing their mental health status. However, Courtney also orients to the power of psychiatry and the importance of compliance: of ‘doing what the doctors say’. Thus, in addition to service users skilfully avoiding the breaching of social norms of public space, they were also aware of the importance of not breaching the social norms of being a ‘good patient’ (Chamberlin, 1998). Distancing oneself from others with the same diagnosis was not the only identity strategy reported; another was to emphasize one’s common humanity through the building of ordinary relationships. John described the validation he experienced from others in his social network when they expressed curiosity about his experiences, enabling him to adopt an educational role and to counter negative stereotypes: JOHN: This

negative stereotyping, you know with the axe-wielder and that sort of thing. They [acquaintances] are quite curious from somebody who has gone through it who is articulate and intelligent and can explain to them what it is all about.

34

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

Some participants also expressed their commonality with, rather difference from, other service users with similar diagnoses: ANDREAS:  I

Identify that they have had problems as well you see, you know, they’re like. Most people, most mentally ill people have had something go wrong in their life […] instantaneously you know I, I identify with them, you know. I’m a schizophrenic and depression, I identify with some trauma in their life and mine and that makes them close to me.

What appears to facilitate Andreas’ identification with others, here, is a psychosocial causal model, emphasising the role of adverse life events on mental health.Yet such explanations do not appear to be routinely offered by professionals. In a recent U.K. qualitative study, the majority of the service users reported not having been given a causal explanation for their difficulties by mental health professionals (Carter, Read, Pyle, & Morrison, 2018). Some felt they had been given an explanation but, on further investigation, it appeared they had simply been given a psychiatric diagnosis but no specific cause for their difficulties had been proposed. This lack of access to explanatory models could be seen as an example of hermeneutical injustice in that service users are thus denied access to explanatory resources which might help them make sense of their experiences. However, although they could emphasize commonality with others, both those with or without diagnoses, some service users with psychosis diagnoses can still feel very different to others (Wood et al., 2015). This can pose a challenge: how can a member of a group experiencing discrimination embrace their sense of being ‘different’ or ‘special’ without it being see as, in some way, inferior? Azim and John described strategies of identification which appeared to be successful. Azim talked about having met artists at a film workshop and how he identified with others who he also saw as ‘different’: AZIM:  I

knew they were like me and you know they were different when they were at school. They were just like, there and it was great and I loved it. JOHN:  I think of myself as being rather special. Erm, not least because of the, the whole experience, uh, led, led me to writing so I write poetry now that’s my main, erm, it’s through, through that it’s, it’s up my life’s specialness, if you like and in a way my worth to society is judged on those terms … so in that sense I feel quite special. It is interesting that both Azim and John found the domain of artistic expression to be one where their experience of feeling different and special could be valued. Indeed, artists and poets have, historically, been members of sub-cultural communities which have provided socially sanctioned space to find meaning in and culturally value the experience of those who feel outside of conventional life (Curtis, Dellar, Leslie & Watson, 2000). In Parker and Aggleton’s (2003) work on HIV/AIDS, they argue for the need to theorize the relationship between constructions of identity and the response to stigma and discrimination. They suggest that these experiences can generate what Castells (1997) terms resistance identities and project identities. According to Castells (1997, p. 8), resistance identities are ‘generated by those actors that are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination’. Project identities are formed ‘when social actors, on the basis of whatever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure’ (Castells, 1997, p. 8). For Parker and Aggleton (2003, p. 22) there should be more of an emphasis ‘on community mobilization aimed

35

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

at unleashing resistance to stigmatization and discrimination’ as well as ‘structural interventions aimed at developing a rights-based approach’ to prejudice and discrimination. Azim’s and John’s celebration of difference appeared to be the result of their individual endeavours rather than through contact with the broader psychiatric service user movement.Thus it seemed more consistent with the notion of a resistance rather than a project identity. Indeed, none of the participants in our qualitative study had attended any meetings of service user advocacy organisations and they did not appear to be aware of them. This lack of awareness and contact is another example of epistemic injustice. Firstly, this lack of access might make testimonial injustice in mental healthcare more difficult to challenge given that advocacy organisations often inform people of their rights and support them to exercise those rights. Secondly, this lack of access can result in hermeneutical injustice since the psychiatric survivor movement is a source of a range of alternative non-medical explanations for mental distress. Although often struggling to find stable long-term funding, there are now a range of organisations and movements which seek to generate such resistance identities. Such groups include the Mad Pride movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Mad_pride), the international Hearing Voices Movement (Corstens, Longden, McCarthyJones, Waddingham & Thomas, 2014), MindFreedom (https://mindfreedom.org/), psychiatric survivor proponents of the social model of disability (Beresford, Nettle, & Perring, 2010) and the recent development of Mad Studies (LeFrançois, Menzies, & Reaume, 2013). Increasingly, similar organisations are being developed outside of the Global North, including in Africa (Kleintjes, Lund, & Swartz, 2013) and Latin America (Ardila-Gómez et al., 2019).

Interventions to address stigma, prejudice and discrimination Gronholm, Henderson, Deb, and Thornicroft (2017) review a range of different interventions aimed at countering mental health prejudice and discrimination, predominantly in high-income countries. They categorize them by their aims: educational; facilitating contact with mental health service users; or rights-based advocacy.They note that early anti-stigma campaigns focused primarily on education whereas, increasingly, interventions have included an element of contact with service users (e.g. describing their personal stories). Gronholm et al. (2017) also categorize interventions by their target audience. Many focus on improving the knowledge and attitudes of the general public whilst others focus on particular target groups like healthcare professionals, police officers or students. However, as discussed earlier in the chapter, there are conceptual debates about the nature both of mental health and stigma itself (Read et al., 2006) and thus interventions can be viewed as lying along a spectrum ranging from those primarily promoting a biomedical approach to those primarily promoting a psychosocial approach and Table 3.1 contrasts their respective assumptions. The biomedical approach is most associated with the slogan ‘mental illness is an illness like any other’ (Read et al., 2006) and is often referred to as ‘mental health literacy’. A good example of this approach was the Defeat Depression Campaign in the United Kingdom between 1992 and 1996 conducted by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of General Practitioners together with a range of stakeholders (Paykel et al., 1997).The aims of the campaign were to distribute information about depression from a medical point of view. For example, materials in the campaign gave information about how to recognize symptoms and encouraged people to see their GP if they had these symptoms. They also aimed to reduce public concerns about the use of anti-depressant medication which those leading the initiative saw as unwarranted and inaccurate. The two key target audiences were the public (reached via briefing media outlets and producing leaflets, books and audiotapes) and GPs (reached via conferences, diagnosis and treatment guidelines, training materials and other publications). 36

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance Table 3.1  Contrasting the biomedical with a psychosocial approach to public education about mental health Biomedical approach

Psychosocial approach

Sees the person’s mental health problems as the main problem Sees problems as a symptom of an underlying disease process and illness Sees societal reactions as due to the stigma attached to having a mental health problem Aim of public education is to remove perceived blame attached to the individual by ‘blaming’ the illness rather than the person Key public education slogan ‘Mental illness is an illness like any other’

Sees barriers in society as the main problem Sees problems as an understandable response to adverse life events Sees societal reactions as due to discrimination against a marginalized group (like racism, sexism, etc.) Rejects the relevance of notions of ‘blame’ and aims to promote diversity, reduce fear and increase empathy and understanding Key public education slogans: ‘I’m crazy: so what?’ ‘It’s normal to be different’ ‘Instead of asking what’s wrong with me, ask what’s happened to me’

Psychosocial approaches are associated with slogans like ‘It’s normal to be different’ and ‘Instead of asking what’s wrong with me, ask what’s happened to me’. An example of such an approach is a small-scale study in London in the United Kingdom based on two previous studies (Pinfold et al., 2003; Schulze, Richter-Werling, Matschinger & Angermeyer, 2003). The study is reported in two publications co-authored by the first author (Sholl, Korkie, & Harper, 2009, 2010). In the study, a trainee clinical psychologist and a mental health service user, who was also a clinical psychologist, facilitated four 50-minute sessions with 13–14 year olds in a school setting. The intervention was informed by a continuum model of distress (e.g. Wiesjahn, Brabban, Jung, Gebauer, & Lincoln, 2014) and assumed that adversities in life were a major cause of psychological distress.The two facilitators sought to use an active learning approach, rather than didactic methods and pupils were encouraged to ask the service user/psychologist questions about his experience. Sessions also focused on key things needed for a happy life as well as countering myths. Gronholm et al. (2017) conclude that there is evidence of small to moderate effects on knowledge, attitudes and intended behaviour both for campaigns focused on the public and those focused on other target groups. A key problem with many studies is that they fail to include longer follow-up so it is unclear if these effects have a lasting impact. However, many reviews of anti-stigma interventions fail to consider the underlying conceptual assumptions of these interventions even though, as we saw earlier in the chapter, these are incredibly important (e.g. Read et al., 2006). For example, the evidence would suggest that biomedical anti-stigma campaigns have had some success in persuading the public in many countries in the Global North to adopt a medical perspective.Yet, as Schomerus et al. (2012) have found, at the same time stigma has not reduced and, in some cases, has worsened, challenging the assumption of these campaigns. This can, perhaps, be understood as the result of the ‘mixed blessings’ of biomedically oriented campaigns (Haslam & Kvaale, 2015): Although biogenetic explanations may soften public stigma by diminishing blame, they increase it by inducing pessimism, avoidance, and the belief that affected people are dangerous and unpredictable. (Haslam and Kvaale, 2015, p. 399) 37

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili

As a result, it is important that those designing such interventions inform themselves about research on the complex attributions associated with different forms of distress (Schomerus et al., 2014) and on how to avoid the negative effects of biomedical explanatory models (e.g. Lebowitz & Appelbaum, 2019). Programmes need to be sensitive to the local cultural context, the different ways in which psychological distress and troubling conduct may be conceptualized and the range of causal models which might be relevant. For those in the Global North, Read et al. (2006) argue that psychosocial explanations of schizophrenia are more likely to result in increased acceptance since, in contrast with biomedical approaches they are more humanising, enabling an understanding of why someone might experience distress. Such approaches can address testimonial injustice through the active involvement of people with direct personal experience who are presented as having expertise – thus addressing doubts about competence and credibility – and can render their distress intelligible in the context of their lives – thus increasing empathy. They can also address hermeneutical injustice, highlighting the different ways in which we can understand distress. This is an area where theory and practice continue to develop. For example, new mental health service philosophies have emerged like trauma-informed care. This proposes that much psychological distress arises as a result of adversities and that, as a result, mental health services need to address the emotional legacy of adversity. Moreover, they should be designed in such a way that they do not, inadvertently, re-traumatize people (e.g. Sweeney, Clement, Filson & Kennedy, 2016). How we should best counter mental health prejudice and discrimination depends to some extent on how we conceptualize distress and troubling conduct. Psychiatric diagnoses are not neutrally descriptive. Rather, they are derived from a medical conceptual framework designed to understand bodily illness rather than thoughts and feelings. A group of British psychologists and service users have sought to address such problems by developing the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF; Boyle & Johnstone, 2020; Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). This proposes that distress and troubling conduct should be understood as intelligible responses to adversities which arise in contexts of unequal power relationships (e.g. social inequality). These adversities are seen as posing threats to common human needs. These threat responses are enabled by the body and learnt through culture. For example, when subject to victimising discrimination we may experience ‘paranoia’, becoming vigilant about threats. Similarly, if exposed to trauma from which we cannot escape, we may respond by disassociating (‘the escape when there is no escape’) and begin to hear voices others can’t hear (‘auditory hallucinations’). This approach not only provides an alternative non-medical way in which service users can understand their experiences (see, e.g. SHIFT Recovery Community, 2020) but it also raises questions about the need to change the societal conditions which produce distress (Boyle & Johnstone, 2020; Johnstone & Boyle, 2018).

Conclusion In this chapter, we have documented the extent of mental health prejudice and discrimination and discussed some explanations for its persistence (including the failed efforts of biomedically oriented anti-stigma campaigners). We have also identified the skilful strategies employed by mental health service users as they navigate widespread prejudice and discrimination and try to construct more valued identities for themselves. We have reviewed current interventions to counter prejudice and discrimination. We have also proposed that, in the high-income countries where much of this research has been conducted, a psychosocial approach may be likely to lead to more epistemically just outcomes. Although the primary focus of this chapter has been on research and campaigns in the Global North these concerns may become increasingly relevant in 38

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance

other countries as the Movement for Global Mental Health (Patel et al., 2011) exports Western constructs of mental health and stigma to low and middle-income countries (Clark, 2014; Mills, 2014; Watters, 2011). New developments like Trauma-Informed approaches and the PTMF offer alternative ways of understanding mental health and prejudice and discrimination. It seems clear that there is a need for a wholesale change of direction in the way in which the problem of mental health prejudice and discrimination is conceptualized and addressed. This will require a collective movement for change including psychiatric survivor activists and their allies, researchers, policymakers and legislators.The international public conversation about mental health needs rebalancing (Harper, 2020) in order to highlight the limitations of a biomedical approach, the benefits of alternative approaches and to emphasize that ideas of mental health are contested cultural constructs.

References American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th edition (DSM-5)). Washington,VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. Anderson, S., Brownlie, J., & Given, L. (2009). Therapy culture? Attitudes towards emotional support in Britain. In A. Park, J. Curtice, K.Thomson, M. Phillips, & E. Clery (eds.), British social attitudes:The 25th report (pp. 155–172). London: Sage/National Centre for Social Research. Angermeyer, M.C. & Dietrich, S. (2006). Public beliefs about and attitudes towards people with mental illness: A review of population studies. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 113(3), 163–179. Ardila-Gómez, S., Agrest, M., Fernández, M.A., Rosales, M., López, L., Díaz, A.R.V., … & Stolkiner, A. (2019).The mental health users’ movement in Argentina from the perspective of Latin American collective health. Global Public Health, 14(6–7), 1008–1019. Beresford, P., Nettle, M., & Perring, R. (2010). Towards a social model of madness and distress: Exploring what service users say. New York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/ towards-social-model-madness-and-distress-exploring-what-service-users-say. Berzins, K.M., Petch, A., & Atkinson, J.M. (2003). Prevalence and experience of harassment of people with mental health problems living in the community. British Journal of Psychiatry, 183(6), 526–533. Boyle, M. & Johnstone, L. (2020). A straight talking introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework: An alternative to psychiatric diagnosis. Monmouth: PCCS Books. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Caplan, P.J. & Cosgrove, L. (eds.) (2004). Bias in psychiatric diagnosis. Oxford: Jason Aronson. Carter, L., Read, J., Pyle, M., & Morrison, A. (2018).“I believe I know better even than the psychiatrists what caused it”: Exploring the development of causal beliefs in people experiencing psychosis. Community Mental Health Journal, 54(6), 805–813. Castells, M. (1997). The information age: Economy, society, and culture.Volume II:The power of identity. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Chamberlin, J. (1998). Confessions of a noncompliant patient. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 36(4), 49–52. Clark, J. (2014). Medicalization of global health 2: The medicalization of global mental health. Global Health Action, 7(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v7.24000 Combs, D.R., Penn, D.L., & Fenigstein, A. (2002). Ethnic differences in subclinical paranoia: An expansion of norms of the paranoia scale. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 8, 248–256. Conrad, P. (2001). Genetic optimism: Framing genes and mental illness in the news. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 25(2), 225–247. Corker, E., Hamilton, S., Henderson, C., Weeks, C., Pinfold, V., Rose, D., … & Thornicroft, G. (2013). Experiences of discrimination among people using mental health services in England 2008-2011. British Journal of Psychiatry, 202(s55), s58–s63. Corstens, D., Longden, E., McCarthy-Jones, S., Waddingham, R., & Thomas, N. (2014). Emerging perspectives from the hearing voices movement: Implications for research and practice. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(Suppl 4), S285–S294. Crichton, P., Carel, H., & Kidd, I.J. (2017). Epistemic injustice in psychiatry. BJPsych Bulletin, 41(2), 65–70.

39

D.J. Harper and K. Vakili Crisp, A.H., Gelder, M.G., Rix, S., Meltzer, H.I., & Rowlands, O.J. (2000). Stigmatisation of people with mental illnesses. British Journal of Psychiatry, 177(1), 4–7. Cromby, J., & Harper, D. (2009). Paranoia: A social account. Theory & Psychology, 19(3), 335–361. Cromby, J., Harper, D., & Reavey, P. (2013). Psychology, mental health and distress. London: Red Globe Press. Curtis, T., Dellar, R., Leslie, E., & Watson, B. (eds.) (2000). Mad pride: A celebration of mad culture. London: Spare Change Books. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gergen, K.J. (1990). Therapeutic professions and the diffusion of deficit. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 11(3/4), 353–368. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43854097. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Penguin Books. Goulden, R., Corker, E., Evans-Lacko, S., Rose, D., Thornicroft, G., & Henderson, C. (2011). Newspaper coverage of mental illness in the UK, 1992–2008. BMC Public Health, 11(1), 796. doi: https://doi. org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-796 Grier, W.H. & Cobbs, P.M. (1992). Black rage (second edition). New York: Basic Books. Gronholm, P.C., Henderson, C., Deb, T., & Thornicroft, G. (2017). Interventions to reduce discrimination and stigma: The state of the art. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(3), 249–258. Harper, D. J. (2011). Social inequality and the diagnosis of paranoia. Health Sociology Review, 20(4), 420–433. Harper, D.J. (2020). Framing, filtering and hermeneutical injustice in the public conversation about mental health. Journal of Constructivist Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10720537.2020.1773360. Haslam, N. & Kvaale, E.P. (2015). Biogenetic explanations of mental disorder: The mixed-blessings model. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(5), 399–404. Henderson, L. (2018). Popular television and public mental health: Creating media entertainment from mental distress. Critical Public Health, 28(1), 106–117. Hinshaw, S.P. & Stier, A. (2008). Stigma as related to mental disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 4, 367–393. Johnstone, L., Boyle, M., Cromby, J., Dillon, J., Harper, D., Kinderman, P., … & Read, J. (2018). The Power Threat Meaning Framework: Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis.  Leicester: British Psychological Society. www.bps.org.uk/PTM-Main. Keating, F., Robertson, D., McCulloch, A., & Francis, E. (2002). Breaking the circles of fear: A review of the relationship between mental health services and African and Caribbean communities. London: Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/sites/default/files/breaking_the_ circles_of_fear.pdf. Khalifeh, H., Johnson, S., Howard, L.M., Borschmann, R., Osborn, D., Dean, K., … & Moran, P. (2015). Violent and non-violent crime against adults with severe mental illness. British Journal of Psychiatry, 206(4), 275–282. Kingdon, D. & Young, A.H. (2007). Research into putative biological mechanisms of mental disorders has been of no value to clinical psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry, 191(4), 285–290. Kleintjes, S., Lund, C., & Swartz, L. (2013). Organising for self-advocacy in mental health: Experiences from seven African countries. African Journal of Psychiatry, 16(3), 187–195. Lebowitz, M.S. & Appelbaum, P.S. (2019). Biomedical explanations of psychopathology and their implications for attitudes and beliefs about mental disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15, 555–577. LeFrançois, B.A., Menzies, R., & Reaume, G. (eds.) (2013). Mad matters: A critical reader in Canadian mad studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Link, B.G., Phelan, J.C., Bresnahan, M., Stueve, A., & Pescosolido, B.A. (1999). Public conceptions of mental illness: Labels, causes, dangerousness, and social distance. American Journal of Public Health, 89(9), 1328–1333. Mills, C. (2014). Decolonizing global mental health:The psychiatrization of the majority world. London: Routledge. Moncrieff, J. (2008). The myth of the chemical cure. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Parker, R. & Aggleton, P. (2003). HIV and AIDS-related stigma and discrimination: A conceptual framework and implications for action. Social Science & Medicine, 57(1), 13–24. Patel, V., Collins, P.Y., Copeland, J., Kakuma, R., Katontoka, S., Lamichhane, J., … & Skeen, S. (2011). The movement for global mental health. British Journal of Psychiatry, 198(2), 88–90. Paykel, E.S., Tylee, A., Wright, A., & Priest, R.G. (1997). The defeat depression campaign: Psychiatry in the public arena. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154(6), 59–65. Philo, G. (1994). Media images and popular beliefs. Psychiatric Bulletin, 18(3), 173–174.

40

Moving beyond stigma and biomedical dominance Pilgrim, D. (2020). Critical realism for psychologists. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Pinfold,V., Toulmin, H., Thornicroft, G., Huxley, P., Farmer, P., & Graham, T. (2003). Reducing psychiatric stigma and discrimination: Evaluation of educational intervention in UK secondary schools. British Journal of Psychiatry, 182(4), 342–346. Read, J., Haslam, N., Sayce, L., & Davies, E. (2006). Prejudice and schizophrenia: A review of the ‘mental illness is an illness like any other’ approach. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 114(5), 303–318. Robinson, P., Turk, D., Jilka, S., & Cella, M. (2019). Measuring attitudes towards mental health using social media: Investigating stigma and trivialisation. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 54(1), 51–58. Rogers, A., & Pilgrim, D. (2010). A sociology of mental health and illness (Fourth edition). Buckingham: Open University Press. Sayce, L. (1998). Stigma, discrimination and social exclusion:What’s in a word? Journal of Mental Health, 7(4), 331–343. Schomerus, G., Matschinger, H., & Angermeyer, M.C. (2014). Causal beliefs of the public and social acceptance of persons with mental illness: A comparative analysis of schizophrenia, depression and alcohol dependence. Psychological Medicine, 44(2), 303–314. Schomerus, G., Schwahn, C., Holzinger, A., Corrigan, P.W., Grabe, H.J., Carta, M.G., & Angermeyer, M.C. (2012). Evolution of public attitudes about mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 125(6), 440–452. Schulze, B., Richter-Werling, M., Matschinger, H., & Angermeyer, M.C. (2003). Crazy? So what! Effects of a school project on students’ attitudes towards people with schizophrenia. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 107(2), 142–150. Shift (2006). Mind over matter: Improving media reporting of mental health. London: Author. SHIFT Recovery Community (2020). Using the power threat meaning framework in a self-help group of people with experience of mental and emotional distress. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2020.1773361. Sholl, C., Korkie, J., & Harper, D. (2009). Working with young people to challenge discrimination against mental health service users: A psychosocial pilot study. Clinical Psychology Forum, 196, 45–49. https:// repository.uel.ac.uk/item/8648y. Sholl, C., Korkie, J., & Harper, D. (2010). Challenging teenagers’ ideas about people with mental health problems. The Psychologist, 23(1), 2–3. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-1/ challenging-teenagers-ideas-about-mental-health. Sweeney, A., Clement, S., Filson, B., & Kennedy, A. (2016). Trauma-informed mental healthcare in the UK: What is it and how can we further its development? Mental Health Review Journal, 21(3), 174–192. Time to Change (2014). Making a drama out of a crisis. London: Author. https://www.time-to-change.org. uk/sites/default/files/Making_a_drama_out_of_a_crisis.pdf. Vakili, K. (2003). Mad, bad and dangerous to know? A study looking at how people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia experience negative cultural representations and discrimination. Unpublished DClinPsych thesis, School of Psychology, University of East London. Ventevogel, P., Jordans, M., Reis, R., & de Jong, J. (2013). Madness or sadness? Local concepts of mental illness in four conflict-affected African communities. Conflict and Health, 7(1), 3. doi: https://doi. org/10.1186/1752-1505-7-3 Watters, E. (2011). Crazy like us:The globalization of the Western mind. London: Robinson. Westwood, S. (1990). Racism, black masculinity and the politics of space. In J. Hearn & D. Morgan (eds.), Men, masculinities & social theory. London: Unwin Hyman. Wiesjahn, M., Brabban, A., Jung, E., Gebauer, U.B., & Lincoln, T.M. (2014). Are continuum beliefs about psychotic symptoms associated with stereotypes about schizophrenia? Psychosis, 6(1), 50–60. Wilson, C., Nairn, R., Coverdale, J., & Panapa, A. (1999). Mental illness depictions in prime-time drama: Identifying the discursive resources. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 33(2), 232–239. Wood, L., Burke, E., Byrne, R., Pyle, M., Chapman, N., & Morrison, A. (2015). Stigma in psychosis: A thematic synthesis of current qualitative evidence. Psychosis, 7(2), 152–165. World Health Organization (2018). International classification of disease (ICD-11) (11th rev. ed.). Geneva: World Health Organization.

41

4 BETWEEN HOPE AND DREAD Unaccompanied children, discrimination and the uncertainties of the asylum application process Jack Aldridge Deacon and Jo Aldridge

Introduction This chapter examines discriminations experienced by unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in the UK. Although recognized as a uniquely situated, highly vulnerable population, deserving of statutory protection in accordance with international law, UASC remain subject to multiple forms of discrimination and ‘othering’ while resident in the UK. These young people encounter a domestic environment that has become increasingly hostile to migrants and noncitizen incomers of all kinds (Anderson, 2013). Asylum seekers in particular have become the subject of intense public and political scrutiny; their perceived validity as individuals deserving of humanitarian protection having been diminished by powerful discourses of mendacity and ‘bogusness’. While such generalized hostility impinges upon the lives of UASC in a variety of ways, we contend that it is in their experiences of the asylum application process, and in their dealings with the Home Office, that the pernicious and systemically entrenched discrimination of UASC is most starkly apparent. Unaccompanied children are required to engage with an asylum system that is at once bureaucratically inscrutable and rooted in a culture of suspicion, disbelief and denial (Jubany, 2011; 2017; Souter, 2011). Inconsistently implemented and frequently taking a long time to reach resolution, the asylum application process leaves UASC in a deeply uncertain state – caught in a liminal position between acceptance and rejection, between the hope of protection and the threat of deportation. Yet these experiences are no accident or quirk of an overly rigorous immigration system, but are in fact a cynical and deliberate aspect of hostile immigration legislation and asylum reception, which have been refined by respective governments over the course of many years (Maughan, 2010; Souter, 2011). The chapter outlines the complexities and nuances of statutory discrimination of UASC in the UK, with a specific focus on the implications for children. It begins by discussing and contextualising the ‘othering’, prejudice and discrimination that children in the UK experience both directly and indirectly, and from within systems, and the consequences of these for children who seek sanctuary and asylum as unaccompanied minors. We explore what it means to be an unaccompanied child at a definitional and experiential level, and outline the statistical and demographic characteristics of this group. This chapter also describes the processes that UASC have to undergo in order to claim asylum in the UK. Necessarily, elements of this are somewhat 42

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-4

Between hope and dread

procedural, given the complexity of the asylum process in the UK.Yet, it is important to explicate the mundane, mechanical, processes of the asylum application system, for the more fundamental reason that it is within these mechanisms, and through the exercising of bureaucratic refugee status determination functions, that the socio-structural discrimination of UASC occurs. As such, the information provided in the initial contextual sections of this chapter will be used as the foundation upon which to outline and unpack a more replete examination of the asylum application process for UASC, and the ways in which this reflects and perpetuates the so-called ‘culture of disbelief ’, identified by many authors (see Anderson, Hollaus, Lindsay, & Williamson, 2014; Jubany, 2011, 2017; Souter, 2011). The negative implications of such systemic discrimination and prejudice are subsequently considered through reference to extant research regarding children’s wellbeing, as well as preliminary findings from the first author’s research.

Children and UASC as marginalized ‘others’ While advances have been made in our knowledge and understanding of children’s needs and rights over the past three decades – thanks in large part to the aims and principles set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) – these have been undermined to a lesser or greater degree by the failure of governments and states to adhere to their duties to promote the best interests and rights of children in domestic policy and practice.With respect to children in the UK, James (1993, p. 112) asserts, ‘through their constructed otherness children’s status in British society is as non-persons relegated to a social, economic and political marginalisation’. While many would argue that the situation for children in the UK has improved somewhat since James’s ­pronouncement – evidenced in the recognition of the need to both listen to and believe children (in their disclosures of abuse, for example) and underpinned by new empirical and methodological endeavours to include children’s voices in research – others would point to the continuing exclusion of children from public spaces (Woolley, Hazelwood, & Simkins, 2011), their vulnerability to exploitation (Bang et al., 2013), and the sweeping cuts to and closing down of children’s services resulting from a decade of austerity measures and increasing levels of child poverty (see, for example, Ridge, 2013). Commentators argue that these issues manifest as discrimination against children as a silenced and ‘othered’ group. Indeed,Webb (2004, p. 804) states that children in the UK ‘experience significant discrimination from both individuals and institutions. This discrimination affects both their health and the quality of child health services’.The reasons for these discrimination claims are manifold but centre mainly on the social construction of children as ‘unfinished’ adults, or as ‘citizens in waiting’ (see Lister, 2007) as perceived by decision-making, powerful adults. Unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the UK experience these issues and challenges as double jeopardy – marginalized and ‘othered’ both as children and as ‘suspect incomers’ seeking help and support. There is a growing literature on the ways in which asylum seekers (adults and children) experience prejudice and discrimination – negative feelings and attitudes towards a particular group based on membership of that group – and stereotyping and ‘othering’ in both perception and treatment (Augoustinos and Petterssen, this volume; Schmitt and Branscombe, 2002) as a form of domestic ‘apartheid’ (Lynn & Lea, 2003) and xenophobia (see Poynting & Briskman, 2020). With respect to the experiences of UASC in the UK, both political and media discourses reinforce the notion of unaccompanied children as ‘suspect incomers’ whose stories – and in many cases even their appearance and demeanour (see below) – are deligitimized through an institutional and discursive culture of disbelief and denial (McLaughlin, 2018; Silverman, 2016). To understand how these processes work in relation to UASC specifically there is a need to identify and understand their distinct characteristics as individual children (in need) and as a distinct policy group. 43

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

Defining UASC, demographics and characteristics Unaccompanied asylum seeking children have garnered increasing empirical and political attention over the course of recent decades, in large part due to the concerted efforts of migration scholars, activists and support groups (Crawley, 2007; Kohli, 2006), but also because of their status as children separated from their homes and families. As a group, they are clearly defined in both international and domestic policy documentation and legal conventions (Smyth, 2014).The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) established what has become the pre-eminent definition of UASC, describing them as: a person who is under the age of eighteen, unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is, attained earlier and who is separated from both parents and is not being cared for by an adult who by law or custom has responsibility to do so (UNHCR, 1997, p. 1) This definition has been ratified by many governments, including that of the UK (Home Office, 2019a). It brings together definitions of childhood set out within such international frameworks as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), as well as notions of asylum-seeking stemming from the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees and the accompanying 1967 protocol. The fact that the UNHCR definition constitutes an amalgamation of pre-existing directives, however, points to the lack of child-specific provisions among established international refugee law more broadly – at least in historical terms (Smyth, 2014). The defining characteristics of UASC, from a legal and policy standpoint, are their status as individuals below the age of 18, lacking parental accompaniment, support and protection; and experiencing a so-called ‘parental protection’ deficit (Bhabha, 2014, p. 4). Whereas for other asylum-seeking and migrant children, whose claims and statuses are tied to those of their parents and primary caregivers, unaccompanied children’s claims are made, considered and determined in their own right and on the basis of their own legitimacy. In the UK, these children are provided with statutory care and support while their asylum claims are determined by the Home Office. While this takes place, UASC are exempted from deportation and detention protocols, until they reach the age of majority – and thus lose the, ‘protective shield of child status’ (Silverman, 2016, p. 31). UASC originate from an array of national, cultural and experiential backgrounds. Although they share certain crucial, defining attributes, they are nonetheless a heterogeneous population, with varied reasons and rationales belying their movement (Wernesjö, 2012). Many of these young people will have experienced violence and persecution in their homelands, which caused them to flee individually, or resulted in them being sent away by parents or family members, in the interests of safety and the hope for a better life elsewhere (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018). In many cases, these young people will have undertaken complex and illicit journeys to the UK and Europe, often forced to utilize extralegal forms of transport, organized by human smuggling networks or people traffickers. Some children may undertake the entirety of their physical journeys individually, while still others may have begun their movement with their families and been separated en route. For some UASC, their journeys to the UK may have been relatively quick – one individual who participated in the first author’s study was driven from Iraq to the UK in just four days – or, alternatively, may span the course of several years, as children get held up in particular national contexts, or are detained illegally (Mannocchi, 2019). The factors driving the movement of these children, the nature of the journeys they undertake, and the challenges they experience both pre-flight and during movement, are complex and 44

Between hope and dread

multi-faceted. Each child’s narrative will be unique, and can be hard to corroborate with certainty, due to the machinations of traumatic memory and the often confusing and overwhelming manner in which children’s journeys play out (Kohli, 2006). Whatever the nature of their experiences, however, UASC arrive in the UK in search of sanctuary and protection, and in most case in need of health and social support (Department for Education, 2017). The UK is compelled to provide certain services to meet these needs, as a signatory to the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees (Smyth, 2014), as well as through various child protection provisions set out in domestic legislation (Children Act, 1989; The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act, 2009).

The asylum application process: Principles and practice From the point at which an unaccompanied child becomes known to social services and border control agents in the UK, they begin the (often lengthy) process of applying for asylum (Home Office, 2019a). An initial welfare interview will be undertaken, and a child will be age assessed (unless they can provide documentary proof of their age) (Coram, 2017).The manner and comprehensiveness of subsequent statutory and legal assistance will be determined according to the outcome of this assessment. Children under the age of 16 may be placed in foster care arrangements, whereas those aged 16 and above will more likely be provided with semi-independent living support (Barrie & Mendes, 2011). Prior to 2003, children over the age of 16 were provided less encompassing statutory assistance with their health and social care needs, under section 17 of the Children Act (1989): meaning they were not afforded formal ‘looked-after’ status under the terms of domestic legislation, and were denied access to additional leaving care support once they surpassed the age of 18 (Kohli, 2007). This practice changed in 2003, due to a legal challenge, with the result that today all UASC are offered support under the more encompassing section 20 of the Children Act (1989), and are provided official ‘looked-after’ status (Kohli, 2007). It remains the case, however, that the nature and forms of support provided for UASC differ according to their determined chronological age (Wright, 2014); as do their outcomes with respect to the asylum status determination process, and the challenges they encounter in their dealings with the Home Office (see subsequent sections). Current Home Office procedure dictates that all children, above the age of 12, must submit to a substantive asylum interview in order that the legitimacy of their application for asylum can be determined (Home Office, 2019a). The substantive interview should take place within 6 months of a child’s arrival in the UK (Home Office, 2019a), although many children wait much longer than this for both an interview and a decision (Chase, 2019). A child will be questioned on such matters as their reasons for leaving their homeland, the nature of their journey to Britain, as well as other case-specific details which the Home Office may wish to clarify (Home Office, 2019a). While it is often difficult for children to remember the exact details of all aspects of their flight (for the reasons highlighted above), and it can be deeply emotionally challenging for them to recall potentially traumatic and violent experiences, they must nevertheless provide a coherent and consistent narrative account of their circumstances in their substantive interview, if they are to be granted any form of ongoing protection (Kohli, 2006; Silverman, 2016). Following the outcome of the substantive interview, unaccompanied children will be afforded a range of different statuses.While comparably few are offered recognized refugee status under the terms of the 1951 Convention, most children are offered some form of time-limited leave to remain in the UK, in the form of Humanitarian Protection (allowing them to remain in the UK for a five-year period), or UASC Leave, which enables a child to remain in the UK until they reach the age of 17.5 years (Coram, 2017). Once a child reaches the age of 17.5, they may be able to submit 45

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

another asylum application through the adult asylum process; appeal the initial decision on their original claim (depending on the nature of their claim and the availability of legal aid provision); or they may become a viable candidate for deportation. While it has historically been the case in the UK that UASC are more likely to be allowed temporary leave to remain in the UK due to their status as separated minors, the increasing usage of time-limited forms of status appear not so much as child-centric modes of protection, reflecting the special vulnerabilities experienced by UASC, but rather as indicative of the fact that the government cannot easily or legally eject children from within its borders (Silverman, 2016). As Silverman (2016, p. 32) iterates: ‘while being of minor age does not confer automatic rights to refuge and permanent settlement, it is more difficult to remove a child refused asylum-seeker than an adult, not least because many receiving states do not have the facilities to care for them’. Time-limited status then, especially UASC leave, becomes a procedural measure for delaying unaccompanied children’s potential deportability; a begrudging acquiescence to international child protection protocols.

Numbers of UASC in the UK Available data gathered by the Home Office show that most UASC who arrive in and seek asylum from the UK are male, and are between 16 and 18 years of age (Refugee Council, 2019). Currently, the largest number of children arrive from nations including: Eritrea, Sudan, Vietnam and Iraq (Refugee Council, 2019). In previous years, Afghanistan and Iraq have accounted for significant proportions of the unaccompanied child population in the UK; however, this trend appears to have diminished somewhat in recent years. In 2018, there were 2,872 applications for asylum made by UASC (Refugee Council, 2019). This figure constitutes a marginal increase on numbers recorded in 2017. However, since 2015/16 – in which some 3,253 UASC applied for asylum in the UK – there has been a general downward trend in applicant numbers in Britain, as there has with asylum applications more broadly (Refugee Council, 2019). The higher number of applications recorded in both 2015 and 2016 coincide with the period which has been termed the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. During this ‘crisis’, there were significant rises in refugee numbers seeking protection across the European Union, as large numbers of peoples fled violence and conflict taking place beyond Europe’s borders (Sirriyeh, 2018). Numbers of UASC also increased during this time, with UASC accounting for 6.7% of the recorded asylum-seeker population in the EU in 2015 (House of Lords European Union Committee, 2016). Eurostat (2017) data show that between 2012 and 2016, there was an approximate 400% increase in the number of unaccompanied children seeking sanctuary from the 28 member states of the EU. While, at a domestic level, the UK did not experience such a marked increase as other EU states during this timeframe, it did record a more modest 67% increase in unaccompanied child applications, as well as a 31% rise in asylum applications generally (Refugee Council, 2019). While recent upward trends in migrant and asylum-seeker numbers have elicited concern and consternation among some quarters (see McLaughlin, 2018), it is worth highlighting in respect to UASC that even during the ‘crisis’ of 2015/16, numbers of child applicants never exceeded those recorded by the Home Office in 2008 or 2002 (Wade, 2011). Available asylum data in the UK are published on a quarterly basis, and are presented against those of previous quarters and recent years, highlighting short-term numerical rises and falls in asylum-seeker numbers. Generally speaking, a long-term perspective is not taken with respect to current figures, and thus impressions of longitudinal trends can be difficult to ascertain. Taking a more longitudinal view, it is noteworthy, that UASC numbers have remained broadly consistent over the course of the 46

Between hope and dread

previous decade, in the sense that they remain a numerically small and yet statistically consistent proportion of the asylum seeking population more generally (Finch, 2005).

Problematics of definition and recognition: Gateways for discrimination Considering the above, a number of factors are apparent. Not only are UASC a well-recognized and documented population in the UK, but there is also evident definitional consistency and descriptive clarity in the various legal frameworks and policy responses pertaining to them directly. Yet, while such legal and policy definitions are clearly explicated, they are by no means passive, nor are they impervious to the vagaries of public and political interpretation (Crawley and Skleparis, 2018); for some they are considered prejudicial and discriminatory (see Silverman, 2016). As increasing numbers of researchers and scholars have highlighted, terms such as, ‘refugee’, ‘asylum-seeker’ and indeed ‘unaccompanied asylum seeking child’ are loaded with a litany of implicit meanings, which go beyond their primary function as tools of administrative distinction (Anderson, 2013; Eastmond, 2015). Legal definitions are neither static nor fixed, but rather, as Crawley and Skleparis (2018, p. 51) iterate are, ‘being constantly formed, transformed and reformed in response to shift(s) in political allegiances or interests on the part of refugeereceiving countries and the evolution of policy and law’. Increasingly, in the eyes and minds of the public and politicians in the UK, to be labelled as a refugee or an asylum seeker is to be held as an object of suspicion; a non-citizen, who falls outside of the nationally oriented ‘community of value’ (Anderson, 2013, p. 3; Jubany, 2017). This perceptual shift has occurred over the course of many years, and is the product of consecutive government policy directives, from both sides of the political spectrum, leading to a restrictionist reception environment for all incoming migrants (Maughan, 2010). Media coverage and political discourse continually abound with stories of ‘bogus asylum seekers’: those elusive ‘folk devils’ who are accused of utilising a false claim for political and humanitarian protection as a means by which to access and exploit the welfare landscape of the refugee-receiving society (Cohen, 2002). During an era in which much of the discussion around forced migration continues to be framed in terms of ‘crisis’ (Sirriyeh, 2018), refugees and asylum seekers consistently bear the brunt of moral, public and political vilification (and thus, discrimination and prejudice). While it has been argued that UASC should be seen as ‘children first and migrants second’ (Crawley, 2006), and thus exempt from such negative portrayals and generalized denigration – the cultural politics of asylum nevertheless influence and shape dominant social framings of them in crucial respects. Widespread notions of asylum-seekers’ bogusness and falsity have come to affect the ways in which policies responding to UASC are designed and implemented. This is particularly apparent in the increasingly prevalent notion of ‘imposter-children’ in the UK asylum process (Silverman, 2016, p. 31). The tenets of the ‘imposter child’ narrative are broadly similar to those which underlie broader impressions of spontaneously arriving adult asylum seekers, which portray these individuals as mendacious charlatans. Over the course of time, UASC have been increasingly re-positioned as adult asylum seekers pretending to be unaccompanied, in order to exploit the more generous provisions and safeguards offered to separated children by the UK government (Eastmond, 2015). This notion is redolent of the dichotomous positioning of unaccompanied children in general, as well as the ways in which the politics of asylum have come to impact upon their reception in the UK. Caught between the powerful conceptual categories of ‘migrants’ (qua, asylum seekers) and ‘children’, UASC occupy a problematic interstitial position between these binary constructions. Their duality triggers competing state functions of border control on the one hand, and child protection on the other (Cemlyn & Nye, 2012). As children, they qualify for statutory intervention and assistance; as asylum seekers within a 47

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

restrictionist immigration regime, they constitute objects of suspicion and a potential threat to state sovereignty (Eastmond, 2015). Such suspicion and doubt is compounded by the fact that UASC often appear – or are portrayed – as unchildlike, by Western cultural and historical standards (McLaughlin, 2018). This was particularly evident in the case of those UASC brought to the UK under the Dubs amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act. As McLaughlin (2018) highlights, upon arrival in the UK, the appearance of these young people was hit upon by the press and politicians as evidence of their non-childlikeness. As one Conservative MP, David Davies, commented: ‘these don’t look like children to me. I hope British hospitality is not being abused’ (McLaughlin, 2018, p. 1763). As McLaughlin (2018, pp. 1763–1764) highlights, the apparent unchildlikeness of these children’s appearances, ‘not only demonstrates how representational practices around child refugees, which foreground young children, rely on codes that preclude the possibility (appropriateness) of demonstrations of resilience, agency, capacity and maturity in children; it also makes clear that the perception of who is deserving of protection is contingent on these codes’. Thus, unaccompanied children, travelling to and arriving alone in Europe, inherently challenge and problematize cultural impressions of childhood, which equate this stage of the life cycle with parental reliance, diminished agency and emotional innocence (Kohli, 2006; McLaughlin, 2018). The very act of moving and seeking asylum independently – that fundamental quality which delineates UASC as a distinct group from other refugee populations – constitutes the very basis on which their legitimacy as children in need of sanctuary is called into question. Rather than acting as an indication and problematisation of the socially constructed nature of childhood, the apparent unchildlikeness of UASC obversely results in their reconstitution; not as children at all, but as adult fraudsters, seeking to exploit the protections and provisions reserved for ‘legitimate’ vulnerable children (Silverman, 2016; McLaughlin, 2018). As McLaughlin (2018, p. 1758) iterates: ‘the construct of child operates to exclude unchildlike individuals, rendering them adult others, an event with material consequences’. The implications of this apparent conceptual ambivalence, and the profligacy of the ‘imposter child’ narrative, have had – as McLaughlin (2018) suggests – a tangible effect on the formulation and delivery of frontline policies for UASC in the UK. This is nowhere more evident than in relation to age determination policies, and the ways in which these subtly work against young people’s recognition as children, their claims for asylum, and the provision of social services. It is claimed that age assessments are undertaken for two interconnected reasons, the first being that support for UASC is contingent upon their being below the age of 18 (Home Office, 2019b). As was highlighted in the preceding sections, support structures differ for children according to their chronological age – with younger children, up to the age of 16, given priority access to foster care, and older children more likely to be placed in semi-independent living arrangements (Wright, 2014). Until relatively recently, it was also the case that Local Authorities (LAs) in the UK provided more monetary funding for UASC aged below the age of 16, meaning those who were assessed as being below this age threshold received more social and financial assistance (Barrie & Mendes, 2011). Although funding has subsequently been aligned for UASC of all ages, children below the age of 16 will nevertheless receive considerable additional support from carers, and other potential benefits associated with life in a foster care setting, meaning that younger children have access to more encompassing forms of assistance than their older counterparts (Wright, 2014). The second reason underlying the purported need for age assessment is the fact that many UASC arrive in the UK without documentary proof of their age – in the form of either a passport or birth certificate (Hjern, Lindqvist, & Norredam, 2012). Lacking such bureaucratic means of ‘proving’ their age, the Home Office undertakes to establish their ‘actual’ chronological age, in order that, ‘the individual is treated age-appropriately, (and) that they receive the 48

Between hope and dread

necessary services and support’ (Home Office, 2019b, p. 7). In cases where an age assessment is undertaken, or a child’s given age is disputed by the Home Office, a decision is made based on a range of criteria, including their physical appearance and demeanour (see Home Office, 2019b). The Home Office (2019b) guidance iterates strongly that age assessments occur both when a child is thought to be an adult, and when an adult is thought to be a child. However, the majority of age-disputed cases result in individuals being found to be older than 18 years of age, rather than the other way around. UK asylum statistics show that of the 760 age disputed UASC cases resolved in 2018, 514 of these resulted in the applicant being deemed to be older than 18 years of age, and thus denied entitlement to recognized UASC status and support (Home Office, 2018). While the language of the Home Office guidance in relation to age disputes strikes a conciliatory tone, and the given rationale for age assessment is one of essential bureaucratic necessity, there is reason to suggest that the impetus driving policies of age determination emanates primarily from political concerns relating to ‘imposter children’ within the UK asylum system, rather than the need to ensure children ‘receive the necessary services and support’ to which they are rightly entitled (Silverman, 2016). Indeed, statements from the Home Office itself indicate the way in which age assessment policies have always been underwritten by concerns regarding abuse of the asylum system by adult ‘imposters’ (Crawley, 2007). A Home Office White Paper from 2002 stated, unequivocally, that age assessment was essential for UASC, in order, ‘to identify children in genuine need at the earliest possible stage, to sift out adults posing as children and to deter those seeking to abuse the system’ (Home Office, in Crawley, 2007, p. 24).That there is little evidence to suggest any form of systematic abuse of the asylum system by adults posing as children is occurring – indeed, quite the opposite, in that it appears that many children are incorrectly assessed to be adults (Crawley, 2007) – demonstrates the extent to which age assessment is a politically, rather than empirically motivated, policy that is also enacted in practice (Hjern et al., 2012). Indeed, recent evidence provided to the Joint Committee on Human Rights in 2014, by the Children’s Commissioner for England and third-sector organisations working with UASC, shows that age assessments appear to be undertaken as a matter of course by the Home Office and Local Authorities, when in theory they should only be implemented when there is ‘significant’ reason to doubt a child’s age (House of Lords, House of Commons Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, 2014; Coram, 2017). It was also iterated, by many of the agencies consulted on this matter, that children are systematically disbelieved in terms of their age upon arrival in the UK, in spite of statutory guidance that officials should afford children the benefit of the doubt in matters concerning their given age (House of Lords, House of Commons Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, 2014; Silverman, 2016). Furthermore, a 2017 Court of Appeal ruling showed the Home Office policy of disbelieving UASC with respect to their age – and basing their assessments on physical appearance or demeanour – was unlawful (The Guardian, 2017). For a process which is so fundamental and determinative of unaccompanied children’s experiences – both with respect to the services and support they receive, but also in relation to the outcome of their asylum claims – there is a surprisingly high level of discretion and subjectivity involved at all stages of the age assessment process (Coram, 2017; Hjern et al., 2012). Essentially, there is no prescribed way in which age assessments are legally required to be undertaken, as all scientific means and methods of determining age – such as dental checks and skeletal x-rays – are at once highly invasive, and have a high margin of error (Silverman, 2016), in some cases, upwards of five years above or below a child’s chronological age (Hjern et al., 2012). Thus, judgements as to the ‘actual’ age of a given applicant are determined according to more anthropometric factors, which are decided according to the judgements of Home Office officials, immigration officers and social workers (Wright, 2014). This is problematic for a number of reasons: not only are such judgements inherently affected by cultural and ideological biases, but 49

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

there may also be implicit incentives for social service professionals, working in the context of constrained budgets and high workload, to over-estimate the age of unaccompanied children, given that younger children receive more comprehensive (and thus expensive) social services (Wright, 2014). As Wright (2014, p. 1030) explains: The power and control social workers hold in the division and allocation of resources suggest a conflict of interest when assessing the age of UASC. Tensions arise between the role of social workers making decisions about a child or young person’s age whilst under pressure to manage budgets and resources. While this is not to say that social workers and other professionals are deliberately and systematically over-estimating the ages of unaccompanied children in order to keep down local authority costs, this point nevertheless illustrates the capacity for discrimination to occur against UASC, when those who determine their age are also those responsible for the financial aspects of social service delivery (House of Lords, House of Commons Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, 2014). Moreover, the reliance on anthropometric, visual and perceptual markers of age, and the potential damage that can result from an incorrect determination, highlights the way in which the age assessment process implicitly discriminates against those children who do not conform to culturally conceived impressions of physiological and emotional standards of childhood (Silverman, 2016). This goes back to the point made in the preceding discussion: that childhood is in many respects a constructed life phase (James & Prout, 2003; Prout, 2016), and yet it is treated at the level of asylum policy and status determination, as both universal and immutable.

The culture of disbelief Fundamentally, the age determination and assessment process in the UK is focussed on identifying and rooting out ‘imposter children’ within the asylum system (Silverman, 2016). That this has become the default position of asylum policy and practice for UASC – without any empirical evidence to support such a rationale – is apparent both from the way in which age assessment functions are undertaken, but also in the language of policy (Crawley, 2007) as well as in practice; as has been evidenced, age assessments are based on individual judgements of social workers and immigration officials (Masocha, 2015, p. 574). Masocha shows, for example how social workers in the UK justify the ‘othering’ of asylum seekers through the persistent use of ‘interpretative repertoires’. UK media discourses have also fanned the flames of discrimination against UASC by reporting bogus asylum claims of ‘imposter’ children who were found to be ‘adults’ (see, for example,The Times, 2018). Indeed, disbelief has come to inherently affect underlying definitions and perceptions of these young people in fundamental ways. Although it remains the case that the UK government adopts the description of UASC first established by the UNHCR (1997), a recent caveat has been added to the definition of ‘child’ within the Immigration Rules. In the Immigration rules, a child is now taken to be: ‘a person who is under 18 years of age or who, in the absence of documentary evidence establishing age, appears to be under that age’ (Immigration Rules, Section 11 – par.349 – emphasis added).This addendum is significant, as it constitutes a semantic legitimisation of the suspicion cast towards UASC seeking support from the UK state at a practical level, and functions to validate the ongoing use of biased age assessments for this group of vulnerable children. At a broader conceptual and impressionistic level, it reflects the ways in which policy approaches to UASC have come to be rooted in a culture of systemic disbelief and discrimination of those seeking sanctuary from the UK state (Jubany, 2011; this was also demonstrated in the outcome of the 2017 Court of Appeal ruling, as mentioned). 50

Between hope and dread

The notion of a culture of disbelief existing in the UK asylum application system is well established (see Robinson, 1999).While it has begun to garner increasing empirical focus among contemporary asylum researchers (see Anderson et al., 2014; Jubany, 2011, 2017), the concept has a longer historical legacy of utilisation by refugee charities and support organisations advocating for fairer treatment of asylum-seeking populations (Souter, 2011). The basic premise of the concept is self-evident from the nature of its constituent terms. It refers to a systematic and entrenched incredulity directed towards asylum seekers throughout the application and adjudication process (Jubany, 2011; Souter, 2011). This disbelief is politically motivated – the corollary of an increasingly draconian migration regime – rather than the product of vast increases in the number of ‘false’ claims made by ‘bogus’ asylum-seekers or ‘imposter’ children (Anderson et al., 2014; Crawley, 2007; Souter, 2011). In many ways, the culture of disbelief constitutes the ideological a priori upon which the practical functions of the asylum system are built and implemented in the modern age (Jubany, 2011; Souter, 2011). Disbelief is perpetuated through the language and rationale of new and existing asylum policies, as well as via the enactment of legislation by frontline immigration professionals and decision-makers (Anderson et al., 2014; Jubany, 2011). Jubany (2011), equates this to a ‘meta-message of deterrence’. As she explains: This message is conveyed in different ways, such as discourses on welfare exploitation or artificial equations on refugees and crime and is inherent in almost every official declaration related to asylum and diffused from policy and organizational levels, to become the driving principle at the implementation level. (Jubany, 2011, pp. 81–82) Such systematic disbelief manifests in a variety of different ways and forms for UASC specifically. As has already been suggested, there is reason to believe that the process of age-assessment and determination is rooted in a culture of suspicion and denial (Souter, 2011), given the recognized problematics of establishing chronological age, and the scepticism directed at spontaneously arriving unaccompanied children who claim to be under 18 (Silverman, 2016). Yet, disbelief is not confined to the age assessment process, but rather permeates significant aspects of unaccompanied children’s lives while resident in the UK. Based on findings from her multi-method research project, involving extended observations at an asylum-screening unit and 26 semistructured interviews with immigration officials, Crawley (2007, p. 27) concluded: There is a widespread doubt and cynicism about the legitimacy or otherwise of asylum applications made by separated asylum-seeking children. Children including those whose age was not disputed, were variously described by immigration officers as ‘rolling in’, ‘turning on the waterworks’ and ‘pretending to be stupid’. Comments were made about the legitimacy of children’s needs before basic information had been collected about their experiences. Crawley’s (2007) findings are supported by those of Jubany (2011), whose fieldwork inside the UK Immigration Nationality Directorate Training and Development Unit, identified that immigration officers are trained to disbelieve the accounts of incoming asylum-seekers, as a matter of course. They are not encouraged to think of asylum applicants as potential refugees, with rights and entitlements that must be carefully weighed and considered before judgement is passed in relation to their claims, rather trainees are inculcated into a professional culture of tacit repudiation, premised upon an automatic position of doubt, geared towards rooting out inconsistencies in individual narratives (Jubany, 2011). 51

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

Findings from the first author’s research give further credence to such interpretations. From 23 interviews undertaken with UASC, their support workers and foster carers during a period of 12 months, participants reaffirmed that the UK asylum system is rooted in a culture of disbelief and denial. Support workers, in particular, whose job involved frequent interaction with Home Office staff and immigration officers, explained that doubt and incredulity were implicit to all elements of children’s dealings with immigration authorities. The asylum application and decision-making process were described by some as operating under an inversion of the legal presumption of innocence, upon which UK law is founded, as several support workers explained: If you commit a crime (in the UK), you are innocent until proven guilty. If you are a child seeking asylum in the UK, you are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. (F, support worker) They’re (UASC) doubted from the beginning, that seems to be the way the system works. And it should be innocent until proven guilty, but it’s not … They want you to make a mistake in your statement, and then it’s a kind of “haha, gotcha” moment. (H, support worker) In many ways, the findings from the research suggest that the culture of disbelief constitutes a form of institutional episteme within the asylum system generally; one which is perpetuated through the ideational legacies of extant immigration officers and their personal interpretations of the philosophy underlying asylum policy (see also Jubany, 2011). This is given power and legitimacy through an over-arching organisational and political structure, which not only condones hostility and denial towards asylum seeking individuals, but is in fact founded upon such principles (Anderson, 2013). Fundamentally, the culture of disbelief appears to be no accident or quirk of an over-zealous immigration and asylum system, but rather the outcome of a deliberate political project, which has been pursued over the course of many years and is designed to dissuade migrantincomers of all kinds – including those who seek asylum (Anderson, 2013; Crawley, 2007). In this sense, then, the culture of disbelief can be seen to constitute a form of embedded statutory discrimination both for asylum seekers generally, and UASC specifically. This discrimination is perpetuated subtly, both through the language and rationale of extant policies, but also through the actions and behaviours of frontline professionals, whose duty it is to undertake asylum screening and decide the legitimacy of an individual’s right for political asylum (Jubany, 2011; 2017).

Implications of statutory discrimination for UASC While there has been increasing recognition of the culture of disbelief in the UK asylum process, there has been comparably little research that explores the effects of state-sanctioned prejudicial treatment of unaccompanied children specifically (although some authors do touch on this issue: Groark, Sclare, & Raval, 2011; Allsopp, Chase & Mitchell, 2014). Considering the literature concerning UASC, it is evident that much of it focusses on the longitudinal effects of trauma, occurring prior to and during children’s flight from their homelands, rather than the effects and implications of discriminatory reception conditions for children and young people directly (Hart, 2014). Some research, however, considers the effects of children’s experiences of an asylum system that is at once overly bureaucratic and rooted in a culture of disbelief and discreditation, and highlights the impact of this on their individual emotional wellbeing. Through semi-structured interviews with UASC seeking asylum alone in the UK, Groark et al. (2011) reported that all of their participants experienced profound uncertainty and fear in relation to the Home Office and 52

Between hope and dread

the asylum system. Children spoke of being at the mercy of a system, which was perceived as being an all-encompassing and dominant and threatening power in their lives.As one child explained:‘there it [the asylum system] is knocking at your door coming to get you, I’m the system, I’m coming to get you’ (Groark et al., 2011, p. 428). So too, Chase (2019), in her study of Afghan youths’ transitions into adulthood, found that children’ anxieties regarding uncertain legal statuses, protracted periods of waiting for a status decision, and the prospect of being refused leave to remain in the UK, significantly impacted upon their emotional wellbeing. The use of enforced extended periods of waiting utilized by the Home Office, HoHo have been described as deliberate tactics of state control, used to discriminate against UASC, by denying them protected child status and additional leaving care support once they reach the age of 18 (Allsopp, Chase and Mitchell, 2014). Allsopp, Chase and Mitchell (2014) highlight how age assessment, in particular, is sometimes used as a means of denying UASC the support to which they should rightly be entitled as looked-after children under the terms of international and domestic legislation.These authors provide an account of one participant in their study who was age assessed as 17.5 years of age by the Home office, and then waited an additional six months to receive support from social services (Allsopp, Chase, & Mitchell, 2014). By the time social services eventually contacted this individual, they were denied services on the grounds that they were then 18, and they were subsequently ejected from their accommodation. In this context, age assessing this individual as 17.5 years – an age of such specificity it could not have been determined by even the most reliable of age assessment measures (Hjern et al., 2012) – appeared as a deliberate and calculated ploy to discriminate against this child, by placing them beyond the age threshold for statutory support. Examples of such practices were also evident from the children’s accounts who took part in the first author’s UASC research. During fieldwork, similar experiences were recounted by a number of the participants, some of whom who were also age assessed as 17.5 years of age by the Home Office, and this was seemingly used as deliberate tactic to deny them status and support. Others were incorrectly age assessed to be over the age of 18, and moved into detention centres, which caused profound stress and fear. One participant, who had been held in a police cell for two days prior to being sent to a detention centre, described his treatment by the UK state as similar to his illegal internment experiences in Libya: I arrive in the UK, and I think it should be safe, but then they put me in a cell, and I feel like I am back in Libya. I think, why did I leave? (F, male UASC, age 18) Another participant, who arrived in the UK at age 12, had his ‘age’ increased by two years, due to the opinion of teachers in the school in which he had been placed, who believed that he was older than he appeared. This ultimately resulted in him being ejected from his school and transferred to the care of a different local authority. Reflecting on his experiences of age assessment, as well as the lengthy period of time he had been made to wait for both a substantive interview with the Home Office, and a decision on his claim for status, this young man said: Let me tell you, it affected everything. It affected my health, my emotions. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep … It affected my physical health, I couldn’t concentrate at school. It was the worst time of my life, it was horrible. (J, male UASC, age 18) Waiting, and the uncertainties and distress this caused, were a consistent theme among all of the interviews with UASC and their support workers. Sleeplessness, nightmares and disengagement with school or college were directly linked to Home Office tactics of deliberate time extension 53

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge

and denial of status in the asylum seeking process for UASC, as Allsopp and colleagues’ also noted in their research (2014). Describing the effects of this process on his emotional health and wellbeing and his ability to plan for the future, one of the young people who took part in the first author’s UASC research (A – a young man from Eritrea) said: It makes me sad and confused.You think about it every moment you are alone, all the time, until you get the paper. When you know (what the outcome is) it is easier.You’ve got five years, you can plan, go school, get house. When you don’t know, you can do none of these things. Maybe go college they say there is no point, maybe you leaving soon.You can’t plan. A’s account, which indicates both the personal and practical implications of statutory discrimination of UASC, highlights the way in which the asylum application process can trap young people within structures of institutional dependency, and frustrate their transitions into adulthood (Chase, 2019). Unable to move forward with their lives, caught in an ambivalent political position between the prospect of sanctuary and the tangible possibility of deportation, UASC experience what Butler (2009, in Chase, 2019, p. 10) refers to as politically induced ‘precarity’.

Conclusion The current system for managing and processing the claims of unaccompanied children in the UK reveals a number of tensions and contradictions inherent within the asylum-seeking process that are reinforced by systemic state discrimination of ‘outsider’ children. This process, in turn, reveals the ways in which, in the case of UASC specifically, childhood is not only socially but also politically constructed and revised, in order to deny unaccompanied children status, ­protection and identity – concepts that are enshrined in both domestic and international policies and mandates on children’s rights. Nowhere is the erosion and denial of children’s human rights more glaringly exposed than in the UK’s asylum process for UASC and especially with respect to the procedure for assessing and determining the age, and thus the ‘status’ of unaccompanied children’s claims. As we have shown and discussed, this process so often works against UASC – children’s chronological age is more likely to be raised than lowered, despite what children themselves say – leaving them subject to the vagaries of a complex and confusing legal and immigration system. It also abets the persistent threat of being denied status to remain and being deported back to the country from which they fled (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018). In the UK, the current Home Office system for assessing children’s asylum status is considered by many to be discriminatory and to contravene domestic child protection and safeguarding policies and practices, particularly with respect to the principle of ‘best interests of the child’. This concept was first introduced and is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and is stated in article 3 (1) as follows: ‘In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’. All countries that sign up to and ratify the UNCRC make a commitment to the ‘best interests’ principle in all of their domestic policies and laws relating to children’s rights welfare and general wellbeing (see Coram, 2017); the UK ratified the Convention in 1991). While it may be claimed that assessing and determining an unaccompanied child’s age is a necessary first step in deciding on the most appropriate form of support (which, in the UK, as discussed, differs according to the age of the child), in fact, what is so often the case is that these assessments are based on challenging or undermining a child’s right to remain in the UK, as 54

Between hope and dread

has been shown. At the very least, such decisions do not, in the main, appear to be made in the best interests of the child. In so many cases they also fail to recognize the potential of unaccompanied children with respect to their future citizenry and contribution to society, concepts also enshrined within the UNCRC. In essence then, the asylum process as endorsed currently by the British government constitutes a form of state-sanctioned discrimination, which fails to acknowledge and include the views of children and young people themselves to give them a voice, prioritize their safety and to acknowledge their identity.

References Allsopp, J., Chase, E., & M. Mitchell (2014). The tactics of time and status: Young people’s experiences of building futures while subject to immigration control in Britain. Journal of Refugee Studies, 28(2), 163–182. Anderson, B. (2013). Us and them?: The dangerous politics of immigration control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, J., Hollaus, J., Lindsay, A., & Williamson, C. (2014). The culture of disbelief: An ethnographic approach to understanding an under-theorised concept in the UK asylum system. Refugee Studies Centre, Working Paper Series No. 2. Bang, B., Baker, P.L., Carpinteri, A., & Van Hasselt, V.B. (eds.). (2013) Commercial sexual exploitation of children. Springer. Barrie, L. & Mendes, P. (2011). The experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in and leaving the out-of-home care system in the UK and Australia: A critical review of the literature. International social work, 54(4), 485–503. Bhabha, J. (2014). Child migration and human rights in a global age. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act (2009). London: The Stationery Office. Cemlyn, S.J. & Nye, M. (2012). Asylum seeker young people: Social work value conflicts in negotiating age assessment in the UK. International Social Work, 55(5), 675–688. Chase, E. (2019).Transitions, capabilities and wellbeing: How Afghan unaccompanied young people experience becoming ‘adult’ in the UK and beyond. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(2), 1–18. Children Act (1989). London: The Stationery Office. Cohen, S. (2002). Folk Devils and Moral Panics:The creation of the Mods and Rockers (3rd ed). Oxon: Routledge. Crawley, H. & Skleparis, D. (2018). Refugees, migrants, neither, both: Categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s ‘migration crisis’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(1), 48–64. Crawley, H. (2006). Child first, migrant second: Ensuring that every child matters. London: Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA). Crawley, H. (2007). When is a child not a child?: Asylum, age disputes and the process of age assessment. London: ILPA. Coram (2017). The age assessment process (online). Available at: https://www.childrenslegalcentre.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/03/Age-assessment-process.march_.2017.pdf (accessed 29 November 2019). Department for Education (2017). Care of unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery: Statutory guidance for local authorities. London: The Stationery Office. Eastmond, M. (2015). Refugees in anthropology. International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed.,Volume 20, pp. 105–110). London: Elsevier. Eurostat (2017). Asylum Applicants Considered to be Unaccompanied Minors – Annual Data (online). Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tps00194& plugin=1 (accessed 20 October 2017). Finch, N. (2005). Seeking asylum alone.The asylum-seeking child in Europe (p. 3). Göteborg: Centre for European Research at Göteborg University. Groark, C., Sclare, I., & Raval, H. (2011). Understanding the experiences and emotional needs of unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents in the UK. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 16(3), 421–442. Hart, J. (2014). Children and forced migration. In E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, & N. Sigona (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hjern, A., Lindqvist, M., & Norredam, M. (2012). Age assessment of young asylum seekers. Acta paediatrica, 101(1), 4–7.

55

J. Aldridge Deacon and J. Aldridge Home Office (2018). National statistics: Immigration statistics year ending September 2018. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-september-2019 (accessed 30 March 2019). Home Office (2019a). Processing children’s asylum claims, version 3.0. London: The Stationery Office. Home Office (2019b). Assessing age, version 3.0. London: The Stationery Office. House of Lords European Union Committee (2016). 2nd Report of Session 2016-2017. Children in crisis: Unaccompanied migrant children in the UK. HL Paper 34. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ ld201617/ldselect/ldeucom/34/3402.htm House of Lords, House of Commons Joint Select Committee on Human Rights (2014). Human Rights of unaccompanied migrant children and young people in the UK: First report of session. London: The Stationery Office. James, A. (1993). Childhood identities: Self and social relationships in the experience of the child. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. James, A. & Prout, A. (2003). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. London: Routledge. Jubany, O. (2011). Constructing truths in a culture of disbelief: Understanding asylum screening from within. International Sociology, 26(1), 74–94. Jubany, O. (2017). Screening asylum in a culture of disbelief:Truths, denials and skeptical borders. London: Springer. Kohli, R.K. (2006). The sound of silence: Listening to what unaccompanied asylum-seeking children say and do not say. British journal of social work, 36(5), 707–721. Kohli, R.K. (2007). Social work with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Lister, R. (2007).Why citizenship:Where, when and how children? Theoretical inquiries in Law, 8(2), 693–718. Lynn, N., & Lea, S. (2003). A phantom menace and the new Apartheid’: The social construction of asylumseekers in The United Kingdom. Discourse & Society, 14(4), 425–452. Mannocchi, F. (2019). Torture, rape and murder: Inside Tripoli’s refugee detention camps (online). The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/03/libya-migrants-tripolirefugees-detention-camps (accessed 3 November 2019). Masocha, S. (2015). Construction of the ‘other’ in social workers’ discourses of asylum seekers. Journal of Social Work, 15(6), 569–585. Maughan, B. (2010). Tony Blair’s asylum policies: The narratives and conceptualisations at the heart of new labour’s restrictionism. London: Refugee Studies Centre. McLaughlin, C. (2018). ‘They don’t look like children’: Child asylum-seekers, the dubs amendment and the politics of childhood. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(11), 1757–1773. Poynting, S. & Briskman, L. (2020). Asylum seekers in the global context of xenophobia: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Sociology, 56(1), 3–8. Prout, A. (ed.). (2016). The body, childhood and society. London: Springer. Refugee Council. (2019). Asylum statistics: Annual trends. Available at: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Asylum-Statistics-Annual-Trends-Aug-2019.pdf (Accessed 5 November 2019). Ridge, T. (2013). We are all in this together’? The hidden costs of poverty, recession and austerity policies on Britain’s poorest children. Children & Society, 27(5), 406–417. Robinson,V. (1999). Cultures of ignorance, disbelief and denial: Refugees in Wales. Journal of refugee studies, 12(1), 78–87. Schmitt, M.T., & Branscombe, N.R. (2002). The meaning and consequences of perceived discrimination in disadvantaged and privileged social groups. In W. Stroebe, & M. Hewstone (eds.), European Review of Social Psychology (Vol. 12, pp. 167–199). Chichester: Wiley. Silverman, S.J. (2016). “Imposter-children” in the UK refugee Status determination process. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 32(3), 30–39. Sirriyeh, A. (2018). The politics of compassion: Immigration and asylum policy. Bristol: Policy Press. Smyth, C. (2014). European asylum law and the rights of the child. London: Routledge. Souter, J. (2011). A culture of disbelief or denial? Critiquing refugee status determination in the United Kingdom. Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration, 1(1), 48–59. The Guardian (2017).Child asylum seekers may have been illegally detained,rules court.https://www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2016/jun/20/home-office-loses-test-case-detention-child-asylum-seekers-look-older-18. The Times (2018). Hundreds posing as child refugees shown to be adults. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ hundreds-of-refugees-pretended-to-be-children-to-win-asylum-n5bzhfcq9. UNHCR (1997). Guidelines on policies and procedures in dealing with unaccompanied children seeking asylum. Geneva: UNHCR.

56

Between hope and dread United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Available at: https://downloads.unicef.org. uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/UNCRC_united_nations_convention_on_the_rights_of_the_ child.pdf?_ga=2.124201354.1044050593.1527758779-701023217.1527758779. Wade, J. (2011). Preparation and transition planning for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee young people: A review of evidence in England. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(12), 2424–2430. Webb, E. (2004). Discrimination against children. Archives of disease in childhood, 89(9), 804–808. Wernesjö, U. (2012). Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children: Whose perspective? Childhood, 19(4), 495–507. Woolley, H., Hazelwood, T., & Simkins, I. (2011). Don’t skate here: Exclusion of skateboarders from urban civic spaces in three northern cities in England. Journal of urban design, 16(4), 471–487. Wright, F. (2014). Social work practice with unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people facing removal. British Journal of Social Work, 44(4), 1027–1044.

57

5 THE SUBTLETY OF GENDER STEREOTYPES IN THE WORKPLACE Current and future directions for research on the glass cliff Leire Gartzia and Michelle Ryan

Gender inequality persists in the workplace. Women continue to be under-represented in particular sectors (such as IT and engineering; Wang & Degol, 2017) and, as we focus on here, in particular roles (such as leadership positions, Eagly, 2018; Eagly, Gartzia, & Carli, 2012). There is a substantive body of literature that illustrates how people’s impressions of women in leadership positions represent an especially relevant obstacle for women’s career advancement and access to leadership roles (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004). The ongoing prevalence of stereotypes in leadership that are consistent with stereotypically masculine traits and values is a commonly recognized cause of workplace gender inequality (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Schein, 1973). For example, leaders are generally viewed as more agentic than communal and thus perceived as more similar to men than women (Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011). At the same time, female leaders who violate gender stereotypes, for instance, by seeking power or engaging in high-status behaviors are disliked and penalized (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010; Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Nauts, 2012). To the extent that such think manager – think male associations signal a particular set of beliefs about women as leaders, their competences are not neutrally evaluated. Recently, research has identified a number of factors that may attenuate or exacerbate such stereotypic associations. For example, research has identified situations in which stereotypically masculine constructions vary, showing that stereotypes of leaders are less masculine in stereotypically feminine contexts such as educational organizations than in domains such as politics, the judiciary, or the arts (for a meta-analytical review, see Koenig et al., 2011). This attenuation and exacerbation of gender stereotypes based on the context opens new opportunities for the promotion of women to leadership positions within certain organizational contexts. One such variation from the traditional definition of leadership is the phenomenon of the glass cliff, identified more than 15 years ago (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). Research into the glass cliff has repeatedly demonstrated that female leaders are, perhaps counter-intuitively, more likely to be appointed to leadership positions in organizational situations of crisis in which companies 58

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-5

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

experience downturns, compared to when all is well (e.g., Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Haslam & Ryan, 2008; Hennessey, MacDonald, & Carroll, 2014; Kulich, Ryan, & Haslam, 2014; Ryan, Haslam, & Kulich, 2010). This pattern has been investigated across a varied range of domains including managerial studies (e.g., Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Haslam & Ryan, 2008; Hennessey et al., 2014), politics (e.g., Kulich et  al., 2014; Ryan et  al., 2010; Thomas & Bodet, 2013), or education (Smith, 2015). Although research in this area has been growing steadily, there remain gaps in our understanding of why, and when, women are preferred for such crisis management situations. Indeed, metaanalytic research demonstrates that while the phenomenon is relatively robust, it is also subtle, context dependent, and multiply determined (Morgenroth, Kirby, Sudkämper, & Ryan, 2020; see also Ryan & Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2016). There is initial evidence for multiple explanations for the causes and consequences of the glass cliff given its multiply-determined nature, with many remaining questions about the underlying antecedents and effects of the selection of women in organizational crisis situations. Moreover, while meta-analyses point to a number of potential moderators, to date there are only a few studies that directly examine factors that may impact on the appointment of women to crisis situations and the boundary conditions of the phenomenon. In our chapter, we review and critically examine current theory and research on the glass cliff with an emphasis on the questions yet to be answered.We begin by discussing the central importance of gender stereotypes to understanding implicit theories about leadership and crisis management.We then describe how the phenomenon of the glass cliff has come to represent a particularly strong deviance from the think-manager think-male association. To better understand the potential effects and antecedents of the glass cliff, we also discuss problematic issues with the way in which crisis is conceptualized in the field and the complex ways in which these associations may influence women’s careers. We then identify some potential reasons for glass cliff appointments, as well as the moderators identified in previous research to explain the specific contexts in which women may be preferred for leadership compared to men. Finally, we conclude with suggestions on how to expand research into the glass cliff, and propose a shift in focus to a greater emphasis on understanding the specific types of crisis in which women are really likely to succeed.

Dynamic gender stereotypes in definitions of effective leadership Understanding how people form impressions of leaders has been a particularly relevant topic when trying to understand workplace gender inequality. Leadership stereotypes have been demonstrated to be consistent with traits and values that are generally ascribed to men (Schein, 1973). Following Eagly and Karau’s (2002) role congruity theory, of particular relevance is the prevalent inconsistency between the communal qualities that are typically associated with women, such as being caring, nice, and sociable; and the agentic qualities that are typically associated with leaders and with men, such as being ambitious, assertive, and powerful (see also Eagly & Carli, 2007; Spence & Buckner, 2000). Such incongruence in the stereotypes of women’s perceived qualities and the perceived demands of leadership has been shown to underlie both the evaluation of women as being less suited to leadership roles and the less positive evaluations of female leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Eagly et al., 2012; Heilman et al., 2004). In their meta-analysis of the cultural stereotypes of leaders, Koenig and colleagues (2011) demonstrated the prevalence of masculine leader stereotypes across three different research paradigms. The first was the think manager–think male paradigm developed by Schein (1973), where direct comparisons are made between leader stereotypes and female and male stereotypes. These analyses demonstrated stronger intraclass correlations for similarity between men and leaders (.62) than between women and leaders (.25). Second, the agency–communion paradigm, 59

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

developed by Powell and Butterfield (1979), directly compares stereotypes of leaders’ agency and communion. Analysis of these studies indicated that stereotypes of leaders showed greater agency than communion (g = 1.55). Finally, analyses of Shinar’s (1975) masculinity–femininity paradigm included studies measuring stereotypes of leadership on a single masculinity–femininity dimension, demonstrating greater masculinity of leaders than the androgynous scale midpoint (g = 0.92). Additional analyses showed that while the masculine construal of leadership across the three paradigms had decreased over time and was greater for male participants compared to female participants, taken together these findings confirmed the persistent and multi-dimensional construal of leaders as being stereotypically masculine. While there is clear evidence for the persistence and prevalence of masculine notions of leadership, and, relatedly, the inconsistencies between construals of leadership and the stereotypical feminine roles, this is not to say that such stereotypes apply equally in all situations. Indeed, the incongruity effects between leader stereotypes and women’s gender stereotypes described by the role incongruity model are not fixed, but rather vary depending on changes in either gender stereotypes or leadership stereotypes (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Gartzia & Baniandres, 2019). For example, notions of leadership should be less prototypically masculine in female-dominated fields such as elementary education or nursing, given the stereotypically feminine qualities, such as warmth, empathy, consideration, that are believed to be required in these fields (Koenig et al., 2011; see also Cejka & Eagly, 1999; Glick, 1991). Accordingly, the features associated with leadership in these fields are less likely to be based solely on agentic, stereotypically masculine characteristics. In contrast, male-dominated fields like finance or engineering should have a more masculine construal (Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016; Knights & Tullberg, 2014; Larreina & Gartzia, 2017). Similarly, in comparison to mid-level management, people tend to define higher level positions like those of executive leaders (e.g., corporate officers in listed companies) in agentic ways, given that they are more often occupied by men (Catalyst, 2010). Such moderating effects are particularly important for our understanding of gender stereotypes across contexts because they capture how beliefs about leadership practices may change in response to the perceived requirements of different organizational contexts. Of particular interest to our chapter, research suggests that notions of leadership may be more stereotypically feminine in certain crisis contexts. In contemporary leadership, stereotypically feminine approaches to leadership, such as teamwork or participatory processes in decision-making, are, more than ever, becoming seen as relevant (e.g., Koenig et al., 2011; McCauley & Van Velsor, 2004). Such practices are in line with a “female advantage” perspective (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Eagly et  al., 2012) and go beyond command-and-control leadership styles more representative of traditional definitions of masculinity. Indeed, research suggests that within organizational contexts where innovation is required and where leaders need to motivate people and promote extra-role behaviors, communal capabilities, such as those implied in more stereotypically feminine traits, become more important (Aragón-Correa, García-Morales, & Cordón-Pozo, 2007; Gartzia & van Knippenberg, 2015; Hunt, 1999; King, 2002; Madera & Smith, 2009; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). Therefore, a question that emerges is whether crisis situations that go beyond ordinary organizational circumstances can generate notions of effective leadership consistent with a think crisis – think female perspective (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia, Ryan, Balluerka, & Aritzeta, 2012; Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011). Building from the metaphor of the glass ceiling, the “glass cliff ” phenomenon has traditionally captured how female leaders are more likely to be placed in managerial positions associated with greater risk of failure, compared to when all is well (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). In this invisible cliff, women in such crisis-related, risky managerial positions, potentially face negative effects of failure, being more likely to suffer from criticism and blame about the organizational situation 60

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

(Ryan & Haslam, 2007). Several media articles have portrayed these effects, referring to the special difficulties that women face as leaders in crisis situations. For instance, many headlines in the popular press trumpet real-life glass cliff situations that Teresa May faced with the difficult task she was handed during Brexit (e.g., “Like many women before her, Theresa May was set up to fail”, The Guardian; S. Stern, 2019, or “Think crisis, think female: Why Theresa May is a classic example of the glass cliff ”, Global News; J. Gerster, 2018). These headlines portray Teresa May, and other female leaders in uncertain situations, as real-world examples of women who are invited to take on a leadership role in precarious circumstances. Such perspectives generally describe the negative experiences of managerial women in crisis situations and provide a critical examination of the negative effects that glass cliff positions pose for women. However, at the same time, the phenomenon of the glass cliff represents an opportunity to look at when traditional stereotypes about gender and leadership may be challenged. Indeed, research suggests that stereotypes of leadership are very different in times of crisis, such that there is a perceived suitability of female leaders in crisis situations.This phenomenon, which has been termed the think-crisis think-female association (Ryan et al., 2010; see also Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia et al., 2012), underscores how construals of management as male may be weaker in such crisis contexts compared to regular organizational situations. Likewise, the question has emerged whether these effects operate differently across gender dimensions, suggesting that crisis contexts may generate less traditional ideals of management both in relation to selection of women and selection of stereotypically feminine leadership traits (see Gartzia & Baniandres, 2019; Gartzia et al., 2012; Gartzia, Komarraju, & Eagly, 2013; Gartzia, Kulich, & Komarraju, 2017 for explicit comparisons between gender dimensions across leadership effects). In the next section, we address some of the boundary conditions of these associations, with a particular emphasis on how broad definitions of crisis can be problematic for understanding these effects.

Defining crises: Remaining challenges for glass cliff research The specific way in which a crisis is defined can be critical if we want to understand the extent to which construals of effective crisis management are consistent with gender stereotypes. In the management literature, a crisis is generally conceptualized as a situation that poses a substantial threat to an organization’s goals and survival, often with little response time available (Mulder, de Jong, Koppeaar, & Verhage, 1986; Slatter & Lovett, 2004). In particular, studies in this field have often understood crises as extreme events where there is a risk of severe physical, psychological, or material consequences (see Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio & Cavarretta, 2009 for a review). In contrast to findings on the glass cliff, this research has traditionally shown that followers tend to look for direction and agency when events generate stress and threat such as natural disasters or management requiring rapid responses (Flanagan & Levy, 1952; Isenberg, 1981). During these extreme events, leadership becomes even more directive and transactional (e.g., Dynes, 1983; Perrow, 1984; Slatter, Lovett, & Barlow, 2011). Confirming these trends, there is evidence in the management literature that task orientation (vs. people orientation) and leaders’ ability to deal with abrupt threats in a directive and authoritarian way is often seen as relevant for the success of an organization (Bass & Bass, 2008; Dynes, 1983; Perrow, 1984). Indeed, leaders who exercise power in traditionally masculine settings such as an aircraft carrier (Mulder, Ritsema van Eck, & De Jong, 1971; Mulder & Stemerding, 1963) seem to be more effective during such extreme events.There is also evidence from military officers that shows that leaders who provide rapid and authoritative responses, that is stereotypically masculine leadership, are more likely be followed in such turbulent organizational situations (Mulder et al., 1986). 61

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

These studies suggest that stereotypically masculine, agentic stereotypes may more easily be evoked in extreme crisis situations. Note, however, that many of these studies were conducted some decades ago and in some cases were specific to extreme crisis situations in stereotypically masculine fields. Leadership prototypes and effectiveness in such extreme events may be different in other fields and may have changed substantially, in line with contemporary definitions of leadership requiring more communal qualities (see Koenig et al., 2011). Indeed, other conceptualizations of organizational crises more clearly underscore the communionrelated specificities of crisis management situations, by pointing to the interpersonal nature of these uncertain situations where displaying teamwork and promoting the importance of cooperation (Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; Hunt, 1999; Sweeney, Thompson, & Blanton, 2009; see also Gartzia et al., 2013). The complexity of the effects that leaders can have in crises context is also represented in those more recent definitions of crises that incorporate more positive connotations. In the classic approach, crisis was an inevitable and undesirable enemy whereas in contemporary approaches crises are no longer seen as unusual events but rather as frequent and natural processes in the life cycle of an organization (Alas & Gao, 2010; Slatter & Lovett, 2004). Also, even the abovementioned leadership studies examining organizations under extended periods of stress have demonstrated the importance of trust in leaders, which includes communal components of interpersonal orientation (Sweeney et al., 2009; see also Clinchy, Belenky, Goldberger & Tarule, 1985; Sweeney et al., 2009). When communal dimensions of a crisis are made salient, both women and stereotypically feminine traits of leaders (e.g., being kind, empathetic and sensitive to others’ needs) may have a stronger role compared to agentic features, which may potentially serve as the stereotypical basis for glass cliff associations. Gartzia, Komarraju, and Eagly (2013) examined these effects by providing participants with descriptions about companies facing different crisis situations (e.g., including stereotypically masculine crises such as major financial or technology problems in manufacturing products and more stereotypically feminine crises such as internal problems involving people not working well together). They then asked participants to identify the qualities that would be most suitable for a leader in each crisis situation. Findings demonstrated that the glass cliff preference for a woman – and for stereotypically feminine traits (e.g., emotional and agreeable leaders) – occurred only in those crises that are believed to favor stereotypically feminine leadership skills. These situations included conceptualizations of crises due to a company’s internal disharmony and lack of knowledge about customers’ preferences. In other crises, they found a general preference for male leaders and agentic qualities (e.g., analytical and confident rather than emotional and agreeable personality). These findings suggest that glass cliff effects cannot be generalized across all crisis contexts. In their seminal paper using archival analyses of the performance of FTSE 100 companies, Ryan and Haslam (2005) introduced the phenomenon of the glass cliff demonstrating that women are particularly likely to be placed in positions of leadership in circumstances of general financial downturn, thereby emphasizing the financial dimensions of a crisis. Following this research, a good number of experimental glass cliff studies – but not all – have implicitly incorporated financial dimensions in their definition of an organizational crisis. Importantly, glass cliff findings suggest that the preference for women in crisis situations is indeed more likely to occur when the crisis impacts indicators such as stock price (Kulich & Ryan, 2017; Ryan & Haslam, 2005;). Because men are generally more likely to engage in economic-driven activities and constitute the majority of the workforce in male-dominated domains like the industrial and financial sector (see Knights & Tullberg, 2014), they are more likely to represent an implicit leadership stereotype of effective management. This is particularly the case in crisis contexts involving stereotypically 62

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

masculine competences such as managing economic-driven activities and financial downturns. As Knights and Tullberg pointed out, “to be an in-group member means that you need to join in the dominant masculine discourse” (Knights & Tullberg, 2014, p. 512). These ideas are consistent with the foundations of role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) and the previous metaanalysis examining the think manager-think male stereotype, which have shown that masculine stereotypes are more prevalent in domains with few female managers and higher status leader roles (Koenig et al., 2011). Operationalizing crises in financial or technological terms (as opposed to broader organizational terms such as limited performance or internal problems) is noteworthy as these activities differ substantially from a gender perspective. Financial activities are a particularly challenging crisis as they are characterized by competitive behavior, that is stereotypically masculine, which is reinforced at the organizational level (Larreina & Gartzia, 2017; see also Gartzia & van Engen, 2012; Gartzia & van Knippenberg, 2015). The mainstream culture in the financial system has been described as disproportionally competitive, with a marked absence of ethics and social values (Gómez-Bezares, Ansotegui & González, 2014; Russ, 2016). In this context, unfair and fraudulent behavior is common, with many managers having to make selfish and unethical decisions that may negatively affect the lives of others, based only on financial criteria. Given this background, the pressure to act in stereotypically masculine, agentic, and competitive ways is especially marked in these financial contexts. In terms of the qualities that are needed to deal with stereotypically masculine tasks, such as dealing with a financial crisis, there is a marked stereotypical mismatch between women (and communal qualities) and the perceived demands of effective leadership.There is experimental evidence that, for both male and female leaders, communal traits (i.e., kind, empathetic, and peopleoriented) reduce the extent to which leaders are perceived as competent in financial activities, such as leading a financial transaction or increasing economic profits (Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016). These findings point to a stereotypical mismatch, which needs to be further investigated, between women’s stereotypically feminine qualities and the features perceived as necessary when managing a financial crisis. Surprisingly, however, previous glass cliff research has provided evidence for the preference of women in these contexts, in contrast to what Eagly and Karau’s (2002) role congruity model would predict. In the next section, we address how research has examined some of these complexities as these antecedents of women’s appointments in crisis situations.

Underlying reasons: Why are women preferred in crisis situations? Because the glass cliff is a complex phenomenon, there are current debates regarding the causes underlying the appointment of female leaders in precarious contexts (Ryan & Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2016; see also Kulich & Ryan, 2017). In particular, there is much ambiguity regarding the stereotypical reasons why women may become leaders, connected to the abovementioned conceptualizations of crises. In general, previous studies have referred to several potential explanations for the selection of women in general crisis management situations (for a metaanalytical review about glass cliff, see Morgenroth et al., 2020; see also Ryan & Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2016). These explanations rarely examine the effects of specific types of crises on appointments of women but include a good number of social and psychological elements. A first set of explanations capture the effects of sexism and gender discrimination in glass cliff decisions, underscoring the idea that women are appointed to difficult organizational situations because crisis management positions are generally more precarious and more likely to result in failure (see Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011, Study 3; Ryan et al., 2016). Consistent with this view, there is evidence that women’s appointments in crisis situations are more likely to 63

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

occur when relevant stakeholders (e.g., shareholders and other relevant organizational members) do not support the appointment of a new leader, pointing to the idea that female leaders are set up to be exposed to failure. In a study by Rink, Ryan, and Stoker (2013) manipulating information about whether the leader either could or could not count on the support and confidence of relevant stakeholders and the larger organizational network, the female leader was expected to be more effective than a male leader where support and resources were absent (Rink et al., 2013). Adding to this approach, previous studies have also shown that the glass cliff is more likely to occur among people with higher scores in conservative ideologies (Brown, Diekman, & Schneider, 2011; Ryan et al., 2010) as well among individuals with high scores in legitimizing ideology (Brown et al., 2011). Extending these effects, Gartzia and colleagues (2012) evaluated participants’ sexism in glass cliff decisions and demonstrated that stereotypic beliefs about the roles and behaviors of women and men (e.g., seeing women as nurturing and caregiving and men as protective and competent) translated into a greater preference not only for men but also for greater agency in leadership positions (e.g., selecting leaders who are competitive, ambitious and independent). An additional set of explanations arises more directly from the perspective of gender stereotypes, capturing at least two different ways in which stereotypes underlie glass cliff decisions. The first underscores the abovementioned connections between communion/femininity and agency/masculinity (Eagly & Karau, 2002), with the underlying assumption that an agentic definition of leadership may be weaker in “crisis” situations compared to regular organizational contexts. These explanations capture the specific content of the glass cliff stereotype, consistent with the think-crisis think-female association (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia et al., 2012; Ryan et al., 2010). A second area of research has examined how stereotypes about crisis management may include assumptions about an implicit need for change, suggesting that crisis contexts are taken as a signal that something needs to be different from the previous organizational norm (Kulich, Lorenzi-Cioldi, Iacoviello, Faniko, & Ryan, 2015). In the following, we summarize these explanations as two different ways in which stereotypes underlie glass cliff appointments – based on content versus based on changing the prevailing norm.

Content stereotypes: Think crisis – think female As we noted earlier, Eagly and Karau’s (2002) role congruity model outlines how the incongruity between stereotypes of leaders and stereotypes of women is dynamic and dependent on context (e.g., Koenig et al., 2011). One such context is that of a crisis – if notions about effective leadership are indeed more stereotypically feminine in certain crisis contexts where motivating employees is particularly relevant (e.g., Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; King, 2002; Madera & Smith, 2009; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993), it is possible that glass cliff decisions are motivated by people’s perception that stereotypically feminine, communal characteristics are important during times of crisis.This approach is consistent with a “think crisis–think female” association (Ryan et al., 2011; see also Gartzia et al., 2012) and, ultimately, with the notion that women bring relevant features as leaders (Eagly et al., 2012). In line with this approach, Ryan and colleagues (2011) examined leadership stereotypes in the context of a company that was doing either well or badly in relation to different organizational performance contexts. The results suggested that, in line with the glass cliff, stereotypically feminine traits (e.g., tactful, courteous) are seen as more desirable in times of “crisis” than stereotypically masculine traits (e.g., assertive, adventurous), while the opposite was the case in a more stable organizational context (Study 2). In an attempt to more specifically capture potential differences across contexts, this research demonstrated that the perceived suitability of 64

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

stereotypically masculine and feminine traits for a crisis leadership position was dependent on what is explicitly required from the leader (Ryan et al., 2011; Study 3). Where a less traditional leadership role was required (e.g., managing people and personnel issues through the crisis, staying in the background, or enduring the period of poor performance), communal traits were seen as more desirable. Such a preference for stereotypically feminine traits was not seen when the leader was required to be a spokesperson or turn the crisis around. While this provided indirect evidence for the think crisis – think female association, and for its context dependence, the study did not directly examine the selection of male and female leaders. Thus, the specific issue of how the desirability of stereotypically feminine traits might lead to women being chosen in these situations was unclear. Gartzia and colleagues (2012) extended these findings by explicitly differentiating between the selection of women and the selection of stereotypically feminine features (i.e., communal traits) in crisis contexts. Their study looked at employees and leaders who varied in their levels of sexism and in the gender stereotypicality of their definitions of effective (male) leadership. The results demonstrated variations in the selection of both stereotypically feminine traits and women in a crisis context. Consistent with the general prevalence of a think manager-think male association in leadership (Koenig et al., 2011), results showed that both sexism and stereotypically masculine representations of leadership played a role in glass cliff selections, such that individuals with higher sexism scores, and a more stereotypically masculine construal of leadership, were less likely to choose both women and communal individuals for leadership positions in a time of crisis. More recently, Kulich, Iacoviello, and Lorenzi-Cioldi (2018) conducted three experimental studies to examine the extent to which people prefer leaders to have stereotypically masculine or feminine traits when implementing change. Contrasting the glass cliff hypothesis, their findings showed that candidates with stereotypically masculine traits (i.e., agency) were preferred over stereotypically feminine candidates (i.e., communal) for poorly performing companies, but not for companies that were performing well. Moreover, this effect was due to perceptions that stereotypically masculine candidates had higher task-orientation and potential for change. Extending these findings, Gartzia et al. (2017) examined how variations in types of crises influence the strength of the think crisis-think female association on selection of both female and communal leaders. In several experimental studies presenting different crisis situations with a stereotypically feminine (e.g., an internal disharmony) versus masculine nature (e.g., a financial problem), and a no crisis situation, results supported the reasoning that the “think crisis-think female” phenomenon is only specific to crises involving stereotypically feminine components and is particularly strong for gender traits (communal leaders) compared to selection of women.

Stereotypes signaling change Because women are generally believed not to be equipped with agentic qualities, Kulich and colleagues (2018) posed the relevant question of whether the selection of women in crisis situations is due to an attraction to women’s leadership qualities or rather a more instrumental means to signal something to shareholders and the general public. Such an approach is consistent with the increasingly relevant argument in the glass cliff literature that women are more easily appointed in situations of crisis because, as members of an underrepresented group in management, they signal change by shifting away from previous leadership styles (e.g., as represented by male leaders). The fact that glass cliff appointments also occur across different underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (e.g., Morgenroth et al., 2020) can be taken as additional support for the idea that women and other members of underrepresented groups are appointed to crisis contexts as a way of signaling change (Kulich et al., 2015). 65

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

To experimentally investigate a signaling change approach to the glass cliff, Kulich and colleagues (2015) investigated the processes underlying the appointment of women. They demonstrated that a preference for female leaders in crisis contexts can be better explained by raters’ beliefs that women can signal change, rather than perceptions of women’s effectiveness in such leadership positions. More specifically, their results reveal that a female candidate is more likely to be chosen in a poorly performing company with past faulty leadership because her atypicality for such a leadership position is believed to symbolize change, rather than because of her qualification or suitability to handle the crisis and improve performance. These ideas are consistent with ethnographic studies of women in leadership demonstrating how people give salience to gender as a relevant membership category when evaluating women in leadership positions, even more than female leaders themselves (e.g., Sorrentino & Augoustinos, 2016; see also Gartzia et al., 2017). Also in line with this approach, Bruckmüller and Branscombe (2010) showed through experimental research, that glass cliff decisions only occurred where there was a previous history of male management, which pointed to the argument that companies may see women’s gender as a salient category generating an “intention for change” effect behind their appointment. Such a perspective generally sees the choice of a woman, or another atypical leader from a minority group, as a strategic movement: as a way to simply “publicize a change” to the outside world. As Kulich and colleagues (2015) pointed out, the atypicality of the female ­leadership – which typically follows a more typical male leadership – can be a symbol of change for those who may evaluate the company, such as shareholders, the media, or the general public. Importantly, this selection is not necessarily explained because of the woman’s qualification per se, but because of gender stereotypes and the association of women with a different set of qualities compared to those of men. Importantly, this “signaling change” hypothesis only seems to play an important role in glass cliff appointments in certain contexts, such as when a company’s performance is attributed to past leadership, which represents an internal and controllable cause, but not when it is attributed to global economic circumstances, which represented an external, uncontrollable cause (Kulich et al., 2015). These findings are also consistent with the experimental study conducted by Ryan and colleagues (2011), in which the “think crisis–think female” association was particularly prevalent when the leader was expected to endure the crisis or to act as a scapegoat. Taken together, research on the perceived signaling power of female leaders suggests that they may be preferred in crisis situations to send the public the message that a new approach is being taken. From this change-signal-motivation approach, the appointment of women can be also seen as a strategy to influence the evaluations of an under-performing company and, for example, improve the company’s public image or performance. By merely providing information that traditional leadership has not been successful people may change their stereotypes of leadership, resulting in less traditional views about who should be in a leadership role in such multifaceted situations.

Stereotypes as social constructions that vary with context: Moderating effects Given the abovementioned complexities involved in glass cliff decisions, a critical analysis of this phenomenon also requires a better understanding of the specific situations under which glass cliff decisions can occur, evaluating moderating effects that can potentially reinforce or attenuate its occurrence. Indeed, for decades social psychology has shown that how people form impressions of others is not fixed but determined by a number of key individual and contextual variables. Therefore, it is likely that the preference for female leaders in crisis situations is influenced by a 66

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

wide range of moderating variables, too, which to some extent are connected to its underlying causes and help disentangle the specific effects of stereotypes in these associations. Because the impressions that people can have of leaders in crisis contexts occur in different circumstances (Gartzia et al., 2012, 2013; Ryan & Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2016), one of the most commonly evidenced moderators of the glass cliff, either directly or indirectly, is the type of crisis described in our earlier section. As we have discussed, in certain crisis contexts, what is seen to be desirable for the organization (e.g., motivating employees or attending to internal disharmony) may be more clearly linked to relational dimensions that are typical of feminine stereotypes and women (Gartzia et al., 2013, 2017; Ryan et al., 2011).These findings suggest that different crisis contexts can change what is required from the manager and moderate the effect of the glass cliff. There is also indirect evidence in the broader leadership literature that the context and specific field in which an organization operates can moderate glass cliff effects. For instance, analyses of leadership in extreme situations suggest that authoritarian expressions of leadership occur particularly in the first phase of a crisis. It is only after the turnaround phase that a more relationshiporiented leader is needed, in part to facilitate a return to stability (Slatter, Lovett, & Barlow, 2011). Bass and Bass (2008) also argued that followers are more likely to accept more authoritarian, autocratic leadership in threatening situations that are poorly determined because, in such extreme crisis contexts, people may have pre-established schemas where centralization of power from their leaders is more likely to be accepted. In a meta-analysis examining the emergence of the glass cliff, Morgenroth and colleagues (2020) examined some of these moderators using studies conducted with both archival (i.e., realworld cases) and experimental data. They showed that the glass cliff was moderated by domain (i.e., more evident in the educational domain compared to management or politics), the minority group (i.e., affecting the appointment of members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups), and the design of the study (i.e., being more prevalent for studies using between-participants rating only a woman or a man than for studies using within-participant designs evaluating male and female candidates simultaneously). No moderating effects were found based on whether participants were men or women or based on sample type (e.g., undergraduate vs. working participants). Decisions about the ideal candidate for a given crisis management position may also vary depending on the dimension being evaluated: selection of women versus selection of stereotypically feminine traits. When making a decision about someone to lead an organizational crisis, the same communal leadership behaviors might be differently evaluated when performed by a female or a male leader. Research has shown that assumptions of women’s communal traits represent a clear obstacle for women’s access to leadership roles (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Heilman et al., 2004). Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that glass cliff decisions tend to be stronger for communal female leaders compared to agentic female leaders in organizational contexts where the agency is not taken as a reference of effective leadership (Gartzia et al., 2012). In situations where more stereotypically masculine referents of leadership prevail, men are more likely to choose men over women for crisis management regardless of their stereotypic orientation (communal/agentic; Gartzia et al., 2012). Performance implied in stock price management has some unique features related to projection to outsiders (e.g., stock is made public), so it may be a particularly relevant moderator to the hypothesis that women signal change. In other words, given the weak stereotypical congruence between stereotypically feminine roles and financial domains (Knights & Tullberg, 2014; Larreina & Gartzia, 2017; see also Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016), these findings give strength to a “signaling change” explanation as the underlying process of glass cliff decisions in companies experiencing financial downturns. If crises that are 67

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

clearly described in financial terms are not clearly perceived as requiring stereotypically feminine attributes (which would point to a stereotypical congruity between feminine features and financial management), other factors beyond gender stereotyping should be driving glass cliff effects in crisis management contexts. Financial problems that are communicated to the general public and shareholders through stock price participation may more clearly be a symbol of change and serve as a moderator of glass cliff effects, but would also likely result in greater failure for women in the long term. Future studies further examining these questions with specific variations of research variables in both definitions of a crisis and exposure to potential evaluators would serve to understand these nuances in more detail.

Conclusion The glass cliff literature is rich and has spanned many years. It has repeatedly shown, since its early demonstration more than fifteen years ago (Ryan & Haslam, 2005), that female leaders are disproportionately likely to be appointed to leadership positions in organizational situations in which companies have experienced a continued pattern of poor financial performance (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). As we have argued, however, the glass cliff may not be a universal phenomenon, but rather emerge under particular contexts and complex ways depending on the situation (Gartzia et al., 2012; Ryan & Haslam, 2007; Ryan et al., 2016). This complexity may help to explain why evidence for the preference of women in crisis situations can be inconclusive across different studies and fields of analysis. Although the management literature generally suggests that some type of change is required in crisis situations, some conceptualizations of organizational crises are more likely to underscore the communion-related specificities of crisis management situations, by pointing to the interpersonal nature of these uncertain situations where displaying teamwork and promoting the importance of cooperation (Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; Hunt, 1999; Sweeney et al., 2009). Therefore, the specific definitions of crisis can produce different effects that need to be further examined. These theoretical nuances in the definition of a crisis are particularly important from the perspective of stereotypes because, in principle, the associations between stereotypically feminine features and the qualities perceived to be required in a crisis should only occur if there is stereotypical congruence between women and the perceived demands of leadership. In general, stereotypically feminine attributes (i.e., communion) should be relevant only in organizational situations where leaders more clearly have the challenge of re-establishing confidence and motivating employees, given that more agentic qualities are preferred when broader conceptualizations of crises are provided (Gartzia et al., 2013, 2017; Mulder et al., 1971). The study of the selection of women in times of crisis derives from a very specific view about crises in the glass cliff literature, building on early conceptualizations of the glass cliff in financial settings – as a general financial downturn or a situation of steadily decreasing economic performance (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). From the perspective of gender stereotypes, there is no clear theoretical reason to expect glass cliff decisions that lead people to prefer women – or c­ ommunion – in crisis situations involving financial dimensions, given their markedly agentic nature (Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016; Knights & Tullberg, 2014; Larreina & Gartzia, 2017). Therefore, a more thoughtful analysis of the crisis categories is needed. If the selection of women is not based on the congruence between their prescribed communal attributes and the characteristics of a “crisis”, other factors should explain glass cliff effects. Following previous research, only conceptualizations of crises containing stereotypically feminine elements like organizations facing internal problems, such as those involving people not working well together, a tendency to take excessive risk, scandals involving fraud or being out 68

Gender stereotypes in the workplace

of touch with customers, should accentuate glass cliff effects (Gartzia et al., 2013). To further understand these associations, glass cliff research should more clearly focus on capturing what is subjectively thought to be effective to solve specific types of crisis with special attention to differentiating between the two basic dimensions of gender (preference for female leaders) and stereotyping (preference for stereotypically feminine attributes). Just as stereotypes are not universal, the glass cliff may not be a universal phenomenon but rather emerge in complex ways across different categories and organizational contexts (Gartzia et  al., 2012; Ryan & Haslam, 2009; Ryan et al., 2016). Clearly differentiating the specific elements and determinants of a crisis may help researchers better understand the underlying gendered mechanisms behind glass cliff decisions, pointing to specific actions that can be implemented in organizations to help female leaders better operate in such difficult organizational contexts. In particular, given the relevance given to financial dimensions (e.g., Ryan & Haslam, 2005), further understanding of the different conceptualizations of crisis management studies in financial versus other broader organizational terms can also be relevant as financial activities are particularly incongruent with both communal roles (Gartzia & Baniandrés, 2016) and women (Knights & Tullberg, 2014). Findings that women are preferred in most operationalizations of crises, regardless of their stereotypical nature, would reinforce interpretations that women are appointed to crises as a way of signaling change. However, to date our understanding of these nuances in stereotypical perceptions, as well as the underlying causes and effects on women’s careers of glass cliff selections, are still unclear and empirically underdeveloped. This diversity and lack of specification in the conceptualization of crises is also manifest in the broader leadership literature, which has generally referred to “crisis” circumstances when evaluating leadership in such unusual circumstances in contrast to day-to-day situations (e.g., Alas & Gao, 2010; Mulder et al., 1986; see also Hannah, Avolio, Luthans, & Harms, 2008). We strongly recommend a more thorough diagnosis of the consequences that glass cliff selections can have for women’s managerial career. Given the proven effectiveness of interpersonally oriented dimensions of leadership in crisis situations (Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; Hunt, 1999; Sweeney et al., 2009), the generally communal repertoire of traits and behaviors that is commonly attributed to female leaders should ironically promote their perceived effectiveness in multi-faceted leadership roles. The tendency for female leaders to display more communal leadership styles, however, do not always translate into better evaluations of their performance and future career potential, but just more glass cliff appointments in crisis management situations and the precarity associated with these leadership positions. As Ryan and colleagues (2016) point out, to date most existing research has examined the antecedents of the appointment of women in crisis situations, but only a limited number of studies have evaluated its consequences for women’s managerial progress. Overall, we believe that future research should not solely examine perceptions of ideal leadership by the presence (or absence) of a crisis but should more specifically determine the nature of the crisis itself, incorporating a richer understanding of the underlying causes of glass cliff decisions. In addition, glass cliff research should more specifically and interactively address stereotypes about leadership, gender, and crises as well as its potential effects for women. Female leaders who are appointed to uncertain crisis situations are certainly capable of overcoming glass ceiling obstacles, but they nonetheless still face many challenges in relation to both physiological/ psychological concerns (e.g., well-being, stress, health) and professional concerns (e.g., future appointments and their general career inside and outside the organization). Women leading uncertain organizational contexts face the challenge of being strong, creative, and psychologically mature in order to be successful, given the many obstacles they can face during the way. 69

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan

Identifying the antecedents and nuances of these complex situations would help us more realistically understand how we might combat this subtle form of gender discrimination, helping both women and organizations become more effective in such challenging organizational times.

References Alas, R. & Gao, J. (2010).The impact of crisis on enterprise life-cycle. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 8(2), 9–21. Aragón-Correa, J.A., García-Morales, V.J., & Cordón-Pozo, E. (2007). Leadership and organizational learning’s role on innovation and performance: Lessons from Spain. Industrial Marketing Management, 36(3), 349–359. Bass, B.M. & Bass, R. (2008). Handbook of leadership:Theory, research, and application. New York: Free Press. Brown, E.R., Diekman, A.B., & Schneider, M.C. (2011). A change will do us good: Threats diminish typical preferences for male leaders. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(7), 930–941. Bruckmüller, S. & Branscombe, N.R. (2010). The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49(3), 433–451. Catalyst (2010) Fortune 500 women executive officers and top earners. https://www.catalyst.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/02/2010_us_census_women_executive_officers_and_top_earners_final.pdf Cejka, M.A. & Eagly, A.H. (1999). Gender-stereotypic images of occupations correspond to the sex segregation of employment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(4), 413–423. Clinchy, B.M., Belenky, M.F., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J.M. (1985). Connected education for women. Journal of Education, 167(3), 28–45. Dynes, R. (1983). Problems in emergency planning. Energy, 8, 653–660. Eagly, A. (2018). Some leaders come from nowhere: their success is uneven. Journal of Social Issues, 74(1), 184–196. Eagly, A.H. & Carli, L.L. (2007). Through the labyrinth: The truth about how women become leaders. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press. Eagly, A.H. & Karau, S.J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review, 109(3), 573. Eagly, A.H., Gartzia, L., & Carli, L. (2012). Female advantage: Revisited.  The Oxford handbook of gender in organizations. Oxford: Oxford University. Flanagan, J.C. & Levy, S. (1952). Development of an objective form of the leaders reaction. Pittsburgh, PA. American Institute for Research. Gartzia, L. (2017). Female representation in top management: Effects on positive work expectations of potential employees. In G. Atinc (ed.), Academy of management proceedings. Atlanta, US. https://doi. org/10.5465/ambpp.2016.12517abstract. Gartzia, L. & Baniandrés, J. (2016).Are people-oriented leaders perceived as less effective in task-related activities? Surprising results from three experimental studies. Journal of Business Research, 69(2), 508–516. Gartzia, L. & Baniandres, J. (2019). How feminine is the female advantage? Incremental validity of gender traits over leader sex on employees’ responses. Journal of Business Research, 99, 125–139. Gartzia, L., Komarraju, M., & Eagly, A.H. (2013, May 22–25). Crisis management: When are female CEOs preferred? [Conference presentation]. EAWOP 2013 Congress, Münster, Germany. http://www. eawop.org/ckeditor_assets/attachments/314/eawop2013.pdf?1371072674. Gartzia, L., Kulich, C., & Komarraju, M. (2017, May 17–20). Contextualizing the think crisis-think female stereotype. [Conference presentation]. EAWOP 2017 congress, Dublin, Ireland. http://www.eawop. org/ckeditor_assets/attachments/1284/final_version_abstract_book_dublin_2017.pdf?1583929929. Gartzia, L., Ryan, M.K., Balluerka, N., & Aritzeta, A. (2012). Think crisis–think female: Further evidence. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 21(4), 603–628. Gartzia, L. & van Engen, M. (2012). Are (male) leaders “feminine” enough? Gender traits of identity as mediators of sex differences in leadership styles. Gender in Management, 27(5), 295–314. Gartzia, L. & van Knippenberg, D. (2015). Too masculine, too Bad: Effects of communion on leaders’ promotion of cooperation. Group and Organization Management, 41(4), 458–490. Glick, P. (1991). Trait-based and sex-based discrimination in occupational prestige, occupational salary, and hiring. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 178–186. Gomez-Bezares, F., Ansotegui, C., & González, R. (2014). Ética de las finanzas. Desclée de Brouwer.

70

Gender stereotypes in the workplace Hannah, S. T., Avolio, B.J., Luthans, F., & Harms, P.D. (2008). Leadership efficacy: Review and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly, 19, 669–692. Hannah, S.T., Uhl-Bien, M., Avolio, B.J., & Cavarretta, F.L. (2009). A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(6), 897–919 Haslam, S.A. & Ryan, M.K. (2008).The road to the glass cliff: Differences in the perceived suitability of men and women for leadership positions in succeeding and failing organizations. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(5), 530–546. Heilman, M.E., Wallen, A.S., Fuchs, D., & Tamkins, M.M. (2004). Penalties for success: Reactions to women who succeed at male gender-typed tasks. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(3), 416. Hennessey, S.M., MacDonald, K., & Carroll, W. (2014). Is there a glass cliff or a solid ledge for female appointees to the board of directors? Journal of Organizational Culture, Communications & Conflict, 18(2), 125–139. Hunt, J.G. (1999). Transformational/charismatic leadership’s transformation of the field: An historical essay. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 129–144. Isenberg, D. J. (1981). Some effects of time-pressure on vertical structure and decision-making accuracy in small groups. Organizational Behavior & Human Performance, 27(1), 119–134. King, K.P. (2002). Creating their futures-the transformative possibilities for women using technology in their professions. TechTrends, 46(6), 37. Knights, D., & Tullberg, M. (2014). Masculinity in the financial sector. In The Oxford handbook of gender in organizations. New York: Oxford University Press. Koenig, A.M., Eagly, A.H., Mitchell, A.A., & Ristikari, T. (2011). Are leader stereotypes masculine? A metaanalysis of three research paradigms. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 616. Kulich, C., Iacoviello,V., & Lorenzi-Cioldi, F. (2018). Solving the crisis: When agency is the preferred leadership for implementing change. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(2), 295–308. Kulich, C., Lorenzi-Cioldi, F., Iacoviello, V., Faniko, K., & Ryan, M.K. (2015). Signaling change during a crisis: Refining conditions for the glass cliff. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 96–103. Kulich,C.& Ryan,M.K.(2017;March 29).The glass cliff.Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management. Retrieved from https://oxfordre.com/business/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.001.0001/ acrefore-9780190224851-e-42. Kulich, C., Ryan, M.K., & Haslam, S.A. (2014). The political glass cliff: Understanding how seat selection contributes to the underperformance of ethnic minority candidates. Political Research Quarterly, 67(1), 84–95. Larreina, M. & Gartzia, L. (2017). Human and social capital gone into the dark side: The case of XXI century’s financial system. Human capital and assets in the networked world (pp. 215–272). Emerald Publishing Limited. doi: 10.1108/9781787148277. Madera, J.M. & Smith, D.B. (2009).The effects of leader negative emotions on evaluations of leadership in a crisis situation: The role of anger and sadness. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(2), 103–114. McCauley, C.D. & Van Velsor, E. (eds.) (2004). The center for creative leadership handbook of leadership development (Vol. 29). John Wiley & Sons. Morgenroth, T., Kirby, T., Sudkämper, A., & Ryan, M.K. (2020). The who, when, and why of the glass cliff phenomenon: A meta-analysis of appointments to precarious leadership positions. Psychological Bulletin, 146(9), 797–829. Mulder, M., de Jong, R.D., Koppeaar, L., & Verhage, J. (1986). Power, situation and leaders’ effectiveness: An organizational field study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 566–570. Mulder, M., Ritsema van Eck, J.R., & De Jong, R.D. (1971). An organization in crisis and non-crisis situations. Human Relations, 24(1), 19–41. Mulder, M., & Stemerding, A. (1963). Threat, attraction to group, and need for strong leadership: A laboratory experiment in a natural setting. Human Relations, 16(4), 317–334. Okimoto, T.G. & Brescoll, V.L. (2010). The price of power: Power seeking and backlash against female politicians. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(7), 923–936. Pearson, C.M. & Mitroff, I.I. (1993). From crisis prone to crisis prepared: A framework for crisis management. Academy of Management Perspectives, 7(1), 48–59. Perrow, C. (1984). Normal accidents. New York: Basic Books. Powell, G. & Butterfield, D.A. (1979). The “good manager”: Masculine or androgynous? Academy of Management Journal, 22, 395–403. Rink, F., Ryan, M.K., & Stoker, J.I. (2013). Social resources at a time of crisis: How gender stereotypes inform gendered leader evaluations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43(5), 381–392.

71

L. Gartzia and M. Ryan Rudman, L.A., Moss-Racusin, C.A., Phelan, J.E., & Nauts, S. (2012). Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 165–179. Russ, M. (2016). The probable foundations of sustainabilism: Information, energy and entropy based definition of capital, Homo Sustainabiliticus and the need for a “new gold”. Ecological Economics, 130, 328–338. Ryan, M.K. & Haslam, S.A. (2005). The glass cliff: Evidence that women are over–represented in precarious leadership positions. British Journal of Management, 16(2), 81–90. Ryan, M.K. & Haslam, S.A. (2007). The glass cliff: Exploring the dynamics surrounding the appointment of women to precarious leadership positions. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 549–572. Ryan, M.K., Haslam, S.A., Hersby, M.D., & Bongiorno, R. (2011). Think crisis–think female: The glass cliff and contextual variation in the think manager–think male stereotype. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(3), 470. Ryan, M.K., Haslam, S.A., & Kulich, C. (2010). Politics and the glass cliff: Evidence that women are preferentially selected to contest hard-to-win seats. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 34(1), 56–64. Ryan, M.K., Haslam, S.A., Morgenroth, T., Rink, F., Stoker, J., & Peters, K. (2016). Getting on top of the glass cliff: Reviewing a decade of evidence, explanations, and impact. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 446–455. Schein,V.E. (1973). The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(2), 95. Shinar, E.H. (1975) Sexual stereotypes of occupations. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 7(1), 99–111. Slatter, S., Lovett, D.C & Barlow, L. (2011). Leading corporate turnaround: How leaders fix troubled companies. London: John Wiley & Sons. Slatter, S. & Lovett, D. (1996). Corporate recovery. Managing Companies in Distress; Beard Books: Frederick, Maryland, 46. Smith, J.A. (ed.) (2015). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage. Sorrentino, J. & Augoustinos, M. (2016). “I don’t view myself as a woman politician, I view myself as a politician who’s a woman”: The discursive management of gender identity in political leadership. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 55(3), 385–406. Spence, J.T. & Buckner, C.E. (2000). Instrumental and expressive traits, trait stereotypes, and sexist attitudes. What do they signify. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(1), 44–62. Sudkämper, A., Ryan, M.K., Kirby, T.A., & Morgenroth, T. (2020). A comprehensive measure of attitudes and behaviour: Development of the support for gender equality among men scale. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 256–277. Sweeney, P.J., Thompson, V., & Blanton, H. (2009). Trust and influence in combat: An interdependence model. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39(1), 235–264. Thomas, M. & Bodet, M.A. (2013). Sacrificial lambs, women candidates, and district competitiveness in Canada. Electoral Studies, 32(1), 153–166. Wang, M.T. & Degol, J.L. (2017). Gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM): Current knowledge, implications for practice, policy, and future directions. Educational Psychology Review, 29(1), 119–140.

72

PART II

Targets of prejudice

6 ANTI-IMMIGRANT PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION IN EUROPE Ulrich Wagner, Patrick F. Kotzur and Maria-Therese Friehs

The history of recent immigration to Europe Europe has always been a continent of migration. At the end of World War II, large movements of people took place both to Europe, as refugees and expelled people returned, and within Europe (Hoerder, Lucassen, & Lucassen, 2010). This was followed by people from former European colonies who immigrated after their independence, e.g., to France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. After the fall of the Communist Eastern Block in the late 1980s, about two million people stemming from the former Soviet Union were given permission to relocate to Germany because they were of German heritage – a process grounded in the specific German understanding of citizenship (see below; Dietz, 2010). Migration within Europe was particularly noteworthy in the 1950s and 1960s. The faster growing northern European states hired people from the European South, including Turkey, as “guest workers” (“Gastarbeiter”), as they were called in Germany, usually with the expectation that people later returned to their countries of origin (Hoerder et al., 2010). However, many of these guest workers remained in the countries they migrated to. With the decision of the European Community for free movement of workers in 1968, allowing Community Member citizens free access to the labor market in all member states, an additional new labor migration emerged and is continuing to this day. The migration described above primarily refers to labor migration, that is, the motive behind the mobility is to get access to better working conditions. In addition to labor migration, Europe has long been a destination for refugees who fled wars and civil wars in their home countries (BAMF, 2019). In the last decades, this has especially concerned refugees from the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. More recently, in the second decade of the 21st century, refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Ukraine, Syria, and North and Central African countries have arrived in Europe seeking refuge from war, persecution, and economic and ecological disasters in their regions of origin. This refugee migration reached its preliminary peak in 2015, with about 1.2 million people applying for asylum in the European Union (Eurostat, 2016). In policy and public debate, this still ongoing process is described as the “refugee crisis”. The distribution of these immigrants between European countries is extremely uneven: In 2016, 60% of all asylum seekers to Europe applied for asylum in Germany (Sola, 2018). Currently, Europe is “defending its borders”. In practice, this means that European states are trying to prevent and dissuade people, especially from the Levant and Africa, from entering the DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-6

75

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs

European continent and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Coastguard policing and so-called repatriation agreements have been made with numerous African and Asian countries, and refugees have been allocated in Turkey and North African states. As a consequence, large-scale refugee camps have emerged not only in Turkey and North Africa but also in Greece, with at least partially unacceptable living conditions and heavy violations of Human Rights (Women’s Refugee Commission, 2019). Additionally, thousands of deaths have been documented in the Mediterranean Sea – estimates for 2016 counted more than 5,000 casualties (International Organization for Migration, 2019). There is little doubt that the history of migration to and within Europe is also the history of prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants, making these topics ripe for social psychological analysis. In the remainder of this chapter, we review social psychological and related work that deals with this important issue, preferentially incorporating studies that aim at recent immigration to the European continent. In accordance with the public and political debate, we thereby primarily focus on the rejection of people with migrant background in general, i.e., immigrants who themselves or whose parents immigrated after the 1960s, including labor migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This overall perspective might lead to an inadequate generalization of findings, as the different subgroups (e.g., labor migrants versus refugees) may differ substantially in the perceived subgroup traits as well as in structural factors, such as the liberty of movement within a country or the representation in the labor market or social systems. However, this summarizing of different groups reflects the European social psychological research, which usually focuses on the rejection of immigrants without differentiation between the different groups (for some of the few exceptions, see Kotzur, Forsbach, & Wagner, 2017). In addition, very little social psychological research focuses on immigrants from within Europe.The few available studies demonstrate the existence of ethnic hierarchies with immigrant groups from Europe at the top and groups from the Middle East and African countries at the bottom (Hraba, Hagendoorn, & Hagendoorn, 1989; Snellman & Ekehammar, 2005).

Prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants Prejudice is defined here as a derogatory social attitude or cognition system against members of a group on account of their membership of that group (cf. also Brown, 1995). Prejudice against immigrants varies across the European countries. A reliable comparison of the levels of rejection of immigrants between different European states is a methodologically ambitious task (Davidov, Cieciuch, & Schmidt, 2018). Nevertheless, a cursory overview of the assignment of the different European states according to their acceptance and rejection of immigrants can be made on the basis of the European Social Survey data, a biannually conducted survey composed of representative samples from 21 European countries. Schnaudt and Weinhardt (2017) used the ESS 2014 data set. Respondents were asked how many members of different immigrant groups (same ethnic group, different ethnic group, from a poor country within Europe, from a poor country outside of Europe) should be allowed to immigrate into their own country. Based on a composite index of the four questions, considerable differences emerged between countries, with Hungary, Great Britain, and Finland emerging as the most rejecting, and Sweden, Germany, and Norway as the most welcoming countries (see also Heath & Richards, 2016).1 1 Additionally, remarkable differences can arise even between regions within countries.The ongoing difference between West and East Germany, representing two different states before the re-unification in 1990, is infamous. East-Germans express higher prejudice (Wagner, van Dick, Pettigrew, & Christ, 2003) and violence against immigrants (Wagner, Tachtsoglou, Kotzur, Friehs, & Kemmesies, 2020) than WestGermans, also after controlling for relevant structural and demographic differences.

76

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination

Levels of prejudice against immigrants vary not only between European regions but also over time. Evans and Kelley (2019) analyzed the change in prejudice between 1981 and 2014 for the different European countries on the basis of composite scores of various representative population surveys. They found a significant decrease in 40% of the countries (strongest decreases in Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia) and an increase in 45% of the countries (strongest increases in Belarus, Georgia, and Russia), while four countries (Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Spain) remained constant during this time period. Even during the recent period of stronger refugee immigration, prejudice seems to develop differently in different European regions: For example, prejudice against immigrants has decreased in the United Kingdom since 2014 (Blinder & Richards, 2018), while prejudice against immigrants increased from 2016 to 2018 in Germany (Zick, Küpper, & Berghan, 2019). Discrimination against immigrants describes the unequal and more unfavorable treatment of immigrants in comparison to non-immigrants. Discrimination can go back to structural influences and individual discrimination. An example of structural discrimination is the uneven access of immigrant children and adolescents in the school system.This becomes especially vivid in the German education system, which separates students into different educational tracks already after elementary school at the age of ten or eleven. Students with migrant backgrounds are significantly overrepresented at the lower educational tracks aiming at blue-collar labor, and underrepresented among those progressing toward a high-school diploma (Beicht, 2011). Research in different European states shows that immigrants are additionally discriminated against in the job and housing market when applying for a job or an apartment (Horr, Hunkler, & Kronenberg, 2018; Weichselmaumer, 2015). This is probably also a consequence of individual discrimination, i.e., individual behavior grounded on personal prejudice of human resources staff and landlords. Finally, also in everyday interactions, immigrants suffer from discrimination. For example, Choi, Poertner, and Sambanis (2019) show that in Germany, the probability of receiving bystander support when being involved in an everyday misfortune (e.g., losing goods from a shopping bag) is reduced for immigrants, even if they had demonstratively adhered to German norms (e.g., sanctioning another person for littering). This discrimination is especially pronounced if the person in need can easily be recognized as a Muslim by wearing a headscarf (see also Hellmann, Berthold, Rees, & Hellmann, 2015). Many Western countries have developed norms against discrimination. One consequence is that people withdraw from open discriminatory behavior. Aversive racism theory (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004) proposes that people usually suppress discriminatory behavior; however, if there are justifications available that can be seen to give reason for discrimination, people tend to show such behavior. In accordance with aversive racism theory, Wojcieszak (2015) provided evidence from Spain showing that a Mexican immigrant job applicant is not discriminated against compared to a Spaniard if the résumés reveal a clearly excellent qualification of the Mexican applicant; however, the Mexican applicant is hired less often than the Spaniard if both their qualifications are unclear and of medium quality. Hate crimes, i.e., violence against immigrants because of their group membership, can be observed in many European states. Statistics show for example 62,685 registered cases of hate crimes against people of a different race in England and Wales in 2016–2017 (Home Office, 2018). The police reported 1,190 violent attacks against immigrants and their properties for Germany in 2016 (Statista, 2019a). This extreme difference in registered hate crimes illustrates the different definitions of hate crimes against immigrants, which makes it impossible to compare between the European countries. Even within a geographical region, the numbers are unclear: The AmadeoAntonio-Stiftung (2019), an NGO, counted 3,769 cases for Germany for 2016, which is more than double the number of cases registered by the police and which shows that counts of hate 77

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs

crimes against immigrants are extremely unreliable. What is obviously needed is a common standard to detect hot spots of hate crimes and to act against them accordingly. The foregoing overview shows that there is prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants in different places in Europe.2 Prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants are in addition related to each other. For example, Ramos, Pereira, and Vala (2020) deliver evidence for the co-variation of prejudice and discrimination tendencies on the basis of the 2015 European Social Survey data: Highly prejudiced European citizens also tend to actively oppose immigration. Shepherd, Fasoli, Pereira, and Branscomb (2018) present similar findings on the basis of British and Italian respondents. An example of the co-variation of prejudice and violence is the correlation of both on the regional level: For example, East-Germans have repeatedly shown higher levels of prejudice than West-Germans (Wagner, van Dick, Pettigrew, & Christ, 2003). The same difference can be demonstrated for the number of hate crimes against immigrants (see Wagner, Tachtsoglou, Kotzur, Friehs, & Kemmesies, 2020), which speaks for a relationship between prejudice and violence, at least on the aggregate level. Recent research shows that the extent to which immigrants are faced with rejection is also contingent upon the groups which immigrants are assigned to.The 2014 European Social Survey asked which groups of migrants should (not) be allowed to come “to live here”.The lowest rate of restriction was found for people of the same race or ethnic group (about 7% rejection rate), followed by people of a different race or ethnic group (13% rejection), people from poorer countries in Europe (14%), poorer countries outside of Europe (20%), and Muslims (27%).This shows that in predominantly Christian Europe, Muslims are a strongly rejected group connected with immigration – even if they have lived in a European country for a long time (see also Anderson & Antalikova, 2014). Kotzur et al. (2017) demonstrated for German respondents that the evaluation of refugees depends on their label: Immigrants denoted as “refugees” and “war refugees” are considered warmer and elicit more positive emotional reactions than “economic refugees” (see also Kotzur, Friehs, Asbrock, & van Zalk, 2019). Further, research shows that rejection and acceptance of immigrants are associated with the attributes assigned to them, e.g., the values they purportedly endorse. For example, the acceptance of immigrants by British respondents is higher if they are perceived as holding high selftranscendence values and low self-enhancement values (Wolf, Weinstein, & Maio, 2019). Thus, it can be concluded that prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants in Europe are strongly interrelated phenomena that vary between European states, as well as over time. In addition, prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants are target group specific, with people from poorer countries outside of Europe and Muslims being most strongly rejected. Next, we turn to the question of how contemporary psychological and related research explains the emergence of prejudice, discrimination, and violence in Europe.

Causes and reasons for prejudice, discrimination, and violence Dispositional influences Personality psychology delivers evidence that stable dispositional differences between people may help to understand differences in the levels of rejection of immigrants. These variables include, 2 It is noteworthy that there are also examples of help and support for immigrants in many European states. Data for Germany, for example, show that during the height of the 2015 immigration to Europe, more than 10% of the German population were engaged in active support for newly arriving refugees (Ahrens, 2015; for the explanation of this kind of behavior, see Becker, Ksenofontov, Siem, & Love, 2019; Kende, Lantos, Belinszky, Csaba, & Lukas, 2017; Thomas, Smith, McGarty, Reese, & Kende, 2019).

78

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination

among others, perpetrators’ political conservatism: Banton, West, and Kinney (2019) show in a survey that highly conservative British respondents, compared to people low in conservatism, tended to infra-humanize immigrants more strongly, i.e., deny them the key attributes that constitute humanity. Wolf et al. (2019) discuss results also from British participants demonstrating that favorability toward immigrants is associated with respondents’ high self-transcendence values (e.g., equality) and low self-enhancement values (e.g., power). Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA, Altemeyer, 1998) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO, Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) are two prominent predictors of prejudice, discrimination, and violence. People high in RWA endorse conventionalism, authoritarian submission, and authoritarian aggression, whereas people high in SDO prefer intergroup hierarchies and rank social groups in a superior–inferior hierarchy. Research shows that RWA and SDO are associated with higher prejudice against immigrants in France (Cohu, Maisonneuve, & Teste, 2016) and Italy (Caricati, Mancini, & Marletta, 2017). Variables that are assumed to promote pro-immigrant attitudes and behavior are allophilia, i.e., the general appreciation of diversity (Barbarino & Stürmer, 2016), and multiculturalism, i.e., the fostering of understanding and appreciation of ethnic diversity by acknowledging and respecting minority group identities (Verkuyten, 2005). Dispositional influences predict attitudes and behavior toward immigrants; often, however, in interaction with situational influences.This can be observed when considering trait pro-diversity beliefs (Kauff, Stemann, van Dick, Beierlein, & Christ, 2019). Pro-diversity beliefs describe a habitual preference for diversity as long as diversity is seen as useful for the ingroup.Thus, people high in diversity beliefs show positive attitudes and behavior in interaction with immigrants, as long as the situation signals that heterogeneity is useful. If the situation does not promote positive consequences of heterogeneity, immigrants are devaluated and discriminated against even by high diversity belief respondents (Kauff et al., 2019).

Situational influences At least three social-psychological mechanisms are known to predict outgroup rejection as a consequence of specific situational antecedent conditions: Ingroup identification, feelings of threat connected with the outgroup, and the lack of intergroup contact. In the following, we present empirical studies testing whether these processes are also valid for explaining the rejection of immigrants in Europe. To reject an immigrant presupposes that he or she is recognized as an outgroup member. The rejection of groups is psychologically based on humans’ ability to categorize the world (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1964) and to identify with a specific ingroup. Social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978) proposes that group memberships give information about a member’s identity, his or her social identity. Social identity theory in addition assumes that people strive for a positive social identity. The combination of these processes, categorization, identification, and striving for positive self-evaluation, implies a motive to positively distinguish the ingroup from relevant outgroups – which often leads to outgroup derogation. The strength of the effect of group identification on outgroup derogation depends on two moderators: The salience of a specific group membership in a situation – the sudden recognition that an interaction partner is a member of a specific immigrant group can change an interaction dramatically from one minute to the other – and the degree of identification with an ingroup. Thus, based on social identity theory, one can propose that the more salient national or ethnic group membership in a situation and the more individuals identify with a national or ethnic ingroup, the stronger their rejection of immigrants. 79

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs

Research on national identification enriches the above-described influence of identification on the rejection of immigrants by differentiating between specific kinds of identification with one’s own national or ethnic group. Nationalistic identification focuses on the comparison between the national ingroup and relevant outgroups, whereas patriotic identification is a kind of critical loyalty with the ingroup that aims at improving the ingroup according to its standards and norms (e.g., Wagner, Becker, Christ, Pettigrew, & Schmidt, 2012). Grigoryan and Ponizovskiy (2018) recently confirmed this differentiation on the basis of survey data with Russian participants and show that nationalism really goes along with anti-immigrant attitudes, whereas political patriotism is linked to more positive outgroup attitudes. Kende, Hadarics, and Szabo (2019) replicated these findings with Hungarian respondents. In addition, they found that European glorification can increase negative attitudes against immigrants and Muslims.Wagner et al. (2012) demonstrated on the basis of German panel data that there is in fact a causal effect of nationalism and patriotism on immigrant rejection. Feelings of intergroup threat cover the expectations that outgroups threaten an individual’s (personal threat) or his/her group’s (group threat) material resources (the individual’s or the group’s economic prosperity – realistic threat) or values (the individual’s or the group’s way of life – symbolic threat; cf. Stephan & Renfro, 2002). Intergroup threat is known to contribute to outgroup rejection. The current political debate in Europe is dominated by controversies about the danger that recent immigrants, predominantly young and male, bring to Europe and the unjustified economic advantages they receive. Accordingly, Ramos, Pereira, and Vala (2020) showed on the basis of data of the European Social Survey that for Europeans, threat is also a strong predictor of the rejection of immigrants. Intergroup anxiety as an additional facet of intergroup threat describes the expected worry about negative interactions with an outgroup member (Stephan, 2014). Shepherd et  al. (2018) manipulated threat experimentally in studies with British and Italian respondents. Their data also confirm the assumption of a causal effect of threat on the agreement with political measures withdrawing support for immigrants. Lastly, relative deprivation, i.e., feelings of being disadvantaged as an ingroup member compared to an outgroup (Smith, Pettigrew, Pippin, & Bialosiewicz, 2012), is also known to be associated negatively with attitudes toward immigrants. Landmann, Gaschler, and Rohmann (2019) recently extended Stephan and Renfro’s (2002) classification scheme on the basis of qualitative interviews and quantitative survey data. They revealed that immigrants and immigration to Germany are connected to Germans’ feelings of symbolic threat (i.e., concerns about cultural differences), realistic threat (i.e., financial strains), safety threats (i.e., concerns about criminal acts), apprehension about increasing xenophobia, cohesion threat (i.e., being concerned about increasing conflicts within society), and altruistic threat (i.e., being concerned about refugee care). All types of threats correlated positively with indicators of immigrant rejection, such as prejudice against immigrants. Bukowski, de Lemus, Rodriguez-Bailon, and Willis (2017) show how outgroup rejection can facilitate coping with adverse societal conditions.They found that attributing the economic crisis in Spain to immigrants restored feelings of personal control among their Spanish participants. In other words, scapegoating immigrants for societal problems improves a sense of personal control among the scapegoaters. Sometimes, however, loss of control can also lead to solidarity effects and lower prejudice against other disadvantaged groups like immigrants (see Bukowski, de Lemus, Rodriguez-Bailon, Willis, & Alburquerque, 2018). Whether it comes to the devaluation of immigrants or solidarity with immigrants as a consequence of feelings of uncontrollability might depend upon new self-categorization processes: If the national ingroup and the ethnic outgroup are considered as composing a new common ingroup which is affected by the same economic crisis, solidarity with the outgroup instead of outgroup devaluation can be expected. 80

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination

Immigrants and their (presumed) behaviors influence the attitudes and behaviors of receiving society members. At the same time, the welcoming of the receiving society affects new immigrants’ attitudes and behaviors. Thus, interactions between immigrants and the already present population can produce mutual threats and therefore have a strong influence on mutual attitudes and future behavior. In this sense, Vezzali (2017) shows that if Italian respondents are experimentally induced to believe that African immigrants have a positive image of the Italians, they expect more positive interactions. Similar results were found with Italian students (Matera, Stefanile, & Brown, 2015). Experimentally induced concordance in preference for intergroup contact both in the ingroup as well as in the outgroup leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrants. Christ, Asbrock, Dhont, Pettigrew, and Wagner (2013) analyzed the relationship of attitudes and expectations of receiving society members and immigrants. They revealed that in German districts, the strength of immigrants’ focus on their ethnic ingroup’s culture (see Berry, 1997) correlates positively with the level of prejudice of receiving society members against immigrants. In other words: The greater immigrants’ focus on their ethnic heritage, the stronger they face rejection from the receiving society and/or vice versa. The interactive character of the perceived behavior “of the other side” becomes also vivid after events of extraordinary conflictual interactions. Cohu et al. (2016) show how prejudice against immigrants increased in the French population after the 2015 Muslim terrorist attacks in Paris, compared to the prejudice levels before the attacks. Intergroup contact is known to help reduce intergroup prejudice and discrimination (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2011). This implies that lack of intergroup contact is also an explanation for the emergence of prejudice. In accordance,Wagner et al. (2006) demonstrated that living in an ethnically homogeneous German district reduces the chances of coming into contact with immigrants. Lowlevel contact with immigrants in turn is associated with a higher level of prejudice. Wagner et al. (2020) show similar patterns for the covariation of the ratio of immigrants (as a proxy for contact opportunities with immigrants) on the district level and xenophobic violence in the district. The lower the number of people of foreign origin, the higher the number of hate crime attacks against immigrants. Finally, contact not only affects prejudice but prejudice is also related to the avoidance of contact. Accordingly, Schlueter, Ullrich, Glenz, and Schmidt (2017) show on the basis of experimental surveys that Germans tend to avoid renting an apartment or sending their children to a school if these are presented as being located in neighborhoods with substantial immigrant population levels. This avoidance of contact is especially pronounced if respondents had no or only a few previous contact experiences with immigrants. To summarize so far, research focusing on the rejection of immigrants in Europe supports a range of social psychological findings elsewhere, in particular the United States (Roberts & Rizzo, 2020) about the causes of prejudice, discrimination, and group-related violence (see also Pettigrew, Wagner, & Christ, 2007). Individual rejection is influenced by ingroup identification processes, feelings of threat, anxiety, and being disadvantaged, as well as lack of contact with immigrants.

Macro-level explanations: The influence of politics and the media Psychologists in general tend to explain phenomena on the basis of theories that locate the phenomena and their explanation at the same level of analysis. For example, to understand an individual’s behavior, his or her attitudes are taken as an explanatory variable (see, e.g., the description of the prejudice-violence correlation above). However, as social individuals, human beings are embedded into a social context which also influences their pattern of thinking and behavior (Pettigrew, 1997, 2021). This implies that in order to understand intergroup relations, 81

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs

macro-context influences like the political and media environment, in addition to the psychological processes within the individual, are relevant. As demonstrated above, the rejection of immigrants varies between the different European states and over time. The question is: How can this be explained? Heinzmann and Huth (2019) show on the basis of the 2014 European Social Survey data that different European countries vary in their mean degree of feelings of threat associated with immigration, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria at the top of countries with high feelings of threat, and Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany with lowest threat perceptions. These differences in feelings of threat might, at least in part, help to understand the differences in rejection of refugees in the different European states. Karpiński and Wysieńska-Di Carlo (2018) propose a normative theory of group relations. The theory predicts that immigrant integration policies in a country deliver a normative framework, thus contributing to attitudes toward immigrants in the receiving societies. If a country’s policy signals the welcoming of immigrants, this should go along with the positive attitudes of society members, whereas more restrictive and exclusive policies should co-vary with higher levels of rejection and prejudice. The authors analyzed the 2002–2014 European Social Survey data and combined these individual data with a macro-index, the Migrant Integration Policy Index (Migrant Policy Group, 2019), which assesses countries’ offers for immigrants to participate in the society. Karpiński and Wysieńska-Di Carlo’s (2018) data support their assumptions: The more positive and inclusive the integration policy in a country, the more positive consequences inhabitants associate with immigration and the lower their rate of rejection of immigrants in the population. Similar results were found by Bello (2016). These results demonstrate how macrovariables, here the political climate in a country, contribute to the receiving society members’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (for the influence of the local social climate on the acceptance of immigrants, see Christ et al., 2014). Jäckle and König (2017) show that politics not only have an influence on citizens’ attitudes but also on society members’ behavior. They found that the strength of extreme right-wing parties in different districts in Germany is positively correlated with the number of hate crime attacks in the districts. However, due to their correlational character, these results as well as the other examples of macro-level influences on individuals’ attitudes and behavior leave the question of causality unanswered: Is it the policy that determines attitudes and behavior, or is it the individual rejection of immigrants that make voters prone for supporting specific policies, especially those from extreme right-wing political parties? Both processes seem plausible and can – in principle – work simultaneously. Immigration to a country and contact with immigrants, especially if they arrived recently, are usually not directly and equally experienced by all receiving society members. On the contrary, information is mostly indirect through the media system and the interpretations delivered there. Thus, the perception and interpretation of immigration and immigrants strongly depend on media influences. Two processes are of relevance here: First, how politics and the media depict immigrants, their behaviors, and the expected impact of immigration on the future, and second, the delivery of possible behavior alternatives to solve the problems connected with immigrants and immigration. Visintin,Voci, Pagotto, and Hewstone (2017) show, on the basis of a correlational study incorporating Italian participants, that exposure to negative reports about immigrants in television and films is associated with higher levels of prejudice. Graf, Linhartova, and Szcesny (2020) provide evidence that there is a causal effect from the reception of negative media presentations of immigrants to the rejection of immigrants. Three experimental studies in the Czech Republic and Switzerland reveal that negative and positive media reports shape the audiences’ prejudice 82

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination

in the respective directions. Schemer (2013) supports these results, based on data of a threewave panel analysis with Swiss participants: The more frequently respondents were exposed to negative news portrayals of asylum seekers, the more negative were their attitudes toward this group (see also Theorin, 2019, for similar results with Swedish respondents). Finally, Azevedo, De Beukelaer, Jones, Safra, and Tsakiris (2019) found experimental evidence with subjects from different European states showing that visually presenting immigrants in large groups moving to Europe leads to more dehumanized perceptions of refugees compared to images depicting small groups. The media system might not only influence the attitudes of the audience, but it also can affect their behavior, especially by delivering role models and behavioral scripts. A demonstration of this effect was found by a longitudinal study of Brosius and Esser (1995) in Germany, taking data of the 1990s riots against refugees from the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The authors found that whenever television and print news reported heavy violent attacks against refugees, the number of hate crimes against immigrants increased in the following weeks – presumably due to model learning processes (Bandura, 1977). Similar processes can be assumed to play a role when politicians deliver public political statements about immigrants and thereby hint at possible violent “solutions”: Such public and published declarations can contribute to a shift in perceived public norms about thinkable behavior alternatives on the societal level, which might influence individual society members’ behavior.To our knowledge, research about such political and media influences, especially through the internet, does not exist yet in Europe and would be urgently needed. Policy and the media do not only influence individual immigration rejection directly, but they also affect the above described social-psychological preconditions of immigrant rejection, namely stable dispositional and (perceived) situational influences. Wagner et al. (2006) have shown that the presence of immigrants in a district where the non-immigrant survey respondents lived (macro-level) influences respondents’ intergroup contact (micro-level), which in turn affected their prejudice against immigrants. Czymara and Dochow (2018) demonstrated a similar influence of macro-level conditions on micro-level social preconditions of immigrant rejection. On the basis of longitudinal data from 2001 to 2015, they show that in times of high salience of immigration-related issues in the media, German majority members were more concerned about immigration than in years of lower media attention to immigration.

A micro-macro interaction perspective on the rejection of immigrants Adopting Coleman’s (1986) idea of the connection of micro-macro processes,3 Figure 6.1 delivers a multi-level framework synthesizing what we have discussed so far about the phenomenology and the causes of prejudice, discrimination, and violence against immigrants in Europe, and shows in which areas we feel social psychological research is particularly lacking.We started with results summarized in line 1, showing that immigrant rejection varies between different European states and (not reproduced in Figure 6.1) over time. Our summary of psychological research shows that immigrant rejection is determined by stable differences between individuals and situation influences which the individual is or perceives to be confronted with (see line 2). In addition, we reviewed data supporting that nation states’ policies and the media influence individual immigrant rejection (see line 3). And, finally, we presented some recent research demonstrating how

3 We assume partial mediation, i.e., we do not propose that all macro-level effects are completely explained by micro-level processes.

83

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs

Macrolevel

1

National states: Policy media

3

4

Aggregated immigrant rejection 7

6

5 Microlevel

Personality: RWA, SDO, allophilia, diversity beliefs

2

Individual immigrant rejection

Situational influences: Identification, threat, lack of contact

Figure 6.1 Multilevel influences on immigrant rejection – a Coleman bath tub perspective. We used dashed arrows to depict relations that are particularly underresearched. Source:  Cf. also Coleman (1986).

social psychological preconditions of outgroup rejection (dispositional influences and situational influences) are connected with macro-level influences (line 4). Psychological processes are not only influenced by macro-level processes, micro- and macrolevel processes also interact with each other (see line 5, also Pettigrew, 2021). However, there are very few studies on macro-micro interactions with a special focus on the rejection of immigrants in Europe. An example of macro-micro interactions on individual immigrant rejection is the already described media analysis by Czymara and Dochow (2018).They show that respondents are affected by the coverage of immigrant issues in the media. If media salience of immigration-related issues is high, readers report a higher concern about immigration. This effect, however, is moderated by an individual-level variable: The effect of the media system is especially strong if the number of immigrants in the respondents’ district is low, in other words, if respondents had no opportunity to buffer media effects by personal contact experiences. Respondents living in districts with high ratios of immigrants show reactions contingent upon media coverage to a significantly weaker degree than respondents living in districts with lower immigrant ratios (see also the surveys with Italian respondents presented by Fuochi,Voci,Venenziani, Boin, Fell, & Hewstone, 2020). The effect of individual immigrant rejection in a nation-state or in a specific region (line 6) as well as the interaction of micro- and macro-processes (7) on aggregated immigrant rejection is also under-researched. Usually, a nation’s degree of prejudice, discrimination, and violence is inferred from the aggregation of individual rejection drawn from representative surveys. Such a procedure can, however, be questioned. There is good reason to assume that immigrant rejection varies, e.g., from the perspective of immigrants themselves, depending on whether the rejection is perceivably shared by all members of society or whether part of the receiving society rejects immigrants and another part accepts and welcomes them (see footnote 1).

A negative perspective for the future of an immigrant-rejecting Europe Our overview demonstrates that at least parts of the European people are prejudiced, discriminate, and behave violently against immigrants and immigration. This individual rejection is associated with general anti-immigration policies within Europe with some variation between the different European countries. The European community as well as European national states enforce the walling of the continent. The consequences are that refugees are forced to live in reception 84

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination

camps, e.g., in North Africa and Greece, often under unacceptable living conditions, with insufficient health care and threatened by abuse and rape (Médecins Sans Frontières, 2017; Women’s Refugee Commission, 2019). Estimates assume that between 2015 and 2018, nearly 15,000 refugees died while “illegally” crossing the Mediterranean Sea (Statista, 2019b). In 2018, the European community withdrew coastguard patrol ships from the Mediterranean Sea, which had rescued thousands of refugees from drowning before. Many of the measures of the European walling against immigrants incorporate violations of Human Rights, such as the right to apply for asylum (see Wagner, 2020). European citizens are aware of that – and nevertheless, the majority supports the described policy of exclusion. Little is known about the consequences of such a contradiction between political practice and individual moral and ethical aspirations, often relating to the European Enlightenment.The belief-in-a-justworld theory (Lerner, 1980) as well as system justification theory (Jost, 2017) predict an attribution of responsibility to the people suffering, in this case refugees, if observers do not see opportunities to overcome the suffering. Consequently, this would mean that continents, nations, and societies which constantly exclude others from participation and expose these others to intensive suffering will change their internal values and norms into a direction of hardness and relinquishment of empathy. We propose that the continuous violation of Human Rights and central Western values will contribute to societal and political development in Europe (and other regions confronted with the same problem) that moves us into a direction of rejection which justifies a differentiation between those who belong to the ingroup and those who don’t and who therefore cannot request Human Rights, justice, and equal opportunities. In other words: The societal and political handling of immigration will not only affect immigrants but also immigrant-receiving societies (for a classical American view on this question, compare Myrdal, 1944) via individual justifications – an example of a micro-macro influence process (see lines 6 and 7 in Figure 6.1).

References Ahrens, P.A. (2015). Skepsis oder Zuversicht? Erwartungen der Bevölkerung zur Aufnahme von Flüchtlingen in Deutschland. [Skepticism or confidence: Expectations of the population concerning the acceptance of refugees in Germany]. Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland. Retrieved from http://www.ekd.de/fluechtlingsstudie-2016.pdf. Altemeyer, B. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality”. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 47–92. Amadeo-Antonio-Stiftung (2019). Chronik flüchtlingsfeindlicher Vorfälle. [History of crimes against refugees]. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/service/chronikvorfaelle?field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=15&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=16&field_bundesland_ tid%5B%5D=6&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=7&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=3&field_ bundesland_tid%5B%5D=2&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=12&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D= 5&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=4&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=8&field_bundesland_tid% 5B%5D=14&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=13&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=10& field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=9&field_bundesland_tid%5B%5D=1&field_bundesland_tid%5B% 5D=11&field_art_tid%5B%5D=861&field_art_tid%5B%5D=858&field_art_tid%5B%5D=860& field_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Byear%5D=2016. Anderson, J. & Antalikova, R. (2014). Framing (implicitly) matters: The role of religion in attitudes towards immigrants and Muslims in Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 55, 593–600. Azevedo, R.T., De Beukelaer, S., Jones, I., Safra, L., & Tsakiris, M. (2019). When the lens is too wide: the visual dehumanization of refugees and its political consequences. Retrieved from https://warburg.blogs.sas. ac.uk/2019/11/14/bias-project-visual-dehumanization-refugees/. BAMF (2019). Anzahl der Asylanträge (Erstanträge) in Deutschland von 1991 bis 2019 [Number of inition applications for asylum in Germany from 1991 to 2019]. Retrieved from https://de.statista.com/statistik/ daten/studie/154286/umfrage/asylantraege-erstantraege-in-deutschland-seit-1995/. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

85

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs Banton, O.,West, K., & Kinney, E. (2019).The surprising politics of anti-immigrant prejudice: How political conservatism moderates the effect of immigrant race and religion on infrahumanization judgements. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59, 157–170. Barbarino, M.L. & Stürmer, S. (2016). Different origins of xenophile and xenophobic orientations in human personality structure: A theoretical perspective and some preliminary findings. Journal of Social Issues, 72, 432–449. Becker, J.C., Ksenofontov, I., Siem, B., & Love, A. (2019). Antecedents and consequences of autonomy- and dependency-oriented help toward refugees. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(4), 831–838. Beicht, U. (2011). Junge Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund: Trotz intensiver Ausbildungsstellensuche geringere Erfolgsaussichten. [Young people with migrant background: despite intensive search for apprenticeship places poor prospects for success]. BIBB-Report 16/11, Bonn. Retrieved from https:// www.bibb.de/dokumente/pdf/BIBBreport_16_11_final_de.pdf. Bello, V. (2016). Inclusiveness as construction of open identity: How social relationships affect attitudes towards immigrants in European societies. Social Indicators Research, 126, 199–223. Berry, J.W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46, 5–34. Blinder, S., & Richards, L. (2018). UK public opinion toward immigration: Overall attitudes and level of concern. Retrieved from https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2019Briefing-Public_Opinion_Immigration_Attitudes_Concern.pdf. Brosius, H.B. & Esser, F. (1995). Eskalation durch Berichterstattung [Escalation by media reports]. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Brown, R. (1995). Prejudice. Its social psychology. Oxford, GB: Blackwell. Bukowski, M., de Lemus, S., Rodriguez-Bailon, R., & Willis, G.B. (2017).Who’s to blame? Causal attributions of the economic crisis and personal control. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 20, 909–923. Bukowski, M., de Lemus, S., Rodriguez-Bailon, R., Willis, G.B., & Alburquerque, A. (2018). When lack of control enhances closeness to others: The case of unemployment and economic threat. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1144–1160. Caricati, L., Mancini, T., & Marletta, G. (2017). The role of ingroup threat and conservative ideologies on prejudice against immigrants in two samples of Italian adults. The Journal of Social Psychology, 157, 86–97. Choi, D.D., Poertner, M., & Sambanis, N. (2019). Parochialism, social norms, and discrimination against immigrants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(33), 16274–16279. Coleman, J.S. (1986). Social theory, social research, and a theory of action. The American Journal of Sociology, 91, 1309–1335. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602%28198605%2991%3A6%3C1309%3AST SRAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6. Christ, O., Asbrock, F., Dhont, K., Pettigrew, T.F., & Wagner, U. (2013). The effects of intergroup climate on immigrants’ acculturation preferences. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 221, 252–257. http://hdl.handle. net/1854/LU-5030381. Christ, O., Schmid, K., Lolliot, S., Swart, H., Stolle, D.,Tausch, N. … Hewstone, M. (2014). Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 3996–4000. Cohu, C., Maisonneuve, C., & Teste, B. (2016). The “Charlie-Hebdo” effect: Repercussions of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in France on prejudice toward immigrants and North-Africans, social dominance orientation, and attachment to the principle. International Review of Social Psychology, 29(1), 50–58. Czymara, C.S. & Dochow, S. (2018). Mass media and concerns about immigration in Germany in the 21st century: Individual-level evidence over 15 years. European Sociological Review, 34, 381–401. Davidov, E., Cieciuch, J., & Schmidt, P. (2018). The cross-country measurement comparability in the immigration module of the European social survey 2014–15. Survey Research Methods, 12, 15–27. http:// www.surveymethods.org. Dietz, B. (2010). Aussiedler/Spätaussiedler in Deutschland seit 1950 [Resettlers in Germany since 1950]. In K. Bade, P.C. Emmer, L. Lucassen, & J. Oltmer (Hrsg.), Enzyklopädie migration in Europa [Encyclopedia migration in Europe] (3. Auflage), pp. 397–404. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag. Dovidio, J. & Gaertner, S. (2004). Aversive racism. In M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 36, pp. 1–51). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Eurostat. (2016). Asyl in den EU-Mitgliedsstaaten – Rekordzahl von über 1,2 Millionen registrierten erstmaligen Asylbewerbern im Jahr 2015 [Asylum in EU member states – Record number of more than 1.2 million registered

86

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination first-time asylum seekers in 2015]. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/ 7203837/3-04032016-AP-DE.pdf/9fcd72adc249-4f85-8c6d-e9fc2614af1b. Evans, M.D.R. & Kelley, J. (2019). Prejudice against immigrants symptomizes a larger syndrome, is strongly diminished by socioeconomic development, and the UK is not an outlier: Insights from the WVS, EVS, and EQLS surveys. Frontiers in Sociology, 26. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00012. Fotaki, M. (2019). A crisis of humanitarianism: Refugees at the gates of Europe. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 8(6), 321–324. Fuochi, G.,Voci, A.,Venenziani, C.A., Boin, J., Fell, B., & Hewstone, M. (2020). Is negative mass media news always associated with outgroup prejudice? The buffering role of direct contact. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 23, 195–213. Graf, S., Linhartova, P., & Sczesny, S. (2020).The effects of news report valence and linguistic labels on prejudice against social minorities. Media Psychology, 23(2), 215–243. Grigoryan, L.K. & Ponizovskiy, V. (2018). The three facets of national identity: Identity dynamics and attitudes toward immigrants in Russia. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 59, 355–361. Heath, A. & Richards, L. (2016). Attitudes towards immigration and their antecedents: Topline results from round 7 of the European Social Survey. Retrieved from http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/docs/findings/ ESS7_toplines_issue_7_immigration.pdf. Heinzmann,B.& Huth,N.(2019).Bedrohungsgefühle und die Befürchtung selektiver Einwanderungskriterien im internationalen und temporären Vergleich [Feelings of threat and the support of selective immigration criteria in international and temporal comaparisons]. Informationsdienst soziale Indikatoren, 61, 12–16. https://www.gesis.org/fileadmin/upload/forschung/publikationen/zeitschriften/isi/isi-61.pdf. Hellmann, J.H., Berthold, A., Rees, J.H., & Hellmann, D.F. (2015). “A letter for Dr. Outgroup”: On the effects of an indicator of competence and chances for altruism toward a member of a stigmatized out-group. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1422. Hoerder, D., Lucassen, J., & Lucassen, L. (2010). Terminologien und Konzepte in der Migrationsforschung [Terminologies and concepts in migration studies]. In Klaus J. Bade et al. (eds.), Enzyklopädie migration in Europa. Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart [Encyclopedia of migration in Europe: From the 17th century to the present] (3rd ed., pp. 28–53). Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag. Home Office (2018). Hate crime, England and Wales, 2017/8. Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.­ service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/748598/hate-crime1718-hosb2018.pdf. Horr, A., Hunkler, C., & Kronenberg, C. (2018). Ethnic discrimination in the German housing market. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 47, 134–146. Hraba, J., Hagendoorn, L., & Hagendoorn, R. (1989). The ethnic hierarchy in the Netherlands: Social distance and social representation. British Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 57–69. International Organization for Migration (Missing Migrants Project). (2 August, 2019). Geschätzte Anzahl der im Mittelmeer ertrunkenen Flüchtlinge in den Jahren von 2014 bis 2019 [Assessed number of droned refugees in the years 2014 to 2019]. In Statista. Retrieved from https://de.statista.com/ statistik/daten/studie/892249/umfrage/im-mittelmeer-ertrunkenen-fluechtlinge/. Jäckle, S., & König, P.D. (2017). The dark side of the German “welcome culture”: Investigating the causes behind attacks on refugees in 2015. West European Politics, 40, 223–251. Jost, J.T. (2017). A theory of system justification. Psychology Science Agenda, June, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2017/06/system-justification. Karpiński, Z. & Wysieńska-Di Carlo, K. (2018). Attitudes towards immigration in Europe 2002–2014: Competition, integration, and values. In F. Sztabiński, H. Domański, & P.B. Sztabiński (eds.), Europe 2002–2014: Competition, integration, and values (pp. 95–128). Berlin: Peter Lang. Kauff, M., Stemann, S., van Dick, R., Beierlein, C., & Christ, O. (2019). Measuring beliefs in the instrumentality of ethnic diversity: Development and validation of the pro-diversity beliefs scale (PDBS). Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 22, 494–510. Kende, A., Hadarics, M., & Szabo, Z.P. (2019). Inglorious glorification and attachment: National and European identities as predictors of anti- and pro-immigrant attitudes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58, 569–590. Kende, A., Lantos, N.A., Belinszky, A., Csaba, S., & Lukas, Z.A. (2017). The politicized motivations of volunteers in the refugee crisis: Intergroup helping as the means to achieve social change. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5, 260–281. Kotzur, P.F., Forsbach, N., & Wagner, U. (2017). Choose your words wisely. Stereotypes, emotions and action tendencies toward fled people as a function of the group label. Social Psychology, 48, 226–241.

87

U. Wagner, P.F. Kotzur and M-T. Friehs Kotzur, P.F., Friehs, M.T., Asbrock, F., & van Zalk, M.H. (2019). Stereotype content of refugee subgroups in Germany. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1344–1358. Landmann, H., Gaschler, R., & Rohmann, A. (2019). What is threatening about refugees? Identifying different types of threat and their association with emotional responses and attitudes towards refugee migration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1401–1420. Lerner, M.J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press. Matera, C., Stefanile, C., & Brown, R. (2015). Majority–minority acculturation preferences concordance as an antecedent of attitudes towards immigrants: The mediating role of perceived symbolic threat and metastereotypes. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 45, 96–103. Médecins Sans Frontières (2017). Confronting the mental health emergency on Samos and Lesvos: Why the containment of asylum seekers on the Greek islands must end. Retrieved from http://urbanspaces.msf.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/03/confronting-the-mental-health-emergency-on-samos-and-lesvos.pdf. Migrant Policy Group (2019). Migrant integration policy index. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https:// www.migpolgroup.com/_old/diversity-integration/migrant-integration-policy-index/. Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma.The Negro problem and modern democracy. Oxford: Harper. Pettigrew, T.F. (1997). Generalized intergroup contact effects on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(2), 173–185. Pettigrew, T.F. (2021). Contextual social psychology. Washington: American Psychological Association. Pettigrew, T.F. & Tropp, L.R. (2011). When groups meet – The dynamics of intergroup contact. New York: Psychology Press. Pettigrew, T.F., Wagner, U., & Christ, O. (2007). The predictors of anti-immigration attitudes. Comparing German results with those of Canada and the United States. Du Bois Review, 4, 19–39. Ramos, A., Peireira, C.R., & Vala, J. (2020).The impact of biological and cultural racism on attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 574–592. Roberts, S.O. & Rizzo, M.T. (2020). The psychology of American racism. American Psychologist (early view, online publication). http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000642. Schemer, C. (2013). Media effects on racial attitudes: Evidence from a three-wave panel survey in a political campaign. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 26(4), 531–542. Schlueter, E., Ullrich, J., Glenz, A., & Schmidt, P. (2017). From segregation to intergroup contact and back: Using experiments and simulation to understand the bidirectional link. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 17–32. Schnaudt, C. & Weinhardt, M. (2017). Schaffen wir das? Zwischen Akzeptanz und Ablehnung von immigration in Deutschland und in Europa. [Will we make it? Between acceptance and rejection of immigration in Germany and in Europe]. Informationsdienst soziale Indikatoren, 57, 12–16. Retrieved from https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/51382/ssoar-isi-2017-57-schnaudt_ et_al-Schaffen_wir_das_Zwischen_Akzeptanz.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-isi2017-57-schnaudt_et_al-Schaffen_wir_das_Zwischen_Akzeptanz.pdf. Shepherd, L., Fasoli, F., Pereira, A., & Branscomb, N.R. (2018). The role of threat, emotions, and prejudice in promoting collective action against immigrant groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 447–459. Sidanius, J. & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, H.J., Pettigrew, T.F., Pippin, G.M., & Bialosiewicz, S. (2012). Relative deprivation: A theoretical and meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 203–232. Snellman, A. & Ekehammar, B. (2005). Ethnic hierarchies, ethnic prejudice, and social dominance orientation. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 83–94. Sola,A. (2018).The 2015 refugee crisis in Germany: Concerns about immigration and populism. SOEPpapers, 966, 1–34. Retrieved from https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.583437. de/diw_sp0966.pdf. Statista (2019a). Anzahl der rechtsextremistisch motivierten Gewalttaten mit fremdenfeindlichem Hintergrund* von 2012 bis 2018 nach Art des Delikts [Number of right-wing motivated violence with xenophobic background from 2012 to 2018 according type of delict]. Retrieved from https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/ studie/4699/umfrage/fremdenfeindlichkeit-rechte-gewalttaten-nach-art-des-delikts/. Statista (2019b). Geschätzte Anzahl der im Mittelmeer ertrunkenen Flüchtlinge in den Jahren von 2014 bis 2019 (Stand: 02. August) [Estimated number of people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the years 2014 to 2019 (date 2nd August)]. Retrieved from https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/892249/umfrage/ im-mittelmeer-ertrunkenen-fluechtlinge/.

88

Anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination Stephan, W.G. (2014). Intergroup anxiety: Theory, research, and practice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 239–255. Stephan, W.G. & Renfro, C.L. (2002). The role of threat in intergroup relations. In D.M. Mackie & E.R. Smith (eds.), From prejudice to intergroup emotions. Differential reactions to social groups (pp. 191–207). New York: Psychology Press. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups. London: Academic Press. Tajfel, H. & Wilkes, A.L. (1964). Salience of attributes and commitment to extreme judgments in the perception of people. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 3(1), 40–49. Theorin, N. (2019). Maintainers of ethnic hierarchies? Investigating the relationship between media use and attitudes toward perceived remote versus perceived close immigration. Mass Communication and Society, 22, 827–850. Thomas, E.F., Smith, L.G.E., McGarty, C., Reese, G., & Kende, A. (2019). When and how social movements mobilize action within and across nations to promote solidarity with refugees. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 213–229. Verkuyten, M. (2005). Ethnic group identification and group evaluation among minority and majority groups:Testing the multiculturalism hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 121–138. Vezzali, L. (2017).Valence matters: Positive meta-stereotypes and interethnic interactions. The Journal of Social Psychology, 157, 247–261. Visintin, E.P., Voci, A., Pagotto, L., & Hewstone, M. (2017). Direct, extended, and mass-mediated contact with immigrants in Italy: Their associations with emotions, prejudice, and humanity perceptions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 47, 175–194. Wagner, U. (2020). Forced migration. Psychological contributions that might help to improve the human rights situation. In P. Hagenaars, M. Plavsic, N. Sveaass, U. Wagner, & T. Wainwright (eds.), Human rights education for psychologists. Psychology for human rights (pp. 179–192). Abingdon, GB: Routledge. Wagner, U., Becker, J.C., Christ, O., Pettigrew, T.F., & Schmidt, P. (2012). A longitudinal test of the relation between German nationalism, patriotism and outgroup derogation. European Sociological Review, 28, 319–332. Wagner, U., Christ, O., Pettigrew, T.F., Stellmacher, J., & Wolf, C. (2006). Prejudice and minority proportion: Contact instead of threat effects. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69, 380–390. Wagner, U., Tachtsoglou, S., Kotzur, P.F., Friehs, M.T., & Kemmesies, U. (2020). Proportion of foreigners negatively predicts the amount of xenophobic hate crimes within German districts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 83, 195–205. Wagner, U., van Dick, R., Pettigrew, T.F., & Christ, O. (2003). Ethnic prejudice in East- and West-Germany: The explanatory power of intergroup contact. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6, 23–37. Weichselmaumer, D. (2015). Discrimination against migrants in Austria. An experimental study. Retrieved from https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jku:econwp:2015_01. Wojcieszak, M. (2015). Aversive racism in Spain – Testing the theory. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 27, 22–45. Wolf, L.J., Weinstein, N., & Maio, G.R. (2019). Anti-immigrant prejudice: Understanding the roles of (perceived) values and value dissimilarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117, 925–953. Women’s Refugee Commission (2019). “More Than One Million Pains”: Sexual violence against men and boys on the Central Mediterranean Route to Italy. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/ files/resources/Libya-Italy-Report-03-2019.pdf. Zick, A., Küpper, B., & Berghan, W. (2019). Verlorene Mitte. Feindselige Zustände [Lost center. Hostile states]. Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

89

7 ROMA PREJUDICES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Responses to structural inequality Salomea Popoviciu and Cristian Tileagă

Introduction The Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in Europe with an estimate of six million living in the European Union (Fundamental Rights Report, 2019). According to the European Commission, the Roma are a heterogeneous group which includes people identifying as Roma, Travellers, Gypsies, Travelers, Manouches, Ashkali, Sinti and Boyash (European Commission, 2019a). Although there is some debate regarding the period Roma people arrived in Europe, historical documents suggest that Roma people, originally from India, migrated to Europe sometime between the 11th and 14th centuries (Achim, 1998; Sandu, 2005). Most sources indicate the fourteenth century as the more likely period, a period that also marked the beginning of Roma slavery in the Carpato-Danubiano-Pontic space. The migration of Roma people from India to Europe was influenced by the history of the times.Various groups of Roma, affected by the major upheavals in the Middle East and South-Eastern Europe, were fleeing inevitably towards the west while trying to escape, first from the Seljuk Turks and then from the Ottoman Turks. They were known in European languages as Tsiganes (and its derivatives), but they called themselves Rom. For nearly 500 years later (1385–1856) they were slaves, owned mostly by boyars and clergymen (Achim, 1998; Filitti, 1931). In his acclaimed work, The Gypsies, Fraser (1992) documents the history of an oppressed people across the European continent.What Fraser calls the “modern times” (the period after the end of WW2) brought into view the emergent position of Roma/Gypsies as a national minority in the different eastern and western countries of the European continent. The consequent push for active policies of integration and assimilation has led to more prejudice and discrimination than to a substantive betterment of Roma/Gypsy status and welfare. Today, most Roma people continue to face prejudice and discrimination.There are significant gaps between Roma and non-Roma people living in European countries in access to education, employment, health and housing, with stark inequalities both in opportunities and outcomes (Fundamental Rights Report, 2019). The inclusion of Roma people has been a long-standing concern of the European political agenda, but policies and public discourses have been marked by ambivalence and moral uneasiness. As Tileagă (2015) argues, the inclusion of Roma people is often framed as an attempt to make “them” more like “us”, a discourse that obscures the systemic barriers that Roma people face when trying to become part of European communities. Often, the 90

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-7

Roma prejudices in the European Union

discourse of tolerance and inclusivity reproduces repertoires that position Roma people as outside of the moral standing of society (Popoviciu & Tileagă, 2019; Tileagă, 2006, 2015). Most social psychological work on racism, prejudice or discrimination looks at the perspectives of the advantaged group members (for a review see: Paluck & Green, 2009). Although there is some literature on the targets’ perspectives (Kaiser & Major, 2006; Major & Keiser, 2005; Swim & Stangor, 1998), it is marginal. Also, one aspect that is often missing is the ways in which Roma people respond to structural inequality and a history of prejudice and discrimination.This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section looks at the social psychological work on the perspectives of disadvantaged groups on prejudice and discrimination. The second section covers research on the inequality of opportunities between Roma and non-Roma people in the European Union with regard to education, housing, health and employment. The third section reviews the responses to structural inequality of Roma people by non-Roma people whereas the final section turns to the responses to structural inequality by Roma people. The structural inequality between Roma and non-Roma people is discussed from the standpoint of racism, prejudice and discrimination. It is argued that Roma people as a group are placed in a position of disadvantage by an unfair and racist system.The discrepancies in access to education, housing, health and employment are seen as having social causes, and the responsibility for remedial actions is placed on the European community. We adopt here Rucker and Richeson’s (this volume) definition of structural racism as a set of policies, practices and laws that have a disparate impact on members of a particular ethnic or racial group. These practices can either be intentional and explicit or they can be unintentional and implicit. The view of prejudice used in this chapter is drawn from Allport (1954), and is defined as a feeling or expression of antipathy based on faulty and inflexible generalization directed towards a group or an individual belonging to that group. The institutionalization of ethnic differences, peculiarities, histories, practices and cultural experiences within a social hierarchy is understood as ethnicism, which according to Mullard (1985) is a sub-type of racism.

The perspectives of disadvantaged groups on prejudice and discrimination Most social psychological work on inequalities in terms of racism, ethnicism, prejudice or discrimination has looked at the perspectives of the advantaged group members (Paluck & Green, 2009). Nonetheless, there are three types of research that study the perspectives of disadvantaged groups on prejudice and discrimination: (1) studies that looked at the consequences of prejudice and discrimination on disadvantaged group members, (2) studies on when and how stigmatized group members perceive prejudice and discrimination and (3) studies focusing on the ways in which minorities cope with prejudice. The social psychological research on the impact of prejudice on minorities’ psyche and wellbeing (Clark & Clark, 1947; Clark, Anderson, & Clark, 1999; Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998; Gutierres, Saenz, & Green, 1994; Williams, Yu, Jackson, & Anderson, 1997) overwhelmingly concluded that the consequences were negative (for a review, see Barreto & Ellemerss, 2015), and noted that the psychological and interpersonal costs further increased when discrimination was reported by people that experienced it (Kaiser & Major, 2006). Other researchers, however, voiced concern that representations of damaged minority psyches were themselves negative, by firstly, reinforcing social myths about that minority and secondly, by providing a legitimate reason for person-change rather than system – change programs (Caplan & Nelson, 1973). For example, a study on the perceptions of social workers working with children in the United Kingdom (Owusu-Bempah, 1994) showed that the interventions preferred for black children 91

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă

were different from those suggested for white children. Black children were routinely perceived as being in need of remedial identity work, while white children in comparable situations were viewed as well-balanced, and not in need of personal-based interventions. In a similar vein, citing Archibald (1970), Caplan and Nelson (1973) noted that when psychologists turn their attention to social problems the assumptions they make are akin to arguing that “if the shoe doesn’t fit, there’s something wrong with your foot”. According to this argument, person-focused interpretations distract attention from the systemic causes, while also discrediting criticism oriented towards the system. Other social psychological work focused on how and when disadvantaged group members encounter prejudice and discrimination (Taylor, Ruggiero, & Louis, 1996; Yechezel & Resh, 2003), and their perceptions about fairness and equality in society (Major, 1994). Research on minorities’ perceptions of prejudice and discrimination mirrors the traditional study of prejudice which focuses on individual and contextual determinants of prejudice.Various biases in the judgements of disadvantaged group members about prejudice are also explored in the literature about the perspectives of minorities (Swim & Stangor, 1998). Two of the major types of perception biases that occur are the vigilance bias, when people perceive more discrimination than there actually exists, and a minimization bias, when people perceive less discrimination than there actually exists (Major & Kaiser, 2005). Lastly, research on the ways in which members of disadvantaged groups attempt to cope with the impact of prejudice and discrimination looks at the possible stressor effects that leads to buffer responses (Bakouri & Staerkle, 2015; Cross & Strauss, 1998). These responses include efforts to change the status of the stigmatized group (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), create bonding identities (Bakouri & Staerkle, 2015), disconfirm the beliefs of others (Deaux & Major, 1987), accept the negative stereotypes (Swann, 1997), or instigate collective action (Taylor, Ruggiero, & Louis, 1996).

Inequalities of opportunity between Roma and non-Roma people in the European Union Before we turn to Roma and non-Roma responses to prejudice, discrimination and structural inequality, we briefly discuss research on inequalities of opportunities between Roma and non-Roma people living in the European Union. It is widely acknowledged that Roma people, as a group, are in a position of disadvantage compared to non-Roma people (Cace, Neagu, Rat, & Ivasiuc, 2014; European Commission, 2019a; Eurostat, 2017). According to the European Commission (2018), there are four areas where there is inequality between Roma and non-Roma people living in the European Union: education, housing, health and employment. Policy measures for redressing inequalities include policies that aim to reduce gaps in opportunities (access to life chances and power that facilitate the fulfilment of one’s goals), and gaps in outcomes (health, success, material possessions and general well-being). Broadly, there are three ways in which these inequalities have been tackled politically: (1) policies that address income inequality (e.g. labour market policies, redistributive measures, promotion of equal access to labour markets and affirmative action programs), (2) policies that aim to close gaps in education, health, housing, employment (e.g. strengthened institutional capacities, expanded access to institutions and services, affirmative action programs) (3) policies that address social exclusion and discrimination (e.g. engagement of socially excluded groups, anti-discriminatory legislation).

92

Roma prejudices in the European Union

Education Available data shows that Roma people have higher rates of school absenteeism, alienation and school drop-out compared to the rest of the population in European countries (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018a). Also, between 4% and 29% of Roma young people attend segregated schools which are often of a lower quality compared to mainstream schools (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2016). Educational segregation is highest in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, and lowest in Italy, Portugal and Spain (O’Hanlon, 2016). A common result of school segregation is that Roma children are overrepresented in classes for children with special needs (Catrina, 2013). According to research, the educational success of students from disadvantaged backgrounds depends a great deal on inclusive education policies, an inclusive school system that provides targeted help to vulnerable students and good communication between the school and the families of the young people (Alexiadou, 2019; Gkofa, 2017). In practice, however, in most European countries, despite policies and legislation aimed to reduce the educational gap between Roma and non-Roma people, many Roma pupils struggle to access schools, study in overcrowded classes, face ethnic discrimination and are enrolled in special education (O’Hanlon, 2016).

Housing In most European countries housing initiatives tend to overlook Roma people, who rarely benefit from a clear targeted policy focus. Instead, their needs are included in mainstream approaches (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2017). One reason is that ethnic data with regard to housing is not systematically collected or monitored. Another reason is that Roma people are an ethnic minority and there are no comprehensive national statistics on their access to goods and services. Access to housing by Roma people and the housing quality are influenced by the public policies concerning housing and migration from various European countries. For example, in Romania, after the revolution of 1989, there was a policy of mass privatization of nationalized housing.While these houses were being returned to their former owners, the tenants were promised access to social housing. However, the budget was too small for the number of people in need of accommodation and since most Roma people had an income that could not cover the higher rent of social housing, many moved into abandoned and unsanitary apartments or in makeshift shanty towns at the fringes of communities (World Bank, 2014, p. 252). The discrepancies in housing between Roma and non-Roma people are still present. According to Eurostat’s housing deprivation rate (2017) – which is the percentage of the population that lives in overcrowded dwellings with poor amenities (no bath/shower, no indoor toilet, leaking roof and too dark) – Romania has the highest percentage of people with severe housing deprivation (19.8%), out of which the majority are Roma. In 2018, 68% of Roma people were living in segregated neighbourhoods, and over 80% were staying in inadequate dwellings (World Bank, 2018). The situation in other European countries is similar, with Roma people disproportionately living in segregated slums or nomad camps in comparison to non-Roma people. In Italy, Amnesty International (2019) reported that approximately 26,000 Roma people lived in housing that lacked basic services such as access to water and sanitation, washing facilities, electricity and heating. Also, due to the fact that most Roma did not have the basic security of tenure, regardless of whether they lived in authorized camps or not, they were vulnerable to forced evictions and were often left homeless. In 2018, France renewed its policy of slum eradication, which affects over 16,000 people mostly of Roma ethnicity (United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, 93

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă

2018). Although there is no official data on evictions, the European Roma Rights Centre estimated that from 2014 to 2018, over 10,000 Roma people were evicted, which came in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights. Many were offered no alternative housing (Ligue des Droits de l’Homme & European Roma Rights Centre, 2017). In Germany, Roma access to housing was restricted by the asylum law that was amended in 2015 (Brenner, 2016). Also, Roma people were more likely to be deported compared to non-Roma people (Sardelić & McGarry, 2017). In Sweden and Finland, the situation is somewhat better due to policies aimed to reduce the housing gap between Roma and non-Roma (Amnesty International, 2018; Ministry of Justice Finland, 2017), such as access to long term shelters for migrants (regardless of ethnicity), enabling them to plan ahead and find employment. Nonetheless, anti-Roma discrimination in housing access continues to be high and many Roma people are homeless (Amnesty International, 2018; Parliamentary Ombudsman of Finland, 2015), which in winter becomes a struggle for survival. In the United Kingdom, a significant number of Roma people live in unauthorized and precarious living conditions and are at risk of evictions (Burchardt, Obolenskaya, Vizard, & Bottaglini, 2018). For example, according to Burchardt et al. (2018) 47.7% of Roma children in the United Kingdom experience housing deprivation, which is three times as high as for other ethnic groups. Also, the situation is likely to worsen after Brexit, as many Roma have reported a rise in discrimination, including in access to housing in the aftermath of the EU referendum vote (Roma Support Group, 2016).

Health Health inequalities usually result from differential access to resources, such as healthcare or housing, and have a major impact on both the wellbeing of people and in terms of economic consequences for countries, such as additional healthcare costs and the loss of productivity (European Public Health Alliance, 2018). Available data show that across Europe Roma people have higher rates of illness and mortality, with an average life expectancy of approximately 10 years less than the majority population (URBACT, 2019). Also, Romanies face many barriers in accessing healthcare such as a lack of health insurance, geographic segregation and discrimination in receiving treatment. Reports of discrimination or fear of discrimination in accessing healthcare are found in many countries including Bulgaria (European Committee of Social Rights, 2019), Spain (Fernández-Feito, Pesquera-Cabezas, González-Cobo, & Prieto-Salceda, 2019), France (Alexiadou, 2018), Sweden (Fundamental Rights Report, 2019) and Romania (Muncan, 2018). A number of Roma people who migrated from one European country to another do not have access to healthcare because of their undocumented status. There are some reports that show ways in which people can find alternative ways of gaining access to healthcare such as pregnant women who borrow health insurance cards from others in order to give birth in a hospital (Sardelić, 2017). On the one hand, this practice insures that vulnerable and undocumented people can gain access to a basic human right by subverting a discriminatory healthcare system. On the other hand, it creates additional problems such as indeterminate child identity and birth registration. Also, according to available data, there is a higher mortality rate for Roma children compared to non-Roma children in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Romania and Slovakia (European Public Health Alliance, 2018). Despite a lack of studies, it is probable that the higher infant mortality is due to inadequate access to pre and post-natal care, poor nutrition and discrimination in healthcare.

94

Roma prejudices in the European Union

It is important to note that the discrepancies in health between Roma and the majority population in different European countries are intertwined with the social-economic, environmental and cultural context. For example, Roma people can live far away from healthcare facilities, they might not have proof of domicile which would prevent them from registering for health services and some might experience a low level of health literacy due to a lack of access to health education.

Employment One of the key Europe 2020 objectives is to achieve a 75% employment rate for people between 20 and 65 years, with a special focus on Roma people (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018a). Although people identifying as Roma have the same right to equal access to services, rights and benefits as all EU citizens, in reality, they face multiple barriers to employment and over 80% live in poverty (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018b). The same report notes that despite substantial funds allocated by the EU to Member States in the area of Roma employment, between 2011 and 2016 there was no change in the percentage of employed Roma, which remained at approximately 38% working with a permanent contract. Also, a higher percentage of Roma are working with a temporary contract or without a contract (55%), compared to non-Roma people (less than 10%). This has a direct impact on the lifechances of Roma people, and especially migrant Roma, finding a permanent residence which is often dependent on proof of employment (Ternoven & Enache, 2017). Without a permanent contract, many Roma people find alternative economic niches, such as collecting and selling scrap metal (Sardelić, 2017). Some choose to migrate from their birth countries (usually Romania and Bulgaria) to other western countries looking for a higher income (Tileagă, Popoviciu, & Aldridge, 2019). Because the majority work in low paying jobs, Roma migrants are likely to tap into multiple sources of income, meaning that earnings gained from selling newspapers, for instance, can be supplemented by seasonal work such as selling flowers or berries (Djuve, Britt, Friberg, Tyldu, & Zhang, 2015; Ternoven & Enache, 2017).

Responses to structural inequality by non-Roma people There are four main non-Roma responses to the structural inequality of Roma people, based on the ways in which arguments about Roma identity and structural inequalities are framed. Firstly, Roma identity can be framed as a threat to public order, as a people who are unable to fit into mainstream society and who are prone to crime and breaking of legal norms. Research on the public, media and political discourses found that Roma people are often described by the advantaged population as “abnormal citizens” engaged in problematic behaviours such as begging, dropping out of school and prone to unemployment (McGarry, 2017; Mirga-Kruszelnicka, 2018). A survey conducted by the European Commission shows that prejudice against Roma people in Europe surpasses the negative feelings expressed towards other vulnerable minorities such as Muslim people and transgender people (European Commission, 2015). According to the report, the highest reported levels of prejudice and discrimination were found in Bulgaria and Romania, which also have the highest proportion of Roma people. Also, although reported intolerance against other minorities was gradually reduced in the period of 2011–2015, in all European countries, prejudice and discrimination against Roma people remained the same. In 2019, discrimination and prejudice against Roma people were still considered by survey respondents to be the most widespread, although a slight improvement was noted in all countries (European Commission, 2019b). The results of the report show that non-Roma people felt

95

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă

justified in not wanting Roma people as work colleagues, family members and Roma children in the same classrooms as non-Roma children. Social and economic inequality is viewed as a direct result of a negative Roma cultural identity, and prejudice and discrimination against Roma people are seen as a justifiable response to people who are expected to cause trouble. Secondly, Roma identity can be framed in terms of the seemingly positive attributes associated with the romanticized idea of a free-spirited and exotic nomad. However, as the Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism (2016) notes, this view also portrays Roma as different compared to the advantaged population supporting the same stereotypical ideas that “they”, due to some essentialist qualities, are engaged in behaviours that do not fit with mainstream values concerning work, education and housing. This process of othering sets Roma people apart and introduces a moral hierarchy, where Romanies are considered of lesser worth and therefore unworthy of equal treatment. A third type of response is ambivalence towards Roma identity where on the one hand, Roma are romanticized, while, on the other hand, vilified for exploiting the welfare system and exhibiting violent and criminal behaviours (Popoviciu & Tileagă, 2019; Tileagă, 2007, 2015). From this point of view, political measures towards Roma people are perceived as favours rather than just actions to ensure equality of rights (Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism, 2016). For example, paternalistic approaches that portray Roma people in need of “special treatment” can come from seemingly well-intended motives. Also, progressive programs and proposals for social inclusion can combine the recognition for structural solutions and inter-ethnic collaboration with problematic suggestions about Roma predisposition for crime and law-breaking behaviours which necessitate individual reforms of Roma identity (Popoviciu & Tileagă, 2019). The fourth type of response, moves away from a focus on Roma identity to a focus on structural inequality. From this point of view, due to structural disadvantage, Roma people as a group are involuntarily placed in a position of disadvantage. We argue that structural inequality – understood as a set of social processes that enable or constrain individual actions beyond individual control (Korenman & Winship, 2000; Owens, McVeigh, & Cunningham, 2019; Young, 2001) – justifies political solutions that affirmatively target the distribution of resources or offers remedial opportunities to particular groups of people. The social and economic inequality between groups of people can be caused by influenced of systemic discrimination, including biased employment decisions and structural racism and ethnicism (Tsang, 2013; Viruell-Fuentes & Miranda, 2012). The argument is that a majority of people who belong to the same social group – such as class, gender, ethnicity or race – experience various forms of exclusion and unequal benefits or burdens caused by institutional and organizational norms and decisions. In other words, if by comparing the average income of a Roma with the average income of a non-Roma of similar age and education, a pattern of discrepancy in averages can be seen across a particular time frame. A case can then be made concerning the social underpinnings of these discrepancies and the responsibility of the entire community for remedial work through interventions that seek to change existing social structures. When differences between groups are viewed as an unfair structural disadvantage, social and political scientists ought to express a moral commitment to concepts such as justice and fairness (Hochschild, 1981; Rawls, 2003).

Responses to structural inequality by Roma people There are three types of research that focus on the perspectives of Roma people (1) studies that looked at the consequences of prejudice and discrimination, (2) studies on when and how Roma

96

Roma prejudices in the European Union

people perceive prejudice and discrimination and (3) studies focusing on the ways in which Roma people cope with prejudice.

Consequences of prejudice and discrimination for Roma people Research on the impact of prejudice and discrimination on Roma’s wellbeing overall concluded that the consequences were negative (Greenfields & Smith, 2010; Cook, Progovac, & Tran, 2019; Sandor et al., 2017). For example, due to constant discrimination in access to safe and affordable housing, education, employment and education, and the ongoing stress of forced eviction or deportation, Roma people experience higher risks to mental health and lower measures of wellbeing compared to non-Roma people (Cemlyn, Greenfields, Burnett, Matthews, & Witwell, 2009). Both Roma children (Lee et al., 2014) and adults (Parry et al., 2007) experience higher rates of anxiety and depression due to experiences of stigma and discrimination, compared to non-Roma children. These results, however, are best read with some caution for two reasons. Firstly, the studies used a mixture of self-reports, teacher reports and medical staff reports to collect data about the mental health of Roma people. This is problematic since Roma children are often systematically misdiagnosed with mental health problems by teachers (Catrina, 2013) and the biases of medical staff towards Roma people are well documented (Kende, Hadarics, & Lášticová, 2017). Nonetheless, studies that use self-report measures and in-depth interviews with Roma people find that the reported rates of stress, distress, anxiety and depression are higher than for the general population and are linked to experiences of prejudice and systemic discrimination in access to quality housing, education, employment and healthcare (Cemlyn et al., 2009). Moreover, inequalities in mental health, specifically self-reported anxiety, are significant even when compared to those of people from other excluded groups (Parry et al., 2007). Secondly, studies that use representations of problematic minorities reinforce social myths about minorities and usually provide a legitimate reason to initiate person-change rather than system-change programs (Popoviciu, 2018). For example, in Romania during a time when jobs were scarce and data showed significant systemic-based inequality in job offers, the political focus on closing the employment gap between Roma and non-Roma people-was almost exclusively on counselling and motivating Roma people to continue to apply for jobs and enrol in skills training classes (Cace et al., 2014; Giurca, 2012; World Bank, 2014). Another consequence of discrimination and prejudice is the moral exclusion of Roma people in the sense that they are placed outside of normal boundaries of fairness and moral values (Tileagă, 2007). This is the consequence of both the extreme negative categorization of groups of people and dehumanizing discourses that can have eliminationist tendencies. When Roma people are portrayed as outside of the moral community of the majority group and other ethnic or minority groups, they are seen as out of place and outside of the reasonable bounds of moral “being” within European societies (Tileagă, 2006, 2007). This moral exclusion of Roma people is uniquely related to the concept of gypsyism which is defined as a historically constructed, persistent complex of customary racism against social groups identified under the stigma ‘gypsy’ or other related terms, and incorporates: (1) a homogenizing and essentializing perception and description of these groups; (2) the attribution of specific characteristics to them; (3) discriminating social structures and violent practices that emerge against that background, which have a degrading and ostracizing effect and which reproduce structural disadvantages. (Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism, 2016, pp. 3–4) 97

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă

Perceptions of prejudice and discrimination A different type of social psychological work has focused on how and when Roma people perceive that they have encountered prejudice and discrimination. For example, a study on the experiences of prejudice by Roma entrepreneurs in Finland noted that prejudice was perceived to occur during a wide variety of job-related face to face interactions including with city councillors, bank workers, insurance agents, suppliers, retailers, customers and competitors (Anttonen, 2008). Studies also show that there are inconsistencies and biases in the judgements of Roma people about the prejudice and discrimination that they experience. For example, in Romania, although discrimination in access to public services, employment and education is among the highest in Europe, the percentage of Roma people who report discrimination is the lowest in the EU, compared to other groups who experience discrimination (Guvernul Romaniei – HG 18/2015, 2015). One possible explanation is the presence of minimization bias (Major & Kaiser, 2005), which explains that in certain situations, people perceive less discrimination than there actually exists. There is evidence that when participating in research conducted by non-Roma people, Roma people can be reluctant to report ethnicity as a central component of their identity (Kelso, 2013; Open Society Foundation, 2007; Zamfir & Preda, 2002). This finding is not unique to Roma people, as studies on migrants find that in situations when ethnic or racial identity is less salient, people may be less likely to report experiences of discrimination and they can also be less responsive to subtle forms of discrimination, attributing ambiguous situations to other causes rather than discrimination based on ethnicity or race (Yip, Gee, & Takeuchi, 2008).

Coping with prejudice and discrimination Research on the ways in which Roma people attempt to cope with the impact of prejudice and discrimination has been looking at three types of responses: (a) efforts to overcome discrimination by displaying personal success or grit, (b) creating bonding identities with the local Roma community and (c) collective action that underpins ways of subverting a system that sustains inequalities. According to the first type of response, some studies argue that stories of personal success in education, business or politics can be used to show that inequality and anti-Roma discrimination can be overcome by individual effort (Cace, 2007; European Commission, 2017; Grigore et al., 2009; Popoviciu, 2018). These stories are mostly presented as optimistic narratives, indexing the psychological benefit of support for other, possibly not yet successful, Roma people. However, these success stories of overcoming discrimination and prejudice often ignore the political and ideological forces that keep the systemic barriers alive. As a result, the spotlight falls on individuals who overcame an unequal system by exhibiting resilience and grit, implying that the path towards achievement and inclusion into mainstream society depends on personal effort rather than a politically based systemic change (Popoviciu, 2018; Tileagă et al., 2019). This response is also found in the case of other groups of people who are historically in a position of vulnerability or disadvantage (Campbell, 1968; Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). Research on the second type of response to experiences of prejudice and discrimination suggests that the tight-knit and supportive family structure in most Roma communities offers psychological benefits such as a sense of safety and security within the community (Van Clemput, 2007). Moreover, in the case of migrants, the presence and support of a larger network of family and friends help reduce the psychological and material costs of moving to a new country (Aldridge et al., 2018). A possible explanation for the ways in which the close ties with family members and the local Roma community may help counterbalance the negative effects 98

Roma prejudices in the European Union

of discrimination and prejudice is offered by the social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2001). When individuals choose to identify with one or more groups they focus on the positive aspects of those groups, gaining a higher sense of self-esteem and belonging and buffering the effects of discrimination (Cross & Strauss, 1998). The third response to discrimination and prejudice involves forms of latent protest by Roma people, specifically Roma migrants, to discriminatory policies and practices regarding their right to free movement as European citizens (Sardelić, 2017). Due to the fact that in their own countries Roma people as a group are seen as semi-citizens (Cohen, 2009), they either do not possess the rights which should be theirs as citizens (i.e. a birth certificate or other identification documents), or they cannot access citizenship rights because of their migrant status. Moreover, because many Roma people are stereotypically perceived as unable to contribute to the formal labour market, many European countries have policies which aim to restrict Roma migration. These restrictions include: exclusionary regulation concerning entry and residence rights, criminalizing street work, destruction of Roma settlements, forced evictions and deportations (Baar, 2015; Fekete, 2014; Perraudin, 2018; Ternoven & Enache, 2017; Tesseri & Allik-Schumemann, 2018;Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, & Cassidy, 2017). According to Sardelić, Roma responses – that state authorities usually interpret as anti-social – are actually practices that Roma people use to subvert discrimination. For example, Roma people that do not have any identification documents, and are legally invisible, cannot access the formal job market. Many create their own alternative economic niche such as collecting and selling scrap metal, generating an income that is invisible as well. Whereas, national governments view such economic practices as disruptive of state systems, for Roma people these strategies are used to raise awareness of their lack of formal access rights, and help them gain alternative access by subverting a discriminatory system.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have reviewed some of the key literature on how Roma groups respond to structural inequality, prejudices and discrimination. First, we have shown that Roma responses to structural inequalities, prejudice and discrimination are related to non-Roma people’s perceptions of these very issues. Second, Roma experiences extend what we already know about responses to structural inequality, albeit with some key differences. We have also highlighted the range of responses from Roma people to structural injustice, including practices that Roma may use to subvert discrimination. For the Roma, inequalities of opportunities are an everyday occurrence in the workplace, healthcare, education, or business. Unfortunately, the acceptability of prejudices and discrimination against Roma makes the alleviation of inequality and disadvantage difficult.

References Achim,V. (1998). Tiganii in istoria Romaniei. Bucuresti: Editura Enciclopedica. Aldridge, J., Daragiu, L., Daragiu, M., Lumsden, K., Popoviciu, S., & Tileagă, C. (2018). Roma community perspectives on migration to the UK. Loughborough: Loughborough University Press. Alexiadou, E.A. (2018). Ethnic diversity and access to healthcare from a human rights perspective: The case of Roma in Europe. European Journal of Health Law, 25(3), 261–283. Alexiadou, N. (2019). Framing education policies and transitions of Roma students in Europe. Comparative Education, 55(3), 422–442. Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism. (2016). Antigypsyism. A reference paper. 1–11. https://www.antigypsyism. eu/?page_id=17.

99

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Amnesty International. (2018). Sweden: Homeless Roma and other EU migrants face widespread discrimination and dangerous conditions. Amnesty International: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Amnesty International. (2019). The Ongoing Scandal of Roma Housing in Italy: Amnesty International Files Complaint Before European Committee of Social Rights. Retrieved August 28, 2019, from Amnesty International Public Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR3000642019ENGLISH. PDF. Anttonen, R. (2008).Trust formation and experiences of prejudice and discrimination of Roma entrepreneurs in Finland. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 2(2), 124–139. Archibald, K. (1970). Alternative orientations to social science utilization. Social Science Information, 9(2), 7–34. Baar, V. (2015). The perpetual Mobile machine of forced mobility: Europe’s Roma and the institutionalization of rootlessness. In Y. Jansen, R. Celikates, & J. De Blois (eds.), The irregularization of migration: Detention, deportation, drowning (pp. 71–86). London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Bakouri, M. & Staerkle, C. (2015). Coping with structural disadvantage: Overcoming negative effects of perceived barriers through bonding identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54(4), 648–670. Barreto, M. & Ellemerss, N. (2015). Detecting and experiencing prejudice: New answers to old questions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 52, 139–219. Brenner,Y. (2016). Germany: Roma march against asylum-seeker crackdown. Demonstrators protested against increasing deportations of West Balkan asylum applicants, many of whom are Roma. Retrieved August 29, 2019, from Aljazeera News: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/germany-roma-march-asylum-seekercrackdown-160605092954463.html. Burchardt, T., Obolenskaya, P., Vizard, P., & Bottaglini, M. (2018). Experience of multiple disadvantage among Roma, gypsy and traveller children in England and Wales. London: Centre of Analysis of Social Exclusion. Cace, S. (2007). Accesul Romilor pe Piata Muncii: Aspiratii, Factori si Strategii de Reusita. Bucuresti: Editura Expert. Cace, S., Neagu, G., Rat, C., & Ivasiuc, A. (2014). Politici de Incluziune a Romilor in Statele Membre ale Uniunii Europene. Bucuresti: Institutul European din Romania. Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Caplan, N. & Nelson, S.D. (1973). On being useful. The nature and consequences of psychological research on social problems. American Psychologist, 199–211. Catrina, S. (2013). Roma children in Community-based Europe exploring the shape of cultural boundaries. European Journal of Science and Theology, 9(June), 85–94. Cemlyn, S., Greenfields, M., Burnett, S., Matthews, Z., & Witwell, C. (2009). Inequalities experienced by gypsy and traveller communities: A review. Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission Research Report Series. Clark, K.B. & Clark, M.P. (1947). Racial identification and preference among Negro children. In E.L. Hartley (ed.), Readings in social psychology (pp. 169–178). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Clark, R.,Anderson, N.B., & Clark,V.R. (1999). Racism as a stressor for African Americans.A biopsychosocial model. American Psychologist, 54(10), 805–816. Cohen, E. (2009). Semi-citizenship in democratic politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, L.ê, Progovac, B., & Tran, A. (2019). Improving the mental health of Roma through research and policies that cross multiple social sectors. International Journal of Public Health, 64(7), 979–980. Crocker, J., Major, B., & Steele, C. (1998). Social stigma. In D.T. Gilbert, S.T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (eds.), The handbook of social psychology (pp. 504–553). New York: McGraw-Hill. Cross, W.E. & Strauss, L. (1998). The everyday functions of African American identity. In J.K. Swim & C. Stangor (eds.), Prejudice:The target’s perspective (pp. 267–279). San Diego: Academic Press. Deaux, K. & Major, B. (1987). Putting gender into context: An interactive model of gender-related behavior. Psychological Review, 94, 369–389. Djuve, A., Britt, J.H., Friberg, G.,Tyldu, G., & Zhang, H. (2015).When poverty meets affluence. Migrants from Romania on the streets of the Scandinavian capitals. Oslo: FAFO. Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for longer-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101. Equality and Human Rights Commission. (2017). Measurement framework for equality and human rights. Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission. European Commission. (2015). Discrimination in the EU in 2015. European Commission.

100

Roma prejudices in the European Union European Commission. (2017). Stories about Roma people: Stopping discrimination against Roma. Brussels: Justice and Consumers. European Commission. (2018). Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion: Your Rights Country by Country. Retrieved August 26, 2019, from Policies, Information and Services: http://ec.europa.eu/social/ main.jsp?catId=858&langId=en. European Commission. (2019a). EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020. Retrieved January 3, 2020, from Roma Integration in the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/ justice-and-fundamental-rights/combatting-discrimination/roma-and-eu/roma-integration-eu_en. European Commission. (2019b). Discrimination in the European Union. European Commission. European Committee of Social Rights. (2019). ECSR: Unequal access to maternal healthcare violates Roma women’s rights. Retrieved August 30, 2019, from International Justice Resource Center: https://ijrcenter. org/2019/04/25/ecsr-unequal-access-to-maternal-healthcare-violates-roma-womens-rights/. European Public Health Alliance. (2018). Closing the life expectancy gap of Roma in Europe. Roma health and early childhood development study. Brussels: EPHA. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. (2016). Second European Union minorities and discrimination survey (EU-MIDIS II) Roma – selected findings.Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. (2018a). Transition from education to employment of Young Roma in nine EU member States.Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. (2018b). A persisting concern: Anti-Gypsyism as a barrier to Roma inclusion. Wien: FRA. Eurostat. (2017). People in the EU – statistics on housing conditions. Retrieved August 27, 2019, from Eurostat Statistics Explained: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=People_in_ the_EU_-_statistics_on_housing_conditions. Fekete, L. (2014). Europe against the Roma. Race & Class, 55(3), 60–70. Fernández-Feito, A., Pesquera-Cabezas, R., González-Cobo, C., & Prieto-Salceda, M.D. (2019).What do we know about the health of Spanish Roma people and what has been done to improve it? A scoping review. Ethnicity & Health, 24(2), 224–243. Filitti, I.C. (1931). Populatia Munteniei la 1857. Analele Economice si Statistice XIV. Fraser, A. (1992). The gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell. Fundamental Rights Report. (2019). Roma integration.Vienna, Austria: FRA. Giurca, D. (2012). Incluziunea Romilor din Romania: Politici, Institutii, Experiente. Bucuresti: Fundatia Soros Romania. Gkofa, P. (2017). Being Roma – being Greek: Academically successful Greek Romas’ identity constructions. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(5), 624–635. Greenfields, M. & Smith, D.M. (2010). Housed gypsy travellers, social segregation and the reconstruction of communities. House Studies, 25(3), 397–412. Grigore, D., Neacsu, M., Sarau, F., Tacea, A.N., Furtuna, D., & Puticeanu, D., et al. (2009). Evaluarea Politicilor Publice Educationale Pentru Romi. Buzau: Editura Alpha MDN. Gutierres, S.E., Saenz, D.S., & Green, B.L. (1994). Job stress and health outcomes among White and Hispanic employees: A test of the person-environment fit model. In G.P. Keita & J.J. Hurrell (eds.), Job stress in a changing workforce: Investigating gender, diversity, and family issues (pp. 107–125). New York: American Psychological Association. Guvernul Romaniei – HG 18/2015. (2015, January 21). Decizia nr 18/2015 pentru aprobarea Guvernului Romaniei a strategiei pentru incluziune a cetatenilor romani apartinand minoritatii rome pentru perioada 2014–2020. Retrieved September 15, 2019, from Lege5: http://lege5.ro/en/Gratuit/guytsnzsha/ hotararea-nr-18-2015-pentru-aprobarea-strategiei-guvernului-romaniei-de-incluziune-a-cetatenilorromani-apartinand-minoritatii-rome-pentru-perioada-2015-2020. Hochschild, J.L. (1981). What is fair? American beliefs about distributive justice. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Kaiser, C.R. & Major, B. (2006). A social psychological perspective on perceiving and reporting discrimination. Law & Social Inquiry, 31(4), 801–830. Kelso, M. (2013). “And Roma were victims, too”. The Romani genocide and holocaust education in Romania. Intercultural Education, 24(1–2), 61–78. Kende, A., Hadarics, M., & Lášticová, B. (2017). Anti-Roma attitudes as expressions of dominant social norms in Eastern Europe. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 60, 12–27.

101

S. Popoviciu and C. Tileagă Korenman, S. & Winship, C. (2000). A reanalysis of the bell curve: Intelligence, family background, and schooling. In K. Arrow, S. Bowles, & S. Durlauf (eds.), Meritocracy and economic inequality (pp. 137–178). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lee, E.J., Keyes, K., Bitfoi, A., Mihova, Z., Pez, O., & Yoon, E., et al. (2014). Mental health disparities between Roma and non-Roma children in Romania and Bulgaria. BMC Psychiatry, 14, 297–304. Ligue des Droits de l’Homme & European Roma Rights Centre. (2017). Census of forced eviction in living areas occupied by Roma (or people designated as such) in France. Budapest: ERRC. Major, B. (1994). From social inequality to personal entitlement: The role of social comparisons, legitimacy, appraisals, and group members. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 293–355. Major, B. & Kaiser, C. (2005). Perceiving and claiming discrimination. In L.B. Nielsen & R. Nelson (eds.), The handbook of employment discrimination research: Rights and realities (pp. 285–299). New York: Kluwer. McGarry, A. (2017). Romaphobia.The last acceptable form of racism. Chicago: Zed Books. Ministry of Justice Finland. (2017). National action plan on fundamental and human rights 2017–2019. Helsinki: Ministry of Justice. Mirga-Kruszelnicka, A. (2018). Challenging anti-gypsyism in academica: The role of Romani scholars. Critical Romani Studies, 1(1), 8–21. Mullard, C. (1985). Race, class, and ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Muncan, B. (2018). Eastern European Roma: Ethnic discrimination in the public healthcare system. Journal of Global Health Reports, 2. https://doi.org/10.29392/joghr.2.e2018025. O’Hanlon, C. (2016).The European struggle to educate and include Roma people: A critique of differences in policy and practice in Western and Eastern EU countries. Social Inclusion, 4(1), 1–10. Open Society Foundation. (2007). Roma Inclusion Barometer. Retrieved September 15, 2019, from http:// www.soros.ro/en/documente.php?document=69. Owens, P.B., McVeigh, R., & Cunningham, D. (2019). Race, ethnicity, and social movements. In D. A. Snow, S.A. Soule, H. Kriesi, & H. J. McCammon (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to social movements (2nd ed., pp. 553–570). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Owusu-Bempah, J. (1994). Race, self-identity and social work. British Journal of Social Work, 24, 123–136. Paluck, E.L. & Green, D.P. (2009). Prejudice reduction: What works? A review and assessment of research and practice. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 339–367. Parliamentary Ombudsman of Finland. (2015). Summary of the annual report. Tampere: Juvenes Print. Parry, G.,Van Cleemput, P., Peters, J., Walters, S., Thomas, K., & Cooper, C. (2007). Health Status of gypsies and travellers in England. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61, 198–204. Perraudin, F. (2018). Roma communities fear deportation in post-Brexit Britain. Retrieved September 18, 2019, from The Guardian: Roma Gypsies and Travellers: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ jul/02/roma-communities-fear-deportation-in-post-brexit-britain. Popoviciu, S. (2018). Framing ethnic disparities: An analysis of views about disparities between Roma and non-Roma people in Romania. PhD Thesis. Loughborough: Loughborough University. Popoviciu, S. & Tileagă, C. (2019). Subtle forms of racism in strategy documents concerning Roma inclusion. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 30(1), 85–102. Rawls, J. (2003). Justice as fairness. A restatement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Roma Support Group. (2016). Brexit Statements. Retrieved August 6, 2019, from Empowering the Roma Community since 1998: http://rsg2016.weebly.com/brexit-statements.html. Rucker, J., & Richeson, J. (this volume). Beliefs about the interpersonal vs. structural nature of racism and responses to racial inequality. Sandor, J., Kosa, Z., Boruzs, K., Boros, J., Tokaji, I., & Adany, R. (2017). The decade of Roma inclusion: Did it make a difference to health and the use of health care services? International Journal of Public Health, 62(7), 803–815. Sandu, M. (2005). Romii din Romania: Repere prin istorie. Bucuresti:Vanemonde. Sardelić, J. (2017). The position and agency of the “irregularized”: Romani migrants as European citizens. Politics, 37(3), 332–346. Sardelić, J & McGarry, A. (2017). How the refugee crisis is dealing another blow to Europe’s Roma. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-the-refugee-crisis-is-dealing-another-blow-toeuropes-roma-74000. Swann, W.B. (1997). Self-traps.The elusive quest for higher self-esteem. New York: Freeman, W. H. Swim, J.K. & Stangor, C. (1998). Prejudice:The target’s perspective. Cambridge: Academic Press. Tajfel, H. & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. Austin & S. Worchel (eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey: Brooks/Cole.

102

Roma prejudices in the European Union Tajfel, H. & Turner, J.C. (2001). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In M. Hogg & D. Abrams (eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 94–109). New York: Psychology Press. Taylor, D.M., Ruggiero, K.M., & Louis, W.R. (1996). Personal/group discrimination discrepancy: Towards a two-factor explanation. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 28, 193–202. Ternoven, M. & Enache, A. (2017). Coping with everyday bordering: Roma migrants and gatekeepers in Helsinki. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(7), 1114–1131. Tesseri, E. & Allik-Schumemann, E. (2018). Some are more equal than others in Finland. Retrieved September 18, 2019, from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/18/someare-more-equal-than-others-in-finland. Tileagă, C. (2006). Representing the other: A discursive analysis of prejudice and moral exclusion in talk about Romanies. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 1–23. Tileagă, C. (2007). Ideologies of moral exclusion: A critical discursive reframing of depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46, 717–737. Tileagă, C. (2015). The nature of prejudice: Society, discrimination and moral exclusion. London: Routledge. Tileagă, C., Popoviciu, S., & Aldridge, J. (2019). Drivers of Roma migration: Understanding migration in politically uncertain times. Loughborough: Loughborough University Press. Tsang, C. (2013). Uncovering systemic discrimination: Allowing individual challenges to a “pattern or practice”. Yale Law and Policy Review, 32(1), 319–333. United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner. (2018). No one left behind: Mission report on the right to housing and related human rights of Roma in France. OHCHR: Brussels. URBACT. (2019). Roma-Net: Integrated urban development. Retrieved August 30, 2019, from URBACT: Driving change for better cities: https://urbact.eu/roma-net-results. Van Clemput, P. (2007). Health impact of gypsy sites policy in the UK. Social Policy and Society, 7, 103–117. Viruell-Fuentes, E.A. & Miranda, P.Y. (2012). More than culture: Structural racism, intersectionality theory, immigrant health. Social Science & Medicine, 75, 2099–2106. Williams, D.R., Yu, Y., Jackson, J.S., & Anderson, N.B. (1997). Racial differences in physical and mental health: Socio-economic status, stress and discrimination. Journal of Health Psychology, 2(3), 335–351. World Bank. (2014). Studiu de Diagnosticare si Consultanta pentru Politicile de Sprijin a Incluziunii Romilor din Romania. Washington: World Bank. World Bank. (2018). Romania – systematic country diagnostic. Background note. Roma inclusion. Brussels: World Bank Group. Yechezel, D. & Resh, N. (2003). Social disadvantage and students’ perceived injustice in socially integrated schools in Israel. Social Justice Research, 16(2), 109–133. Yip, T., Gee, G.C., & Takeuchi, D.T. (2008). Racial discrimination and psychological distress: The impact of ethnic identity and age among immigrant and United States-born Asian adults. Developmental Psychology, 44(3), 787–800. Young, I.M. (2001). Equality of whom? Social groups and judgements of injustice. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 9(1), 1–18. Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G., & Cassidy, K. (2017). Racialized bordering discourses on European Roma. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(7), 1047–1057. Zamfir, C. & Preda, M. (2002). Romii in Romania. Bucuresti: Editura Expert.

103

8 LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER PEOPLE Prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination and social change Elizabeth Peel, Sonja J. Ellis and Damien W. Riggs

Introduction As targets of prejudice, many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people experience considerable scrutiny, regulation and violence as a result of living in societies that are shaped by normative ideologies in relation to sexuality and gender. Social psychologists have studied anti-LGBT prejudice since at least the 1970s with the development of ‘gay affirmative’ psychology (see Clarke & Peel, 2007; Ellis, Riggs & Peel, 2020; Kitzinger & Coyle, 2002). This chapter explores both subtle and extreme forms of prejudice as experienced by LGBT people and argues that all forms of prejudice experienced by LGBT people can be understood through specific theoretical concepts that account for why such prejudice occurs. In order to provide a framework for the chapter, the different groups are first introduced, and their intersections and some of the complexities involved in understanding LGBT populations are explored. Then the key theoretical concepts utilized in this chapter are outlined, namely (i) homophobia, (ii) heterosexism, (iii) heteronormativity, (iv) cisgenderism, (v) minority stress and (vi) decompensation. Using these concepts, the chapter then examines prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination in turn, demonstrating that each can be directed towards LGBT people in very specific ways. The chapter concludes by discussing the role that social psychology can play in creating positive social change with regard to LGBT people, with a focus on attitudinal change and its relationship to prejudice.

Groups under the rainbow acronym The LGBT acronym is often used in ways that do not fully account for each of its component parts. Specifically, the LGBT umbrella comprises people of both diverse sexualities and genders, people who may be attracted to people of the same or different genders (or to all genders), as well as comprising people whose identities cross-cut categories of gender and sexuality. As such, it is important to first briefly outline the identity categories that fall under the rainbow acronym, acknowledging their intersections. 104

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-8

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

Lesbian as a term is used to refer to women who are attracted to other women. Importantly, not all lesbian women will only have experienced attractions to other women, just as not all lesbian women will only have experienced intimacy with other women (Kitzinger, 1987). Some lesbian women may have entered into heterosexual relationships before coming out as lesbian. Some lesbian women will only have entered into relationships with other women. For some women lesbianism is a political decision, undertaken as a refutation of heterosexuality. As is true for lesbian women, gay men may have experienced heterosexual relationships in the past, and in some contexts gay men may remain in relationships with heterosexual women due to societal, religious, cultural, or familial expectations. Such relationships may be referred to as mixed orientation marriages or relationships (Davids & Lundquist, 2018). Some men may enjoy intimacy with other men but may not identify as gay. Bisexual people are often overlooked in the LGBT acronym, only recognized when they are in relationships with people of a different gender (Bowes-Catton & Hayfield, 2015). Further, there are many stereotypes about bisexual people, including that bisexuality is not a genuine sexuality. In reality, many people identify as bisexual, and experience attractions to, and enjoy relations with, people of all genders. For other people, bisexuality may be part of a journey of discovery that may ultimately lead to identification as lesbian or gay. As such, there are many diverse experiences of bisexuality. Transgender is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to people whose gender differs from that normatively expected based on their assigned sex (American Psychological Association, 2015). When we are born, most people are assigned a sex based on visual inspection of the genitalia. Normative assumptions mean that it is typically assumed that our assigned sex determines our gender (such that having a penis and being assigned male is assumed to mean we will experience ourselves as such, and having a vagina and being assigned female is assumed to mean we will experience ourselves as such). For transgender people such normative assumptions are incorrect. Some transgender people may have a binary gender (i.e., male or female), while others might have a non-binary gender (e.g., as agender, non-binary, gender fluid or poly gender). Other transgender people might identify with culturally specific terms such as Māori whakawahine or Samoan fa’afafine (e.g., see Tan, Schmidt, Ellis, & Veale, 2019). As we emphasized above, sexuality and gender are both included within the LGBT acronym. As such, it is important to recognize that being transgender refers to gender. Transgender people may identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, as per the descriptions provided above. Transgender people may also identify as heterosexual, but are still included within the LGBT acronym due to their gender diversity.

Key concepts Over the last two decades, to address increased diversity LGBT psychology has come to include people born with intersex variations (where a person’s genitalia and/or chromosomal pattern do not conform to standard definitions of ‘female’ or ‘male’) and queer people (a term used by some people to define their gender and/or sexuality as outside of normative binaries) to become LGBTIQ psychology (see Ellis, Riggs, & Peel, 2020). Within the field of LGBTIQ psychology, there are many core concepts that help us to understand the marginalisation that many LGBT people experience (Ellis et al., 2020). Each of these concepts offers a different vantage point on marginalisation, and each concept is informed by different theoretical accounts of how marginalisation operates. We now outline the key theoretical concepts that we use in this chapter. The term homophobia is possibly the most well-known term in use and has been used within social psychology for the longest period of time. The term was coined by Smith (1971) and then 105

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs

popularized by Weinberg (1972), who defined it as ‘the dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals – and in the case of homosexuals themselves, self-loathing’ (p. 4). This became the basis for much psychological work that conceptualized homophobia as negative perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards lesbians and gay men. Although the term ‘homophobia’ is often used as an umbrella term for all forms of anti-LGBT prejudice, it does not adequately capture the ways in which the discrimination experienced by bisexual and transgender people differs from that experienced by lesbians and gay men.Therefore, the terms biphobia and transphobia are often used to describe negative perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards bisexual and transgender people, respectively.The term ‘homophobia’ (and by implication ‘biphobia’ and ‘transphobia’) has, however, been frequently criticized. In using the term ‘phobia’ these phenomena have commonly been defined (and constructed) as negative attitudes, feelings, sentiments, or even irrational fears; implying personal and/or individual pathology (Aguinaldo, 2008; Kitzinger, 1996). This ideological positioning depoliticizes prejudice and discrimination, ignoring the way in which LGBT people are systematically marginalized (cf. Kitzinger, 1996). The concept of heterosexism was popularized in the late 1980s by Herek (1990) who defined it as ‘an ideological system that denies … and stigmatizes any non-heterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community’ (p. 316). In contrast to homophobia – which primarily focuses on attitudes and behaviours directed at individuals – the focus of heterosexism is on systematic bias in societal customs and institutions (e.g., religion, education, and the legal system) that result in the erasure and denial of sexual diversity, customs, and history; and by implication, the privileging of heterosexual experiences, customs, and history. Rather than documenting attitudes and acts, then, heterosexism is concerned with exploring how people enact prejudice – that is, how prejudice is produced and reproduced in discourse, social interaction, and through cultural artefacts (e.g., images, official documents, institutional norms). Discursive research has made a significant contribution to our understanding of how heterosexism is manifested. For example, analyses of ordinary interactions have illustrated the way in which much heterosexism is reproduced in talk (e.g., see Speer & Potter, 2000), even in everyday conversation (e.g., see Kitzinger, 2005; Land & Kitzinger, 2005). This phenomenon is encapsulated in the construct ‘mundane heterosexism’ (Peel, 2001). Further, Braun (2000) notes that heterosexism may occur through both the explicit voicing of heterosexist comments or by the failure to challenge it. Related to the idea of heterosexism is the construct of heteronormativity (Warner, 1991). Heteronormativity refers to the perceived reinforcement of certain beliefs about sexuality within social institutions and policies.These beliefs include things like the notion that ‘sex’ equals penisin-vagina intercourse, that ‘family’ constitutes a heterosexual couple and their children, and that marriage is a procreative institution and therefore should only be available to different-gender couples. From this perspective, heterosexuality is viewed as the only natural manifestation of sexuality. Heteronormativity may also be viewed as the practices and institutions that legitimize and privilege heterosexuality (Cohen, 2005). In terms of gender, cisgenderism is a concept used to describe an ideology that marginalizes and delegitimizes people’s own understandings of their bodies and identities (Ansara, 2015; Ansara & Hegarty, 2012, 2014; Blumer, Ansara, & Watson, 2013; Riggs, von Doussa, & Power, 2015). As an ideology, cisgenderism assumes that there are only two genders, that gender is a correlate of assigned sex, and that gender is immutable. Cisgenderism can take many different forms, including pathologising (i.e., characterising a person’s gender as disordered), misgendering (i.e., using incorrect pronouns to refer to a person’s gender), marginalising (i.e., excluding someone on the basis of their gender or gender history), coercive queering (i.e., collapsing transgender people under the banner of ‘queer’ or ‘LGBT’) and objectifying biological language. Importantly, cisgenderism does not simply impact transgender people. Rather, it shapes how all people feel able to express their 106

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

gender, and how their gender may be marginalized by other people. For example, thinking back to the definitions of lesbian women and gay men above, the definitions speak about attractions, not about gender expression. Cisgender (i.e., not transgender) lesbians, gay men and bisexual people, like all people, can express their genders in a multitude of ways, some of which may be policed by others due to perceptions of non-conformity. Like heterosexism, cisgenderism may also be manifested in everyday talk and text; a phenomenon that Riggs (2014) calls ‘mundane transphobia’. Discursive work (e.g., Speer & Parsons, 2006) has illustrated the way in which cisgenderism is invoked in the gatekeeping of medical support in the process of transitioning. Homophobia, heterosexism, heteronormativity and cisgenderism in concert with one another can negatively impact upon LGBT people’s wellbeing. A number of concepts have been developed to account for such negative impacts. Meyer (1995), for example, developed the concept of minority stress, which he has theorized as comprising a combination of three components: internalized homophobia, stigma (i.e., expectations of rejection/discrimination), and prejudice (i.e., actual events of discrimination and violence). A key contribution of this work was the way in which it highlighted that both distal (external) and proximal (internal) factors are implicated in producing minority stress. In his later work, Meyer (2003) extended his research to include lesbians and bisexual people; additionally focusing on the effects of concealing one’s sexual orientation, and on the role of coping processes in mitigating against the effects of stress. The findings of this later study pointed to a two-to-threefold risk of psychological distress resulting from minority stress. While this theory was developed to explain psychological distress on the basis of marginalized sexuality, it has also been applied to transgender people (e.g., see Rood et al., 2016; Testa et al., 2017). Despite its widespread adoption, minority stress theory is by no means unproblematic. Meyer (2003) claims that the model is underpinned by a social stress framework. In the main, minority stress theory focuses on one person’s negative regard for another and is ‘largely devoid of an account of the role of social norms in shaping how particular individuals may be rendered legitimate targets of negative regard’ (Riggs & Treharne, 2017, p. 595). In this respect, it fails to acknowledge and explain the role that institutionalized, systematic oppression (e.g., lack of legal recognition; insensitivity to, and ignorance of, sexual minority perspectives/experiences; social exclusion) may have on the wellbeing of LGBT people individually and collectively. As such, a more socially situated model was offered by Riggs and Treharne (2017) through the theory of decompensation. Riggs and Treharne suggested that having a marginalized identity produces the need to compensate for stigma and discrimination on a daily basis. From this perspective, psychological distress occurs when an individual is no longer able to compensate for daily discrimination, the ideologies that question people’s right to exist, and the experience of repeated marginalization that results in protective resources no longer working. This framework is consistent with research highlighting the importance of social norms rather than subjective appraisals in affecting wellbeing in individuals marginalized by ideologies of gender and sexuality (e.g., Pachankis & Bernstein, 2012; Tan, Ellis, Schmidt, Byrne, & Veale, 2020; see also Leach and BouZeineddine, this volume).

Prejudice Within psychology, the term prejudice is commonly used to refer to when a person holds unfounded views, opinions, or beliefs about another person or group of people (Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick, & Esses, 2010). Prejudice can lead to biases in terms of the treatment of other people and can range from more subtle biases – such as those stemming from heteronormative assumptions – to more explicit biases, such as those associated with homophobia and cisgenderism. 107

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs

Prejudice negatively impacts upon LGBT people in contexts such as employment and education, where the biases of other people can shape service delivery. As such, prejudice in these (and other) contexts can lead to minority stress, and to decompensation when stressors associated with prejudice become overwhelming. Within the workplace, for example, prejudice towards LGBT families and relationships can cause additional strain for employees. This strain and stigma can result from families and relationships not being recognized, even when individual employees are out in the workplace and have positive experiences coming out as LGBT (Sawyer et al., 2017). The 2018 Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) Employee Survey, for instance, found that more than 13 per cent of the genderdiverse participants experienced ‘very high’ or ‘high’ levels of anxiety during the recruitment processes (Hough, 2018). Research conducted in the US on the workplace experiences of transgender people has also found high levels of harassment at work (Grant et al., 2011), affecting trans women particularly, though harassment may be mitigated by supportive colleagues and gender identity equality policies. Further, in terms of non-recognition of families and relationships in the employment context, Sawyer and colleagues’ (2017) interview study with 53 US employees identified (1) stigma-based work-family-conflict connected to perceived membership in a stigmatized family; (2) lack of formal invitation for partners to work events; (3) lack of same-gender partner benefits at work and 4) heterosexist pressure to suppress LGB family-related information at work. Heterosexism at work has been well established (Harding & Peel, 2007), but in the context of families in particular LGBT people may need to engage in extra impression management work, which can sit incongruously with desires to be ‘out and proud’ in the workplace. Schools and early years services (e.g., nursery or kindergarten) are other sites where prejudice towards LGBT people may occur. In secondary (high) school sex and relationship education the presumption of heterosexuality is often still heavily encoded in teaching, and same-gender attractions are still often problematized (cf. Shannon, 2016). Abbott, Ellis, and Abbott (2015), for example, found in the UK context that although teachers were cognisant of the importance of inclusivity, this was largely accounted for by focusing on homophobia, rather than embedding LGBT relational and sexual practices in the curriculum. Importantly, there are ‘self-help’ resources available (e.g., Barnes & Carlile, 2018) aimed at the transformation of schools into ‘LGBT+ friendly’ settings, but typically these are aimed at LGBT young people or parents, and the potential need for radical change is often avoided at a policy or management level (Surtees & Gunn, 2010). For transgender young people exclusion may be further compounded by the resistance of those on the Christian right (and others) to the inclusion of information about transgender people’s lives in sex and relationship education. Riggs and Bartholomaeus (2018), for example, explored how young transgender people speak about their needs in terms of sex education, but how their needs are often not met due to prejudicial educational contexts. Furthermore with regard to education, and as Cloughessy and Waniganayake (2015) highlight with respect to child care centres, ‘how the educational environment is set up, including which books are purchased and read and which are not, forms that are filled (such as, enrolment applications) and centre policies can all contribute to the creation of environments that make heterosexuality appear as the only available identity’ (p. 377). How ‘mother’s day’ and ‘father’s day’ are promoted in these settings, or how role play is constructed around normative gender and relational roles, can send powerful heteronormative and cisgenderist messages to young children and marginalize LGBT families. Imagine the difference that the movement of an apostrophe (e.g., mothers’ day) might make for the recognition of some children’s families? About half (n = 32) of the Australian children’s centre directors surveyed by Cloughessy and Waniganayake (2015) had knowingly worked with lesbian-parented families, and very small numbers with 108

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

gay male-parented and transgender-parented families. Cloughessy and Waniganayake found that active inclusion was initiated by lesbian-parented families, with 46% of directors reporting that they were not adequately prepared in training to work with LGBT-parented families. Overcoming potential prejudices, then, was the work of LGBT people, not service providers. Prejudice is often acutely evident when it comes to service providers meeting the needs of transgender parents.Transgender parenthood is comparatively common, with between a quarter and a half of transgender people having children, especially transgender women who became parents prior to gender transition (Pyne, Bauer, & Bradley, 2014). Yet prejudice in services can be especially acute for transgender parents. Nearly all (95.5 per cent) of the trans parents in one Canadian study had heard that trans people are ‘not normal’, and some reported having no legal access to their child/ren (18.1 per cent) or having lost custody or reduced access (17. 7 per cent) (Pyne et al., 2014). There are particular challenges for transgender men who bear children posttransition because of the cisgenderist norms that are embedded in health care services. Indeed, it has been suggested that there needs to be ‘a specific approach that recognizes such men as men and does not default to norms for pregnancy defined historically by the experiences of women’ (Riggs, 2013, p. 70), rather than defaulting to biased assumptions about the needs of transgender men.

Stereotyping Stereotypes are cognitive schemas used by people to process information about others; often on the basis of group membership (see Dovidio et al., 2010). At its simplest, a stereotype is like a cookie-cutter: it presumes that all people of a particular group conform to a particular set of assumptions about the group. Importantly, the assumptions about the group are rarely based on fact, but instead are more typically indicative of bias and prejudice (see Bilewicz, this volume). Some stereotypes about LGBT people include that lesbian relationships lack sexual intimacy, that gay male relationships are always non-monogamous, that bisexual people are ‘fence sitters’, and that transgender people seek to ‘trick’ cisgender intimate partners (see Peel, 2002, 2005). These types of stereotypes, amongst many others, are harmful not simply because they misrepresent LGBT people’s lives, but because they can lead to marginalization and indeed violence. As we shall see in this section, research on the sexual practices of LGBT people highlights other stereotypes about LGBT people’s intimate lives. Sexual practices within LGBT communities that are more publicly visible or that do not approximate monogamous coupledom are often viewed as problematic or even as dangerous (e.g., sex in public). Historically sex in public places, and sex in venues designed for sexual encounters (e.g., gay saunas), have played an important role in providing gay men with opportunities to meet one another. Although it may be argued that men who have sex with men (MSM) have often been restricted to seeking sex in these places because of limited alternative options, the use of public spaces and sex venues has also allowed MSM opportunities to develop their own sexual communities (Frankis & Flowers, 2005). However, it should not be assumed that all gay men primarily meet potential partners in public places. As for anyone today, couples may meet through a wide range of means including at social events (e.g., Gay Pride; LGBT youth groups), while out at a nightclub, and most commonly through online dating sites and apps (e.g., see Prestage et al., 2015). In terms of research on LGBT people’s intimate relationships, value judgments that draw on stereotypes are often evident. For example, the notion of ‘promiscuity’ is a good example. How much sex people have, and (of course) with whom, is culturally value-laden, and the label ­‘promiscuous’ – as applied to gay men, bisexual people or younger heterosexual women who are 109

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs

actively interested in sex – is not seen as a positive thing. Certainly, research evidence seems to suggest that gay men do have more sex than other groups (Solomon, Rothblum, & Balsam, 2005). However, the notion of ‘promiscuity’ is highly problematic and we need to ask who decides how much sex is too much sex? Another way to think about this is to focus on this issue of safety rather than quantity of sex: if people are practicing safer sex does it matter how much sex they are having? From a liberal perspective the answer is ‘no’, but from some religiously informed and cultural perspectives the answer would be ‘yes’. So the moral dimensions of sex and sexuality often underlie particular understandings of what is ‘normal’ in terms of the amount of sex. In terms of the amount of sex that people have within same-gender and different-gender relationships, there is a great deal of variability, though a consistent finding is that there is a decline in the frequency of sex in relationships over time. In Solomon et al.’s (2005) US study, for example, married heterosexual women reported having more sex (2–3 times a month, on average) than did lesbians (closer to once a month, on average). Heterosexual and gay men did not significantly differ in frequency of sex, but over half of the gay men had experienced sex outside their primary relationship compared to only 15.2 per cent of the married heterosexual men. Research such as that undertaken by Solomon and colleagues (2005) would seem to give credence to the stereotype of ‘lesbian bed death’. However, a more recent study of 586 women who had been in a same-gender relationship for up to 36 years (Cohen & Byers, 2014) indicated that most women reported engaging in genital and non-genital sexual behaviours with their partner at least once a week. As Cohen and Byers suggest, there are a number of problems with accepting the conclusion that women who have sex with women are less sexual than other women. One of the main reasons is that most researchers use the same single-item measure (how often do you have sex?). However, the term ‘having sex’ is invariably interpreted as phallocentric and therefore people often do not include genital touching, oral-genital activity, and nongenital activities when considering their responses (Sewell, McGarrity, & Strassberg, 2017). This means that the criteria on which lesbians are judged to have ‘less sex’ should be challenged. It can be argued therefore that it is a heterosexist and patriarchal stereotype to view low levels of sexual activity amongst lesbians as ‘unhealthy’. Further, others have argued that making claims to a sexless norm in long-term lesbian relationships is problematic because it reinforces cultural notions that women are not sexual beings (Iasenza, 2002). In terms of transgender people’s experiences of intimacy, research by Tobin (2003) suggests that in some cases cisgender partners of transgender people contribute to the stereotyping of their partner’s gender. This may occur when anatomy normatively viewed as gendered in a particular way is referred to as such by cisgender partners, despite the fact that transgender people may regender their bodies to reflect their gender (i.e., referring to what might be normatively viewed as a clitoris as a dick). Transgender people may also experience their bodies being fetishized by intimate partners, drawing on broader cultural stereotypes about transgender people (Riggs, von Doussa, & Power, 2015). Beyond the impact that partners can have, dysphoria can also negatively impact on transgender and gender-diverse people’s experiences of intimacy. Doorduin and van Berlo (2014), for example, suggest that some of their participants who had managed to negotiate intimate encounters with cisgender partners felt that during the experience they were not in control of their body and its responses to intimacy and that this led to the encounter being akin to a rape. Importantly, as Doorduin and van Berlo note, ‘they felt not so much raped by their partners as raped by the situation itself ’ (original emphasis, p. 660). This speaks to the potential that stereotypes have to radically shape how people view their own bodies and their interactions with other people. For bisexual people, stereotypes hold a considerable potential to shape how bisexual people negotiate and experience intimacy. Research has found that bisexual people are often viewed 110

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

as ‘confused’ or ‘indecisive’, meaning that their sexual attractions may be placed in question or under scrutiny (Zivony & Lobel, 2014). The assumption that being attracted to all genders indicates ‘confusion’ can mean that bisexual intimate partners are viewed as untrustworthy. Another common stereotype about bisexual people is the assumption of a preference for nonmonogamy. Assumptions about non-monogamy are often connected to assumptions about promiscuity, meaning that bisexual people are often subjected to stereotypes related to both. All of these stereotypes can impact upon how bisexual people are viewed as intimate partners, as well as how bisexual people experience intimacy (McLean, 2008).

Discrimination Discrimination refers to the unreasonable or unwarranted treatment of people based on assumptions about them as individuals and as group members (see Dovidio et al., 2010). Unjust treatment can be a product of prejudiced views, it can be a product of stereotypes, and it can be a product of cultural norms, all of which are shaped by homophobia, heterosexism, heteronormativity and cisgenderism. Arguably, the most extreme form of discrimination towards LGBT people occurs when such people are denied the right to safety and indeed life. This can take the form of explicit and intentional violence directed towards LGBT people, which is our focus in this section. Violent anti-LGBT discrimination, in some settings referred to as ‘hate crimes’ or ‘homo-/ bi-/trans-phobic bullying’, can be understood ‘not as a random, opportunistic, or particularistic attacks [against individuals] but rather as the targeting of members of specific groups as symbols of that group’ (Kitzinger, 1996, pp. 11–12). In other words, such acts not only harm their victims but also send a message of intimidation to wider LGBT communities. While statistical information about sexuality and gender identity hate crime is not routinely (if at all) collected by police and other law enforcement agencies in many countries, there is considerable research and anecdotal evidence that it occurs (Peel, 1999). High-profile murder/manslaughter cases and targeted incidents (e.g., the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in London in 1999; the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando in 2016) are reminders that hate crimes directed towards LGBT people persist. One of the challenges faced by both researchers and practitioners is determining what constitutes a homophobic, biphobic or transphobic hate crime. Just because a crime is committed against someone who is LGBT (or against their property), it is not automatically hate-motivated. Although it is reasonable to assume that crimes are motivated by anti-LGBT discrimination given the prevalence of this within society, Herek and colleagues (Herek, Gillis, Cogan, & Glunt, 1997) explored how lesbians and gay men infer that the incidents they experience are motivated by discrimination. Based on interview data they identified three criteria: verbal cues (i.e., the perpetrator made anti-LGBTIQ remarks), visibility cues (i.e., the incident occurred in an LGBTIQidentified location or situation), or contextual inferences (e.g., the incident occurred while the person was known to be at a gay event). The same act (e.g., gendered embodiment; kissing or holding hands) can result in different consequences depending on the (perceived) gender of those involved (Meyer, 2015). It is therefore important to remember, for example, that an apparently homophobic incident may have as much to do with a person’s race, gender or class as it does with sexuality. Further in terms of discrimination and violence, we know from the literature that transgender young people experience high rates of discrimination (see Pullen Sansfaçon et al., 2018 for a summary).This can be from family members, from peers, from teachers, from healthcare professionals and from strangers. All of these groups can perpetuate the cisgenderist narrative that there is 111

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs

something ‘wrong’ with transgender young people, including that their bodies are ‘wrong’. This can be implicit – in the lack of inclusion or recognition of transgender young people – or it can be explicit, in acts of verbal and physical violence and exclusion.Transgender adolescents may be told or forced by their parents to conform to normative gendered expectations based on their assigned sex. They may be rejected outright by their parents. Their peers may ridicule them, intentionally misgender them, and refuse to associate with them. Strangers may target them for verbal harassment or physical abuse (as may family members and peers). For many transgender young people, there are few places that are safe from discrimination, and places that may seem safe can become unsafe. Given the research summarized above, research on discrimination, and specifically hate crimes, directed towards LGBT people is clearly very important and useful for understanding how discrimination against LGBT people is enacted, and about the psychological effects of such prejudice. However, because it focuses on overt forms of discrimination – that is, things that have happened or might happen (i.e., acts of aggression or violence, the expression of anti-LGBTQ sentiments) – and discrete incidences, it is less useful for understanding the wider impact that hate crimes have. Often acts of anti-LGBTIQ victimisation result in LGBTIQ people taking action to avoid victimisation (Ellis, Bailey, & McNeil, 2016; Rivers, Gonzalez, Nodin, Peel, & Tyler, 2018; Schmitz & Tyler, 2018), and heterosexual people taking action to avoid being labelled ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ (see further Ellis et al., 2020, pp. 101–102 discussion of identity management). It is therefore equally relevant to understand these resulting actions as it is to understand homophobic, biphobic and transphobic discrimination itself.Therefore, some social psychologists (e.g., Ellis, 2009) have focused their attention on LGBTIQ people’s perceptions of their environment and their experiences of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic prejudice. Often referred to as ‘climate studies’, this work focuses largely on documenting perceptions of how ‘safe’ or ‘LGBTIQ-friendly’ a particular setting (e.g., a school, college/university, or workplace) is. Such an approach to mapping discrimination is thus important for understanding the effects of discrimination upon wellbeing.

Social psychology and social change Importantly, the social-psychological study of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination directed towards LGBT people has not simply identified their effects but has also focused on their causes. Research has consistently found that attitudes towards LGBT people are most positive amongst people who are younger, less religious and less politically conservative (Eliason, 2000; Ellis, Kitzinger, & Wilkinson, 2003; Holland, Matthews, & Schott, 2013; Riggs & Sion, 2017). Women have consistently been found to hold more positive attitudes towards LGBT people when compared to men. This, of course, does not mean that all young, agnostic, liberal women hold positive attitudes towards LGBT people, but rather that there is a trend towards this being the case. Certainly older men may hold positive attitudes towards LGBT people, and young women may not. Studies have consistently found that attitudes towards LGBT people may be shaped or changed as a result of a number of factors. These include education about LGBT people’s lives, contact with LGBT people, exposure to LGBT people’s lives via positive media representations, and if ‘tolerance’ is promoted as a social norm (Bartoş, Berger, & Hegarty, 2014). Social psychologists continue to play a key role, then, in identifying approaches to inclusion that may help facilitate more positive attitudes towards LGBT people (Peel, 2009, 2010). Certainly, positive attitudes can occur for a number of reasons: upbringing, legislative change, outlook on life, interactions and exposure. For some people, positive attitudes may come ‘naturally’. However, for other people, 112

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

the same reasons (i.e., upbringing, legislation, outlook and interactions) may lead to negative attitudes, as these reasons may serve to reinforce existing prejudices and stereotypes. Nonetheless, research findings with respect to attitudes towards LGBT people are important, as such attitudes have been found to be linked to the wellbeing of LGBT people (Puckett, Woodward, Mereish, & Pantalone, 2015; Riggs et al., 2015). A sense of community belonging and acceptance is key to wellbeing for many people. For LGBT people specifically, a sense of community belonging and acceptance has been found to positively impact upon mental health and wellbeing (Dane & MacDonald, 2009; McLaren, Jude, & McLachlan, 2008). Programmes aimed at promoting positive attitudes towards LGBT people have been found to positively impact upon willingness to be inclusive and accepting, which have direct benefits for LGBT people (Menvielle & Hill, 2010), and indeed for all people in terms of living in a just society. For example, the Australian Government–funded ‘Safe Schools’ programme, which focused on promoting LGBT social inclusion in schools, was met with considerable resistance and polarized views on sexuality and gender. As a result, funding for the programme was withdrawn in 2017. In the main, social psychologists have taken a mainstream approach to understanding prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people. Importantly, however, a key barrier to increasing positive attitudes may be better understanding the most subtle forms of discrimination, and identifying how best to challenge these. Therefore, more work is needed to discursively explore ‘mundane heterosexism’ (Peel, 2001) and ‘mundane transphobia’ (Riggs, 2014). As Peel (2012) argued the field ‘has yet to comprehensively map the shifting terrain of the language of heterosexism (to borrow from Wetherell & Potter, 1992) … a renewed focus on this important project’ (p. 43) is valuable in understanding the normative assumptions that make heterosexism and transphobia speakable and the rhetorical devices that make them difficult to challenge (e.g., see Ellis, 2001; Jowett, 2014; Peel, 2002; Speer & Potter, 2000). Importantly, the use of the term ‘mundane’ is not intended to minimize the significance of any form of discrimination. Rather, it is to highlight the subtle and often unnoticed forms of discrimination that may occur. These concepts can be of use to social psychologists looking to move beyond a focus on extreme or explicit attitudes and to instead explore some of the more common, everyday barriers to inclusion which LGBT people experience. One of the challenges in working for positive social change is breaking down the takenfor-granted assumption of the biological essentialism surrounding the gender binary. Often it is (perceived) non-conformity to constructions of gender underpinned by this binary that produces prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people. For example, the positioning of a trans man as ‘once a female, now sort of a male’ (i.e., not a ‘real man’) (see Riggs, 2014) is a form of gatekeeping of gender that orients to this binary. An essentialist approach that measures attitudes is useful for determining the beliefs of the general population; and the study of stereotyping gives us an understanding of common perceptions of specific subgroups within the LGBT community. The study of discrimination focuses on the actions that may arise from attitudes and stereotypes, and which directly impact of the wellbeing of LGBT people. While it is important to understand all these aspects of prejudice, these approaches are less useful for identifying how prejudice is produced and therefore not ideally suited to identifying ways of challenging prejudice; especially that which is institutionalized and/ or reproduced in mundane interaction. Therefore, critical social psychological theory (e.g., social constructionist and discursive approaches) has an important part to play in challenging prejudice and effecting positive social change for LGBT people. As Riggs (2014, p. 169) highlighted: ‘As long as it is acceptable to talk about trans people as “really” being their natal sex, or only being “poor approximations” of natally assigned men and women, transphobia will continue to occur in mundane ways’. 113

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs

Conclusion This chapter has explored both the causes and effects of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination directed towards LGBT people. In so doing, it has highlighted that although the impact upon targets may be differentiated (i.e., marginalisation is differentially directed towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people), in many ways the net effects are similar: increased risk for poor outcomes, including poor mental health and violence. As such, this chapter demonstrated that programmes and strategies aimed at increasing positive attitudes are important, so as to minimize the negative net effects of marginalisation (i.e., minority stress and decompensation), and to promote social inclusion. More broadly, into the future it will be important that social psychologists continue to explore not simply how anti-LGBT prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination impact upon LGBT people, but also how they impact upon heterosexual and/or cisgender people. This is not to suggest that heterosexual and/or cisgender people are equally affected. Rather, it is to suggest that homophobia, heterosexism, heteronormativity and cisgenderism are a problem for everyone (Sears & Williams, 1997). They can lead people to police their own sexualities and genders, for fear of being read as LGBT. It can mean that people police other people so as to maintain strict binaries that reinforce heteronormativity and cisgenderism. Investigating the effects of anti-LGBT prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination on people who are not LGBT, then, requires sophisticated and subtle measures and research approaches that allow for an examination of the effects of social norms upon all people. In conclusion, the study of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination directed towards LGBT people has rightly been an increasingly important focus within social psychology. Needed, however, as the study of LGBT people’s lives continues, is a focus on equity rather than equality. What might be the specific needs of LGBT people that need targeted attention, rather than presuming that a level playing field is possible? Discourses of ‘positive discrimination’ are perhaps the most familiar to many, yet arguably these are often misread as showing favour towards a particular group. By contrast, a focus on equity looks at how, despite considerable gains in terms of the law in many western countries, inequities continue. Examining structural as well as individual barriers to inclusion, then, and arguing for the importance of equity-based (as opposed to equality-based) approaches to designing research, is thus an important focus for the field of social psychology into the future as it continues to grapple with prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination directed towards LGBT people.

References Abbott, K., Ellis, S.J., & Abbott, R. (2015). ‘We don’t get into all that’: An analysis of how teachers uphold heteronormative sex and relationship education. Journal of Homosexuality, 62(12), 1638–1659. Aguinaldo, J.P. (2008). The social construction of gay oppression as a determinant of gay men’s health: ‘Homophobia is killing us’. Critical Public Health, 18(1), 87–96. American Psychological Association. (2015). Guidelines for psychological practice with transgender and gender nonconforming people. American Psychologist, 70, 832–864. Ansara, Y.G. (2015). Challenging cisgenderism in the ageing and aged care sector: Meeting the needs of older people of trans and/or non-binary experience. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 34(S2), 14–18. Ansara, Y.G. & Hegarty, P. (2012). Cisgenderism in psychology: Pathologising and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008. Psychology & Sexuality, 3(2), 137–160. Ansara, Y.G. & Hegarty, P. (2014). Methodologies of misgendering: Recommendations for reducing cisgenderism in psychological research. Feminism & Psychology, 24(2), 259–270. Barnes, E. & Carlile, A. (2018). How to transform your school into an LGBT+ friendly place. London: Jessica Kingsley.

114

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people Bartoş, S.E., Berger, I., & Hegarty, P. (2014). Interventions to reduce sexual prejudice: A study-space analysis and meta-analytic review. Journal of Sex Research, 51(4), 363–382. Blumer, M.L., Ansara, Y.G., & Watson, C.M. (2013). Cisgenderism in family therapy: How everyday clinical practices can delegitimize people’s gender self-designations. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 24(4), 267–285. Bowes-Catton, H. & Hayfield, N. (2015). Bisexuality. In C. Richards, & M.J. Barker (eds.), The Palgrave handbook of the psychology of sexuality and gender (pp. 42–59). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Braun, V. (2000). Heterosexism in focus group research: Collusion and challenge. Feminism & Psychology, 10(1), 133–140. Clarke,V. & Peel, E. (eds.) (2007). Out in psychology: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer perspectives (pp. 11–35) Chichester: John Wiley. Cloughessy, K. & Waniganayake, M. (2015). ‘Raised eyebrows’: Working with lesbian-parented families – Experiences of childcare centre directors in Australia. Children & Society, 29: 377–387. Cohen, C. (2005). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queen: The radical potential of queer politics? In E. Patrick Johnson & Mae G Henderson (eds.), Black Queer Studies. Duke: Duke UP. Cohen, J.N. & Byers, E.S. (2014). Beyond lesbian bed death: Enhancing our understanding of the sexuality of sexual-minority women in relationships. Journal of Sex Research, 51(8), 893–903. Dane, S.K. & MacDonald, G. (2009). Heterosexuals’ acceptance predicts the well-being of same-sex attracted young adults beyond ingroup support. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 26(5), 659–677. Davids, C.M. & Lundquist, G.G. (2018). Relationship themes and structures of bisexual individuals. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 33(1–2), 6–12. Doorduin,T. & Van Berlo,W. (2014).Trans people’s experience of sexuality in the Netherlands: A pilot study. Journal of Homosexuality, 61(5), 654–672. Dovidio, J.F., Hewstone, M., Glick, P., & Esses,V.M. (2010). Chapter 1: Prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination: Theoretical and empirical overview. In J. F. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, P. Glick, & V. M. Esses (eds.), The SAGE handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. London: Sage. Eliason, M. (2000). Bi-negativity: The stigma facing bisexual men. Journal of Bisexuality, 1(2–3), 137–154. Ellis, S., Riggs, D.W., & Peel, E. (2020). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer psychology: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, S.J. (2001). Doing being liberal: Implicit prejudice in focus group talk about lesbian and gay human rights issues. Lesbian & Gay Psychology Review, 2(2), 43–49. Ellis, S.J. (2009). Diversity and inclusivity at university: A survey of the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students in the UK. Higher Education, 57(6), 723–739. Ellis, S.J., Bailey, L., & McNeil, J. (2016). Transphobic victimisation and perceptions of future risk: A largescale study of the experiences of trans people in the UK. Psychology & Sexuality, 7(3), 211–224. Ellis, S.J., Kitzinger, C., & Wilkinson, S. (2003). Attitudes towards lesbians and gay men and support for lesbian and gay human rights among psychology students. Journal of homosexuality, 44(1), 121–138. Frankis, J. & Flowers, P. (2005). Men who have sex with men (MSM) in public sex environments (PSEs): A systematic review of quantitative literature. AIDS Care, 17: 273–288. Grant, J.M., Mottet, L.A., Tanis, J., Harrison, J., Herman, J.L., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimination survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Harding, R. & Peel, E. (2007). Heterosexism at work: Diversity training, discrimination law and the limits of liberal individualism. In V. Clarke & E. Peel (eds.), Out in psychology: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer perspectives (pp. 247–271). Chichester: Wiley. Herek, G.M. (1990). The context of anti-gay violence: Notes on cultural and psychological heterosexism. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 5(3), 316–333. Herek, G.M., Gillis, J.R., Cogan, J.C., & Glunt, E.K. (1997). Hate crime victimization among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults: Prevalence, psychological correlates, and methodological issues. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 12(2), 195–215. Holland, L., Matthews, T.L., & Schott, M.R. (2013). ‘That’s so gay!’ Exploring college students’ attitudes toward the LGBT population. Journal of Homosexuality, 60(4), 575–595. Hough, D. (2018). Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) National Benchmarking Publication. ACON’s Pride Inclusion Programs. Retrieved July 3, 2019, from http://www.pid-awei.com.au/content/ uploads/2018/08/AWEI_Report_2018.pdf. Iasenza, S. (2002). Beyond ‘lesbian bed death’. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 6(1), 111–120.

115

E. Peel, S.J. Ellis and D.W. Riggs Jowett, A. (2014). ‘But if you legalise same sex marriage …’: Arguments against equal marriage in the British press. Feminism & Psychology, 24(1), 37–55. Kitzinger, C. (1987). The social construction of lesbianism. London: Sage. Kitzinger, C. (1996). Speaking of oppression: Psychology, politics, and the language of power. In E.D. Rothblum & L.A. Bond (eds.), Preventing heterosexism and homophobia (pp. 3–19). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kitzinger, C. (2005). Heteronormativity in action: Reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in afterhours medical calls. Social Problems, 52(4), 477–498. Kitzinger, C. & Coyle, A. (2002). Introducing lesbian and gay psychology. In A. Coyle & C. Kitzinger (eds.), Lesbian and gay psychology: New perspectives (pp. 1–29). Leicester: BPS/Blackwell. Land,V., & Kitzinger, C. (2005). Speaking as a lesbian: Correcting the heterosexist presumption. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(4), 371–416. McLaren, S., Jude, B., & McLachlan, A.J. (2008). Sense of belonging to the general and gay communities as predictors of depression among Australian gay men. International Journal of Men’s Health, 7(1), 90–99. McLean, K. (2008). Silences and stereotypes: The impact of (mis)constructions of bisexuality on Australian bisexual men and women. Gay & Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, 4(3), 158–165. Menvielle, E. & Hill, D.B. (2010). An affirmative intervention for families with gender-variant children: A process evaluation. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 15(1), 94–123. Meyer, I.H. (1995). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36(1), 38–56. Meyer, I.H. (2003). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. In L.D. Garnets & D.C. Kimmel (eds.), Psychological perspectives on lesbian, gay, and bisexual experiences (pp. 699–731). New York: Columbia University Press. Meyer, I.H. (2015). Resilience in the study of minority stress and health of sexual and gender minorities. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 2(3), 209–213. Pachankis, J.E. & Bernstein, L.B. (2012). An etiological model of anxiety in young gay men: From early stress to public self-consciousness. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 13(2), 107–122. Peel, E. (1999). Violence against lesbians and gay men: Decision-making in reporting and not reporting crime. Feminism & Psychology, 9(2), 161–167. Peel, E. (2001). Mundane heterosexism: Understanding incidents of the everyday. In Women’s Studies International Forum, 24, 541–554. Peel, E. (2002). Lesbian and gay awareness training: Challenging homophobia, liberalism and managing stereotypes. In A. Coyle, & C. Kitzinger (eds.), Lesbian and gay psychology: New perspectives (pp. 255–274). Oxford: BPS Blackwell. Peel, E. (2005). Effeminate ‘fudge nudgers’ and tomboyish ‘lettuce lickers’: Language and the construction of sexualities in diversity training. Psychology of Women Section Review, 7(2), 22–34. Peel, E. (2009). Intergroup relations in action: Questions asked about lesbian, gay and bisexual issues in diversity training. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 19, 271–285. Peel, E. (2010). Chipping away at the taken-for-granted: Reflection in a sexualities course. Feminism & Psychology, 20(2), 225–231. Peel, E. (2012). Moving beyond heterosexism? The good, the bad and the indifferent in accounts of others’ reactions to important life events. Psychology of Sexualities Review, 3(1), 34–46. Prestage, G., Bavinton, B., Grierson, J., Down, I., Keen, P., Bradley, J., & Duncan, D. (2015). Online dating among Australian gay and bisexual men: Romance or hooking up? AIDS and Behavior, 19(10), 1905–1913. Puckett, J.A.,Woodward, E.N., Mereish, E.H., & Pantalone, D.W. (2015). Parental rejection following sexual orientation disclosure: Impact on internalized homophobia, social support, and mental health. LGBT health, 2(3), 265–269. Pullen Sansfaçon, A., Hébert, W., Lee, E.O.J., Faddoul, M., Tourki, D., & Bellot, C. (2018). Digging beneath the surface: Results from stage one of a qualitative analysis of factors influencing the well-being of trans youth in Quebec. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 184–202. Pyne, J., Bauer, G., & Bradley, K. (2014). Transphobia and other stressors impacting trans parents. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 11(2), 107–126. Riggs, D.W. (2013). Transgender men’s self-representations of bearing children post-transition. In F. Green & M. Friedman (eds.), Chasing rainbows (pp. 62–71). Toronto: Demeter Press. Riggs, D.W. (2014). What makes a man? Thomas Beatie, embodiment, and ‘mundane transphobia’. Feminism & Psychology, 24(2), 157–171.

116

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people Riggs, D.W., Ansara, G.Y., & Treharne, G.J. (2015). An evidence-based model for understanding the mental health experiences of transgender Australians. Australian Psychologist, 50(1), 32–39. Riggs, D.W. & Bartholomaeus, C. (2018). Transgender young people’s narratives of intimacy and sexual health: Implications for sexuality education. Sex Education, 18(4), 376–390. Riggs, D.W. & Sion, R. (2017). Gender differences in cisgender psychologists’ and trainees’ attitudes toward transgender people. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 18(2), 187. Riggs, D.W. & Treharne, G.J. (2017). Decompensation: A novel approach to accounting for stress arising from the effects of ideology and social norms. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(5), 592–605. Riggs, D.W., von Doussa, H., & Power, J. (2015). The family and romantic relationships of trans and gender diverse Australians: An exploratory study. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 30(2), 243–255. Rivers, I., Gonzalez, C., Nodin, N., Peel, E., & Tyler, A. (2018). LGBT people and suicidality in youth: A qualitative study of perceptions of risk and protective circumstances. Social Science & Medicine, 212: 1–8. Rood, B.A., Reisner, S.L., Surace, F.I., Puckett, J.A., Maroney, M.R., & Pantalone, D.W. (2016). Expecting rejection: Understanding the minority stress experiences of transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. Transgender Health, 1(1), 151–164. Sawyer, K.B., Thoroughgood, C., & Ladge, J. (2017). Invisible families, invisible conflicts: Examining the added layer of work-family conflict for employees with LGB families. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 103, 23–39. Schmitz, R.M. & Tyler, K.A. (2018). Contextual constraints and choices: Strategic identity management among LGBTQ youth. Journal of LGBT Youth, 65(2), 197–223. Sears, J.T. & Williams,W. (eds.) (1997). Overcoming heterosexism and homophobia: Strategies that work. New York: Columbia University Press. Sewell, K.K., McGarrity, L.A., & Strassberg, D.S. (2017). Sexual behavior, definitions of sex, and the role of self-partner context among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. Journal of Sex Research, 54(7), 825–831. Shannon, B. (2016). Comprehensive for who? Neoliberal directives in Australian ‘comprehensive’ sexuality education and the erasure of GLBTIQ identity. Sex Education, 16(6), 573–585. Smith, K.T. (1971). Homophobia: A tentative personality profile. Psychological Reports, 29, 1091–1094. Speer, S.A. & Parsons, C. (2006). Gatekeeping gender: Some features of the use of hypothetical questions in the psychiatric assessment of transsexual patients. Discourse & Society, 17(6), 785–812. Speer, S.A. & Potter, J. (2000).The management of heterosexist talk: Conversational resources and prejudiced claims. Discourse & Society, 11(4), 543–572. Solomon, S.E., Rothblum, E.D., & Balsam, K.F. (2005). Money, housework, sex, and conflict: Same-sex couples in civil unions, those not in civil unions, and heterosexual married siblings. Sex Roles, 52(9/10), 561–575. Surtees, N. & Gunn, A. (2010). Remarking heteronormativity: Resisting practices in early childhood education contexts. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 35, 42–47. Tan, K.H., Ellis, S.J., Schmidt, J.M., Byrne, J.L., & Veale, J.F. (2020). Mental health inequities among transgender people in Aotearoa New Zealand: Findings from the counting ourselves survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(8), 2862. Tan, K.H., Schmidt, J.M., Ellis, S.J., & Veale, J.F. (2019). Mental health of trans and gender diverse people in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A review of the social determinants of inequities. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 48(2), 64–72. Testa, R.J., Michaels, M.S., Bliss, W., Rogers, M.L., Balsam, K.F., & Joiner, T. (2017). Suicidal ideation in transgender people: Gender minority stress and interpersonal theory factors. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(1), 125–136. Tobin, H.J. (2003). Sexuality in transsexual and transgender individuals. (Unpublished honors thesis). Ohio: Oberlin College. Warner, M. (1991). Introduction: Fear of a queer planet. Social Text, 9(4), 3–17. Weinberg, G. (1972). Society and the healthy homosexual. New York: St Martin’s. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Zivony, A. & Lobel, T. (2014). The invisible stereotypes of bisexual men. Archives of sexual behavior, 43(6), 1165–1176.

117

9 ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENTS IN WESTERN SOCIETIES Maykel Verkuyten

The migration of Muslims to Western societies has led to strong public and political debates, especially since the beginning of the 21st century.What citizens think about Muslim immigrants and their offspring has important implications for intergroup relations, civic cohesion, the acceptance of immigration and asylum policies, and political responses to radicalisation and terrorism. Islam is often construed and viewed as a threat to Western liberal values and democracy and there is an increasing number of discriminatory, hostile and violent actions against Muslims and Islamic facilities. In the United States, Muslims experience various forms of discrimination, including being treated with suspicion, singled out by airport security or called offensive names.1 In Australia, Muslims have been found to experience discrimination at three times the rate of other Australians.2 And in Europe, Muslims are discriminated in the areas of employment and education, their rights to freedom of religion and of expressing their religious identity are restricted (Amnesty International, 2012), and there is widespread public support for a restriction, or even ban, on Muslim immigration (Marfouk, 2019). In the last 20 years, the number of empirical studies on anti-Muslim sentiments has been growing and these studies focus on different types of attitudes and different underlying reasons. Furthermore, various conceptualizations, measures, research methods and comparative designs have been proposed and used.This chapter begins with a discussion of the conceptualization and related empirical attitude research of anti-Muslim sentiments by making a distinction between prejudices against Muslims and negative views about Islam. This is followed by an overview of concepts explaining the emergence of anti-Muslim sentiments, particularly secular and liberal ideological beliefs, and cultural, political and security threats. I will regularly refer to the West European context because most of the empirical research has been conducted here. Furthermore, anti-Muslim sentiments are examined in various social sciences and therefore the current discussion is not limited to social psychological research. However, most of the research focuses on measuring individual attitudes and this is reflected in the chapter. Finally, I will use the term Muslim immigrants to refer to people who are international 1 www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/26/american-muslims-are-concerned-but-also-satisfiedwith-their-lives/. 2 www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-30/muslims-discr imination-three-times-more-than-otheraustralians/6985138.

118

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-9

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

migrants themselves or of immigrant-origin (i.e., second and third generation), and who describe themselves and/or are ascribed as belonging to the nominal religion of Islam.

Anti-Muslim sentiments There are different concepts for referring to negative sentiments towards Muslim immigrants and Islam, such as Islamophobia, anti-Islamism, Muslimphobia, anti-Muslim prejudice, and intolerance against Muslims. These different concepts reflect differences in focus and understanding: how a phenomenon is conceptualized matters for the causes, key features, manifestations and practical implications that are considered. All these concepts are contested and have been strongly discussed and criticized (e.g., Bleich, 2011; Richardson, 2012). For example, Islamophobia is not only a contested term because of the connotations of the concept of ‘phobia’, but also because of the question as to whether Islam as a religion/culture or Muslims as adherents of Islam is the focal point. One way to distinguish between the terms that are in current use is to differentiate between the object of the attitude. This allows us to examine the differences and relations between people’s sentiments towards Muslims as a group of people (anti-Muslim prejudice), and towards Islam as a religious belief system and set of practices (Islamophobia).

Anti-Muslim prejudices Research indicates that anti-Muslim prejudices are fairly widespread in Western societies, although there are important country differences (e.g., Ogan, Willnat, Pennington, & Bashir, 2014; Shaver, Troughton, Sibley, & Bulbulia, 2016). For example, a large-scale representative survey in different countries found that majorities (> 65%) in Hungary, Italy, Poland and Greece express unfavourable views about Muslims, while these views were less common in Northern and Western Europe and in the United States (around 25–30%, PEW, 2017), and in Australia (around 10%).3 In the European context, these findings are sometimes used to argue that anti-Muslim feelings are more widespread than general anti-immigrant feelings (see Strabac & Listhaug, 2008). Almost all Muslims living in Western countries are of immigrant origin, but in addition to the prejudices and discrimination faced by immigrants, Muslim immigrants have to cope with prejudices related to their religious background. In the media and in political and public debates, Muslims are often singled out as the prototypical negative other (Zolberg & Long, 1999) and therefore would face more negative reactions and behaviours. Although greater news exposure has been found to be associated with stronger anti-Muslim attitudes (Ogan et al., 2014; Shaver, Sibley, Osborne, & Bulbulia, 2017), much of the research on anti-Muslim prejudices is ill-suited for drawing the conclusion that these prejudices are more widespread. Anti-Muslim attitudes and anti-immigrant attitudes tend to be (very) strongly related (e.g., Helbling, 2010) and some research on attitudes towards immigrants suggests that these are quite similar across different groups of newcomers (e.g., Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007). However, others argue and demonstrate that the attitudes are (in part) group-specific and depend, for example, on cultural similarity (Ford, 2011), national origin (Hainmueller & Hangartner, 2013), and religion (Bansak, Hainmueller, & Hangartner, 2016). To better understand people’s attitudes towards Muslim immigrants, survey and experimental research has compared these with those towards other immigrants in general. Comparative

3 www.unisa.edu.au/siteassets/episerver-6-files/global/eass/mnm/publications/islamophobia_report.pdf.

119

M. Verkuyten

research in Europe (e.g., Doebler, 2014), the United States (e.g., Kalkan, Layman, & Uslaner, 2009) and in Australia and New Zealand (e.g., Shaver et al., 2016) demonstrates that anti-Muslim feelings are indeed more wide-spread than negative feelings towards other immigrant groups. For instance, a large-scale study found that Muslim immigrants were more subject to discrimination than immigrants in general in 13 out of the 17 European countries studied (Strabac & Listhaug, 2008; but see Strabac, Aalberg, & Valenta, 2013), and the same was found in a large-scale study in New Zealand (Shaver et al., 2016). Further, experimental research in Belgium demonstrated that anti-Muslim attitudes were more intense compared to anti-immigrant attitudes and that respondents who had Muslims in mind while being asked about immigrants in general (around a third of the sample) had equally negative attitudes as those who were explicitly asked about Muslims (Spruyt & Elchardus, 2012). Additionally, experimental research that compares people’s attitudes towards Muslim and Christian immigrants and asylum seekers of the same ethnicity or the same country of origin, demonstrates that Muslims are evaluated more negatively than Christians (e.g., Bansak et al., 2016; Helbling & Traunmüller, 2018).This is also found in everyday talk of majority members in city neighbourhoods in the Netherlands (Verkuyten, 1997). The existing research typically uses direct measures and therefore assesses explicit attitudes. Studies using implicit (Malhotra, Margalit, & Mo, 2013) or covert (i.e., fully anonymous, Creighton, Schmidt, & Zavala-Rojas, 2018) measures have shown that anti-immigrant attitudes can be significantly and substantially masked with more negativity on these measures compared to explicit questions. However, these differences in overt and covert attitudes do not have to be equally strong for different immigrant groups. Specifically, the negative societal discourse and public debate about Muslim immigrants might make it socially more acceptable to explicitly express negative attitudes towards this group compared to, for example, Christian immigrants. As a result Muslim immigrants might experience more explicit resistance, while the covert attitude towards both religious immigrant groups is the same. This pattern of results was found among a representative sample of the US population in relation to granting citizenship to a legal immigrant who is either Muslim or Christian (Creighton & Jamal, 2015). This indicates that majority members can be less concerned about expressing socially undesirable attitudes towards Muslim immigrants than towards Christian immigrants (see also Brown-Iannuzzi1, Najle1, & Gervais, 2019).

Islamophobia By name, Islamophobia suggests resentment against Islam as a religion but scholars (Bleich, 2011) and research (e.g., Lee, Gibbons, Thompson, & Timani, 2009) often do not differentiate between questioning and criticizing aspects of Islamic doctrine and prejudice towards Muslims. One important reason for this is that Islam critique often serves to rationalize prejudicial attitudes and justify discrimination against Muslims (Fekete, 2004; Semati, 2010). Criticizing a religion is socially more acceptable than criticizing a group of people and as a result individuals can disguise their prejudiced views towards Muslims as ‘reasonable’ criticism of Islam (e.g., as a violenceglorifying religion, or a sexist religion). For example, populist politicians have been found to strategically use the distinction between Islam and Muslims to ward off accusations of being prejudiced and discriminating (Verkuyten, 2013). They claim that they have nothing against Muslims as such but that Islam does not fit into the Christian or rather liberal and secular nature of the country. Further, politicians can use a strong affective discourse of threat and discomfort with particular Islamic beliefs and practices (e.g., face-veiling) that functions to exclude Muslims (e.g., Moors, 2009). Political and media discourse on Islam has also been analysed in terms of cultural essentialist representations that construe Muslims as the negative, incompatible other (e.g., Van Nieuwkerk, 2004). 120

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

However, the fact that rationalizations and justifications of anti-Muslim sentiments often occur does not mean that people cannot have genuine concerns and that critique of Islam cannot have other sources (Zuquete, 2008). On some accounts critique of Islamic doctrine and practices should not simply be denounced and confused with negative feelings towards Muslims as a group of people. In survey research in Germany using confirmatory factor analysis it was found that anti-Islam belief can be empirically differentiated from anti-Muslim prejudice (Uenal, 2016a, 2016b). A similar result was found in a survey study in the US context (Lee et al., 2009) and in India, Poland and France (Uenal et al., 2020). Further, in two other survey studies in Germany an empirical distinction between prejudiced views and secularly motivated critiques of Islam were made, with both scales being independent or only moderately related (Imhoff & Recker, 2012). Additionally, a research study in six Western European countries found large country differences in the levels of opposition to the Islamic practice of wearing a headscarf, but similar attitudes towards Muslims as a group of people (Helbling, 2014). In the context of the United States, Kalkan and colleagues (2009) showed that an empirical distinction can be made between people’s attitudes towards social categories that are defined by racial, ethnic and religious background and their attitudes towards cultural groups that are defined by dissenting practices and behaviours. Anti-Muslim sentiments were found to be connected to both attitudes, but most strongly to the latter one. In line with this, experimental research in the United Kingdom has demonstrated that anti-Muslim sentiments are more strongly determined by people’s resistance towards orthodox religious practices and behaviours than towards Muslims as a group. Devout practising Muslim immigrants were evaluated somewhat more negatively compared to devout Christian immigrants but the latter were clearly resented more than the average practicing Muslim. These findings indicate that people’s concerns about Muslim immigrants can be more about strict forms of religiosity than about Muslim immigrants as a group per se (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2018). Various studies have examined how the public evaluates different Islamic practices and behaviours and whether one is willing to accept or rather reject these. For example, public opinion research has found that around half of the public supports a ban on headscarves in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, whereas the other half does not.4 In this type of research, respondents are typically presented with two types of information: the group of Muslims and the specific religious practice. This means that people can respond to the group (e.g., dislike of Muslims) or to the specific practice (religious schools), or a combination of the two. For example, one can resist the idea of wearing a headscarf because one disapproves of this particular practice (Saroglou, Lamkaddem,Van Pachterbeke, & Buxant, 2009), and/or has explicit negative feelings towards Muslims as a group (Helbling, 2014). In Germany,Van der Noll (2014) finds significant associations between the dislike of Muslims and the willingness to ban various civil rights (e.g., wearing headscarves, Islamic education, building mosques). However, other studies show that the relationship between dislike of Muslims and rejection of some of their religious practices is not always that straightforward. Some individuals do not dislike Muslims as a group but still oppose particular practices, while others dislike the group but accept some practices. For example, in a Dutch study one-third of participants showed prejudice towards Muslims, but still tolerated their rights, while 12% had positive attitudes towards Muslims, but did not accept a Muslim teacher in school or a Muslim giving a public speech at school (Van der Noll,Verkuyten, & Poppe, 2010). In another study,Van der Noll (2014) found that 20% of the respondents rejected headscarves, Muslim symbols and minarets despite having positive attitudes towards Muslims.And by using an unobtrusive measure of prejudice, Sniderman and Hagendoorn

4 www.pewglobal.org/2006/11/20/europeans-debate-the-scarf-and-the-veil/.

121

M. Verkuyten

(2007) showed that the rejection of Islamic practices can be based more on the disapproval of the practice itself rather than a dislike of Muslims per se. A particular Muslim minority practice might raise specific moral and normative concerns among non-Muslim citizens (Verkuyten, 1997). For instance, wearing a headscarf might evoke the issue of gender equality, and religious education in public schools can evoke concerns about the secular nature of the state (Moss, Blodorn, Van Camp, & O’Brien, 2019; Sarrasin, 2016). When people view an issue as moral, they show greater discomfort with dissenting practices and do not accept these, regardless of whether Muslims or Christians engage in them (Hirsch,Verkuyten, & Yogeeswaran, 2019). Using latent profile analysis and four national samples in the Netherlands, Adelman and Verkuyten (2020) identified a group of people who rejected various Islam-based practices without having prejudicial feelings towards Muslims, and a group of people who consistently rejected the same practices but reported strong negative affect towards Muslims (see also Dangubic,Verkuyten, & Stark, 2021). Individuals might apply a double standard and not object to the same practice when, for example, Christians are engaged in it. If people are equally opposed to Muslims and Christians engaging in the same practice (no double standard), it is likely that they have more generic reasons (e.g., secular beliefs) for doing so. But if people apply a double standard and reject a particular practice only for Muslims, it is likely that negative feelings towards Muslims as a group are involved (Dangubic, Stark, & Verkuyten, 2020; Mondak & Hurwitz, 1998).

Explaining anti-Muslim sentiments There are various explanations for anti-immigrant attitudes at the individual and intergroup levels. For example, social psychological research has focused on individual differences in social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, political orientation, national identification and intergroup competition over restricted material and symbolic resources (Wagner, Christ, & Heitmeyer, 2010). These explanations are also put forward and tested in relation to attitudes towards Muslim immigrants (e.g., Ciftci, 2012; Dangubic et al., 2021; Dunwoody & McFarland, 2017; Johnson, 2006; Rowatt, Franklin, & Cotton, 2005; Strabac et al., 2013; Wilson, 2019). However, there are also more specific explanations that can improve our understanding of these attitudes (Meuleman, Abts, Slootmaeckers, & Meeusen, 2019). In this chapter I will focus on some of these more specific explanations by first discussing the role of secularism and liberalism as two core ideological beliefs, and then the role of cultural fears, perceived Islamization, and security fear as three specific forms of outgroup threat.

Ideological beliefs Using survey data, several studies have tried to examine the extent to which anti-Muslim attitudes are predicted by specific value orientations, over and above the statistical effect of generalized prejudice. For example, research in Belgium shows that adherence to a conception of human rights induces Islam scepticism, independent of prejudice and xenophobia (Elchardus & Spruyt, 2014), whereas values of self-direction and universalism are independently associated with stronger support for Islamic practices (Saroglou et al., 2009;Van der Noll, 2014). Here I focus on the role of secularism and liberalism as two central Western democratic values.

Secularism Secularism involves a general opposition to religious interference in public affairs and this can form the ground for not accepting a role for religion – including Islam – in, for example, public 122

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

education and public institutions (Fetzer & Soper, 2003). In a German study, it was found that a desire for the separation of church and state plays a role in opposition to both Christian and Islamic public education, beyond anti-Muslim attitudes (Van der Noll & Saroglou, 2015). In Denmark, Aarǿe (2012) showed that those who support secularism do not differentiate between endorsing the banning of Christians’ and Muslims’ symbols for public officials. Additionally, in a large-scale study in Western European countries it was found that those endorsing secularism were more likely to reject religious symbols and religious public education for both Christians and Muslims (Dangubic et al., 2020). Moreover, in cross-national European research the strongest anti-Muslim attitudes were found among nonreligious people (Ribberink, Achterberg, & Houtman, 2017). Further, in a study in Quebec, Breton and Eady (2015) showed that while those who hold prejudicial views supported a ban on religious symbols, a majority of people supporting such a ban did so out of secular beliefs. In another study in Quebec it was found that feelings of cultural threat and generalized prejudice predicted support for banning minority religious symbols whereas holding secular values predicted support to ban all religious symbols (Bilodeau, Turgeon, White, & Henderson, 2018). These findings indicate that the rejection of Islamic practices cannot always be reduced to anti-Muslim feelings but can be based on secular convictions against religion per se.

Liberalism Liberal values emphasize individual autonomy, freedom and choice and these can be discursively deployed for ‘illiberal ends’ (Augoustinos & Every, 2007). Liberal arguments can be used against equal rights for all and to justify prejudices and discrimination of groups that are construed as being non-liberal. For example, populist right-wing politicians and also lay people have been found to justify the intolerance of Muslim immigrants by claiming that these immigrants themselves are intolerant and thus undermine society’s liberal values (Verkuyten, 1997, 2013). However, supporting the right of each citizen to express their views and live the life that they want is also closely connected to political and social tolerance (Sullivan & Transue, 1999). People who emphasize the importance of protecting individual rights and freedoms tend to be more tolerant and accepting of minority practices. For example, valuing civil liberties has been found to be associated with lower support for a ban on headscarves and lower opposition to the building of Mosques in Germany (Van der Noll, 2014). Saroglou and colleagues (2009) showed that those who value freedom more tend to be more accepting of Muslim religious symbols in society. Similarly, Hagendoorn and Poppe (2012) found that tolerant people support the freedom of Muslim minorities to live their lives as they see fit. Additionally, Gustavsson and colleagues (2016) found that those who emphasize that the state should not restrict individual choices and religious expressions expressed less negative attitudes towards the Muslim headscarf. However, in this latter research it was also found that an emphasis on personal autonomy and choice was associated with a more negative attitude towards the Muslim veil. People with liberal values have been found to have positive attitudes towards Muslims as a group but feel torn when it comes to religious practices such as the wearing of the headscarf (Helbling, 2014). The reason is that some of these practices are considered to stand for the illiberal values of Islam (patriarchal, gender inequality, rejection of sexual liberties). One can oppose the headscarf in the name of liberalism because it is seen as a signal of restricted freedom and inequality. Liberalism might have a more procedural meaning in which one accepts all ways of life or rather a more substantive one in which only those ways of life are accepted that are considered liberal. A large-scale study in the Netherlands found that many people condemn Muslims’ alleged negative attitudes towards women and their authoritarian child-raising 123

M. Verkuyten

practices, without having negative attitudes towards Muslim immigrants as a group (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007). And in a qualitative analysis of an open-ended question in a representative population survey in Norway, it was found that depictions of how Muslims treat women are considered the main reason for negative attitudes towards Islam (Doving, 2015). Furthermore in an experimental study that manipulated whether Muslims either do or do not support gender equality, anti-Muslim attitudes were found to be reduced in the condition in which Muslims valued gender equality because this increased people’s belief that Muslims share their liberal values (Moss et al., 2019).

Cultural threat, perceived Islamization and security fear The mass media and social media, and populist politicians often present Muslims as a cultural, demographic and safety threat to the West. For example, an analysis of five Australian newspapers in 2017 found almost 3000 articles in which words suggesting threat (violence, terror, radical) were used alongside Muslims/Islam (One Path, 2018).5 And an analysis of the word corpus of British newspaper articles (1998–2009) found that notions related to ‘conflict’ were prominent (Baker, Gabrielatos, & McEnery, 2013). In right-wing political discourse, an essentialised, homogeneous and dangerous ‘Islamic other’ is being construed (Verkuyten, 2013; Wood & Finlay, 2008) with an inflated perception of the size of the Muslim minority population. For example, the number of Muslim immigrants in the United States (1.2%) and throughout West European nations (< 10%) is overestimated with 15% to 20%.6 There is threat in numbers and this threat might appear greater as it actually is which increases feelings of vulnerability that reduce cognitive functioning and simplifies thinking. In turn, simplification can lead to more category-based thinking with related out-group negativity.The perceived size of the Muslim immigrant population might be an important outcome as well as a predictor of anti-Muslim sentiments.

Cultural threat Many people in the West feel that Muslim immigration is causing their country to change in unrecognizable ways. For example, in Europe there is widespread support for the idea that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the country’s culture and values.7 Cultural fears arise from concerns about Muslim beliefs and cultural traditions that appear to challenge or undermine the liberal and secular way of life in one’s country, or rather its deep-rooted Christian traditions (Dahab & Omori, 2019). Either way, Muslim immigrants are construed and viewed as a threat to longstanding traditions, moral values and everyday norms and habits which is associated with a narrative of failed integration and understandable Muslim disadvantage (e.g., Moffitt, Juang, & Syed, 2018). Survey research has found that perceptions of cultural threat are associated with anti-Muslim attitudes (e.g., Velasco González, Verkuyten, Weesie, & Poppe, 2008; Wirtz, van der Pligt, & Doosje, 2015). These associations are typically interpreted as feelings of threat driving prejudices. However, it is also possible that anti-Muslim attitudes and discourses justify and cause perceptions of threat that make one’s outgroup dislike and hostility psychologically and socially understandable: threat can not only affect and justify prejudice but prejudice can also affect and justify threat

5 www.onepathnetwork.com/islam-in-the-media. 6 www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/01/daily-chart2?fsrc=scn%2Fwl1%2Fislamineurope. 7 www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/.

124

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

(Bahns, 2017). Research measuring cultural threat typically uses items that focus on both the ‘object’ that is at risk (one’s cultural identity) and the group (Muslims) that allegedly puts it at risk (e.g., ‘These days, I am afraid that our national culture is threatened by Muslim immigrants’). This means that the measure might not only tap into feelings of threat but also whether in general individuals dislike Muslims as a group. This can make cultural threat an explanation of anti-Muslim prejudice tautological. One way to address this risk of tautology is to ask about perceptions of cultural threat without making reference to Muslims as a group (e.g., ‘These days, I am afraid that our national culture is threatened’). Research that has used this de-coupling strategy has found that cultural threats matter markedly more for prejudicial attitudes than any other form of threat (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007). Another approach is the use of experimental and quasi-experimental designs to test the effect of perceived cultural threat on prejudicial attitudes (Rios, Sosa, & Osborn, 2018). For example, cultural threat from Muslims in Western countries can be experimentally manipulated by providing ‘evidence’ that Muslims value gender equality less (Moss et al., 2019), by highlighting visible differences between Islam and other religions in Western countries (Schmuck & Matthes, 2017), or by manipulating the degree of Muslim religiosity (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2018). For example, in a large-scale survey embedded experiment in the United Kingdom it was found that anti-Muslim attitudes are far more negative towards beliefs of orthodox Muslims which are seen as incompatible with western culture and liberal values (gender roles, sexual orientations), compared to the average practicing Muslim and secular Muslim immigrants (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2018). Additionally, naturally occurring events can form a quasi-experimental context for testing the importance of cultural threat. After the London attacks (June, 2005), it was found that perceived economic threat from Muslims was unaffected, but that perceived cultural threat increased and led to stronger anti-Muslim sentiments (Abrams,Van de Vyver, Housten, & Vasiljevic, 2017). Another study was conducted in the context of the 2014/2015 Cologne New Year’s Eve sexual assault of women that the mass media and the public attributed to the suspects’ Muslim culture. Using a survey and an experimental design, this attribution was found to intensify the relationship between pre-existing feelings of cultural threat and the approval of radical responses to Muslim immigration (Stürmer, Rohmann, Froelich, & Van der Noll, 2019). These increased feelings of threat are likely to result in higher levels of victimization and discrimination against Muslims. A pre- and post-September 11th, 2001, comparison found a rise of 82.6% in experiences of indirect discrimination among British Muslims, and a rise of 76.3% in experiences with overt discrimination (Sheridan, 2006).

Islamization and national loyalty In 1998, a large-scale survey among a representative sample in the Netherlands found that Muslim immigrants were twice as likely as other immigrant-origin groups to be viewed as being more loyal to their country of origin and its government than to Dutch society and that nearly one out of every two Dutch believed that Muslims are politically untrustworthy (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007). Similar results were found in another large-scale survey conducted in 2012 (Hindriks,Verkuyten, & Coenders, 2015). Furthermore, in Western Europe a majority thinks that in their hearts, Muslims want to impose their religious laws on everyone else in the country.8

8 www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/24/in-western-europe-familiarity-with-muslims-is-linkedto-positive-views-of-muslims-and-islam/.

125

M. Verkuyten

On their part, Muslim immigrants can maintain strong transnational political ties and some of them believe that they are not bound by basic liberal-democratic rules when these conflict with their religious tenets. For example, a public opinion poll found that 30% of British Muslims want to live under shariah law, 68% believe that British citizens who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted,9 52% said they believe homosexuality should be illegal and 39% believe women should always obey their husbands (compared to 5% for non-Muslims).10 These percentages represent relatively large numbers of people and present clear challenges to the accommodation of Muslims in Western societies. These percentages are also used in populist right discourse to present, for example, British, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Swiss,American or Australian Muslims as trying to undermine and Islamize the liberal democratic state. Political leaders and right-wing groups can work up threatening versions of Islam to justify discriminatory actions and exclusionary measures (e.g., Braouezec, 2016; De Castella, McGarty, & Musgrove, 2009; Wood & Finlay, 2008). The belief in a secretly ongoing Islamization of the country and the presence of a ‘fifth column’ of Muslims taking over is summarized in terms such as ‘Eurabia’ and ‘Londonistan’ and articulated in the so-called ‘great replacement theory’.This process is presented as being propelled by continuing mass immigration and a higher fertility rate in Muslim families. Furthermore the supposedly conspiring Muslims are perceived as being well organized, having a single shared goal, and hiding their real intentions (Taqiyya) of wanting to establish the caliphate in the West.These anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and related stereotypes partly motivated the 2011 massacre in Norway by Breivik (Fekete, 2011), are used by political leaders (Wood & Finlay, 2008), and are present among the public (Braouezec, 2016; Uenal et al., 2021). Support for these theories seems to be substantial and is stronger among those who feel threatened by Muslims and have negative sentiments towards Islam (e.g., Swami, Barron, Weis, & Furnham, 2018; Uenal, 2016a, 2016b). Furthermore, a stronger belief that Muslims are politically unreliable and deep down desire to turn the country into an Islamic state is a strong predictor of negative feelings towards Muslim immigrants (Hindriks et al., 2015). Similarly, several studies in other contexts indicate that belief in conspiracy theories is significantly associated with prejudice, discrimination and political extremism. For example, belief in Jewish conspiracy theories has been found to be associated with anti-Semitic behavioural intentions in Polish respondents (Bilewicz, Winieski, Kofta, & Wójcik, 2013).

Security fear The Islamic terrorism discourse has emerged as an important fear-arousing narrative in political and public debate and in daily conversations (Jackson, 2007). It tends to present terrorism and violence as inherently rooted in Islamic doctrine. This discourse is used in different contexts and for different purposes, including the legitimation of international and domestic political projects and partisan political goals (De Castella et al., 2009). In Western Europe two of the traits most often associated with Muslims are ‘fanatical’ and ‘violent’.11 And in the United States, stereotypes about Muslims and Muslim Americans relating to violence and trustworthiness are commonplace and associated with support of several aspects of the War on Terror (Sides & Gross, 2011). Negative attitudes and reactions towards Muslims and Islam are often linked to terrorist attacks and empirically related to security fears (e.g., Uenal, 2016c) and the endorsement of the value

9 www.cbsnews.com/news/many-british-muslims-put-islam-first. 10 www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-survey. 11 www.pewforum.org/2018/05/29/being-christian-in-western-europe/.

126

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

of security (Saroglou et al., 2009; Van der Noll, 2014). Some European Islamists having joined and fought with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and terrorists who claim to act in the name of Islam and/or are presented in the media as such, further lead to Muslims being perceived as a security threat. This perception is additionally fuelled by media reports on public opinion polls that find, for example, that more than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts, that only one in three British Muslims said that they would contact the police if they believed that somebody close to them had become involved with jihadists,12 that 27% indicated to have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris (January 7, 2015),13 and that 30% of the Muslim public in Western Europe find that suicide bombings and other forms of violence to defend Islam is sometimes justifiable (Zhirkov,Verkuyten, & Weesie, 2014). In one study, Germans were found to assume that Muslims are more religious and aggressive, and more accepting of terrorism than Christians (Fischer, Grietmeyer, & Kastenmüller, 2007). Terrorist and security threats increase feelings of vulnerability and fear, but also anger and the motivation for revenge. After 9/11 prejudice against Muslim Americans increased and in Western Europe increased discrimination, hostility and physical attacks towards Muslims were reported (Allen & Nielsen, 2002; Sheridan, 2006). Using terror management theory, three experimental studies in the Netherlands found that terrorism news and an actual terrorist event (the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh) increased death-related thoughts which, in turn, increased prejudicial attitudes towards Muslims (Das, Bushman, Bezemer, Kerkhof, & Vermeulen, 2009). In another experimental study it was found that an Arabic speaker calling for terrorism against the United States increased anger towards Muslims and strengthened anti-Muslim attitudes (Steele, Parker, & Lickel, 2015). Further, an analysis of survey data from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the United States found that perceptions of security threat drive negative attitudes towards Muslims (Wike & Grim, 2010), and the same was found for terrorism anxiety in the context of New Zealand (Hawi, Osborne, Bulbulia, & Sibley, 2019). In an experimental vignette study in Britain it was found that security fears negatively affected attitudes towards Muslim immigrants whereas economic concerns affected views towards Eastern Europeans (Hellwig & Sinno, 2017). Assessing the effects of actual terrorist attacks on people’s attitudes is difficult because research typically lacks comparable measures before and after the event. One exception is a UK study using data from representative national surveys one month before and again one month after the attacks in London (July 7, 2005). Threats to safety were found to increase following the bombings and this led to stronger prejudice against Muslims (Abrams et al., 2017). Another exception is a study in Britain, Germany and France on public attitudes towards Muslim minority practices before and after 9/11. In all three countries a small decline in support was found (Fetzer & Soper, 2003). A further study among German students used an experimental vignette design immediately before and after the November 2015 attacks in Paris (Jungkunz, Helbling, & Schwemmer, 2019). It was found that the terrorist attack did not have an overall negative effect on attitudes towards Muslim immigrants from Syria to Germany. However, there was an interaction effect with political selfplacement. Conservatives, but not liberals, had stronger anti-Muslim attitudes and were stronger against political participation (e.g., voting rights, public office) of Muslims after the attack, while their attitudes towards Christian Syrian immigrants did not change much.The attitudes and views of the liberal students were overall positive and were hardly affected by the attack.

1 2 www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7861/british-muslims-survey. 13 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31293196.

127

M. Verkuyten

Discussion In this chapter, I have discussed the empirical research that tries to describe and understand antiMuslim sentiments in Western societies, predominantly by measuring individual attitudes. In doing so, I have focused on the relative distinctiveness of these sentiments in comparison to the research on anti-immigrant attitudes more generally. This means that I did not discuss research examining the positive or negative role for anti-Muslim sentiments of, for example, intergroup contact, shared national identity, religiosity, social dominance orientation, in-group identification and political orientation. And there is also research on the importance of knowledge of Islam (Mansouri & Vergani, 2018; Novotný & Polonský, 2011), being exposed to positive information about Muslims (Park, Felix, & Lee, 2007) and evaluating conditioning (French, Franz, Phelan, & Blaine, 2013) for more positive explicit and implicit attitudes towards Muslims. There are some additional issues that are important for future work that I was not able to discuss thus far. I will briefly draw attention to two of these: group dynamics and societal context.

Group dynamics There can be important intergroup differences in values and beliefs between Muslim immigrants and majority members, such as in relation to gender equality, the acceptance of apostasy, sexual liberties, the tolerance of homosexuality, and the role of religion in society more generally (Eskelinen & Verkuyten, 2019). These differences in beliefs and the related feelings of threat can fuel an intergroup dynamic of mutual polarization, as a sort of co-radicalization (Pratt, 2015).The negativity that Muslims face can lead to stronger Muslim group identification with an engagement in religious normative practices such as Islamic clothing (e.g., Djellaba, burqa) and growing a beard. These practices publicly express and affirm one’s religious identity. In turn, majority group members can react more negatively towards these identity enactments because they see them as threatening their (re-emphasized) Christian cultural identity (Vollaard, 2013) or liberal worldview, leading to the fear that Islam will override one’s own way of life and thereby the prevailing status arrangements in society. Co-radicalization is not restricted to attitude polarization but might also ensue from Islamic extremists and right-wing extremists. Islamic extremists use right-wing extremism to claim that the West is hostile and violent towards Islam, and right-wing extremists use Islamic extremism to argue that Islam is incompatible with the West. The discourse of right-wing extremist groups forecast a violent future and argue that the defining values and lifestyle of the native population will be changed forever by Muslim immigrants (‘great replacement theory’; Braouezec, 2016). In turn, Islamists can present events such as calls for a headscarf ban in France, Belgium and Germany and the 2009 Swiss minaret ban as a confirmation of oppression, injustice and hostility towards Islam that justifies their radical political actions (Holtz, Wagner, & Sartawi, 2015). And radical Islamic organizations can seek to incite Western authorities to take ever more restrictive and harsh measures that further disengage Muslims from society making them more receptive to extremist messages and recruitment (Heath-Kelly, 2013). Intergroup conflicts in society and restrictive policy responses can serve to make extremist messages more credible and espouse a culture of enmity in which the host society and the West, or rather Muslims and the Islamic world, are considered the enemy (Abbas, 2007).

Societal context The strength of anti-Muslim sentiments differs substantially between countries (Doebler, 2014; Strabac & Listhaug, 2008). For example, using an experimental design and representative samples, 128

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies

Muslim, compared to non-Muslim, immigrants were found to be tolerated less in Germany but tolerated more in the Netherlands (Erisen & Ketntmen-Cin, 2017). Furthermore, in relation to Islamic practices and the related Muslim rights there are striking country differences in the kind of practices around which public conflicts centre, with issues that are very controversial in one country (e.g., the building of Mosques) being absent from the debate in other countries (Carol & Koopmans, 2013). Additionally, individuals who live in countries with a liberal citizenship regime are more likely to be tolerant towards Muslims (Kaya, 2015). Furthermore, the association between perceptions of cultural threat and anti-Muslim attitudes appears to be especially strong in contexts in which there is stronger state support for the Christian majority religion (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016). People see Muslim immigrants more as a threat to their way of life when their religious values, traditions and everyday habits are more strongly embedded and represented in public institutions. Similarly, nonreligious people tend to have stronger anti-Muslim sentiments in more secular contexts (Ribberink et al., 2017). Political and public debates, immigration and integration policies, demographic composition, historical circumstances and state regulations of religion all differ between countries and can be important for people’s feelings and behaviour. Furthermore, there are national contexts in which non-immigrant Muslim minorities experience forms of discrimination, hostility and violence, such as in parts of India, the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs in China. Whether, when, and how exactly these societal conditions are relevant in moderating people’s anti-Muslim sentiments is an important avenue for future research. Systematically considering these conditions makes it possible to develop a more contextual social psychology that is able to make a contribution to theory development and to reducing the negative feelings and beliefs within the broader social and political context in which people live (Pettigrew, 2018). Such a social psychology is sensitive to the ways in which political, public and everyday discourses and debates represent the distinction between Muslim and non-Muslims, and when and how particular representations become dominant or contested. Similar to prejudice research (Dixon & Levine, 2012), social psychological work on anti-Muslim sentiments tends to focus on general psychological processes (e.g., threat perception) and individual characteristics (e.g., value orientations), and this is reflected in the research discussed in the current chapter. The focus is much less on the ways in which particular group distinctions, collective values and shared norms are defined and used for different (political) purposes, and with different implications for how people feel and behave towards Muslims.Yet, for understanding anti-Muslim sentiments we also need to consider how the media, political and community leaders, and lay people rationalize hatred, and justify discriminatory actions and exclusionary measures, for example, by working up essentialist and threatening versions of Islam and of disloyal Muslim citizens who fail, or are unwilling, to integrate (e.g., Jackson, 2007;Verkuyten, 2013; Wood & Finlay, 2008).

Conclusion The accommodation of Muslim immigrants in Western societies continues to fuel public and political debates. Some sections of the public and some politicians and mass media, emphasize the equal status and rights of Muslim citizens and their freedom to live the life that they want. Other sections of the public and other politicians and media claim that many Muslim immigrants are not to be trusted and lack the willingness or ability to integrate into liberal democratic societies. As a result, there are initiatives to increase the acceptance of Muslim immigrants and support their rights, and there are negative sentiments, hostilities, restrictions of rights and forms of discrimination. In this chapter I have discussed attitude research on anti-Muslim sentiments and I want to end with two main conclusions. 129

M. Verkuyten

A first conclusion relates to the importance of making a conceptual distinction between attitudes towards Islam and anti-Muslim prejudices. Both can be inextricably intertwined in empirical reality and the former often functions as a rationalization and justification for the latter. Criticizing a system of belief and specific religious practices is more acceptable than expressing negative views about a group of people (Verkuyten, 2013). This means that various types of research (i.e., discourse-analytical, experimental) on the representation of Islam to ‘normalize’ and justify anti-Muslim sentiments is critically important. Anti-Muslim sentiments do not simply exist in people’s heads but are discussed and debated, construed and challenged, and cognitively and socially rationalized and justified. However, not all Islam critique is merely a form of masking one’s prejudice and reducing the former to the latter is theoretically and practically limiting. Without a conceptual distinction it is impossible to investigate when and why the two do get intertwined and to consider those situations in which people disapprove of specific Islamic beliefs and practices (gender inequalities, building of minarets, ritual slaughter of animals), but not necessarily of Muslims as a category of people. Criticism of Islam as a religion can arise from principle commitments to values that have little to do with feelings towards those who believe in it. For instance liberal and secular principles can be genuine determinants of opposition to specific Islamic practices (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007) similar to the fact that beliefs about sexual morality and sanctity of life can underlie opposition towards abortion (Rodriguez & Ditto, 2019), and concern for procedural justice can be a genuine determinant of opposition to affirmative action (Bobocel, Son Hing, Davey, Stanley, & Zanna, 1998). A second conclusion is that anti-Muslim sentiments might represent a socially accessible and acceptable stepping stone towards more blatant anti-immigrant attitudes because Muslims are seen as the prototypic negative ‘other’ which determines people’s views about other immigrants. However, negative attitudes towards Muslim immigrants might also be the cumulative result of different forms of prejudice. Muslim immigrants can be simultaneously considered a religious (Muslims) and cultural/ethnic (e.g., Arabs in the United States, Pakistani in the United Kingdom, Turks in Germany) outgroup (e.g., Shaver et al., 2016), in addition to being seen as non-Western immigrants more generally.This might make anti-Muslim sentiments more negative than towards other specific immigrant groups or immigrants in general. Additionally, these sentiments are in part driven by specific concerns such as secular and liberal beliefs and perceived threats in relation to the alleged Islamization of the country, and terrorism and security. This means that addressing anti-Muslim sentiments might require a somewhat different approach than addressing negative attitudes towards immigrants in general. Both can be strongly related but changing anti-Muslim sentiments might require a stronger focus on specific ideological discourses and beliefs and the implications that these have for religious group distinctions, religious identities and forms of intergroup threat.

Acknowledgement Many thanks to Roy Konings for the literature search and summary.

References Aarǿe, L. (2012). Does tolerance of religion in the public space depend on the salience of the manifestation of religious group membership? Political Behavior, 22, 585–606. Abbas, T. (2007). Muslim, minorities in Britain: Integration, multiculturalism and radicalism in the post 7/7 period. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 28, 287–300.

130

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies Abrams, D.,Van de Vyver, J., Houston, D.M., & Vasiljevic, M. (2017). Does terror defeat contact? Intergroup contact and prejudice toward Muslims before and after the London bombings. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 23, 260–268. Adelman, L. & Verkuyten, M. (2020). Prejudice and the acceptance of Muslim minority practices: A personcentered approach. Social Psychology, 51, 185–198. Allen, C. & Nielsen, J.S. (2002). Summary report on islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2011. Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Amnesty International (2012). Choice and prejudice: Discrimination against Muslims in Europe. London: Amnesty International. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007). The language of ‘race’ and prejudice: A discourse of denial, reason, and liberal-practical politics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26, 123–141. Bahns, A.J. (2017). Threat as justification of prejudice. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 20, 52–74. Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T. (2013). Sketching Muslims: A corpus-driven analysis of representations around the word ‘Muslim’ in the British press 1998–2009. Applied Linguistics, 34, 255–278. Bansak, K., Hainmueller, J., & Hangartner, D. (2016). How economic, humanitarian, and religious concerns shape European attitudes toward asylum seekers. Science, 354, 217–222. Bilewicz, M.,Winiewski, M., Kofta, M., & Wójcik, A. (2013). Harmful ideas:The structure and consequences of anti-Semitic beliefs in Poland. Political Psychology, 34, 821–839. Bilodeau, A., Turgeon, L., White, S., & Henderson, A. (2018). Strange bedfellows? Attitudes toward minority and majority religious symbols in the public sphere. Politics and Religion, 11: 309–333. Bleich, E. (2011). What is Islamophobia and how much is there? Theorizing and measuring an emerging comparative concept. American Behavioral Scientist, 55, 1581–1600. Bobocel, D.R., Son Hing, L.S., Davey, L.M., Stanley, D.J., & Zanna, M.P. (1998). Justice-based opposition to social policies: Is it genuine? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 653–669. Braouezec, K. (2016). Identifying common patterns of discourse and strategy among the new Extremist movements in Europe: The case of the English defense league and the Bloc Identitaire. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 37, 637–648. Breton, C. & Eady, G. (2015). Is support for banning religious symbols in the public sphere prejudiced? Vanderbilt University: Department of Political Science. Brown-Iannuzzi, J.L., Najle, M.B., & Gervais, W.M. (2019). The illusion of political tolerance: Social desirability and self-reported voting preferences. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10, 364–373. Carol, S. & Koopmans, R. (2013). Dynamics of contestation over Islamic religious rights in Western Europe. Ethnicities, 13, 165–190. Ciftci, S. (2012). Islamophobia and threat perceptions: Explaining anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 32, 293–309. Creighton, M.J. & Jamal, A. (2015). Does Islam play a role in anti-immigrant sentiment? An experimental approach. Social Science Research, 53, 89–103. Creighton, M.J., Schmidt, P., & Zavala-Rojas, D. (2018). Race, wealth and the masking of opposition to immigrants in the Netherlands. International Migration, 57, 245–263. Dahab, R. & Omori, M. (2019). Homegrown foreigners: How Christian nationalism and nativist attitudes impact Muslim civil liberties. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42, 1727–1746. Dangubic, M., Stark, T., & Verkuyten, M. (2020). Tolerating Muslim religious practices in Western Europe: A multiple-acts-multiple-actors approach. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43, 306–326. Dangubic, M.,Verkuyten, M., & Stark, T. (2021). Understanding (in)tolerance of Muslim minority practices: A latent profile analysis. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47, 1517–1538. doi: 10.1080/ 1369183X.2020.1808450. Das, E., Bushman, B.J., Bezemer, M.D., Kerkhof, P., & Vermeulen, I.E. (2009). How terrorism news reports increase prejudice against outgroups: A terror management account. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 453–459. De Castella, K., McGarty, G., & Musgrove, L. (2009). Fear appeals in political rhetoric about terrorism: An analyses of speeches by Australian prime minister Howard. Political Psychology, 30, 1–26. Dixon, J. & Levine, M. (eds.) (2012). Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doebler, S. (2014). Relationships between religion and intolerance towards Muslims and immigrants in Europe: A multilevel analysis. Review of Religious Research, 56, 61–86. Doving, C.A. (2015). The wat they treat their daughters and wives: Radicalisation of Muslims in Norway. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 3, 62–77.

131

M. Verkuyten Dunwoody, P.T. & McFarland, S.G. (2017). Support for anti-Muslim policies: The role of political traits and threat perception. Political Psychology, 39, 89–106. Elchardus, M. & Spruyt, B. (2014). Universalism and anti-Muslim sentiment. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 38, 75–85. Erisen, C. & Kentmen-Cin, C. (2017). Tolerance and perceived threat toward Muslims in Germany and the Netherlands. European Union Politics, 18, 73–97. Eskelinen, V. & Verkuyten, M. (2019). Support for democracy and liberal sexual mores among Muslims in Western Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(11), 2346–2366. Fekete, L. (2004). Anti-Muslim racism and the European security state. Race & Class, 46(1), 3–29. Fekete, L. (2011). The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre. Race & Class, 53, 30–47. Fetzer, J.S. & Soper, J.C. (2003). The roots of public attitudes toward state accommodation of European Muslims’ religious practices before and after September 11. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 247–258. Fischer, P., Greitemeyer, T., & Kastenmüller, A. (2007). What do we think about Muslims? The validity of Westerners’ implicit theories about the associations between Muslims’ religiosity, religious identity, aggression potential, and attitudes toward terrorism. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10, 373–382. Ford, R. (2011). Acceptable and unacceptable immigrants: How opposition to immigration in Britain is affected by migrants’ region of origin. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37, 1017–1037. French, A.R., Frans, T.M., Phelan, L.L., & Blaine, B.E. (2013). Reducing Muslim/Arab stereotypes through evaluative conditioning. The Journal of Social Psychology, 153, 6–9. Gustavsson, G.,Van der Noll, J., & Sundberg, R. (2016). Opposing the veil in the name of liberalism: Popular attitudes to liberalism and Muslim veiling in the Netherlands. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39, 1719–1737. Hagendoorn, L. & Poppe, E. (2012). Consistency of tolerance, public opinion on immigrants in the Netherlands at the turn of the Millennium Politics. Culture and Socialization, 2, 367–87. Hainmueller, J. & Hangartner, D. (2013). Who gets a Swiss passport? A natural experiment in immigrant discrimination. American Political Science Review, 107, 159–187. Hawi, D., Osborne, D., Bulbulia, J., & Sibley, C. (2019).Terrorism anxiety and attitudes toward Muslims. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 28, 80–89. Heath-Kelly, C. (2013). Counter-terrorism and the counterfactual: Producing the ‘radicalization’ discourse and the UK PREVENT strategy. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15, 394–415. Helbling, M. (2010). Islamophobia in Switzerland: A new phenomenon or a new name for xenophobia? In S. Hug, & H. Kriesi (eds.), Value change in Switzerland (pp. 65–80). Lanham, MD: Lexington Press. Helbling, M. (2014). Opposing Muslims and the Muslim headscarf in Western Europe. European Sociological Review, 30, 242–257. Helbling, M. & Traunmüller, R. (2016). How state support of religion shapes attitudes toward Muslim immigrants: New evidence from a sub-national comparison. Comparative Political Studies, 49, 391–424. Helbling, M. & Traunmüller, R. (2020).What is Islamophobia? Disentangling citizens’ feelings toward ethnicity, religion and religiosity using a survey experiment. British Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 811–828. Hellwig, T. & Sinno, A. (2017). Different groups, different threats: Public attitudes towards immigrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43, 339–358. Hindriks, P., Verkuyten, M., & Coenders, M. (2015). The evaluation of immigrants’ political acculturation strategies. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 47, 131–142. Hirsch, M., Verkuyten, M., & Yogeeswaran, K. (2019). To accept or not to accept: Level of moral concern impacts on tolerance of Muslim minority practices. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58, 196–210. Holtz, P., Wagner, W., & Sartawi, M. (2015). Discrimination and immigrant identity: Fundamentalist and secular Muslims facing the Swiss minaret ban. Journal of the Social Sciences, 43, 9–29. Imhoff, R. & Recker, J. (2012). Differentiating Islamophobia: Introducing a new scale to measure Islamoprejudice and secular Islam critique. Political Psychology, 33(6), 811–824. Jackson, R. (2007). Constructing enemies:‘Islamic terrorism’ in political and academic discourse. Government and Opposition, 42, 394–426. Johnson, S.D. (2006). Religion and anti-Islamic attitudes. Review of Religious Research, 48(1), 5–16. Jungkunz, S., Helbling, M., & Schwemmer, C. (2019). Xenophobia before and after the Paris 2015 attacks: Evidence from a natural experiment. Ethnicities, 19, 271–291. Kalkan, K.O., Layman, G.C., & Uslaner, E.M. (2009). ‘Bands of others’? Attitudes toward Muslims in contemporary American society. The Journal of Politics, 71, 847–862.

132

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies Kaya, S. (2015). Islamophobia in Western Europe: A comparative multilevel analysis. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 35, 450–465. Lee, S.A., Gibbons, J.A., Thompson, J.M., & Timani, H.S. (2009). The Islamophobic scale: Instrument development and initial validation. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19, 92–105. Malhotra, N., Margalit, Y., & Mo, C.H. (2013). Economic explanations for opposition to immigration: Distinguishing between prevalence and conditional impact. American Journal of Political Science, 57, 391–410. Mansouri, F. & Vergani, M. (2018). Intercultural contact, knowledge of Islam, and prejudice against Muslims in Australia. International Journal of Intercultural relations, 66, 85–94. Marfouk, A. (2019). I’m neither racist nor xenophobic, but: Dissecting European attitudes towards a ban on Muslims’ immigration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42, 1747–1765. Meuleman, B., Abts, K., Slootmaeckers, K., & Meeusen, C. (2019). Differentiated threat and the genesis of prejudice: Group-specific antecedents of homonegativity, islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and antiimmigrant attitudes. Social Problems, 66, 222–244. Moffitt, U., Juang, L.P., & Syed, M. (2018). Being both German and other: Narratives of contested national identity among white and Turkish German young adults. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 878–896. Mondak, J.J. & Hurwitz, J. (1998).Values, acts, and actors distinguishing generic and discriminatory intolerance. Political Behavior, 20, 313–339. Moors, A. (2009). The Dutch and face-veil: The politics of discomfort. Social Anthropology, 17, 393–408. Moss, A.J., Blodorn, A., Van Camp, A.R., & O’Brien, L.T. (2019). Gender equality, value violations, and prejudice toward Muslims. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 22, 288–301. Novotný, J., & Polonský, F. (2011). The level of knowledge about Islam and perception of Islam among Czech and Slovak university students: Does ignorance determine subjective attitudes? Sociologia, 43, 647–696. Ogan, C., Willnat, L., Pennington, R., & Bashir, M. (2014). The rise of anti-Muslim prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States. The International Communication Gazette, 76, 27–46. Park, J., Felix, K., & Lee, G. (2007). Implicit attitudes toward Arab-Muslims and the moderating effects of social information. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29, 35–45. Pettigrew, T.F. (2018). The emergence of contextual social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(7), 963–971. Pratt, D. (2015). Reactive co-radicalization: Religious extremism as mutual discontent. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 28, 3–23. Ribberink, E., Achterberg, P., & Houtman, D. (2017). Secular tolerance? Anti-Muslim sentiment in Western Europe. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 56, 259–276. Richardson, R. (2012). Islamophobia or anti-Muslim prejudice? Concepts and terms revisited. Instead Consultancy. Online www.insted.co.uk/anti-muslim-racism.pdf. Rios, K., Sosa, N., & Osborn, H. (2018). An experimental approach to intergroup threat theory: Manipulations, moderators, and consequences of realistic vs. symbolic threat. European Review of Social Psychology, 29, 212–255. Rodriguez, C.G., & Ditto, P.H. (2019). Respect for life? Respect for women? Testing ideologically competing explanations for abortion attitudes. https://psycarxiv.com/s8kz7/ Rowatt, W.A., Franklin, L.M., & Cotton, M. (2005). Patterns and personality correlates of implicit and explicit attitudes toward Christians and Muslims. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 29–43. Saroglou,V., Lamkaddem, B.,Van Pachterbeke, M., & Buxant, C. (2009). Host society’s dislike of the Islamic veil: The role of subtle prejudice, values and religion. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33, 419–428. Sarrasin, O. (2016). Attitudes toward gender equality and opposition to Muslim full-face veils. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 75, 153–160. Schmuck, D. & Matthes, J. (2017). Effects of economic and symbolic threat appeals in right-wing populist advertising on anti-immigrant attitudes: The impact of textual and visual appeals. Political Communication, 34, 607–626. Semati, M. (2010). Islamophobia, culture and race in the age of Empire. Cultural Studies, 24(2), 256–275. Shaver, J.H., Sibley, C.G., Osborne, D., & Bulbulia, J. (2017). News exposure predicts anti-Muslim prejudice. PlosOne, 12(3), e0174606. Shaver, J.H., Troughton, G., Sibley, C.G., & Bulbulia, J. (2016). Religion and unmaking of prejudice toward Muslims: Evidence from a large national sample. PlosOne, 11(3), e0150209.

133

M. Verkuyten Sheridan, L.P. (2006). Islamophobia pre- and post-September 11th, 2001. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21, 317–336. Sides, J. & Gross, K. (2011). Stereotypes of Muslims and support for the war on terror. The Journal of Politics, 75, 583–598. Sniderman, P.M. & Hagendoorn, L. (2007). When ways of life collide: Multiculturalism and its discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Spruyt, B. & Elchardus, M. (2012). Are anti-Muslim feelings more widespread than anti-foreigner feelings? Evidence from two split-sample experiments. Ethnicities, 12, 800–820. Steele, R.R., Parker, M.T., & Lickel, B. (2015). Bias within because of threat from outside: The effects of an external call for terrorism on anti-Muslim attitudes in the United States. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6, 193–200. Strabac, Z., Aalberg, T., & Valenta, M. (2013). Attitudes towards Muslim immigrants: Evidence from survey experiments across four countries. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40, 100–118. Strabac, Z. & Listhaug, O. (2008). Anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe: A multilevel analysis of survey data from 30 countries. Social Science Research, 37, 268–286. Stürmer, S., Rohmann, A., Froelich, L., & Van der Noll, J. (2019). Muslim immigration, critical events, and the seeds of majority members’ support for radical responses: An interactionist perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45, 133–145. Sullivan, J.L. & Transue, J.E. (1999). The psychological underpinnings of democracy: A selective review of research on political tolerance, interpersonal trust, and social capital. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 625–650. Swami,V., Barron, D., Weis, L., & Furnham, A. (2018). To Brexit or not to Brexit: The roles of Islamophobia, conspiracist beliefs, and integrated threat in voting intentions for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. British Journal of Psychology, 109, 156–179. Uenal, F. (2016a). Islamophobia and anti-Semitism: Comparing the social psychological underpinnings of anti-semitic and anti-Muslim beliefs in contemporary Germany. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 3, 35–55. Uenal, F. (2016b). The ‘Secret Islamization’ of Europe: Exploring integrated threat theory for predicting Islamophobic conspiracy stereotypes. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 10, 94–108. Uenal, F. (2016c). Disentangling Islamophobia: The differential effects of symbolic, realistic, and terroristic threat perceptions as mediators between social dominance orientation and Islamophobia. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4, 66–90. Uenal, F., Bergh, R., Sidanius, J., Zick, A., Kimel, S., & Kunst, J.R. (2020).The nature of islamophobia: A test of a tripartite view in five countries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47, 275–292. Van der Noll, J. (2014). Religious toleration of Muslims in the German public sphere. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 38: 60–74. Van der Noll, J. & Saroglou,V. (2015). Anti-Islam or anti-religion? Understanding objection against Islamic education. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41, 219–238. Van der Noll, J.,Verkuyten, M., & Poppe, E. (2010). Political tolerance and prejudice: Differential reactions toward Muslims in the Netherlands. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32, 46–56. Van Nieuwkerk, K. (2004). ‘Weils and wooden clogs don’t go together’. Ethnos, 69, 229–246. Velasco González, K., Verkuyten, M., Weesie, J., & Poppe, E. (2008). Prejudice towards Muslims in the Netherlands: Testing integrated threat theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 667–685. Verkuyten, M. (1997). ‘Redelijk racisme’: Gesprekken over allochtonen in oude stadswijken (‘Reasonable racism’: Talking about immigrants in the inner city). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Verkuyten, M. (2013). Justifying discrimination of Muslim immigrants: Outgroup ideology and the five-step social identity model. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 345–360. Vollaard, H.J.P. (2013). Re-emerging Christianity in West European politics: The case of the Netherlands. Politics and Religion, 6, 74–100. Wagner, U., Christ, O., & Heitmeyer, W. (2010). Anti-immigration bias. In J.F. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, P. Glick, & V.M. Esses (eds.), The Sage handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination (pp. 361–376). London: Sage. Wike, R. & Grim, B.J. (2010). Western views toward Muslims: Evidence from a 2006 cross-national survey. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 22, 4–25. Wilson, M.S. (2019). A community-based test of the dual process model of intergroup relations: Predicting attitudes towards Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 48, 133–139.

134

Anti-Muslim sentiments in Western societies Wirtz, C., van der Pligt, J., & Doosje, B. (2015). Negative attitudes toward Muslims in The Netherlands: The role of symbolic threat, stereotypes, and moral emotions. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 22, 75–83. Wood, C. & Finlay, W.M.L. (2008). British national party representations of Muslims in the month after the London bombings: Homogeneity, threat, and the conspiracy tradition. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 707–726. Zhirkov, K., Verkuyten, M., & Weesie, J. (2014). Perceptions of world politics and support for terrorism among Muslims: Evidence from Muslim countries and Western Europe. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 31, 481–501. Zolberg, A.R. & Long, L.W. (1999). Why Islam is like Spanish: Cultural incorporation in Europe and the United States. Politics and Society, 27, 5–28. Zuquete, J.P. (2008). The European extreme-right and Islam: New directions. Journal of Political Ideologies, 13, 321–344.

135

10 EXPLAINING THE JEW-HATRED The structure and psychological antecedents of antisemitic beliefs Michał Bilewicz

When the society suffers, it needs someone to blame, someone upon whom to avenge itself for its disappointments; and those persons whom opinion already disfavors are naturally singled out for this role. It is the pariahs who serve as expiatory victims. (…) As a result of the trial people finally knew whom to blame for the economic troubles and the moral distress through which they lived. Evil came from the Jews.The fact was officially certified (Emil Durkheim, 1899/2008, p. 322) From Durkheim’s theorizing to the most recent social-cognitive experimental research, social and behavioral sciences have sought to explain and understand the phenomenon of antisemitic prejudice. In this chapter, I will discuss the specificity of antisemitic prejudice, reviewing classic psychological, sociological and philosophical works on the topic. I will try to shed more light on the debate about the uniqueness and typicality of antisemitic prejudice. Finally, I will discuss key psychological antecedents of antisemitism: displacement of responsibility, victimhood competition, conspiracy mentality, relative deprivation and loss of control – in order to better explain the mechanisms responsible for the endurance of antisemitic prejudice in the modern world. The history of antisemitic prejudice starts in antiquity (Wistrich, 1991). From early Christianity (Church Fathers, such as Tertullian or John Chrysostom), Jews were portrayed as Satanic conspirers and blamed for deicide. In the Middle Ages, blood libel and host desecration accusations led to numerous killings and expulsions of Jews throughout Europe. Jewish conspiracy theories flourished also in modern Europe. In the late 19th century, Jews were blamed for plots against national majorities in France, Austria and Tsarist Russia, where notorious antisemitic canard “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were created. What seems common across centuries is the psychological dynamics in which Jews were blamed for people’s individual and collective misfortunes. This dynamic has been theoretically explored in many areas of social sciences and philosophy that treated it as a distinctive characteristic of European Enlightenment and modern nation-building processes (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002; Fromm, 1984). Today’s social and political psychology contributes to this theorizing by providing not only new theoretical insights but also empirical studies examining these mechanisms.

136

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-10

Explaining Jew-hatred

From Durkheim to Moscovici: Classic theories of antisemitism The Dreyfus affair, a trial of a French Jewish artillery captain, who was arrested in 1894 and accused of spying against his homeland, led to large-scale antisemitic turmoil in the late 19th century. The trial, based on false accusations that fitted the anti-Jewish political climate of that era, inspired many critical analyses both at the time it happened (e.g., J’Accuse, a pamphlet by the French writer Emile Zola shedding light on the antisemitic motivations of the military staff), and nowadays (e.g., a recent film by Roman Polanski An Officer and a Spy). Emil Durkheim, a founder of modern sociology, used the story of the Dreyfus trial as an example of the dynamics and roots of antisemitism. In his rarely cited work Anti-Semitism and Social Crisis (Antisémitisme et Crise Sociale), written in 1899, he shows how the antisemitic accusation appeared in a particular time of French history. Durkheim (1899/2008) writes about the time of “moral disturbance”, with frequent changes of governments, assassinations and terrorist acts, which preceded the Dreyfus trial. He suggests that talking of a Jewish conspiracy allowed people to make sense of their adverse political situation. Analyzing anti-Jewish pogroms and other forms of antiminority aggression during revolutions and power shifts, the French social psychologist Serge Moscovici (1987) suggested that such situations create the need for an explanation and focus public attention on foreigners and ethnic minorities: “Undoubtedly, it is in periods of social unrest that minorities are most insistently associated with conspiracy” (Moscovici, 1987, p. 152). According to Moscovici, the main anthropological scheme of antisemitism is the opposition between the minority heretics and the faithful majority of the persecuting society (Moscovici, 2020). He found examples of this in the German Third Reich, as well as in the pre-modern Christian forms of anti-Jewish prejudice. The specificity of antisemitic prejudice lies in the fact that it points to the covert rather than the overt nature of collective intentions of the hated target. It refers to intrigues, plots and conspiracies rather than to visible influences of Jewish people. Jews have been always viewed not as enemies per se, but rather as a “fifth column” helping enemies to succeed. This stereotype is clearly visible in the motivations of perpetrators of terrorist attacks on synagogues and Jewish sites, who blame Jews for inspiring feminism (the attacker in Halle in Germany; Gensing, 2019), immigration (the Halle attacker as well as the attacker in Pittsburgh in the United States;Van Sant, 2018) or posing a threat to the European civilization through secret conspiracies (the attacker in Poway in the United States; Collins & Blankstein, 2019). Gustav Ichheiser (1944) suggested that antisemitism is based on one of the two basic human fears: the fear of swindlers. He proposed that in the modern era people are less afraid of powerful others (“gangsters”) but are increasingly obsessed with covert and hidden powers of people who ostensibly look powerless (“swindlers”). The ultimate evil becomes an attribute of hidden forces, and Jews are portrayed as an objectification of such forces. Although most studies on the topic focus on the specificity of the antisemitic conspiracy stereotype, many early studies on prejudice against Jews looked at the commonalities between antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. In the classic study on the authoritarian personality, Adorno and his collaborators (1950) suggested that antisemitism is a byproduct of a nondemocratically evolving bourgeois society. Based on a set of interviews with white, non-Jewish, middle-class, Americans recruited through different organizations, Adorno et  al. located antisemitism within a larger ideological stance. They concluded that “the limitation of human rights which is consummated in their idea of a special treatment of the Jews, not only logically implies the ultimate abolition of the democratic form of government and, hence, of the legal protection of the individual, but is frequently associated quite consciously, by high-scoring [in antisemitism] interviewees, with overt antidemocratic ideas” (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford,

137

M. Bilewicz

1950, p. 653). In that respect, antisemitism would be just another face of authoritarian and antidemocratic sentiments, in which minorities are deprived of their rights. One of the common social psychological explanations of antisemitism considered Jews as scapegoats (Glick, 2002). In the most classic account of this concept, Gordon Allport (1954) suggested that certain features of Jewish culture, history and religion could make them a highly probable target of scapegoating. He suggested that the practice of circumcision would provoke castration fear among majorities, intellectualism would provoke hatred among the ignorant section of the majority society, banking and trading would provoke aggression among impoverished people, etc. In that respect, Jews would become complementary scapegoats for the frustrations and fears in the society. The early interpretations of antisemitism proposed by Durkheim, Moscovici, Ichheiser, Adorno et  al. and Allport reflect several of the main questions that social psychologists have been asking in subsequent decades. Is antisemitism specific, as suggested by Ichheiser – or is it a component of a broader ethnocentric ideology, as suggested by Adorno et al.? Are there specific psychological needs, like the need for control or for certainty, whose deprivation is responsible for antisemitic prejudice – as suggested by Allport? Or maybe political and economic factors stand behind antisemitic thinking – as proposed by Durkheim and Moscovici? This chapter will review the contemporary social psychological research and theorizing that have attempted to address these problems.

Antisemitism: Unique or typical? Although antisemitism has been often viewed as the prototype of prejudice and as the “longest hatred” (Wistrich, 1991), there are many specific aspects of anti-Jewish hatred that cannot be found in other forms of bigotry. Although other forms of bigotry served the foundational role in the formation of modern nations and societies, anti-Jewish hatred has been suggested to have played a key role in nation-building processes in Europe in the 19th century. Daniel Goldhagen (1996) proposed that “eliminationist antisemitism” could have been a core of the modern German national culture that developed through the exclusion of Jews and ultimately created a spiritual climate that allowed for the destruction of German Jews. Joanna Michlic (2006) suggested that Jews, as “threatening others”, were central to the creation of the modern Polish national identity that developed in opposition to Jewishness. Therefore, strong national attachments in both Poland and Germany directly led to antisemitic attitudes but did not necessarily result in negative attitudes toward other ethnic groups or minorities. Contrary to these views of historians and political scientists, traditional psychological theorizing on antisemitism has tried to link anti-Jewish views with other forms of prejudice. In his now-classic work on prejudice, Gordon Allport (1954, p. 68) wrote: “One of the facts of which we are most certain is that people who reject one out-group will tend to reject other out-groups. If a person is anti-Jewish, he is likely to be anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, anti any out-group”. This hypothesis received considerable support in empirical research. Studies on group-focused enmity in Europe (Zick, Küpper, & Hövermann, 2011) found that antisemitism is strongly connected to other forms of prejudice. In a cross-national study performed in eight European countries, it was observed that antisemitism is significantly correlated with racism (r = .42), sexism (r = .37), anti-immigrant attitudes (r = .41), and islamophobia (r = .37). It is important to underline that significant positive correlations of antisemitism and islamophobia were found in all studied countries: Germany, United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Hungary. Therefore, these findings speak against the hypothesis that antisemitism is merely a result of one’s position on the Middle-Eastern conflict (i.e., one’s prejudice toward Jews is a justification of 138

Explaining Jew-hatred

someone’s positive attitude toward Muslims or Arabs). On the other hand, studies looking more directly into people’s attitudes toward Israel and Palestine found antisemitism to be correlated with harsh criticism of Israel (Bulska & Winiewski, 2018; Cohen, Jussim, Harber, & Bhasin, 2009; Frindte, Wettig, & Wammetsberger, 2005). Bulska and Winiewski (2018) observed that people believing in a Jewish conspiracy would express more uncritical pro-Palestinian attitudes and less rational approaches to the conflict in the Middle East.This suggests that endorsing more extreme positions on the conflict in the Middle East could serve as an expression of underlying antiJewish prejudice, in a similar way as symbolic and modern racism in the case of racial prejudice (Sears & Henry, 2005). Therefore, such delegitimizing and selective forms of criticizing Israel were sometimes named as the “new antisemitism” (Peace, 2009). The idea that antisemitism is a part of a broader xenophobic mental structure could be attributed to Theodore Adorno and his colleagues’ work on the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950). They created a specific scale to measure antisemitic prejudice (A-S scale developed and described by Levinson, 1950) and conducted several interviews with people holding antisemitic views. For them, antisemitism was a component of a broader anti-democratic worldview that can be characterized by high obedience to authorities and high derogation of any people who deviated from group norms. In more recent political psychology, the concept of an authoritarian personality has been often treated as a political ideology (right-wing authoritarianism) that incorporates three dimensions: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1988). This ideology resembles the main tenets of the German Nazi ideology – obedience to the leader, aggression toward enemies defined by the leader and blind support for laws and orders defined by the leader. In fact, group-focused enmity in most European countries has been strongly positively correlated with right-wing authoritarianism (Zick et al., 2011). Most studies looking at antisemitism and authoritarianism found the two concepts to be very closely related. Frindte and colleagues (2005) found that, in Germany, people with high levels of right-wing authoritarianism expressed higher levels of manifest and latent antisemitism, rejected historical responsibilities of Germans toward Jews and showed more anti-Israeli attitudes. Authoritarianism was a stronger predictor of antisemitism than other individual differences measures (e.g., social dominance orientation). Dunbar and Simonova (2003) observed a similar pattern of results in Czech and North American samples: right-wing authoritarianism was an equally strong predictor of antisemitic bias as overall prejudice. A study of a representative sample of Poles (Bilewicz, Winiewski, Kofta, & Wójcik, 2013) found that right-wing authoritarianism is not only a strong correlate of all three forms of antisemitic stereotypes (i.e., belief in a Jewish conspiracy, traditional antisemitism and secondary antisemitism), but it is also the strongest predictor of social distance to Jews and anti-Jewish discrimination in voting (i.e., unwillingness to vote for a Jewish candidate). Although authoritarianism is a common correlate of all ethnic prejudice, its uniqueness in predicting antisemitism seems rather specific. Other forms of prejudice are driven by a two-faceted ideology: authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (sometimes called “generalized authoritarianism”; Hodson, MacInnis, & Busseri, 2017). In the case of antisemitic prejudice, the role of authoritarianism is fundamental and exceeds that of any other individual difference measure. This is mostly due to the specific character of the antisemitic stereotype depicting Jews as powerful and threatening to ingroup values. Jews are portrayed as cultural deviants and “swindlers” (Ichheiser, 1944), an image that corresponds with authoritarian opposition to any form of non-conformity. Authoritarian aggression is directed toward those who are threatening cultural norms and standards, and rules set by authorities. This makes highly authoritarian individuals focus on such minorities that are portrayed as powerful and non-conformist, and, at the 139

M. Bilewicz

same time, violating cultural norms of the majority. Jews then become a prototypical target of authoritarian aggression. This could explain a commonly observed fact that antisemitism is a trigger of other forms of prejudice: people holding antisemitic conspiracy theories are likely to blame also other minority groups (Kofta, Soral, & Bilewicz, 2020), and exposure to such theories increases people’s prejudice against all ethnic and religious outgroups (Jolley, Meleady, & Douglas, 2020).

Antisemitism as a displacement of responsibility The idea that much of post-Holocaust antisemitism could be explained by the sense of suppressed responsibility for anti-Jewish crimes or passivity during World War II was also first expressed by Theodor Adorno (1963). It was applied to the context of the countries directly involved in the Holocaust as perpetrators (e.g., Germany; Bergmann, 2006) and the countries occupied by Nazi Germany where local populations were a direct witness of Jewish suffering (e.g., Poland; Steinlauf, 1997).This idea could be explained through a well-known concept of just-world beliefs (Furnham & Procter, 1989; Lerner & Miller, 1978). People witnessing the suffering of another person tend to blame the victim, as it restores the basic sense of justice and predictability of their environment. Therefore, antisemitism among those who witnessed crimes against Jews could result from such victim-blaming control-restoring processes. On the other hand, perpetrators might be affected by a dissonance-driven or self-motivated process, a form of moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999). After committing an atrocity, people tend to cognitively transform their inhumane conduct into a worthy, moral one, in order to maintain a positive self-image.Therefore, antisemitism could be viewed as a protection of a moral self-image among perpetrators of antisemitic crimes, or as a reduction of dissonance among people who committed cruel acts against Jews violating their moral standards or values. The process in which past perpetrators of anti-Jewish crimes express anti-Jewish sentiments in order to silence their sense of responsibility is often described as secondary antisemitism (Bilewicz et al., 2013; Imhoff & Banse, 2009). In a pioneering empirical study of the dynamics of this process, Imhoff and Banse (2009) reminded German participants about the long-enduring consequences of the Jewish suffering during World War II. After this manipulation, they measured implicit and explicit antisemitic prejudice. In order to overcome socially desirable responses, they induced participants’ truthfulness by a bogus pipeline procedure (a fake polygraph). The study found that the reminder of the ongoing suffering of Jews increased the level of antisemitism. It is worth noting that the study was performed amid a heated public debate about German compensations for the Holocaust, Swiss banks benefitting from the crime, etc. The attempts to replicate this result later, when no such topics were publicly debated, were largely unsuccessful (Imhoff & Messer, 2019). The phenomenon of secondary antisemitism can be viewed as a dynamic societal process, but it can be also captured as an individual difference: the extent to which someone blames Jews for their antisemitic experiences. Secondary antisemitism scale developed by Imhoff (2010) includes focusing on the Jews as perpetrators of contemporary crimes, perception of the ingroup as real victims, the instrumentalization of memory and historical closure (detachment from the past). In Germany, the scale was found to be highly correlated with right-wing political views, such as right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, as well as national glorification. Similarly, Polish studies (Bilewicz et al., 2013) found secondary antisemitism to be more widespread among right-wing authoritarians. Compared to other forms of antisemitism (such as beliefs in Jewish conspiracy or religious anti-Judaism) it was much less related to social distance toward Jews. Secondary antisemites are not necessarily the ones who avoid Jews in their 140

Explaining Jew-hatred

environment. On the other hand, secondary antisemitism was highly predictive of discriminatory decisions made in an allocation task, in which participants could distribute resources between Jewish and majority institutions. All these results suggest that secondary antisemitism is a political phenomenon driving political responses and institutional discrimination rather than direct aggression or avoidance of specific Jewish individuals.

Antisemitism as a victimhood competition The concept of secondary antisemitism assumes that hatred directed toward Jews is caused by the sense of responsibility for their own misbehavior and passivity among past perpetrators and silent bystanders of the Holocaust. It is however obvious that antisemitism – also the one involving Holocaust revisionism and denial – exists beyond such countries that were involved in the Nazi crimes. For example, recent Belgian studies (De Guissmé & Licata, 2017) found high levels of secondary antisemitism among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. This suggests that the explanations of post-Holocaust antisemitism based on the dissonance or moral disengagement processes among perpetrators are not sufficient. An alternative look at this process focuses on the specific status of Jews as ultimate historical victims, as the extreme victimization of Jews in the Holocaust is today the most commonly acknowledged genocide in history. The Holocaust is today obviously a prototype of a genocide.When people think about genocidal crimes, the Holocaust comes more often to mind than for example Rwanda, Cambodia or the Armenian genocide (Mazur & Vollhardt, 2016).This prototypical character of the Holocaust puts Jews in the role of prototypical victims – a potential enemy in recognition to all unrecognized victim groups and nations. Indeed, a set of nationally representative studies in Poland found that people who focused on their nation’s historical victimhood more often expressed traditional, modern and secondary forms of antisemitism (Bilewicz & Stefaniak, 2013; Bilewicz et al., 2013; Bilewicz & Liu, 2020). Although this issue could be viewed as a case of competitive victimhood, in which two conflicted groups struggle for recognition (Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012; Young & Sullivan, 2016), victimhood-driven antisemitism could not be reduced to this phenomenon alone. A study performed in Poland showed that even when competition over victim status with Jews is statistically partialled out, the sense of victimhood still independently predicts antisemitic conspiracy beliefs (Bilewicz & Stefaniak, 2013). Also, victimhooddriven antisemitism has been observed among groups that were never directly conflicted with Jews, such as Armenians (Bogner, 2019) or Congolese immigrants in Belgium (De Guissmé & Licata, 2017). The alternative explanation of victimhood-driven antisemitism looks at the specific, narcissistic dynamics of recognition. The groups that are constantly struggling for global recognition of their past tragedies are more inclined to view Jews as threatening since the Holocaust is a globally recognized mass atrocity. Such dynamics could be observed in the studies conducted on Congolese and Arab Muslim immigrants in Belgium (De Guissmé & Licata, 2017). Those immigrants who had a sense of strong collective victimhood often complained about their harm not being properly recognized by a host society. This made Jews viewed as ultimate competitors in recognition and motivated secondary antisemitism. Also in Poland, the sense of collective victimhood (related to the history of World War II, Katyń, etc.) was strongly correlated with secondary forms of antisemitism and the beliefs in Jewish conspiracy (Bilewicz et al., 2013). Recent experimental studies found that when Poles were presented with information about American president Barak Obama recognizing the historical suffering of Poles, their level of secondary antisemitism was reduced, compared to a baseline level (when participants did not hear about any recognition of Polish suffering, Kuzawinska & Bilewicz, 2020). 141

M. Bilewicz

Although collective victimhood can be described as an objective experience of group members who suffered mass trauma in their past, it is obvious that within any population the sense of collective victimhood varies significantly. Therefore, one could view collective victimhood as a psychological process resulting from a specific form of group attachment. Researchers exploring collective narcissism (a defensive form of group attachment) suggest that people who identify with their nation in a narcissistic way are more prone to view the nation as being constantly victimized, oppressed and endangered (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2011). Such narcissisticdriven siege mentality (Bar-Tal & Antebi, 1992) strongly predicts antisemitic prejudice in Poland (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2011). Acknowledging the fact that collective narcissism stems from people’s lack of personal control (Cichocka, 2016; Cichocka, Cislak, Stronge, Osborne, & Sibley, 2019), it is plausible that the narratives about historical victimhood that are commonly observed among collective narcissists might be a reaction to their everyday experiences of political uncontrollability. The fact that politics is beyond control could focus attention on historical victimhood, and this motivates negative responses to Jews whose victimhood status is considered as threatening, due to uniqueness strivings that are also highly typical for narcissists. At the same time – control deprivation among narcissists could lead to antisemitism through a different route (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2011). As collective narcissists are often highly prone to believe in conspiracy beliefs (Cichocka, de Zavala, Marchlewska, & Olechowski, 2015), people with a narcissistic attachment to their nation could view Jews as main agents behind such conspiracies, regardless of their history.

Antisemitism as a conspiracy theory The belief in Jewish conspiracy has long been a landmark of antisemitic beliefs. It was at the core of Ichheiser’s concept of the “swindler” stereotype (1944) and Durkheim’s (1899/2008) theory of antisemitism as an explanation of misfortunes. According to Kofta and Sedek (2005), the main cognitive specificity of the anti-Jewish stereotype is that it is not based on a set of stereotypical attributes (traits), but it involves the belief in a group soul. This makes antisemites perceive Jews as an entity, regardless of the actions of individual Jewish people. The outgroup as a whole is accused of conspiring against the ingroup. Such conspiracy stereotypes form a causal, holistic theory about Jews and their role. It points to alleged collective goals (i.e. aiming to dominate other ethnic groups), the secret character of collective behavior (clandestine plots, secret agreements) and high levels of group egoism (supporting fellow ingroup members rather than being interested in other groups’ well-being). Group members and their individual actions are viewed as irrelevant – as they are mainly viewed as actors in the hand of the conspiracy and its leadership (Kofta, & Sedek, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2005). This is why antisemitism today cannot be captured by simple measurement of attitudes or sympathies. As Jovan Byford (2011, p. 95) suggests, “Animosity towards Jews is today seldom expressed in terms of demeaning stereotypes that defined racial antisemitism in the past or as routine ‘dislike’ of Jews or ‘disapproval’ of their culture or religion (…). Instead, the biggest ‘fault’ of Jews in the eyes of antisemites worldwide is that they are in possession of considerable wealth, power and influence and are using it to exercise undue control over democratic governments, international organizations, financial institutions, media corporations and cultural establishments”. Conspiracy antisemitism has been observed in countries populated by sizeable Jewish populations, such as Ukraine (Bilewicz & Krzeminski, 2010) and Britain (Billig, 1987), in the countries where large Jewish communities existed in the past, like Poland (Bilewicz et al., 2013), but also in countries where almost no Jews ever lived, like Malaysia (Swami, 2012). One of the obvious psychological explanations of conspiracy theories about Jews links them to a more 142

Explaining Jew-hatred

general paranoid cognitive style. The authors of early studies on authoritarianism observed paranoid trends among highly antisemitic people (Frenkel-Brunswik & Sanford, 1945). Although this psychopathological explanation has been confirmed in several further studies (e.g., GrzesiakFeldman & Ejsmont, 2008), it is obvious that conspiracy beliefs about Jews could not be equated to paranoid ideation. Although conspiracy theories are related to paranoia, they are distinctive phenomena with different antecedents and correlates (Imhoff & Lamberty, 2018).

Antisemitism as an epistemic reaction to deprivation Beliefs in Jewish conspiracy were more often observed among people under relative deprivation – those who felt economically disadvantaged compared to their compatriots, but also felt that their nation is disadvantaged compared to other nations (Bilewicz & Krzeminski, 2010; Meuleman, Abts, Slootmaeckers, & Meeusen, 2019). The willingness of people suffering from deprivation to believe in antisemitic conspiracy theories could be viewed as a purely cognitive, attributional process (Kruglanski, 1987). Under frustrating conditions, people might employ either a universalistic blame-placing schema (“whole world is against us”) or particularistic schemata (“we are victims of a specific Jewish/communist/bankers plot”). Studying such pattern of attributions in the context of the 2009 economic crisis in Europe, Becker, Wagner, and Christ (2011) found that when the causes of experienced frustrations are attributed to bankers and speculators, crisis threat would heighten antisemitic prejudice, whereas if the causes are attributed to the influx of immigrants, then the crisis threat would lead to Islamophobic prejudice.This suggests that Jewish conspiracy beliefs are related to a more complex stereotypical network involving banking and speculation, in line with Ichheiser’s (1944) predictions about fear of “swindlers”. The striving for explanations of one’s disadvantage is at the core of an ideological model of scapegoating proposed by Peter Glick (2002) to explain the historical eruption of antisemitism in the German Weimar Republic. According to this model, antisemitic ideology provides an explanation of difficult life conditions (a shared sense of deprivation). Glick (2002) suggests that scapegoat ideology is effective as long as it plausibly presents certain minority groups (Jews in the Weimar Republic, Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey, Tutsi people in Rwanda of the Habyarimana regime) as responsible for the deprivation of the majority group. The minorities selected for the role of scapegoats are often viewed through the lens of a specific stereotype that combines alleged high competence with negative intentions toward the ingroup (envious prejudice, Fiske, Xu, Cuddy, & Glick, 1999; Glick & Fiske, 2001). Such ideology then offers a good explanation of misfortunes and becomes highly popular in the majority society. The contemporary popularity of beliefs in Jewish conspiracy is obviously also caused by similar needs for explanation of current economic problems (economic crises, shared frustrations, cf. Winiewski, Soral, & Bilewicz, 2015). The view that conspiratorial antisemitism is a consequence of an epistemic process refers to an assumption that people have a fundamental need to explain their reality in terms of structured, simplified causes.Therefore, conspiracy theories should serve as such explanations. Research evidence looking at the link between epistemic motives (need for cognition, intolerance of ambiguity, need for cognitive closure) and belief in conspiracy theories is relatively mixed – some studies are finding positive relationships between these constructs, whereas other studies are pointing to negative relationships (Kofta & Soral, 2018; Marchlewska, Cichocka, & Kossowska, 2018). There is also empirical evidence showing that epistemic motives and conspiracy beliefs are unrelated (Abalakina-Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999; Moulding et  al., 2016). This would suggest that the purely cognitive account of the conspiracy-based antisemitism is at least disputable. 143

M. Bilewicz

Antisemitism as a form of control restoration The fact that in the “suffering societies” (Durkheim, 1899/2008) antisemitism can be observed more commonly than in the prosperous ones could be also explained beyond the epistemic motivational process. Economic deprivation is a situation that threatens not only people’s certainty and enhances desire for explanation – it also threatens the very basic existential motivation of control and agency. When people are deprived of control, they tend to perceive other agents in their environment as possessing control. The naïve understanding of control is that of equilibrium: people believe that someone must have control – either they have it or the government, God, or other powers have it (as proposed by the compensatory control theory; Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009; Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008). The less control people have over their environment, the more they would perceive other groups as being agentic and influential.This is when the stereotype of Jews as a conspiring group will become highly accessible – as it gives an impression that a specific group is in control. Additionally, people deprived of personal control are motivated to restore it on a collective level – by delegating the sense of control to their leaders and groups. From this perspective, all forms of group defense, such as prejudice or intergroup biases, could be viewed as examples of control restoration after its deprivation at the individual level (as proposed by the group-based control restoration theory Fritsche et al., 2013). People deprived of control would be more willing to express prejudiced opinions and discriminate against outgroups – they would also be more negatively intended toward minorities. Control restoration framework has been used by social psychologists to explain historical genocides as a consequence of shared frustrating events, such as economic crises (Frey & Rez, 2002), or to describe heightened ethnocentric tendencies caused, among others, by economic crises and terrorist risks (Fritsche, Jonas, & Kessler, 2011). The initial empirical evidence for such a link was presented by Greenaway, Louis, Hornsey, and Jones (2014) who found that the threat caused by an economic crisis leads to heightened prejudice only among people who are experiencing control deprivation. Based on these two social psychological theories that explain the effects of personal control deprivation, one could view antisemitism as a direct consequence of perceived loss of control – rather than a consequence of epistemic process. Our recent empirical findings (Kofta et al., 2020) suggest that control deprivation could be viewed as a key antecedent of antisemitic conspiracy theories. People declaring that they have no control over politics tend to believe in Jewish conspiracies more often than those who feel more control in that domain. This in turn leads to higher support for discriminatory policies against Jewish people. By discriminating against Jews, people seem to regain the sense of control from those whose control is ostensibly perceived as large. This pattern was observed in nationally representative surveys in Poland and the United Kingdom, in a large longitudinal study conducted in Poland and in an experiment performed in Poland. It is important to note that when we experimentally induced people’s lack of control over politics, they became more confident about Jewish conspiracy theory – but not about conspiracy theories involving other groups (e.g., Russians). Thus, the control restoring mechanism could be observed in the case of antisemitic stereotyping, but not in other national or ethnic groups. At the same time, beliefs in Jewish conspiracies that are induced by control deprivation elicit other conspiracy theories – about bankers, politicians and governments. Politics is not the only domain in which people suffer loss of control. Very basic existential thoughts about death and mortality can also pose a threat to personal control (Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankhänel, 2008). In fact, when non-Jews think about death, their hostility to Jews also increases (Cohen et al., 2009). Participants who were asked to imagine their own physical death showed higher levels of antisemitic prejudice and anti-Israeli sentiments than those who thought about 144

Explaining Jew-hatred

other adverse events (e.g., pain). Such a procedure, known as a mortality salience induction, affected also anti-Jewish cognitions: participants reminded about death were more likely to exaggerate the size of Israel and support sanctions against Israel (but not against India or Russia). The specific effects of death reminders on antisemitic prejudice could be either attributed to the control-restoring character of antisemitism (Kofta et al., 2020) or explained as a worldview defense among those who perceive Jews as an ultimate threat to their core beliefs (Cohen et al., 2009). Anyhow, death reminders are known to cause antisemitic prejudice more than any other forms of group hostility. An American study found that mortality salience increases the level of antisemitism, but it does not affect the level of prejudice toward Blacks or Asians (Cohen, Jussim, Bhasin, & Salib, 2011). People’s desire to live in a predictable and controllable environment is often endangered. Economic crises, natural disasters, personal problems and existential fears can all pose a threat to the basic sense of personal control. Images of Jews as a diabolic force behind politics serve as both an explanation of why the world is uncontrollable, and a strategy to regain control through discriminatory actions. This makes antisemitism prevalent not only in totalitarian states but also in democratic societies suffering from economic and social difficulties.

The political psychology of antisemitism: A summary As one can see from this short review of psychological scholarship on antisemitism, hostility against Jews seems relatively distinct from other forms of prejudice. It is visible in both the structure of the antisemitic stereotype (a stereotype about a group as a whole rather than about individuals; and a complex explanatory theory rather than a mere simplified representation) and its mechanisms (epistemic, control-restorative, driven by victimhood and responsibility denial). Antisemitism is also a powerful political tool, used by populist leaders in times of uncertainty and turmoil. Although there is some evidence that conspiracy theories are politically demobilizing and decrease people’s willingness to participate in elections and support mainstream politicians (Jolley & Douglas, 2014), they might motivate people to engage in political actions that would confront conspiracies (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014). This makes conspiracy theories a particularly attractive means of mobilization directed against an ostensibly powerful conspiring political enemy. Research by Kofta and Sedek (1992) showed that conspiracy theories about Jews become activated in times of election campaigns, and their influence on people’s beliefs and attitudes seems to be stronger in that period than after elections. Our later research with nationally representative samples of Poles (Bilewicz & Sedek, 2015) confirmed that in an electoral year conspiracy stereotypes of Jews had a higher impact on attitudes than in a year without any elections. It is plausible that, historically, not only political but also religious mobilization could have activated antisemitism. Many pogroms of Jews in Eastern Europe took place before or during Easter or Corpus Christi celebrations (Judge, 1992; Markowski, 2015; 2018). This would be in line with Popper’s (1949) view that conspiracy theories are secularized religious imageries in which gods are replaced by secret plots, imperialists and financiers. Therefore, when people focus their attention on religious or political issues, their tendency to blame certain groups for conspiring is elevated. This could be true in the case of any group historically accused of conspiring against the ethnic majority (e.g., Armenians in Turkey during World War I, Jews in Poland and France during the 1968 student protests). Elevated interest in politics puts Jews in the place of a conspiring force – an explanation of current unrest. This brings us back to Durkheim’s observation of the Dreyfus trial in France. The longenduring stereotypes among military officers were combined with the psychological needs of French society in times of turmoil. The pars pro toto sentence against Captain Dreyfus allowed 145

M. Bilewicz

French citizens to restore their subjective sense of control over the complex political reality that the majority of the French society could not properly comprehend. This interactive view (existing stereotypes interacting with triggering societal situations) is probably the best explanation of antisemitism offered by social science today. Although it is specific to antisemitism, it can be used to explain prejudice toward other minority groups that are also stereotyped as being omnipotent and conspiring against majorities.

References Abalakina-Paap, M., Stephan, W.G., Craig, T., & Gregory, W.L. (1999). Beliefs in conspiracies. Political Psychology, 20, 637–647. Adorno, T. (1963). Eingriffe. Neun kritische Modelle [Interventions: Nine Critical Models]. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J., & Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Adorno, T.W. & Horkheimer, M. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Bandura,A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193–209. Bar-Tal, D. & Antebi, D. (1992). Beliefs about negative intentions of the world: A study of the Israeli siege mentality. Political Psychology, 13, 633–645. Becker, J.C., Wagner, U., & Christ, O. (2011). Consequences of the 2008 financial crisis for intergroup relations: The role of perceived threat and causal attributions. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14, 871–885. Bergmann,W. (2006). Nicht immer als Tätervolk dastehen – Zum Phänomen des Schuldabwehr-Antisemitismus in Deutschland [Not always appearing as the population of perpetrators – About the phenomenon of anti-semitism as defense against guilt in Germany]. In D. Ansorge (ed.), Antisemitismus in Europa und in der arabischen Welt [Anti-semitism in Europe and in the Arab world] (pp. 81–106). Paderborn: Bonifatius Verlag. Bilewicz, M. & Krzeminski, I. (2010). Anti-semitism in Poland and Ukraine: The belief in Jewish control as a mechanism of scapegoating. International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 4, 234–243. Bilewicz, M. & Liu, J. (2020). Collective victimhood as a form of adaptation: A world system perspective. In J. R.Vollhardt (ed.), The social psychology of collective victimhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bilewicz, M. & Sedek, G. (2015). Conspiracy stereotypes. Their sociopsychological antecedents and consequences. In M. Bilewicz, A. Cichocka, & W. Soral (eds.), The psychology of conspiracy (pp. 3–22). London: Routledge. Bilewicz, M. & Stefaniak, A. (2013). Can a victim be responsible? Antisemitic consequences of victimhoodbased identity and competitive victimhood in Poland. In B. Bokus (ed.), Responsibility: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 69–80). Warsaw: Lexem. Bilewicz, M.,Winiewski, M., Kofta, M., & Wójcik, A. (2013). Harmful ideas, the structure and consequences of anti-Semitic beliefs in Poland. Political Psychology, 34, 821–839. Billig, M. (1987). Anti-Semitic themes and the British far left: Some social-psychological observations on indirect aspects of the conspiracy tradition. In C.F. Graumann & S. Moscovici (eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy (pp. 115–136). New York, NY: Springer. Bogner, J. (2019, June 25). Armenia’s Jewish problem. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from https://www.jpost. com/Opinion/Armenias-Jewish-problem-593591. Bulska, D. & Winiewski, M. (2018). Irrational critique of Israel and Palestine: New clothes for traditional prejudice? Social Psychological Bulletin, 13, 1–23. Byford, J. (2011). Conspiracy theories: A critical introduction. New York, NY: Springer. Cichocka, A. (2016). Understanding defensive and secure in-group positivity: The role of collective narcissism. European Review of Social Psychology, 27, 283–317. Cichocka, A., Cislak, A., Stronge, S., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C.G. (2019). Does high self-esteem foster narcissism? Testing the bidirectional relationships between self-esteem, narcissistic admiration and rivalry. Journal of Research in Personality, 83, 102–110.

146

Explaining Jew-hatred Cichocka, A., de Zavala, A.G., Marchlewska, M., & Olechowski, M. (2015). Grandiose delusions: Collective narcissism, secure in-group identification, and belief in conspiracies. In M. Bilewicz, A. Cichocka, & W. Soral (eds.), The psychology of conspiracy (pp. 3–22). London: Routledge. Cohen, F., Jussim, L., Bhasin, G., & Salib, E. (2011). The modern anti-semitism Israel model: An empirical relationship between modern anti-semitism and opposition to Israel. Conflict & Communication, 10, 1–5. Cohen, F., Jussim, L., Harber, K.D., & Bhasin, G. (2009). Modern anti-semitism and anti-Israeli attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 290–306. Collins, B., & Blankstein, A. (2019, April 28). Anti-Semitic open letter posted online under name of Chabad synagogue shooting suspect. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/usnews/anti-semitic-open-letter-posted-online-under-name-chabad-synagogue-n999211. De Guissmé, L. & Licata, L. (2017). Competition over collective victimhood recognition: When perceived lack of recognition for past victimization is associated with negative attitudes towards another victimized group. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 148–166. Dunbar, E. & Simonova, L. (2003). Individual difference and social status predictors of anti-semitism and racism US and Czech findings with the prejudice/tolerance and right wing authoritarianism scales. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27, 507–523. Durkheim, E. (2008). Anti-semitism and social crisis. Sociological Theory, 26, 321–323. (Original work published 1899.) Fiske, S.T., Xu, J., Cuddy, A.C., & Glick, P. (1999). (Dis)respecting versus (dis)liking: Status and interdependence predict ambivalent stereotypes of competence and warmth. Journal of Social Issues, 55, 473–489. Frenkel-Brunswik, E. & Sanford, R.N. (1945). Some personality factors in anti-semitism. The Journal of Psychology, 20, 271–291. Frey, D. & Rez, H. (2002). Population and predators: Preconditions for the Holocaust from a control theoretical perspective. In L.S. Newman & R. Erber (eds.), Understanding genocide:The social psychology of the Holocaust (pp. 188–221). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Frindte, W., Wettig, S., & Wammetsberger, D. (2005). Old and new anti-Semitic attitudes in the context of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation – Two studies in Germany. Peace and Conflict, 11, 239–266. Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., Ablasser, C., Beyer, M., Kuban, J., Manger, A.M., & Schultz, M. (2013). The power of we: Evidence for group-based control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 19–32. Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., & Fankhänel, T. (2008). The role of control motivation in mortality salience effects on ingroup support and defense. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 524–541. Fritsche, I., Jonas, E., & Kessler, T. (2011). Collective reactions to threat: Implications for intergroup conflict and for solving societal crises. Social Issues and Policy Review, 5, 101–136. Fromm, E. (1984). The working class in Weimar Germany: A psychological & sociological study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Furnham, A., & Procter, E. (1989). Belief in a just world: Review and critique of the individual difference literature. British Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 365–384. Gensing, P. (2019, October 9). Angriff in Halle: Ein Stream voller Hass. Tagesschau.du. Retrieved from https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/halle-taeter-101.html. Glick, P. (2002). Sacrificial lambs dressed in wolves’ clothing: Envious prejudice, ideology, and the scapegoating of Jews. In L.S. Newman, & R. Erber (eds.), Understanding genocide:The social psychology of the Holocaust (pp. 113–142). London: Oxford University Press. Glick, P. & Fiske, S.T. (2001). Ambivalent stereotypes as legitimizing ideologies: Differentiating paternalistic and envious prejudice. In J. Jost & B. Major (eds.), The psychology of legitimacy (pp. 278–306). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldhagen, D.J. (1996). Hitler’s willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Golec de Zavala, A. & Cichocka, A. (2011). Collective narcissism and anti-semitism in Poland. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15, 213–229. Greenaway, K.H., Louis, W.R., Hornsey, M.J., & Jones, J.M. (2014). Perceived control qualifies the effects of threat on prejudice. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53, 422–442. Grzesiak-Feldman, M. & Ejsmont, A. (2008). Paranoia and conspiracy thinking of Jews, Arabs, Germans, and Russians in a Polish sample. Psychological Reports, 102, 884–886. Hodson, G., MacInnis, C.C., & Busseri, M.A. (2017). Bowing and kicking: Rediscovering the fundamental link between generalized authoritarianism and generalized prejudice. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 243–251.

147

M. Bilewicz Ichheiser, G. (1944). Fear of violence and fear of fraud:With some remarks on the social psychology of antisemitism. Sociometry, 7, 376–383. Imhoff, R. (2010). Zwei Formen des modernen Antisemitismus? Eine Skala zur Messung primären und sekundären Antisemitismus [Two forms of modern anti-semitism? A scale for the measurement of primary and secondary ant-semitism]. Conflict and Communication Online, 9, 1–13. Imhoff, R. & Banse, R. (2009). Ongoing victim suffering increases prejudice: The case of secondary antisemitism. Psychological Science, 20, 1443–1447. Imhoff, R. & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (un–)truth to power: Conspiracy mentality as a generalised political attitude. European Journal of Personality, 28, 25–43. Imhoff, R. & Lamberty, P. (2018). How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 909–926. Imhoff, R., & Messer, M. (2019). In search of experimental evidence for secondary antisemitism: A file drawer report. Meta-Psychology, 3, 1–22. Jolley, D. & Douglas, K.M. (2014). The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 35–56. Jolley, D., Meleady, R., & Douglas, K.M. (2020). Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups. British Journal of Psychology, 111, 17–35. Judge, E. (1992). Easter in Kishinev: Anatomy of a pogrom. New York, NY: New York University Press. Kay, A.C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J.L., Callan, M.J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 18–35. Kay, A.C., Whitson, J.A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A.D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 264–268. Kofta, M. & Sedek, G. (1992). Struktura poznawcza stereotypu etnicznego, bliskość wyborów parlamentarnych a przejawy antysemityzmu [Cognitive structure of ethnic stereotype, proximity of parliamentary elections, and signs of anti-semitism]. In Z. Chlewiński & I. Kurcz (eds.), Stereotypy I uprzedzenia [Stereotypes and prejudice] (pp. 67–86). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Psychologii PAN. Kofta, M. & Sedek, G. (1995). Stereotyp “duszy grupowej”, wybory parlamentarne a postawy wobec osób pochodzenia żydowskiego [Conspiracy stereotypes, parliamentary elections, and attitudes toward Jewish-background people]. In B. Wojciszke (ed.), Jacy s Polacy? Badania opinii społecznej jako źródło wiedzy psychologicznej [What are poles like? Opinion polls as a source of psychological knowledge] (pp. 55–72). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Psychologii PAN. Kofta, M. & Sedek, G. (1999). Stereotyp duszy grupowej a postawy wobec obcych: Wyniki badań sondażowych [Conspiracy stereotypes and attitudes toward “Strangers”: Results of survey research]. In B. Wojciszke & M. Jarymowicz (eds.), Psychologia rozumienia zjawisk społecznych [The psychology of understanding social phenomena] (pp. 173–208). Warsaw: PWN. Kofta, M. & Sedek, G. (2005). Conspiracy stereotypes of Jews during systemic transformation in Poland. International Journal of Sociology, 35, 40–64. Kofta, M. & Soral, W. (2018). Dlaczego ludzie szukają spiskowych wyjaśnień zdarzeń politycznych? Mechanizmy psychospołeczne [Why do people look for conspiracy explanations of political events? Psychosocial mechanisms]. In M. Drogosz (ed.), Podzielony umysł społeczny. Polacy po ćwierćwieczu demokracji [divided social mind: Poles after a quarter of a century of democracy] (pp. 147–168).Warsaw: Liberi Libri. Kofta, M., Soral, W., & Bilewicz, M. (2020). What breeds conspiracy antisemitism? The role of political uncontrollability and uncertainty in the belief in Jewish conspiracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118, 900–918. Kruglanski, A.W. (1987). Blame-placing schemata and attribution research. In C.F. Graumann & S. Moscovici (eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy (pp. 219–229). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag. Kuzawinska, O. & Bilewicz, M. (2020). The role of acknowledgement in commemorative biases against Jews. Manuscript in preparation. Laurin, K., Kay, A.C., & Moscovitch, D.A. (2008). On the belief in God: Towards an understanding of the emotional substrates of compensatory control. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1559–1562. Lerner, M.J. & Miller, D.T. (1978). Just world research and the attribution process: Looking back and ahead. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030–1051.

148

Explaining Jew-hatred Levinson, D.J. (1950).The study of anti-semitic ideology. In T.W. Adorno, E. Frenkel-Brenswik, D.J. Levinson, & R.N. Sanford (eds.), The authoritarian personality (pp. 57–101). New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Marchlewska, M., Cichocka, A., & Kossowska, M. (2018). Addicted to answers: Need for cognitive closure and the endorsement of conspiracy beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 109–117. Markowski, A. (2015). Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Polish Kingdom. In G. Dynner, A. Polonsky, & M. Wodzinś ki (eds.), Jews in the Kingdom of Poland: 1815–1918 (pp. 219–255). Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Markowski, A. (2018). Przemoc antyżydowska i wyobrażenia społeczne. Pogrom białostocki 1906 roku [antiJewish violence and social imagery: The Bialystok pogrom of 1906]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Mazur, L.B. & Vollhardt, J.R. (2016). The prototypicality of genocide: Implications for international intervention. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 16, 290–320. Meuleman, B., Abts, K., Slootmaeckers, K., & Meeusen, C. (2019). Differentiated threat and the genesis of prejudice: Group-specific antecedents of homonegativity, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, and antiimmigrant attitudes. Social Problems, 66, 222–244. Michlic, J.B. (2006). Poland’s threatening other: The image of the Jew from 1880 to the present. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Moscovici, S. (1987).The conspiracy mentality. In C.F. Graumann, & S. Moscovici (eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy (pp. 151–169). New York, NY: Springer. Moscovici, S. (2020). Reflections on the popularity of ‘Conspiracy Mentalities’. International Review of Social Psychology, 33, 9. Moulding, R., Nix-Carnell, S., Schnabel, A., Nedeljkovic, M., Burnside, E.E., Lentini, A.F., & Mehzabin, N. (2016). Better the devil you know than a world you don’t? Intolerance of uncertainty and worldview explanations for belief in conspiracy theories. Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 345–354. Noor, M., Shnabel, N., Halabi, S., & Nadler, A. (2012). When suffering begets suffering: The psychology of competitive victimhood between adversarial groups in violent conflicts. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 351–374. Peace, T. (2009). Un antisémitisme nouveau? The debate about a ‘new antisemitism’ in France. Patterns of Prejudice, 43, 103–121. Popper, K.R. (1949). Prediction and prophesy and their significance for social theory. In E.W. Beth, H.J. Pos, & J.H.A. Hollack (eds.), Proceedings of the tenth international congress of philosophy (pp. 82–91). Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. Sears, D.O. & Henry, P.J. (2005). Over thirty years later: A contemporary look at symbolic racism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 95–125. Steinlauf, M.C. (1997). Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Swami, V. (2012). Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: The case of the Jewish conspiracy theory in Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychology, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00280. Van Sant, S. (2018, October 27).What’s known about Robert Bowers, the suspect in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/10/27/661409410/whats-knownabout-robert-bowers-the-suspect-in-the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting?t=1580946197630. Winiewski, M., Soral, W., & Bilewicz, M. (2015). Conspiracy theories on the map of stereotype content: Survey and historical evidence. In M. Bilewicz, A. Cichocka, & W. Soral (eds.), The psychology of conspiracy (pp. 23–41). London: Routledge. Wistrich, R.S. (1991). Anti-semitism:The longest hatred. London: Thames Methuen. Young, I.F. & Sullivan, D. (2016). Competitive victimhood: A review of the theoretical and empirical literature. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 30–34. Zick, A., Küpper, B., & Hövermann, A. (2011). Intolerance, prejudice and discrimination – A European report. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

149

PART III

Discrimination, stereotypes and bias in the field

11 DISCRIMINATION AND INTERGROUP CONTACT Katy Greenland

Intergroup contact is probably the oldest and most intuitive means by which to challenge and reduce discrimination. Underpinning this intervention is the idea that prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping are caused by deficits in experience, understanding, and/or communication, and that these deficits can be reduced through group members meeting and building relationships. Contact enables actors to learn about and reappraise the outgroup; to reduce anxiety, increase self-efficacy and approach motivations; to generate bonds of trust, empathy, and positive affect; and thereby to establish a platform for continuing positive relationships into the future (Pettigrew, 1998). However, contact is not always positive and can be constructed as a threat to both majorities and minorities (Paolini, Harwood, & Rubin, 2010; Pettigrew & Hewstone, 2017; Sengupta, Osborne, & Sibley, 2019; Smeekes & Verkuyten, 2015).1 In this chapter, I summarise the classic research; explore emergent fields; and outline the limitations of contact with particular emphasis on structural inequalities, power, and the daily lived experience of contact. I conclude with positive suggestions for future research.

Classic research The main features of positive intergroup contact have been evidenced over many decades. These include cooperation around shared goals; closeness and intimacy; equal status between group members; and institutional support (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000, 2006).

1 One of the risks in writing about intergroup phenomena is that we reify social and cultural groups when in practice they are both fluid and socially constructed (e.g., black/ white; men/ women: Condor, 1988; Gillespie, Howarth, & Cornish, 2012; Reicher, 1986). Nevertheless, an effective text requires an efficient terminology. I will use the terms ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ to confer both the distinctions between in/outgroups and the power relations often inherent in those relations. This status is conferred with reference to social, cultural, political, and/or economic power that often has a longstanding historical element. However, it is also contingent (in that different category statuses become more or less relevant in different contexts) and intersectional (in that people can be majorities on one dimension but minorities in another). That said, these statuses are not wholly fluid either, since they are strongly associated with the deployment of power (Link & Phelan, 2001). When I refer to minorities and majorities, I am therefore referring to those categories which are relevant in that specific context, while acknowledging that some categories are more repeatedly ascribed and strongly policed than others.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-11

153

K. Greenland

While the prototypical form of contact might be people sitting down around a table, contact should be thought of as a continuum of interactions and events that happen every day. Contact can take place face to face or electronically (e.g., over social media), directly or vicariously (e.g., when a friend or family member has contact), and through the ecology of desegregated institutions and communities (Christ et al., 2014; Turner, Hewstone, & Voci, 2007; White, Turner, Verrelli, Harvey, & Hanna, 2019). Interestingly, contact can even have a secondary transfer effect: positive interactions with members of one group can transfer to members of a different group (Pettigrew, 2009). There have been two main modifications to the original contact hypothesis over the last 50 years, both of which contrast with common-sense assumptions. The first concerns cognition versus affect (what you know versus what you feel). It is widely assumed that discrimination is caused by ignorance and that contact therefore works through increased knowledge (Figgou & Condor, 2006). In fact, the principal effects of contact appear to be affective: contact increases empathy and perspective taking and reduces intergroup anxiety (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, 2008; Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). Intergroup anxiety in particular is an important mediator in the relationship between contact and prejudice: people can experience fear and uncertainty before and during contact, either because they believe that the outgroup represents a threat, or because they want to avoid the appearance of being prejudiced (Butz & Plant, 2006; Greenland, Xenias, & Maio, 2012; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008; Plant, Butz, & Tartakovsky, 2008; Stephan & Stephan, 1985, 2000). Although contact works through changing both cognition and affect, it is the latter that drives much of the observed effects. The second major modification to the contact hypothesis concerns the role of categorisation (Brewer & Miller, 1984; Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986; Hewstone & Brown, 1986). When people interact with outgroup members, how should they think of each other? Should they interact as individuals, as representatives of their respective groups, or seek a wider shared identity (e.g., as human beings)? Most people assume the former or the latter: seeking a ‘colourblind’ or ‘universalist’ approach (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; DiAngelo, 2010). However, the problem with colour blind or universalist orientations relates to generalisation: if the aim of contact is to change relations at an intergroup level, then actors must generalise from their contact experiences to the outgroup as a whole. And unless actors think of their contact partners as representative of the outgroup, then they are unlikely to do this generalisation work. At the same time, however, the more contact partners view each other as outgroup members, the greater the risk of stereotyping and intergroup anxiety. Pettigrew’s (1998) elegant solution to this conundrum was to theorise contact as a process rather than an event: the early stages of contact should be interpersonal (i.e., participants interacting with each other as individuals) in order to reduce anxiety and build affective ties; once established, then contact should become more intergroup such that actors start to become aware of and address group differences (acknowledging and addressing difficulties or misunderstandings); finally, actors can seek a wider, superordinate shared identity which explores the elements that their different groups have in common, and seeks to reduce the emphasis on ingroup/outgroup binaries. A number of studies have now supported this process model (e.g., Binder et al., 2009; Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Davies & Aron, 2016; McIntyre, Paolini, & Hewstone, 2016).

Emerging fields in contact research Thus far I have outlined the established literature on the contact hypothesis. I now explore current research and ongoing debates in more detail.

154

Discrimination and intergroup contact

Structural and social contexts The effectiveness of intergroup contact is greatly reduced or eliminated in contexts where there is significant structural inequality (Kende, Phalet, Van den Noortgate, Kara, & Fischer, 2018; see also Lamont et al., 2016). In these contexts, contact that reproduces existing social hierarchies merely reinforces and normalises those hierarchies (e.g., in racialised domestic labour: Durrheim, Jacobs, & Dixon, 2014), but equal status between contact partners can constitute a threat to majorities because it challenges the status quo (Knowles, Lowery, Chow, & Unzueta, 2014; Mutz, 2018; Norton & Sommers, 2011; Saguy & Kteily, 2014; Sonnenschein, Bekerman, & Horenczyk, 2010). Institutional support (and associated local social norms) are important in these contexts because these are the resources that actors are likely to mobilise to define appropriate action (Crandall, Miller, & White, 2018; Durrheim, Quayle, & Dixon, 2016). Institutional support can be considered both in terms of peers (e.g., social norms that value or devalue diversity), specific institutions (e.g., policies and practices in schools: Baysu, Celeste, Brown,Verschueren, & Phalet, 2016; Celeste, Baysu, Phalet, Meeussen, & Kende, 2019; Meeussen, Otten, & Phalet, 2014), and wider social structures (e.g., institutionalised discrimination). Social norms that value diversity are associated with more interest in outgroup contact and less prejudice (Christ et al., 2014; Ramiah, Schmid, Hewstone, & Floe, 2015; Tropp & Bianchi, 2006), even among actors whose contact experience is limited. Social norms are also the most likely explanation of the positive effects of vicarious (or ‘extended’) contact: when people believe that members of their ingroup are experiencing contact with the outgroup, they report more positive outgroup attitudes themselves (Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997). What is particularly interesting about this effect is that it seems to be comparable to the effects of direct contact (in terms of effect size and mediators: Pettigrew, Christ, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2007). Knowing that someone from your own group is having outgroup contact appears to change perceived peer group norms, shifting the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable ingroup behaviour, and increasing willingness for contact.

Approach and avoidance in contact The adage goes ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’. Even as institutions and geographies become more diverse, then people resegregate themselves within those spaces (Dixon & Durrheim, 2003; Ramiah et al., 2015). Researchers have begun to explore the factors that make people more or less likely to approach contact. Analysis typically takes a multivariate approach, in that there is a range of factors at play and at a range of different levels (for reviews, see Paolini, Harwood, Hewstone, & Neumann, 2018; Ron, Solomon, Halperin, & Saguy, 2017; see also Pettigrew & Hewstone, 2017). So, for example, the contextual factors outlined in the previous section (institutionalised inequality, institutional support, and social norms) have an impact on both the availability of contact and the likelihood that people will approach contact in that context. Individual factors also impact people’s approach inclinations. The most obvious of these is prejudice itself: people who are more prejudiced or support more separatist ideologies are also more likely to avoid contact (Dhont & Van Hiel, 2009). However, longitudinal research suggests that there is a two-way relationship between contact and prejudice: people who are most prejudiced are more likely to avoid contact, but contact reduces prejudice over and above this effect (Binder et al., 2009). People who have more negative attitudes may have more negative contact experiences, but their low expectations and disinterest in making a good impression

155

K. Greenland

can ironically lend itself to more relaxed interactions (Butz & Plant, 2009; Goff, Steele, & Davies, 2008; Shelton, 2003; Shelton, Richeson, Salvatore, & Trawalter, 2005; see also Hodson, 2011). Individual factors can also include actors’ expectancies about contact. People may want to have contact, but believe that they do not have the skills to do so effectively, or that members of the outgroup are not open to meeting them (Butz & Plant, 2011; Plant & Butz, 2006; Plant et al., 2008). When shared by both ingroup and outgroup members, these expectancies can generate a state of pluralistic ignorance, where both ingroups and outgroups say that they would like more contact, but do not make an approach because they believe that the other group does not want to do so (Shelton & Richeson, 2005). I have considered approach and avoidance in terms of how people resegregate themselves in desegregated spaces. However, approach and avoidance can also be used in a more technical sense to refer to the motivations of actors within contact (Butz & Plant, 2009; Keller, Hurst, & Uskul, 2008; Plant, Devine, & Peruche, 2010; Trawalter & Richeson, 2006). In this analysis, approach motivations indicate the desire to reach a positive endstate (e.g., to meet someone new; to broaden your experience) while avoidance motivations indicate the desire to avoid a negative endstate (e.g., to avoid saying the wrong thing or making a fool of yourself). Research suggests that these are distinct regulatory systems that are associated with different emotions and different levels of persistence (Higgins, 1998). Research also suggests that people are often strongly motivated to avoid the appearance of prejudice to the extent that avoidance motivations are often the default position during contact (Greenland et  al., 2012; Plant & Devine, 1998; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005; Trawalter & Richeson, 2006). This emphasis on avoidance matters because avoidance motivations are often associated with agitation, fear, or threat. Avoidance motivations are also more likely to cause actors to become exhausted (with consequences for information processing, action, and memory). Avoidance motivations can therefore have a detrimental effect on the quality of contact (Paolini, Harris, & Griffin, 2016; Trawalter, Adam, Chase-Lansdale, & Richeson, 2012; West & Greenland, 2016). Approach and avoidance can have ironic consequences in contact such that those who are most motivated to avoid giving offence may inadvertently cause more negative contact experiences (Butz & Plant, 2009; Goff et al., 2008; Shelton, 2003; Shelton et al., 2005). To counteract these effects, actors can be encouraged to change the way that they frame contact (i.e., to focus on enjoyment, interest, and learning, rather than the avoidance of negative experiences: Paolini, Wright, Dys-Steenbergen, & Favara, 2016; Trawalter & Richeson, 2006).

The impacts of positive and negative contact Contact research suffers from the same ‘bottom drawer’ problem as other empirical work: research is more likely to be published when it is successful (i.e., when contact has the effect of reducing prejudice) compared to when it is not (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). However not all contact experiences will be positive, particularly in contexts where conflict is entrenched. What is the impact of negative contact compared to positive? Paolini and colleagues (e.g., Paolini & McIntyre, 2019; Paolini et al., 2010) suggest that negative contact has a generalisation advantage compared to positive contact: actors are more likely to make outgroup generalisations on the back of negative experiences compared to positive experiences (Barlow et al., 2012; Graf, Paolini, & Rubin, 2014; Paolini, et al., 2010; Paolini, Rubin, Husnu, Joyce, & Hewstone, 2014; but see also Pettigrew & Hewstone, 2017; Paolini & McIntyre, 2019). In practice, this means that negative contact experiences have a stronger impact on attitudes compared to positive contact experiences. Fortunately, negative contact is also relatively infrequent (compared to positive contact). In contexts where there is approximate equality, positive intergroup experiences tend to outnumber 156

Discrimination and intergroup contact

negative experiences by factors of between 4:1 and 2:1 (Barlow et al., 2012; Graf et al., 2014; Pettigrew, 2008; see also Husnu & Paolini, 2019). Note, however, that contexts where there is significant conflict and/or institutionalised inequality also have lower ratios of positive to negative contact (Boniecki & Britt, 2003; Dhont, Cornelis, & Van Hiel, 2010). This research opens up a number of interesting research questions, particularly as to what constitutes positive/negative contact in the first place. I will return to this observation in the final section.

Asymmetries between minority and majority contact experiences Clearly, the experience and impact of contact partly depend on the power relationships between the groups involved: the experiences of majorities and minorities can be different. Meta-analysis suggests that the positive effects of contact are reduced for minorities (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000; Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). Worse, contact can have a negative effect on attention to social inequality and support for social change (Hasan-Aslih, Pliskin, van Zomeren, Halperin, & Saguy, 2019; Hässler et al., 2020; McKeown & Dixon, 2017; Saguy, Shchory-Eyal, Hasan-Aslih, Sobol, & Dovidio, 2017; Wright & Lubensky, 2009). Minorities who experience positive intergroup interactions may have increased positive affect towards the majority, but simultaneously report reduced support for the kinds of structural and collective changes that would address systemic forms of inequality. This research is described in more detail in Dixon and Langdridge (this volume). Minority and majority actors also differ in their goals and expectations for contact in ways that can be consequential for the progress of that contact. Minority and majority participants are likely to enter interactions with some sense of historical inequalities and metastereotypes that they will want to address and/or disconfirm (Adams, O’Brien, & Nelson, 2006; Bergsieker, Shelton, & Richeson, 2010; Vorauer, Hunter, Main, & Roy, 2000; Vorauer, Main, & O’Connell, 1998;Wilkins, 2012). For majorities, this means demonstrating that they are not prejudiced and a consequent desire to emphasise superordinate commonalities (Crocker & Canevello, 2012; Goff et al., 2008). Minorities, in contrast, may want to address issues of status and inequality directly, and in a way that majorities do not (Apfelbaum, Sommers, & Norton, 2008; Bergsieker et al., 2010; Brannon, Carter, Murdock-Perriera, & Higginbotham, 2018; Plant & Devine, 1998; Saguy, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2008; Trawalter & Richeson, 2008). Majorities and minorities may therefore enter contact with strikingly different (and incompatible) goals. A small number of longitudinal studies have explored the progression of contact over time by looking at cross-group friendships. It is well established that there is a gap between minorities and majorities in terms of knowledge of historical and structural discrimination (Adams et al., 2006; Bonam, Nair Das, Coleman, & Salter, 2019; Kraus, Rucker, & Richeson, 2017; Nelson, Adams, & Salter, 2013) and that majorities can be overconfident that they understand the nature of that discrimination (West & Eaton, 2019). There is some evidence from longitudinal studies that these asymmetries persist over time and can be consequential for the progression of friendships. Specifically, majority experiences of cross-group friendship can lead to a sense of overconfidence that they understand intergroup issues, and this may (ironically) undermine the quality of those relationships (Holoien, 2016; Holoien, Bergsieker, Shelton, & Alegre, 2015); the majority actors may be motivated to feel that they understand minority partners (because of their desire to affiliate), but minority partners may not feel so understood (Holoien, 2016). In fact, there is some evidence of an inverse relationship between majorities’ belief that they understand their minority friends, and their friends’ evaluation of the relationship quality (Holoien et al., 2015; see also Greenland, Augoustinos, Andreouli, & Taulke-Johnson, 2020). 157

K. Greenland

Although there has been some exploration of the dynamics of dyadic relationships in contact (Shelton & Richeson, 2006; Trawalter & Richeson, 2008; Trawalter, Richeson, & Shelton, 2009) this research area remains under-developed. Understanding these dynamics at a local level is important to making sense of the power relationships and associated asymmetries between minority and majority actors during intergroup contact.

Theoretical and methodological limitations Contact is not a panacea for intergroup conflict, and this is readily acknowledged by contact theorists (e.g., Paolini et al., 2018). The effect sizes of contact are small to moderate (r = –.21; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) and vary according to target groups, the degree of existing inequality, and the dependent variables of interest (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000, 2006). At its worst, contact can be a site of exploitation and oppression that reinforces existing inequalities (Durrheim et al., 2014; Lamont et  al., 2016). Even subjectively positive contact can be problematic in that it can give an illusion of equality which can (1) suppress minority support for action that might challenge the structural status quo (Hasan-Aslih et al., 2019; McKeown & Dixon, 2017; Saguy et al., 2017; Wright & Lubensky, 2009); (2) bolster majorities’ unjustified beliefs that they understand the issues (Holoien et al., 2015); and (3) enable people to make claims about the end of discrimination and/or to justify particular practices (Andreouli, Greenland, & Howarth, 2016; Bonilla-Silva, 2002; Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2005; Greenland et al., 2020). At this point, it is worth returning to first principles and asking: what is contact for? Is it a reduction in prejudice (stereotypes, emotions, attitudes, and action tendencies), or a reduction in discrimination (behaviours, practices, policies)? To what extent are we theorising social inequalities as the consequence of individual processes (albeit on a mass scale), or the consequence of social and cultural institutions? One might argue that these questions constitute a false dichotomy, because discrimination is the consequence of prejudice and because social institutions are made up of people. However, and as already outlined, contact can undermine support for challenging institutional forms of discrimination (even while reducing prejudice per se; Dixon & Langdridge, this volume). Contact research is generally conducted by psychologists working within objectivist traditions, and the assumptions inherent in these traditions have shaped both the research questions, and the methods used to answer those questions. Specifically, researchers in this tradition emphasise processes inside the head and broad brush effects that can be demonstrated with quantitative designs. There is an associated historical under-development of research that demonstrates the messy, contradictory, and counter-intuitive nature of everyday contact (see also Dixon et  al., 2005), and the ways in which majorities can continue to exert power over minorities in subtle (and not so subtle) ways (Sue, 2013). I will return to this point in the final section. In addition, there is an argument that the contact paradigm is itself consequential in bolstering a status quo in which structural inequalities persist. I have demonstrated how the experience and practice of contact can suppress minorities’ support for collective action and social change. In addition, it could be argued that the idea of contact as an intervention can have an equally suppressive effect on majorities’ support for collective action and social change, as it constructs the problem as located in individuals rather than institutions. Contact theory is predicated on a model of theoretical individualism (Dixon et al., 2005) that focuses on the attitudes and experiences of individuals. Discrimination, however, is as much a structural and cultural problem as a psychological one, and is impacted by processes that have been institutionalised and reproduced across generations (e.g., in education, health care, employment, housing, and the criminal justice system; Pager, 2008). There is good evidence that majorities prefer to conceptualise discrimination as an 158

Discrimination and intergroup contact

individual (rather than structural) problem (O’Brien et al., 2009), and often know little about the historical and cultural forces that have shaped the contemporary practice and social institutions (Adams et al., 2006; Bonam et al., 2019; Nelson et al., 2013). Majorities also tend to underestimate the systematic and repeated nature of discrimination (Adams, Tormala, & O’Brien, 2006; West, 2019;West & Eaton, 2019). Framing discrimination at an individual level (as contact theory often does) fails to challenge majority ideas about the nature of persistent structural and cultural inequalities (Adams, Edkins, Lacka, Pickett, & Cheryan, 2008; Rucker & Richeson, this volume) and enables majorities to continue to construct discrimination as something largely in the past and/or that is done by other people (Andreouli et al., 2016; O’Brien et al., 2010). Indeed, contact can be exploited in order to make claims about the nature of discrimination and/or to defer real social and political change (Bonilla-Silva, 2002; Dixon et al., 2005; Greenland et al., 2020).

Future research Discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping are as much social and structural phenomena as they are individual (Link & Phelan, 2001; Pager, 2008). Changing the structures and institutions that shore up and reproduce discrimination would arguably do more to address inequalities than changing the individuals who are members of those institutions. Achieving this in ways that are both structural and resilient requires a change to policy, legislation, and practice (ideally in ways that are not specifically aimed at one group: Brannon et al., 2018). Contact may not be the most effective way to affect such changes, and can even (ironically) undermine support for them. Nevertheless, contact remains a fact of life in diverse and desegregated societies, and it makes sense to understand how it can be used effectively as a tool for social change. I therefore suggest a reframing of contact research to address two questions. First, to what extent could the practices and experiences of contact be harnessed to achieve structural change? Second, what are the ways in which structural inequalities are reproduced and maintained during contact? Contact can be an opportunity to witness and talk about inequality, but it can also contribute to the (widely held) belief that discrimination is either restricted to a small number of people and/or largely a thing of the past (Andreouli et al., 2016; Greenland, Andreouli, Augoustinos, & Taulke-Johnson, 2018, Greenland et al., 2020). The extent to which contact can be harnessed to achieve structural change partly depends on the extent to which participants are deploying interpersonal and/or intergroup categorisations. One would expect that only intergroup contact would inspire action to achieve change at a structural level (e.g., participation in collective action, support for relevant policy changes) rather than at an individual level (e.g., offering to edit a CV or seeking counselling). One might also expect that interpersonal vs intergroup categorisation might impact on the relationship between contact and lay beliefs about inequality i.e., the extent to which participants construct discrimination to be an individual phenomenon (e.g., caused by majority ‘bad apples’ and/or by minority ‘deficits’) or a structural one (e.g., a consequence of historical and economic factors; Adams et  al., 2008; Greenland et  al., 2018; Greenland, West, & Van Laar, under review; O’Brien et al., 2009, 2010; Rucker & Richeson, this volume). These beliefs are likely to be consequential for participants’ subsequent attributions to discrimination and support for social change (Greenland et  al., under review; Rucker & Richeson, this volume). I would therefore urge researchers to continue to include measures of interpersonal, intergroup, and superordinate categorisations in their designs, and attitudes towards collective action and policy change. Researchers could particularly distinguish between incremental forms of policy change and change that could be constructed as a threat to privilege and cultural continuity (Durrheim & Dixon, 2010; Hässler et al., 2020; Jetten, 2019; Jetten & Wohl, 2012; Norton & 159

K. Greenland

Sommers, 2011; Stephan & Stephan, 2000). These modifications to quantitative designs could help identify which elements of contact contribute towards achieving structural change. Understanding the ways in which structural inequalities are reproduced and maintained during contact, in contrast, is likely to require a more qualitative approach. Contact is rarely an unambiguously positive or negative experience, and its meaning is neither objective nor fixed in time. There can be miscommunications, debts of gratitude (real or expected), and resentments; changes in the nature of relationships or identity work can lead to a re-evaluation of past experiences (Greenland & Taulke-Johnson, 2017; Greenland et al., 2020). Contemporary forms of discrimination are often ambiguous and making attributions of discrimination can be problematic. Consider, for example, category-based humour (jokes or teasing that refer to category memberships): Minority participants tend to construct category-based humour between friends as non-problematic, but subsequently report poorer mental health (Douglass, Mirpuri, English, & Yip, 2016). Minorities often work hard to construct hearably negative contact experiences as neutral or even positive (Durrheim, 2017; Greenland et al., 2017, 2018, 2020; Kadianaki, 2014; Kirkwood, McKinlay, & McVittie, 2013). They may do this for a range of different reasons: because their expectations of the outgroup are low (Anderson, 2002); they are beholden to, or dependent on the majority (Durrheim, 2017; Kirkwood et al., 2013); to avoid confirming pejorative stereotypes; Anderson, 2002; Duggan, 2002; Greenland & Taulke-Johnson, 2017; Greenland et al., 2020;Wilkins, 2012); and/or they lack the resources (realistic or symbolic) to effect any real change (Greenland et al., 2018, 2020; Kadianaki, 2014; Lamont et al., 2016; Sue, 2013; Wilkins, 2012). It should be clear how these practices are both a consequence of existing inequalities and a way in which inequality is maintained during contact. ‘Positive’ contact may require that minorities become tolerant to ambiguous forms of discrimination. In contrast, majorities can engage in contact while simultaneously failing to learn from it, because there are no real consequences to doing so (Goodwin, Gubin, Fiske, & Yzerbyt, 2000; Greenland et al., 2020; Knowles et al., 2014). The relationship between contact and constructions of ‘discrimination’ is an important and under-researched area, and one in which constructivist and objectivist accounts can be reconciled: constructions can be understood as discourses, social representations, lay beliefs, social norms, and/or ideologies (Christ et al., 2014; Gibson, 2015; Greenland et al., 2018, 2020, under review; Moscovici, 1984; Rucker & Richeson, this volume). Understanding these constructions and the ways in which they are played out during contact could be used to generate novel interventions that operate beyond contact per se, and thereby start to address structural inequalities.

References Adams, G., Edkins, V., Lacka, D., Pickett, K.M., & Cheryan, S. (2008). Teaching about racism: Pernicious implications of the standard portrayal. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(4), 349–361. Adams, G., O’Brien, L.T., & Nelson, J.C. (2006). Perceptions of racism in hurricane Katrina: A liberation psychology analysis. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 6(1), 215–235. Adams, G., Tormala, T.T., & O’Brien, L.T. (2006). The effect of self-affirmation on perception of racism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(5), 616–626. Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley. Amir,Y. (1969). Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations. Psychological Bulletin, 71, 319–342. Anderson, E. (2002). Openly gay athletes: Contesting hegemonic masculinity in a homophobic environment. Gender & Society, 16(6), 860–877. Andreouli, E., Greenland, K., & Howarth, C. (2016). ‘I don’t think racism is that bad anymore’: Exploring the ‘end of racism’ discourse among students in English schools. European Journal of Social Psychology, 46(2), 171–184. Apfelbaum, E.P., Sommers, S.R., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Seeing race and seeming racist? Evaluating strategic colorblindness in social interaction. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 95(4), 918–932.

160

Discrimination and intergroup contact Barlow, F.K., Paolini, S., Pedersen, A., Hornsey, M.J., Radke, H.R.M., Harwood, J., … Sibley, C.G. (2012). The contact caveat: Negative contact predicts increased prejudice more than positive contact predicts reduced prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(12), 1629–1643. Baysu, G., Celeste, L., Brown, R., Verschueren, K., & Phalet, K. (2016). Minority adolescents in ethnically diverse schools: Perceptions of equal treatment buffer threat effects. Child Development, 87(5), 1352–1366. Bergsieker, H.B., Shelton, J.N., & Richeson, J.A. (2010). To be liked versus respected: Divergent goals in interracial interactions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 99(2), 248–264. Binder, J., Zagefka, H., Brown, R., Funke, F., Kessler, T., Mummendey, A., … Leyens, J.-P. (2009). Does contact reduce prejudice or does prejudice reduce contact? A longitudinal test of the contact hypothesis among majority and minority groups in three European countries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 843. Bonam, C.M., Nair Das,V., Coleman, B.R., & Salter, P. (2019). Ignoring history, denying racism: Mounting evidence for the Marley hypothesis and epistemologies of ignorance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2), 257–265. Boniecki, K.A. & Britt,T.W. (2003). Prejudice and the peacekeeper. The psychology of the peacekeeper.Westport, CT: Praeger. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2002). The linguistics of color blind racism: How to talk nasty about blacks without sounding “racist”. Critical Sociology, 28(1–2), 41–64. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th edition). Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield. Brannon, T.N., Carter, E.R., Murdock-Perriera, L.A., & Higginbotham, G.D. (2018). From backlash to inclusion for all: Instituting diversity efforts to maximize benefits across group lines. Social Issues and Policy Review, 12(1), 57–90. Brewer, M.B., & Miller, N. (1984). Beyond the contact hypothesis: Theoretical perspectives on desegregation. In N. Miller & Marilynn B. Brewer (eds.), Groups in contact: The psychology of desegregation (pp. 281–302). London; Florida: Academic Press. Brown, R. & Hewstone, M. (2005). An integrative theory of intergroup contact. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 255–343. Butz, D.A. & Plant, E.A. (2006). Perceiving outgroup members as unresponsive: Implications for approachrelated emotions, intentions, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(6), 1066–1079. Butz, D.A. & Plant, E.A. (2009). Prejudice control and interracial relations:The role of motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality, 77(5), 1311–1342. Butz, D.A. & Plant, E.A. (2011). Approaching versus avoiding intergroup contact: The role of expectancies and motivation. In L.R.Tropp & R.K. Mallett (eds.), Moving beyond prejudice reduction: Pathways to positive intergroup relations (pp. 81–98). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association. Celeste,L.,Baysu,G.,Phalet,K.,Meeussen,L.,& Kende,J.(2019).Can school diversity policies reduce belonging and achievement gaps between minority and majority youth? Multiculturalism, colorblindness, and assimilationism assessed. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, doi:0146167219838577. Christ, O., Schmid, K., Lolliot, S., Swart, H., Stolle, D., Tausch, N., … Hewstone, M. (2014). Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(11), 3996–4000. Condor, S. (1988). ‘Race stereotypes’ and racist discourse. Text, 8(1–2), 69–89. Crandall, C.S., Miller, J.M., & White, M.H. (2018). Changing norms following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election: The Trump effect on prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(2), 186–192. Crocker, J. & Canevello, A. (2012). Chapter five – Consequences of self-image and compassionate goals. In P. Devine & A. Plant (eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 45, pp. 229–277). Cambridge: Academic Press. Davies, K. & Aron, A. (2016). Friendship development and intergroup attitudes: The role of interpersonal and intergroup Friendship processes. Journal of Social Issues, 72(3), 489–510. Dixon, J. & Langdridge, D. (this volume). Beyond prejudice as antipathy: Understanding gentler, kinder forms of discrimination. In C. Tileaga, M. Augoustinos, & K. Durrheim (eds.), Routledge handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. Dhont, K., Cornelis, I., & Van Hiel, A. (2010). Interracial public–police contact: Relationships with police officers’ racial and work-related attitudes and behavior. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 34(6), 551–560.

161

K. Greenland Dhont, K. & Van Hiel, A. (2009).We must not be enemies: Interracial contact and the reduction of prejudice among authoritarians. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(2), 172–177. DiAngelo, R.J. (2010). Why can’t we all just be individuals?: Countering the discourse of individualism in anti-racist education. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 6(1). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5fm4h8wm Dixon, J. & Durrheim, K. (2003). Contact and the ecology of racial division: Some varieties of informal segregation. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42(1), 1–23. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., & Tredoux, C. (2005). Beyond the optimal contact strategy: A reality check for the contact hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(7), 697–711. Douglass, S., Mirpuri, S., English, D., & Yip, T. (2016). “They were just making jokes”: Ethnic/racial teasing and discrimination among adolescents. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22(1), 69–82. Duggan, L. (2002). The New homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism. In R. Castronova & D.D. Nelson (eds.), Materializing democracy: Toward a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175–194). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Durrheim, K. (2017). Race trouble and the impossibility of non-racialism. Critical Philosophy of Race, 5(2), 320–338. Durrheim, K. & Dixon, J. (2010). Racial contact and change in South Africa. Journal of Social Issues, 66(2), 273–288. Durrheim, K., Jacobs, N., & Dixon, J. (2014). Explaining the paradoxical effects of intergroup contact: Paternalistic relations and system justification in domestic labour in South Africa. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 41, 150–164. Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of ‘Prejudice’: ‘Prejudice’ expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37(1), 17–35. Figgou, L. & Condor, S. (2006). Irrational categorization, natural intolerance and reasonable discrimination: Lay representations of prejudice and racism. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45(2), 219–243. Gaertner, S.L., & Dovidio, J.F. (1986). Prejudice, discrimination and racism: Problems, progress and promise. In Samuel L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination and racism. New York: Academic Press. Gibson, S. (2015). From representations to representing: On social representations and discursive-rhetorical psychology. In G. Sammut, E. Andreouli, G. Gaskell, & J.Valsiner (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of social representations (pp. 210–223).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.. Gillespie, A., Howarth, C., & Cornish, F. (2012). Four problems for researchers using social categories. Culture & Psychology, 18(3), 391–402. Goff, P.A., Steele, C.M., & Davies, P.G. (2008). The space between us: Stereotype threat and distance in interracial contexts. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 94(1), 91–107. Goodwin, S., Gubin, A., Fiske, S., & Yzerbyt,V.Y.A. (2000). Power can bias impression processes: Stereotyping subordinates by default and by design. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 3(3), 227–256. Graf, S., Paolini, S., & Rubin, M. (2014). Negative intergroup contact is more influential, but positive intergroup contact is more common: Assessing contact prominence and contact prevalence in five Central European countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(6), 536–547. Greenland, K., Andreouli, E., Augoustinos, M., & Taulke-Johnson, R. (2018). What constitutes ‘discrimination’ in everyday talk? Argumentative lines and the social representations of discrimination. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(5), 541–561. Greenland, K., Augoustinos, M., Andreouli, E., & Taulke-Johnson, R. (2020). Cross-group friendships, the irony of harmony, and the social construction of ‘discrimination’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(7), 1169–1188. Greenland, K. & Taulke-Johnson, R. (2017). Gay men’s identity work and the social construction of discrimination. Psychology & Sexuality, 8(1–2), 81–95. Greenland, K., Xenias, D., & Maio, G. (2012). Intergroup anxiety from the self and other: Evidence from selfreport, physiological effects, and real interactions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(2), 150–163. Greenland, K., Xenias, D. and Maio, G.R. (2017). Effects of promotion and compunction interventions on real intergroup interactions: promotion helps but high compunction hurts. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, article number: 528. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00528. Greenland, K., West, K., & Van Laar, C. (under review). Definitional boundaries of discrimination: Cultural tools for deciding what constitutes discrimination (and what doesn’t). Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E., & Saguy, T. (2019). A darker Side of Hope: Harmony-focused Hope decreases collective action intentions among the disadvantaged. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(2), 209–223.

162

Discrimination and intergroup contact Hässler, T., Ullrich, J., Bernardino, M., Shnabel, N., Laar, C.V., Valdenegro, D., … Ugarte, L.M. (2020). A large-scale test of the link between intergroup contact and support for social change. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(4), 380–386. Hewstone, M., & Brown, R.J. (1986). Contact is not enough: An intergroup perspective on the contact hypothesis. In M. Hewstone & R.J. Brown (eds.), Contact and conflict in intergroup encounters (pp. 1–44). Oxford; New York: Basil Blackwell. Higgins, E.T. (1998). Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle. In P.Z. Mark (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 1–46). New York: Academic Press. Hodson, G. (2011). Do ideologically intolerant people benefit from intergroup contact? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 154–159. Holoien, D.S. (2016). Whites’ desire to affiliate and perceived understanding in interracial interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 7–16. Holoien, D.S., Bergsieker, H.B., Shelton, J.N., & Alegre, J.M. (2015). Do you really understand? Achieving accuracy in interracial relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(1), 76–92. Husnu, S. & Paolini, S. (2019). Positive imagined contact is actively chosen: Exploring determinants and consequences of volitional intergroup imagery in a conflict-ridden setting. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(4), 511–529. Jetten, J. (2019). The wealth paradox: Prosperity and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(6), 1097–1113. Jetten, J. & Wohl, M.J.A. (2012). The past as a determinant of the present: Historical continuity, collective angst, and opposition to immigration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(4), 442–450. Kadianaki, I. (2014). The transformative effects of stigma: Coping strategies as meaning-making efforts for immigrants living in Greece. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 24(2), 125–138. Keller, J., Hurst, M., & Uskul, A. (2008). Prevention-focused self-regulation and aggressiveness. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(4), 800–820. Kende, J., Phalet, K., Van den Noortgate, W., Kara, A., & Fischer, R. (2018). Equality revisited: A cultural meta-analysis of intergroup contact and prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(8), 887–895. Kirkwood, S., McKinlay, A., & McVittie, C. (2013). ‘They’re more than animals’: refugees’ accounts of racially motivated violence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52(4), 747–762. Knowles, E.D., Lowery, B.S., Chow, R.M., & Unzueta, M.M. (2014). Deny, distance, or dismantle? How White Americans manage a privileged identity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(6), 594–609. Kraus, M.W., Rucker, J.M., & Richeson, J.A. (2017). Americans misperceive racial economic equality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(39), 10324–10331. Lamont, M., Silva, G.M.,Welburn, J., Guetzkow, J., Mizrachi, N., Herzog, H., & Reis, E. (2016). Getting respect: Responding to stigma and discrimination in the United States. Brazil, and Israel: Princeton University Press. Link, B.G. & Phelan, J.C. (2001). Conceptualizing stigma. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 363–385. McIntyre, K., Paolini, S., & Hewstone, M. (2016). Changing people’s views of outgroups through individualto-group generalisation: Meta-analytic reviews and theoretical considerations. European Review of Social Psychology, 27(1), 63–115. McKeown, S. & Dixon, J. (2017). The ‘contact hypothesis’: Critical reflections and future directions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(1), e12295. Meeussen, L., Otten, S., & Phalet, K. (2014). Managing diversity: How leaders’ multiculturalism and colorblindness affect work group functioning. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(5), 629–644. Moscovici, S. (1984). The Phenomenon of Social Representations. In R. Farr and S. Moscovici (eds.), Social Representations (pp. 3–69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mutz, D.C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(19), E4330–E4339. Nelson, J.C., Adams, G., & Salter, P.S. (2013). The Marley hypothesis: Denial of racism reflects ignorance of history. Psychological Science, 24(2), 213–218. Norton, M.I. & Sommers, S.R. (2011). Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 215–218. O’Brien, L.T., Blodorn, A., Alsbrooks, A., Dube, R., Adams, G., & Nelson, J.C. (2009). Understanding White Americans’ perceptions of racism in hurricane Katrina-related events. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12(4), 431–444.

163

K. Greenland O’Brien, L.T., Crandall, C.S., Horstman-Reser, A., Warner, R., Alsbrooks, A., & Blodorn, A. (2010). But I’m no bigot: How prejudiced White Americans maintain unprejudiced self-images. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(4), 917–946. Pager, D. (2008).The dynamics of discrimination. In A.C. Lin, & D.R. Harris (eds.), The colors of poverty:Why racial and ethnic disparities persist (pp. 21–51). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Paolini, S., Harris, N.C., & Griffin, A.S. (2016). Learning anxiety in interactions with the outgroup: Towards a learning model of anxiety and stress in intergroup contact. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 19(3), 275–313. Paolini, S., Harwood, J., Hewstone, M., & Neumann, D.L. (2018). Seeking and avoiding intergroup contact: Future frontiers of research on building social integration. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(12), e12422. Paolini, S., Harwood, J., & Rubin, M. (2010). Negative intergroup contact makes group memberships salient: Explaining why intergroup conflict endures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(12), 1723–1738. Paolini, S., Harwood, J., Rubin, M., Husnu, S., Joyce, N., & Hewstone, M. (2014). Positive and extensive intergroup contact in the past buffers against the disproportionate impact of negative contact in the present. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(6), 548–562. Paolini, S. & McIntyre, K. (2019). Bad is stronger than good for stigmatized, but not admired outgroups: Meta-analytical tests of intergroup valence asymmetry in individual-to-group generalization experiments. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(1), 3–47. Paolini, S., Wright, S.C., Dys-Steenbergen, O., & Favara, I. (2016). Self-expansion and intergroup contact: Expectancies and motives to self-expand lead to greater interest in outgroup contact and more positive intergroup relations. Journal of Social Issues, 72(3), 450–471. Pettigrew, T.F. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65–85. Pettigrew, T.F. (2008). Future directions for intergroup contact theory and research. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32(3), 187–199. Pettigrew, T.F. (2009). Secondary transfer effect of contact. Social Psychology, 40(2), 55–65. Pettigrew,T.F., Christ, O.,Wagner, U., & Stellmacher, J. (2007). Direct and indirect intergroup contact effects on prejudice: A normative interpretation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 31(4), 411–425. Pettigrew, T.F. & Hewstone, M. (2017). The single factor fallacy: Implications of missing critical variables from an analysis of intergroup contact theory. Social Issues and Policy Review, 11(1), 8–37. Pettigrew, T.F. & Tropp, L.R. (2000). Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Recent meta-analytic findings. In S. Oskamp (ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp. 93–114). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pettigrew, T.F. & Tropp, L.R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. Pettigrew, T.F., & Tropp, L.R. (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(6), 922–934. Plant, E.A. & Butz, D.A. (2006). The causes and consequences of an avoidance-focus for interracial interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(6), 833–846. Plant, E.A., Butz, D.A., & Tartakovsky, M. (2008). Interethnic interactions: Expectancies, emotions, and behavioral intentions. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 11(4), 555–574. Plant, E.A. & Devine, P.G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 811–832. Plant, E.A., Devine, P.G., & Peruche, M.B. (2010). Routes to positive interracial interactions: Approaching egalitarianism or avoiding prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(9), 1135–1147. Ramiah, A.A., Schmid, K., Hewstone, M., & Floe, C. (2015). Why are all the White (Asian) kids sitting together in the cafeteria? Resegregation and the role of intergroup attributions and norms. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54(1), 100–124. Reicher, S. (1986). Contact, action and racialisation: Some British evidence. In M. Hewstone & Rupert J. Brown (eds.), Contact and conflict in intergroup encounters. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Richeson, J.A. & Trawalter, S. (2005).Why do interracial interactions impair executive function? A Resource depletion account. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88(6), 934–947. Ron,Y., Solomon, J., Halperin, E., & Saguy, T. (2017). Willingness to engage in intergroup contact: A multilevel approach. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 23(3), 210.

164

Discrimination and intergroup contact Rucker, J.M. & Richeson, J.A. (this volume). Beliefs about the interpersonal vs. Structural nature of racism and responses to racial inequality. In C.Tileaga, M. Augoustinos, & K. Durrheim (eds.), Routledge handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. Saguy, T., Dovidio, J.F., & Pratto, F. (2008). Beyond contact: Intergroup contact in the context of power relations. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 34(3), 432–445. Saguy, T. & Kteily, N. (2014). Power, negotiations, and the anticipation of intergroup encounters. European Review of Social Psychology, 25(1), 107–141. Saguy, T., Shchory-Eyal, N., Hasan-Aslih, S., Sobol, D., & Dovidio, J. (2017). The irony of harmony: Past and new developments. In L.Vezalli & S. Stathi (eds.), Intergroup contact theory: Recent developments and future directions (pp. 53–71). London: Routledge. Sengupta, N.K., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C.G. (2019). On the psychological function of nationalistic ‘Whitelash’. Political Psychology, 40(4), 759–775. Shelton, J.N. (2003). Interpersonal concerns in social encounters between majority and minority group members. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6(2), 171–185. Shelton, J.N. & Richeson, J.A. (2005). Intergroup contact and pluralistic ignorance. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88(1), 91–107. Shelton, J.N. & Richeson, J.A. (2006). Interracial interactions: A relational approach. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 121–181. Shelton, J.N. Richeson, J.A., & Salvatore, J. (2005). Expecting to be the target of prejudice: Implications for interethnic interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(9), 1189–1202. Retrieved from http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/9/1189 Shelton, J.N., Richeson, J.A., Salvatore, J., & Trawalter, S. (2005). Ironic effects of racial bias during interracial interactions. Psychological Science, 16(5), 397–402. Smeekes, A. & Verkuyten, M. (2015). The presence of the past: Identity continuity and group dynamics. European Review of Social Psychology, 26(1), 162–202. Sonnenschein, N., Bekerman, Z., & Horenczyk, G. (2010).Threat and the majority identity. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, & Practice, 14(1), 47–65. Stephan, W.G. & Stephan, C.W. (1985). Intergroup anxiety. Journal of Social Issues, 41, 157–175. Stephan,W.G. & Stephan, C.W. (2000). An integrated threat theory of prejudice. In S. Oskamp (ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination: Claremont symposium on applied social psychology (pp. 23–45). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sue, D.W. (2013). Race talk: The psychology of racial dialogues. American Psychologist, 68(8), 663–672. Trawalter, S., Adam, E.K., Chase-Lansdale, P.L., & Richeson, J.A. (2012). Concerns about appearing prejudiced get under the skin: Stress responses to interracial contact in the moment and across time. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 682–693. Trawalter, S., & Richeson, J.A. (2006). Regulatory focus and executive function after interracial interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(3), 406–412. Trawalter, S., & Richeson, J.A. (2008). Let’s talk about race, baby! When Whites’ and Blacks’ interracial contact experiences diverge. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(4), 1214–1217. Trawalter, S., Richeson, J.A., & Shelton, J.N. (2009). Predicting behavior during interracial interactions: A stress and coping approach. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(4), 243–268. Tropp, L.R. & Bianchi, R.A. (2006). Valuing diversity and interest in intergroup contact. Journal of Social Issues, 62(3), 533–551. Tropp, L.R. & Pettigrew, T.F. (2005). Relationships between intergroup contact and prejudice among minority and majority Status groups. Psychological Science, 16(12), 951–957. Turner, R.N., Hewstone, M., & Voci, A. (2007). Reducing explicit and implicit outgroup prejudice via direct and extended contact: The mediating role of self-disclosure and intergroup anxiety. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 93(3), 369–388. Vorauer, J.D., Hunter, A.J., Main, K.J., & Roy, S.A. (2000). Meta-stereotype activation: Evidence from indirect measures for specific evaluative concerns experienced by members of dominant groups in intergroup interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 690–707. Vorauer, J.D., Main, K.J., & O’Connell, G.B. (1998). How do individuals expect to be viewed by members of Lower Status groups? Content and implications of meta-stereotypes. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 75(4), 917–937. West, K. (2019).Testing hypersensitive responses: Ethnic minorities are not more sensitive to microaggressions, they just experience them more frequently. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 45(11), 1619–1632.

165

K. Greenland West, K. & Eaton, A.A. (2019). Prejudiced and unaware of it: Evidence for the dunning-Kruger model in the domains of racism and sexism. Personality and Individual Differences, 146, 111–119. West, K. & Greenland, K. (2016). Beware of ‘reducing prejudice’: Imagined contact may backfire if applied with a prevention focus. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46(10), 583–592. White, F.A., Turner, R.N., Verrelli, S., Harvey, L.J., & Hanna, J.R. (2019). Improving intergroup relations between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland via E-contact. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(2), 429–438. Wilkins, A. (2012). ‘Not out to start a revolution’. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41(1), 34–65. Wright, S.C., Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe,T., & Ropp, S.A. (1997).The extended contact effect: Knowledge of cross-group friendships and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 73–90. Wright, S.C., & Lubensky, M. (2009). The struggle for social equality: Collective action vs. Prejudice reduction. In S. Demoulin, J.P. Leyens, & J.F. Dovidio (eds.), Intergroup misunderstandings: Impact of divergent social realities (pp. 291–310). New York: Psychology Press.

166

12 DISCRIMINATION IN EDUCATION Josephine Cornell and Shose Kessi

The power of education to “make the world a better place” is widely lauded in global discourse. Education is positioned as a system that can reduce poverty, promote gender equality, foster peace, lead to economic growth and stability, combat disease and address other global development goals (Nicolai et  al., 2016; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018; UNESCO, 2015). However, access to education across the world is deeply inequitable. UNICEF reports that 264 million children and adolescents globally do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics states that 1 in 5 children worldwide are not enrolled in schooling (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018). Promoting equitable access to education worldwide is thus the focus of much of the global development work around education (e.g. International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, 2016; UNICEF, 2018). Expanding the provision of education to more diverse populations of students is certainly important and improved access to education may indeed work for the betterment of the lives of marginalised and excluded groups of people. However, the inequity embedded within the global system of education extends beyond the point of unequal access. Policies that focus exclusively on widening participation and promoting diversity in education can mask oppressive and exclusionary practices, and reinforce problematic binary representations of “non-traditional” or “diverse” students (see Burke, 2012; Gibson et al., 2016). Dominant norms and practices within education must also be considered. Primary schooling broadly functions to transmit particular hegemonic societal values to children and to promote dominant social consensus and integration. Secondary and tertiary education works at “differentiating, recruiting, selecting, and grooming students for adult occupational roles” (Margolis, Soldatenko, Acker, Gair, 2001, p. 18). Embedded within systems of education is an “achievement culture that selects rather than develops the talent of all children in its midst” (Weinstein, Gregory, & Strambler, 2004, p. 511). Ultimately, the hidden curriculum underpinning education at all levels is in the service of the differentiation and stratification of society (Margolis et al., 2001). Discrimination and prejudice are thus implicit to the system of education on a global scale and manifest both in who is able to access education as well as how students are treated within education institutions. These processes and practices of discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping within schools and universities are the focus of this chapter. We present a decolonial feminist lens on social psychological research into discrimination in education to not only shed light on the historical and intersecting ways that DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-12

167

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

discriminatory practices are reproduced, but also to provide a framework for engaging students and other actors to call for and participate in institutional change. In most countries there are laws and policies in place to prohibit discrimination and prejudice in education. Similarly, many international bodies have policies and instruments to safeguard against discrimination in education and to require measures that promote equity in education, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) (McConnachie, 2017). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for example, has made their Convention against Discrimination within Education instrument a cornerstone of their 2030 Education Agenda. Despite the focus on prohibiting discrimination in education at the level of international and national policy, often discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice in education occurs within countries with supposedly equitable and robust education policies. In South Africa, for example, the context for the research examined in this chapter, unfair discrimination on the basis of race as well as “gender, religion, language, sexual orientation and disability has been a constant feature of education” even after the dismantling of the apartheid regime in 1994 (McConnachie, 2017, p. 92). Since the early days of colonialism, education was a tool to control indigenous people and establish and maintain structures of white supremacy (Sehoole, 2006).The apartheid government further entrenched discrimination in education into national law. Schools and higher education institutions were segregated on the basis of race, and hugely inferior resources were provided for “black1 only” schools and universities. “White only” schools and universities were prohibited from accepting black students and employing black teachers and academic staff (Bunting, 2002; Christie & McKinney, 2017; Kamsteeg, 2016). Since the dismantling of apartheid in 1994, unfair discrimination in education is prohibited by both the South African Constitution and the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 (the Equality Act). Despite this, the legacies of colonialism and apartheid linger on in the South African education system. Discriminatory institutional cultures of whiteness are the status quo within schools and universities, and hetero-patriarchal, middle-class, cisgendered, able-bodied norms are privileged (Donaldson, 2015; Engelbrecht & de Beer, 2014; Epstein, 2014; Howell, 2006; Msibi, 2013; Teeger, 2015; Walker, 2005; Woods, 2001). The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC)2 has expressed concern about discrimination in both schools (see Jordaan, 2019) and higher education institutions (SAHRC, 2016). In their report on the National Hearing examining the state of higher education in South Africa, the SAHRC concludes that despite some successes at educational transformation “patterns of systemic exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination persist” in higher education in South Africa (SAHRC, 2016, p. viii). The pervasive patterns of exclusion and discrimination have been highlighted in the student protests that have swept across South Africa in recent years (Omarjee, 2018). The

1 Throughout this chapter when discussing the South African context we use the term “black” in the inclusive sense to refer to individuals historically classified under apartheid as “African”, “Coloured”, and “Indian”. When we refer to literature drawn from other contexts, we employ the terms used by the authors. While we acknowledge that racial categories such as “black” and “white” are socially constructed, discriminatory products of oppressive systems of racial classification, we use these terms to reflect the social and structural divisions and material inequalities that exist worldwide. 2 A national South African institution established in 1995 under the Human Rights Commission Act 54 of 1994 to support constitutional democracy.

168

Discrimination in education

RhodesMustFall movement started symbolically at the University of Cape Town in 2015 when student Chumani Maxwele threw faeces on the statue of the colonialist Cecil John Rhodes (see Maxwele, 2016). Since early 2015, student protests across the country have called for the decolonisation of higher education. Amongst other things, these protests have highlighted the racism experienced by black students at South African universities; the paucity of black academic staff; the marginalisation of African languages; and the eurocentrism of academic curricula. Growing out of this, the nationwide FeesMustFall protest movement focused on the rising cost of tuition and highlighted the exclusionary cost of fees for working-class students (Badat, 2016; Langa, 2017). Although the recent wave of student protests has been most prominent in the context of higher education in South Africa, schoolchildren have also protested against discriminatory practices and the colonial legacy in their schools (Christie & McKinney, 2017). In particular, in recent years South African high school students have protested racist hair policies which regulate how black students may wear their hair (Boyat, 2018; France-Presse, 2016) as well as exclusionary language policies in which black students are prohibited from or punished for speaking in their mother tongue at school (Christie & McKinney, 2017; Mail & Guardian, 2016). The persistence of comparable patterns of discrimination and prejudice in education despite progressive education policies are evident across other contexts globally. The dominant institutional climates endemic to education settings are frequently at odds with broader commitments to the equitable provision of education, and can often be hostile, unwelcoming and alienating to students who do not fit the status quo, be that based on race, gender, sexuality, class, religion or ability (Blumenfeld, Weber, & Rankin, 2016; Campbell, Carter-Sowell & Battle, 2019; Harper & Hurtado, 2007). The United States of America’s constitution, for example, similarly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, but the racism targeted at students of colour across all levels of education in the US is well documented (e.g. Campbell, Carter-Sowell, & Battle, 2019; Davis et al., 2004; Gildersleeve, Croom, & Vasquez, 2011; Harper, & Hurtado, 2007; Solórzano, Allen, & Carroll, 2002). The Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 resulted in the desegregation of North American schools, however, “contemporary conditions of racial, ethnic, and class inequity in education stand in sharp and disappointing relief to what was imagined and sacrificed for Brown” (Fine, 2004, p. 502). As much as this ruling was a victory for social justice, it attracted substantial backlash and served as a “flashpoint for obdurate resistance to social change” (Pickren, 2004, p. 493). The integration of schools did not ensure the equal provision of quality education for all children and indeed daily informal re-segregation and discrimination persisted within schools (Weinstein, Gregory, & Strambler, 2004). A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre, reported that college-educated black Americans were more likely to have experienced discrimination based on race than black people who had not attended college, highlighting the prevalence of race-based discrimination in tertiary education contexts (Anderson, 2019). Structural inequalities in the system of education act as barriers to success for many students who do not fit the dominant status quo (Royce, 2018). Students’ experiences of discrimination, stereotyping and prejudice in education have profound implications for their educational outcomes and as well as their psychological and physical wellbeing more generally (Garveya, Squire, Stachler, & Rankin, 2018; Johnson-Ahorlu, 2012). Experiences of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism in education settings have been linked to increased dropout rates of students (e.g. McWhirter, Garcia, & Bines, 2018); academic disengagement (Ogbu, 2003; Phoenix, 2009; Howarth, 2004, 2002); lowered self-esteem and damaged sense of self-identity (Howarth, 2002); risky sexual behaviour (Respress, Amutah-Onukaghab & Oparac, 2018); depression and suicidal ideation (Russell, Ryan, Toomey, Diaz, & Sanchez, 2011; Wolff & Himes, 2010); and heightened psychological and physiological stress responses (e.g. Smith, Allen, & Danley, 2007; 169

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

Smith, Hung, & Franklin, 2011). Research interrogating the processes and outcomes of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping in education thus present a key area that social psychological research should be concerned with.

Social psychology approaches to the study of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping in education Within social psychological literature, perhaps one of the most prevalent ways in which the effects of discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice on students have been studied is through research on the concept of “stereotype threat” (e.g. Chavous, Harris, Rivas, Helaire, & Green, 2004; Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003; Osborne & Walker, 2006; Solórzano, Allen, & Carroll, 2002; Steele, 1999; Steele & Aronson, 1995; Stone, Harrison, & Mottley, 2012). This concept, proposed by Steele and Aronson (1995), holds that when students from particular categories of identity fail to perform as well as their peers it has less to do with their innate ability or preparation and more to do with stereotypes around their group identity. Stereotype threat is a social psychological predicament that arises when an individual is aware of negative stereotypes about their group. For example, black students are inevitably aware of the stereotypes about black intellectual inferiority.Thus, when they are in situations that test students’ intellectual capacity, such as a university classroom, the fear and anxiety around confirming the stereotype may interfere with their intellectual functioning and lead to lowered performance. Although most often considered in relation to race and ethnicity, this process has also been examined with respect to other aspects of identity, such as gender (e.g. Ramsey & Sekaquaptewa, 2011; Muzzatti & Agnoli, 2007) and disability (e.g. Desombre, Anegmar & Delelis, 2018). Relatedly, psychologists have also considered expectancy effects and subsequent negative self-fulfilling prophecies in exploring educational inequalities (e.g. Weinstein, 2002; Weinstein et al., 1991, 2004). Much of the research on expectancy has examined how teachers respond to individual differences among students by lowering their expectations, they resultantly provide inferior opportunities for students and undermine their capacity for learning, thus confirming their expectations of the student. Drawing on ecological theory, Weinstein (2002), for example, has demonstrated that these teacher–student interactions have cumulative consequences and may entrench stigmatising beliefs about students over their entire school career. Furthermore, students themselves are frequently aware of differential expectations from teachers and internalise these beliefs. The particular achievement cultures of schools and classrooms may enhance or constrain the effects of such a process. In addition to the work on stereotype threat and expectancy effects, theorists examining discrimination and prejudice in education have considered the effects of microaggressions in education (e.g. Locke & Trolian, 2018; Solórzano, Allen, & Carroll, 2002). Microaggressions are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group” (Sue, 2010, p. 5). Following a similar socio-psychological mechanism as “stereotype threat”, microaggressions engender an invalidating and hostile learning environment and lead to students’ underperformance and selfdoubt. Smith, Hung and Franklin (2011), for example, have proposed that black male students facing racial microaggressions in education spaces experience “racial battle fatigue”. Racial battle fatigue refers to the psychological (e.g. hopelessness, shock, disappointment, frustration), physiological (e.g. headache, backache, insomnia, high blood pressure), and behavioural responses (e.g. social withdrawal, self-doubt, loss of appetite) students experience in response to encountering racial microaggressions. 170

Discrimination in education

Social psychologists are also increasingly considering the concept of “symbolic disqualification” when examining students’ experiences of discrimination in education (Croizet, Goudeau, Marot, & Millet, 2017; Croizet & Millet, 2012). This term refers to the “psychological experience conveyed by institutional structures that one, as a disadvantaged group member, does not fit or belong within a certain valued space due to some personal shortcoming, such as a lack of ability to succeed” (Marx, Ko, & Croizet, 2019, p. 324). This theoretical framing positions students’ harmful experiences of discrimination and prejudice as resulting from an education system structured to benefit particular (i.e. middle class, continuing-generation) students over others. Importantly, this foregrounds the failure of the schools and universities to provide equitable learning environments for all students (Marx et al., 2019). The process of symbolic disqualification elucidates how education institutions reproduce social inequality by sabotaging students’ self-identities, forcing students to reassess their ambitions and educational aims, compromising students’ sense of belonging, or emphasising the supposed incompatibility between students’ educational choices and goals and their backgrounds (Jury, Aelenei, Chen, Darnon, & Elliot, 2019; Marx et al., 2019; Nieuwenhuis, Manstead, & Easterbrook, 2019; Thoman et al., 2019). Research into practices of discrimination in education and the effects on students’ educational outcomes and wellbeing, provides valuable insights into the socio-psychological processes at play in students’ experiences of stereotyping, discrimination and prejudice.Vitally, this type of research foregrounds contextual and structural rather than individualistic, victim-blaming explanations for achievement gaps between groups of students in education (Marx et al., 2019), and raises necessary concerns about the inequitable and harmful status quo in educational institutions. A structural approach to educational disparities locates the “problem” within educational institutions rather than students themselves and thus may work to change education systems rather than pathologising specific groups of students. As Rucker and Richerson (this volume) suggest, a belief in structural rather than individualistic explanations for racism is associated with the support of policies that ensure, for example, racial equality in schools. However, it is also important to consider students’ agency in the context of discrimination in education. Some theorists have critiqued research examining and centring on the detrimental outcomes of stereotyping and prejudice for the lack of emphasis on students’ agency (see Gutiérrez, 2008; James, 2012). Wiggan (2007), for example, suggests that research that focuses on teachers’ or lecturers’ low expectations as a cause of black student underachievement assigns all the power to teachers, views black students as passive and does not acknowledge how some black students may actively resist oppression in educational spaces. This type of research, with its focus on the difficulties students face in education, may at times inadvertently reinforce stigmatising and marginalising representations of students (Cornell & Kessi, 2018). It is particularly important that theorists working in the field of psychology are wary of this risk, as psychology as a discipline has been implicated in and responsible for the perpetuation of harmful discourses relating to race, inferiority and difference (Kessi & Boonzaier, 2018). Psychology is, in part, accountable for the creation and maintenance of the dominant inequitable educational culture and “must assume leadership in its undoing” (Weinstein et al., 2004, p. 518). Furthermore, research focusing on students or teachers without an engagement with the broader historical and socio-political context of educational institutions and practices, tends to be reductionist and focused on individualistic explanations to institutional and societal problems. Increasingly researchers are considering how students may cope with or resist the pervasive stereotyping and discrimination in education settings; how students may engender positive subjectivities for themselves and succeed academically; and how schools and universities may promote more equitable and just learning environments and supports students’ academic success and wellbeing (Moriña, López-Gavira, & Molina, 2017; Codjoe, 2006; Cornell & Kessi, 2018; Crisp, 171

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

Taggart & Nora, 2015; Ellis, Rowley, Nellum, & Smith, 2018; Fries-Britt & Griffin, 2007; Howarth & Andreouli, 2015; O’Connor, Mueller, L’Heureux Lewis, Rivas-Drake, & Rosenberg, 2011; Ong, Smith, & Ko, 2018; Wittrup, Hussain, Albright, Hurd, Varner, & Mattis, 2019). Howarth (2002, 2004, 2010), for example, has drawn on social representations theory to demonstrate how schoolchildren in the UK can reformulate stigmatising racialising representations, claim acknowledgement of their perspectives and attain positive social identities. Vincent (2016) proposes using collective memory projects to transform alienating institutional cultures in higher education. In education settings, stories act as “potent sense-making, identity producing mechanisms” (p. 27). To make space for stories, narratives, and self-representations that interrupt dominant tropes and hegemonic institutional narratives offers the potential for reshaping oppressive institutional cultures (Vincent, 2016). Boonzaier and Mkhize (2018), drawing on an intersectional black feminist perspective and using participatory action research methodologies illustrate that although black, queer university students are exposed to alienating institutional cultures on campus, “far from internalizing the oppressions they are forced to encounter, engage in collective action and struggle to challenge institutional practices but also to create spaces of belonging in an alienating environment” (p. 97). Similarly, Liccardo’s (2018) research with black female science graduate students draws on decolonial theory to propose an infinity model that illustrates the psychosocial rhythms of inclusion and exclusion in higher education. The findings demonstrate how black, female university students may “recreate new subjectivities and epistemic communities at the intersecting space in between inclusion-exclusion” (p. 26). Such approaches acknowledge that institutional cultures in educational institutions are historically shaped and need to be understood as representative of the beliefs and values permeating society and need to be challenged as such. These alternative approaches disrupt the everyday practices of prejudice and discrimination often concealed within educational institutions that typically promote values of participation, diversity, and inclusivity. When examining how students might cope with, resist and challenge prejudice and discrimination in education, theories and methodologies from outside of the mainstream of social psychology have much to offer. Decolonial and feminist approaches to psychology in particular can heighten our understandings of the intricacies and matrices of power that prevail in institutions dented by legacies of colonial policies. Specifically, the value of taking a decolonial feminist approach underlines the importance of examining students’ resistances to prejudice and discrimination and enables a focus on the systemic challenges of educational institutions rather than trying to find explanations that have to do with the characteristics of individual students. Decoloniality is generally understood as efforts to address the lingering colonial relations of power that subside following the dismantling of formal forms of slavery, colonisation, and apartheid (Maldonado-Torres, 2011). In many of the studies described above, it is clear that race, class, and gender inequalities and discrimination persist in educational institutions in ways that reproduce coloniality. A decolonial approach to research thus goes beyond individual or groupbased understandings to prejudicial attitudes and behaviour to take into account how institutional systems and global power relations play out in localised contexts. Psychologists have often ignored power relations in theories of prejudice and discrimination through reductionist accounts theorising prejudice as a cognitive error (Leach, 2002) or overestimating the potential of contact between groups to correct prejudicial attitudes (Zuma, 2014). These are limited in the sense that they do not take into account the historical context or construct of institutions, such as universities. Scholar and political writer Ali Mazrui (2005) has described universities in Africa as vehicles of cultural westernisation for European expansion and domination.This can be seen through the ways in which the global academic project is skewed towards the recognition of Euro-American knowledges as global standards of success (Hountondji, 1997). As an alternative to this epistemic singularity embedded within global education and knowledge systems 172

Discrimination in education

(Crilly, 2019) scholars such as Achille Mbembe (2016) and Walter Mignolo (2018) advance the concept of “pluriversity”.This concept refers to a process of knowledge production that acknowledges the diversity of epistemic knowledges and encompasses a “horizontal strategy to openness to dialogue” between varied epistemic traditions (Mbembe, 2016, p. 37). Furthermore, a decolonial feminist approach foregrounds in very important ways, how conceptualisations of gender and sexuality are central to our understandings of power relations in contemporary contexts. Indeed, psychologists have been complicit in legitimising fixed gender identities (Halpern, 1992; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Multiple studies have attempted to show differences in abilities between men and women, generally accrediting men as rational and women as emotional and the pathologisation of those who fall outside of such categorisations (i.e. gender identity disorders) (Smit, 2006). These ideas become crystalised in elitist institutions such as universities, where male scholars (particularly white men) tend to be associated with and accredited as the pioneers of scientific knowledge and the guardians of rational thought. In such a context, other forms of knowledge are often disregarded as unscientific, irrational, and belonging outside of academic institutions. Therefore, if we are to shed light on how discriminatory practices are sustained in educational institutions, it is imperative that we locate the individuals within them in a broader context that interrogates the historical and political dimensions that shape these institutions, their cultures and practices.

Resisting discrimination at UCT: Photovoice as decolonial feminist praxis In the rest of this chapter, we share some findings and insights from over five years of research with university students at a historically “white only” university in South Africa, the University of Cape Town (UCT). These findings are drawn from a participatory action research project using Photovoice methodology. Photovoice embraces the values of social justice and social action in line with decolonial feminist theories.The focus on critical consciousness, empowerment, and mobilisation in Photovoice projects is an attempt to engage those who are marginalised from institutional power to find voice, reclaim space, and engage collectively in activities to change their circumstances. Photovoice uses photography as a narrative tool through which participants share stories about their lives in a particular context. Photographs and captions are then exhibited to a wider audience with the aim of raising awareness, sensitisation, and mobilising others to advocate for change. In this project, groups of black students from diverse backgrounds shared their experiences of navigating university life at UCT. The project ran from 2013 to 2015 and included a total of 363 students from undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across all faculties in the university. This included 23 women, 9 men, and 4 participants who did not identify with binary gendered categories. Specifically, these students self-identified as a transgender woman, a transgender man, gender non-binary and as a gender nomad. Students also self-identified through a range of sexual orientations. The participants came together through initial focus groups to discuss their experiences of being black at UCT and were asked to write short personal stories of approximately 500 words about their experiences of the institution. Following this, a photography training workshop was organised to give participants basic knowledge of photography, such as lighting, framing, and composition. During the training we also spoke critically about the themes that had emerged from the focus groups and how to convey these through photographs. Participants were thereafter given cameras to construct their photo-stories on their own. In a

3 Some participants did not complete all phases of the project.

173

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

final session, participants regrouped and shared their photo-stories with each other. This was an important moment for critical reflection on their experiences and for building solidarity. The photo-stories were then exhibited in a series of exhibitions that travelled through different parts of the university campus and which continued beyond the end of the project. The last exhibition was held in 2017. Overall, the data produced through this study which was analysed by the researchers included the focus groups, personal stories, photo-stories, and observations noted by the researchers during all stages of the project. The decolonial feminist frame was articulated through the participatory nature of the project which involved participants as co-producers of knowledge rather than respondents to predetermined research questions that is more common in mainstream psychological research. Standpoint theory in feminist research is the idea that those who are marginalised from access to resources are the most knowledgeable about these experiences of marginalisation and must therefore take the lead in framing and telling these stories about their own lives. This was emphasised through the freedom that participants had to craft their own photographs and stories. Participation also involved critically reflecting as a group on the themes emerging from the photo-stories and deliberately questioning the historical and institutional causes of the experiences of marginalisation and alienation that were expressed. For example, the race-based affirmative action policy was critically reflected on as producing contradictory effects. Whilst it was seen as a necessary policy for instituting demographic change at UCT, it was simultaneously criticised for inadvertently reproducing images of black students as not getting in on merit, as being inferior, or having to “catch up” with their white counterparts and thus lowering the standards of the university (see Kessi & Cornell, 2015). Together, we sought solutions in how to navigate these challenges and advocate for change. In one of the groups, comprised of gender-diverse students, the participants themselves came together to organise a protest during the course of the Photovoice project calling for access to gender-neutral bathrooms. They proceeded to remove male and female signs from bathroom doors across the various campuses as a way of signalling to the university executive the difficulties faced by transgender students in particular in accessing bathroom facilities on campus (see Cornell, Ratele, & Kessi, 2016).The signs were then collated in a collage and mounted alongside the photo-stories in one of the exhibitions. Such actions demonstrate the power of participatory work to mobilise people into social action beyond the scope of the actual project and provide them with the strategic tools to initiate change. The exhibitions themselves represented an extension of the participatory aspect of the project as they were aimed at engaging other students and staff in the institution to become aware of participants’ experiences and build solidarity in the pursuit of institutional change. For many of the viewers, including the university executive, it was their first time to encounter these students’ experiences. Seeing participants’ narratives through photographs also constituted an important alternative to textual data, engaging the affective sensibilities of the viewers in ways that challenged the conventional/rational sense-making project of most scholarly research. The exhibitions also represented a source of pride and self-esteem for the photographers whose stories gained great interest from the public. Many radio interviews and media articles also ensued extending the awareness-raising aspect of the project. Finally, the participatory element of the project recently extended into a co-authored chapter in a book on decolonial feminist community psychology (see Cornell, Mkhize, and Kessi, 2019). The authors included a participant of the Photovoice project, the student–researcher and the supervisor–researcher.The chapter represents an important contribution to challenging the rules of knowledge production by extending the participatory principles of Photovoice research into the dissemination of academic research. 174

Discrimination in education

All of these aspects of the Photovoice project described here embrace the principles of standpoint, critical consciousness, awareness-raising, mobilisation, solidarity, and social justice.Although used in various approaches to community, social, and critical forms of psychology, we approach these principles with a deliberate agenda to disrupt coloniality in academic research and practice and work towards a decolonial feminist praxis that blurs the lines between researchers and participants and between academia and activism. In the end, we hope that psychological research can find relevance and contribute to producing knowledge that is effective in counteracting oppressive relations of power.

Challenging race, class, and gender discrimination at UCT In their everyday experiences at UCT, the students who took part in this project spoke about the different forms of discrimination that they were experiencing. These took place amongst their peers in classrooms, with their lecturers, in student residences, in cafeterias, in administrative buildings and so on. In many of their accounts, students spoke about feeling small or unseen, often referred to as “feeling black” (see Kessi & Cornell, 2015). This experience of invisibility was conveyed in the photographs through the use of various techniques. In the following stories, the first photographer used a blurring technique as a way of depicting the affective experience of being isolated. The second photographer used the reflection of the sun as overexposure to describe the sense of being blinded from the other realities of UCT. Both participants juxtaposed UCT’s reputation as a leading institution in the country and continent to the racialising experiences of what it means to be black at UCT.

Out of focus

Beauty at its best

As part of the theme on transformation at UCT, I took this photo as it captured this idea. The fact that the subject, the student, is out of focus while the building is, has important suggestions being made concerning transformation at UCT. As a newcomer at UCT it feels as though it is the image of UCT (top achieving institution on the continent) which is privileged over the students themselves. This then makes the student feel almost as insignificant and “out of focus” which is evident in the photograph. (Claudia, photo-story)

Students come to UCT because they are attracted to its credibility and perhaps its beauty. The sun shining so bright that it blinds its residents from seeing UCT’s reality of an institution that is moving forward but not in terms of the social aspect. Thinking that it is warm, the cars parked yet there is nobody in sight. The picture serves as a metaphor to the nature of the thinking of a black 1st year student; beauty, warmth and welcoming only to find … (Lindiwe, photo-story)

Segregation was a key theme that came up in many of the stories across participant groups to illustrate their accounts of discrimination. Whether in classrooms and lecture halls, cafeterias, 175

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

dining halls, or simply in public spaces across campus, participants described how students would congregate in groups along racial lines. Kopano, for example, described how students would refer to different sections of the lecture halls according to historically segregated areas of Cape Town, such as Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s pain, or Camps Bay (Kopano, personal story). Spatial segregation is a legacy of colonial and apartheid eras. During apartheid, segregation was instituted through laws and policies to keep people of different races separate from each other.This separation was a way of maintaining control over resources to the advantage of white South Africans as black South Africans were forcibly displaced and confined to areas on the periphery of towns with less access to resources. The legacies of this past are still present in institutions of higher education. Black students enter these institutions with the knowledge that they are occupying spaces, in Sean’s words “that were never meant for me” (Sean, focus group).

Transformation at UCT? This random photograph of students taking a break on Jammie stairs shows apparent transformation with regard to the presence of black students. However, it also depicts a degree of segregation. My reason for feeling ‘BLACK’ for the first time at UCT. (Kharnita, photo-story)

In the above photo-story, Kharnita is critiquing the discourse of diversity and transformation as something that is celebrated.The demographic changes at UCT since the dismantling of apartheid in 1994 represent an important achievement, but in their stories, students are challenging the meaning of demographic change as one that does not necessarily translate into cultural diversity as a university experience. Indeed, black students spoke of the common microaggressions they experienced, such as being penalised for their use of English, being mocked for their accents or fellow students checking over their work in group assignments. As Simamkele says: “… most of the time it is really difficult to work on projects as a group because the white students believe that they are always right, but … for example when others give ideas and they disregard them completely. The worst is when they pretend to listen and give an affirmative nod and smile at you as if you are speaking some foreign language”. (Simamkele, personal story) 176

Discrimination in education

These experiences were also classed and gendered, with many of the young women expressing similar experiences as Gloria: In high school I was the best learner, I even made the top 100 learners in my province for the matric finals and out of that hundred I was position 20, but that did not matter here. Suddenly I felt so dumb, it was like the 12 years of my life in school never happened. I hated the fact that I went to a public school. Some of my black friends went to private schools, they were not only taught proper English but were also introduced to some of the material that I only came across for the first time at tertiary level. (Gloria, personal story) Occupying spaces at UCT for transgender and gender non-conforming students also highlighted the everyday difficulties in accessing bathrooms on campus, having to conform to life in singlesex student residences, using student cards that misrepresent who you are.These stories depict the daily realities of being marginalised from the everyday discourses and practices of the institution.

Harassment for access – the UCT student card The picture was taken in a classroom setting. It speaks to the heteronormative and cisgender-normative (cis-het) teaching and administration practices at UCT which erase, victimise and silence all students with transgender experiences. The student card was created to bring about the daily conflict experienced by transgender students at UCT. (Fiki, photo-story) 177

J. Cornell and S. Kessi

Thengi’s story below also powerfully captures the affective experience of being a “queer gender-nomad” in a single-sex female residence. These photographs and captions are taken from an eight-part series of Thengi getting dressed in their bedroom. The series describes the misrecognition of gender non-conforming bodies and the discomfort caused to others by clothing oneself in a way that makes their gender identity ambiguous.

There are situations where your existence is acknowledged, like a quote in a long speech. It only serves to decorate the situation, maybe even to fill the statistics. (Thengi, photo-story)

And even though you don’t get to exist, you still wake up every morning and convince yourself to get out of bed, layer yourself with clothes like you’re putting on a hazmat suit, like you know that these clothes are the blade that snips the noose off of your throat every morning, because anyone can deny your identity; but the mind goes ballistic when it can’t marry the image before it with the idea it has of what it should be. (Thengi, photo-story)

Race, class, and gender discrimination at UCT were thus commonplace experiences amongst the students who participated in this project. These also intersected in ways that created specific experiences depending on their various backgrounds. In many ways, as conveyed through the narratives, students were very much aware of the discrimination they were experiencing and how it impacted on their lives. They spoke about being made to feel inferior which led to self-doubt and lowered self-esteem, and the consequences on their academic performance and psychological wellbeing. Many students, as a result, used strategies for coping and resisting that were seen as “adapting” to the institutional culture rather than challenging it. As Mandisa describes: There still exists this idea that in order to appear educated and proficient, black people must assume the accent of white people when speaking English. This idea has even been adopted by black people when relating to one another. In fact, I have noticed that at UCT black people seem to use the English language as a medium of communicating with one another, even when they are fluent in a common mother language. (Mandisa, personal story) Nevertheless, in telling their stories and challenging some of the coping strategies, students demonstrated a heightened awareness of the causes of their circumstances as located in the 178

Discrimination in education

historical culture and practices of the institution and not in themselves, despite their inability at times to shield themselves from the impact of discriminatory practices. What is needed are concerted and participatory efforts to build solidarity and collective consciousness; and to understand and disrupt the everyday and often less visible ways in which discriminatory practices continue to take place in universities like UCT.

Conclusion Institutions of higher learning, especially those that are historically white need to take seriously how the institutional cultures inherited from the past reproduce discriminatory practices and reproduce ideas of white superiority and black inferiority which have real impacts on people’s lives and academic performance. Segregationist practices, both spatial and cultural, are racialised, classed, and gendered and thus require changes that can address the complex and layered legacies of the past. What these examples also suggest is that contrary to much of the international policy literature on education, students’ experiences in educational institutions may not necessarily lead to the promise of a “better world” but instead exacerbate relations of power and control. How are universities to address problems of poverty, disease, gender inequality, and promote peace when the cultures embedded within their walls reproduce discriminatory practices? A decolonial feminist approach to understanding educational institutions is perhaps what is needed in order to gain a deeper understanding of what educational institutions really do, and why, despite increasing universal access, poverty, and discrimination persist on a global scale but particularly in communities most marginalised from access to power. As Zanele (personal story) suggests, “the more we only focus on the disadvantaged black student the more we invisibilise white privilege and allow whiteness go unnoticed …”Through participatory methods, that have a deliberate focus on justice, those most discriminated against in educational institutions can find voice and participate in imagining and building new cultures and practices (new knowledge) for change. The Photovoice project described here speaks to the discriminatory cultures of institutions of higher learning but also foregrounds the agency of students in navigating these spaces and introducing change. Their stories are narratives of resistance to the race, gender, and class dynamics that manifest in interpersonal and everyday experiences and serve to disrupt the colonial legacies and the associated racialised, classed, and gendered discourses of standards and merit in educational institutions. Addressing what happens within institutions of learning is perhaps a starting point for creating schools and universities that can produce the knowledge and practices needed for a just society.

References Anderson, M. (2019). For Black Americans, experiences of racial discrimination vary by education level, gender. Pew Research Centre. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/02/ for-black-americans-experiences-of-racial-discrimination-vary-by-education-level-gender/. Badat, S. (2016). Deciphering the meanings, and explaining the South African higher education student protests of 2015–16. Pax Academica, 1, 71–106. Blumenfeld,W.J.,Weber, G.N., & Rankin, S. (2016). In our own voice: Campus climate as a mediating factor in the persistence of LGBT students, faculty, and staff in higher education. In P. Chamness Miller, & E. Mikulec (eds.), Queering classrooms: Personal narratives and educational practices to support LGBTQ youth in schools (pp. 187–212). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. Boonzaier, F. & Mhkize, L. (2018). Bodies out of place: Black queer students negotiating identity at the University of Cape Town. South African Journal of Higher Education, 32(3), 81–100. Boyat, J. (2018, September 10). The school hairstyle protest in Soweto. Africa is a Country. Retrieved from https://africasacountry.com/2018/10/the-school-hairstyle-protest-in-soweto.

179

J. Cornell and S. Kessi Bunting, I. (2002). The higher education landscape under apartheid. In N. Cloete, R. Fehnel, P. Maassen, T. Moja, H. Perold, & T. Gibbon (eds.), Transformation in higher education: Global pressures and local realities in South Africa (pp. 35–52). Cape Town, South Africa: Juta. Burke, P.J. (2012). The right to higher education. London, England: Routledge. Campbell, S.D., Carter-Sowell, A.R., & Battle, J.S. (2019). Campus climate comparisons in academic pursuits: How race still matters for African American college students. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(3), 390–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430218823065. Chavous,T.M., Harris, A., Rivas, D. et al. (2004). Racial stereotypes and gender in context:African Americans at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. Sex Roles 51, 1–16. Christie, P. & McKinney, C. (2017). Decoloniality and “Model C” schools: Ethos, language and the protests of 2016. Education as Change, 21(3), 1–21. Crilly, J. (2019). Decolonising the library: a theoretical exploration. Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 4(1), 6–15. Codjoe, H. (2006).The role of an affirmed black cultural identity and heritage in the academic achievement of African–Canadian students. Intercultural Education, 17(1), 33–54. Cornell, J. & Kessi, S. (2018). Black students’ resistances to stigmatizing discourses in higher education: A photovoice study. In T. Shefer, J. Hearn, K. Ratele, & F. Boonzaier (eds.), Engaging youth in activist research and pedagogical praxis: Transnational perspectives on gender, sex, and race (pp. 215–234). New York, NY: Routledge. Cornell, J., Mkhize, L., & Kessi, S. (2019). Envisioning photovoice as decolonial feminist praxis. In F.  Boonzaier, & T. van Niekerk (eds.), Decolonial feminist Community psychology (pp. 59–76). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Cornell, J., Ratele, K., & Kessi, S. (2016). Race, gender, and sexuality in student experiences of violence and resistances on a university campus. Perspectives in Education, 34(2), 97–119. Crisp, G.,Taggart, A., & Nora, A. (2015). Undergraduate Latina/o students: A systematic review of research identifying factors contributing to academic success outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 85(2), 249–274. Croizet, J.-C., Goudeau, S., Marot, M., & Millet, M. (2017). How do educational contexts contribute to the social class achievement gap: Documenting symbolic violence from a social psychological point of view. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 105–110. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.025. Croizet, J.-C., & Millet, M. (2012). Social class and test performance: From stereotype threat to symbolic violence and vice versa. In M. Inzlicht, & T. Schmader (eds.), Stereotype threat:Theory, process, and application (pp. 188–201). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Davis, M., Dias-Bowie,Y., Greenberg, K., Klukken, G., Pollio, H.R., & Thomas, S.P. et al. (2004).“A fly in the buttermilk”: Descriptions of university life by successful black undergraduate students at a predominately white South-Eastern university. The Journal of Higher Education, 75(4), 420–445. Desombre, C., Anegmar, S., & Delelis, G. (2018). Stereotype threat among students with disabilities: The importance of the evaluative context on their cognitive performance. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 33(2), 201–214. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.uct.ac.za/10.1007/s10212-016-0327-4. Donaldson, N. (2015).What about the queers? Institutional culture of heteronormativity and its implications for queer staff and students. In P.Tabenksy & S. Matthews (eds.), Being at home: Race, institutional culture and transformation at South African higher education institutions (pp. 130–146). Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Ellis, J.M., Rowley, L.L., Nellum, C.J., & Smith, C.D. (2018). From alienation to efficacy: An examination of racial identity and racial academic stereotypes among Black male adolescents. Urban Education, 53(7), 899–928. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915602538. Engelbrecht, L. & de Beer, J.J. (2014). Access constraints experienced by physically disabled students at a South African higher education institution. Africa Education Review, 11(4), 544–562. Epstein, D. (2014). Race-ing class ladies: Lineages of privilege in an elite South African school. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 12(2), 244–261. doi: 10.1080/14767724.2014.890887. Fine, M. (2004).The power of the Brown v. Board of education decision:Theorizing threats to sustainability. American Psychologist, 59(6), 502–510. France-Presse, A. (2016, August 29). Racism row over South Africa school’s alleged hair policy. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/south-africa-pretoria-highschool-for-girls-afros. Fries-Britt, S.L. & Griffin, K. (2007). The black box: How high-achieving blacks resist stereotypes about Black Americans. Journal of College Student Development, 48(5), 509–524. Garvey, J.C., Squire, D.D., Stachler, B., & Rankin, S. (2018). The impact of campus climate on queerspectrum student academic success. Journal of LGBT Youth. doi:10.1080/19361653.2018.1429978.

180

Discrimination in education Gibson, S., Baskerville, D., Berry, A., Black, A., Norris, K., & Symeonidou, S. (2016). Diversity, “widening participation” and “inclusion” in higher education: An international study. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 18(3), 7–33. Gildersleeve, R.E., Croom, N.N., & Vasquez, P.L. (2011). “Am I going crazy?!”: A critical race analysis of doctoral education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 44(1), 93–114. Good, C., Aronson, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents’ standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24(6), 645–662. Gutiérrez, R. (2008). A “gap-gazing” fetish in mathematics education? Problematizing research on the achievement gap. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 39(4), 357–364. Halpern, D.F. (1992). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (2nd edn.). Hillside: Erlbaum. Harper, S.R. & Hurtado, S. (2007). Nine themes in campus racial climates and implications for institutional transformation. New Directions for Student Services, 120, 7–24. Hountondji, P. (1997). Endogenous knowledge: Research trails. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA. Howarth, C. & Andreouli, E. (2015). “Changing the context”: Tackling discrimination at school and in society. International Journal of Educational Development, 41, 184–191. Howarth, C. (2002). “So, you’re from Brixton?”: The struggle for recognition and esteem in a multicultural community. Ethnicities, 2(2), 237–260. Howarth, C. (2004). Re-presentation and resistance in the context of school exclusion: Reasons to be critical. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 14, 356–377. Howarth, C. (2010). Revisiting gender identities and education: Notes for a social psychology of resistant identities in modern culture. Papers in Social Representations, 19(1), 8.1–8.17. Howell, C. (2006). Disabled students and higher education in South Africa. In B. Watermeyer, L. Swartz, T. Lorenzo, M. Schneider, & M. Priestly (eds.), Disability and social change (pp. 164–178). Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press. James, C.E. (2012). Students “at risk”: Stereotypes and the schooling of Black boys. Urban Education, 47(2), 464–495. International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (2016). The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a changing world [report]. Retrieved from https://report.educationcommission. org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Learning_Generation_Full_Report.pdf. Johnson-Ahorlu, R.N. (2012).The academic opportunity gap: How racism and stereotypes disrupt the education of African American undergraduates. Race Ethnicity, and Education, 15(5), 633–652. Jordaan, N. (2019, January 13). SA Human Rights Commission “deeply” concerned about discrimination at SA schools. Times Live. Retrieved from https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-0113-sa-human-rights-commission-deeply-concerned-about-discrimination-at-sa-schools/. Jury, M., Aelenei, C., Chen, C., Darnon, C., & Elliot, A.J. (2019). Examining the role of perceived prestige in the link between students’ subjective socioeconomic status and sense of belonging. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 356–370. Kamsteeg, F. (2016). Transformation and self-identity: Student narratives in post-apartheid South Africa. Transformation in Higher Education, 1(1), 1–10. Kessi, S. & Boonzaier, F. (2018). Centre/ing decolonial feminist psychology in Africa. South African Journal of Psychology, 48(3), 299–309. Kessi, S. & Cornell, J. (2015). Coming to UCT: Black students, transformation, and discourses of race. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 3(2), 1–16. Langa, M. (ed.) (2017). #Hashtag: An analysis of the #FeesMustFall movement at South African universities. Johannesburg, South Africa: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR). Leach, C. (2002). The social psychology of racism reconsidered. Feminism & Psychology, 12(4), 439–444. Liccardo, S. (2018). A symbol of infinite (be) longing: Psychosocial rhythms of inclusion and exclusion at South African universities. South African Journal of Higher Education, 32(3), 12–29. Locke, L.A. & Trolian,T.L. (2018). Microaggressions and social class identity in higher education and student affairs. New Directions for Student Services, 2018(162), 63–74. Maccoby, E.E. & Jacklin, C. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mail & Guardian (2016, September 1). Sans Souci Girls’ High School pupils protest against “discriminatory” code of conduct. Mail & Guardian Online. Retrieved from https://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-01sans-souci-girls-high-school-pupils-protest-against-discriminatory-code-of-conduct. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2011). Thinking through the decolonial turn: Post-continental interventions in theory, philosophy, and critique – An introduction. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 1–15.

181

J. Cornell and S. Kessi Margolis, E., Soldatenko, M., Acker, S., & Gair, M. (2001). Peekaboo: Hiding and outing the curriculum. In Margolis, E. (ed.), The hidden curriculum in higher education (pp. 1–20). New York, NY: Routledge. Marx, D.M., Ko, S.J., & Croizet, J.C. (2019). Introduction to the special issue on group-based inequalities in educational outcomes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22(3), 323–329. Maxwele, C. (2016, March 16). Black pain led me to throw Rhodes poo. Business Day Live. Retrieved from http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2016/03/16/black-pain-led-me-to-throw-rhodes-poo. Mazrui,A. (2005). Pan-Africanism and the intellectuals. In T. Mkandawire (ed.), African intellectuals: Rethinking politics, language, gender, and development (pp. 56–77). Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA Books. Mbembe, A.J. (2016). Decolonizing the university: New directions. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), 29–45. McConnachie, C. (2017). Equality and unfair discrimination in education. In F. Veriava, A. Thom, & T.F. Hodgson (eds.), Basic education rights handbook: education rights in South Africa (pp. 91–104). Johannesburg, South Africa: Section27. McWhirter, E. H., Garcia, E. A., & Bines, D. (2018). Discrimination and other education barriers, school connectedness, and thoughts of dropping out among Latina/o students. Journal of Career Development, 45(4), 330–344. Mignolo, W.D. (2018). On pluriversality and multipolar world order: Decoloniality after decolonization: Dewesternization after the cold war. In B. Reiter (ed.), Constructing the pluriverse:The geopolitics of knowledge (pp. 90–116). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moriña, A., López-Gavira, R., & Molina, V.M. (2017). What if we could imagine an ideal university? Narratives by students with disabilities. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 64(4), 353–367. Msibi, T. (2013). Queering transformation in higher education. Perspectives in Education, 31(2), 65–73. Muzzatti, B. & Agnoli, F. (2007). Gender and mathematics: Attitudes and stereotype threat susceptibility in Italian children. Developmental Psychology, 43(3), 747. Nicolai, S., Greenhill, R., Jalles d’Orey, M.A., Magee, A., Rogerson, A.,Wild, L. et al. (2016). Education cannot wait: Proposing a fund for education in emergencies. London, England: Overseas Development Institute. Nieuwenhuis, M., Manstead, A.S.R., & Easterbrook, M.J. (2019). Accounting for unequal access to higher education: The role of social identity factors. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 371–389. O’Connor, C., Mueller, J., L’Heureux Lewis, R., Rivas-Drake, D., & Rosenberg, S. (2011). “Being” black and strategizing for excellence in racially stratified academic hierarchy. American Educational Research Journal, 48(6), 1232–1257. Ogbu, J. U. (2003). Sociocultural, political, and historical studies in education. Black American students in an affluent suburb: A study of academic disengagement. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Omarjee, N. (2018). Reimagining the dream: Decolonising academia by putting the last first. Leiden, the Netherlands: African Studies Centre, University of Leiden. Ong, M., Smith, J.M., & Ko, L.T. (2018). Counterspaces for women of color in STEM higher education: Marginal and central spaces for persistence and success. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 55(2), 206–245. Osborne, J.W. & Walker, C. (2006). Stereotype threat, identification with academics, and withdrawal from school: Why the most successful students of colour might be most likely to withdraw. Educational Psychology, 26(4), 563–577. Phoenix, A. (2009). De-colonising practices: negotiating narratives from racialised and gendered experiences of education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 12 (i), 101–114. Pickren,W.E. (2004). Fifty years on: Brown v. Board of education and American psychology, 1954–2000: An introduction. The American Psychologist, 59(6), 493–494. Ramsey, L.R. & Sekaquaptewa, D. (2011). Changing stereotypes, changing grades: A longitudinal study of stereotyping during a college math course. Social Psychology of Education, 14(3), 377–387. Respress, B.N., Amutah-Onukagha, N.N., & Opara, I. (2018). The effects of school-based discrimination on adolescents of color sexual health outcomes: A social determinants approach. Social Work in Public Health, 33(1), 1–16. Royce, E. (2018). Poverty and power:The problem of structural inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Russell, S.T., Ryan, C., Toomey, R.B., Diaz, R.M., & Sanchez, J. (2011). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescent school victimization: Implications for young adult health and adjustment. Journal of School Health, 81, 223–230.230. SAHRC (South African Human Rights Commission). (2016). Transformation at Public Universities in South Africa. (SAHRC Report). Johannesburg, South Africa: SAHRC.

182

Discrimination in education Sehoole, C. (2006). Internationalisation of higher education in South Africa: A historical review. Perspectives in Education, 24(4), 1–13. Smit, E. (2006). Western psychiatry and gender identity disorder (GID): A critical perspective. In T. Shefer, F. Boonzaier, & P. Kiguwa (eds.), The gender of psychology (pp. 250–292). Cape Town, South Africa: UCT Press. Smith, W.A., Allen, W.R., & Danley, L.L. (2007). “Assume the position … you fit the description”: Psychosocial experiences and racial battle fatigue among African American male college students. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(4), 551–578. Smith,W.A., Hung, M., & Franklin, J.D. (2011). Racial battle fatigue and the miseducation of Black men: Racial microaggressions, societal problems, and environmental stress. The Journal of Negro Education, 80(1), 63–82. Solórzano, D.G., Allen,W.R., & Carroll, G. (2002). Keeping race in place: Racial microaggressions and campus racial climate at the University of California. Berkeley. Chicano-Latino Law Review, 23(15), 15–112. Sue, D.W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Steele, C. M. (1999, August). Thin ice: “Stereotype threat” and black college students. The Atlantic Monthly, 284(2), 44–47, 50–54. Steele, C. M. & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of AfricanAmericans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797–811. Stone, J., Harrison, C., & Mottley, J. (2012). “Don’t call me a student-athlete”:The effect of identity priming on stereotype threat for academically engaged African American college athletes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 34(2), 99–106. Teeger, C. (2015). “Both Sides of the Story”: History Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa. American Sociological Review, 80(6), 1175–1200. Thoman, D.B., Lee, G.A., Zambrano, J., Geerling, D.M., Smith, J.L., & Sansone, C. (2019). Social influences of interest: Conceptualizing group differences in education through a self-regulation of motivation model. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 330–355. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2018). One in Five Children, Adolescents and Youth is Out of School. [Fact Sheet No. 48]. Retrieved from http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs48-one-fivechildren-adolescents-youth-out-school-2018-en.pdf. UNICEF (2018). Goal areas two: Every child learns. [Global Annual Results Report 2018]. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/media/55331/file UNESCO (2015, May). Education 2030: Equity and quality with a lifelong learning perspective. [Policy Paper 20]. Retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000233029. Vincent, L. (2016). “Tell us a new story”: A proposal for the transformatory potential of collective memory projects. In P. Tabenksy, & S. Matthews (eds.), Being at home: Race, institutional culture and transformation at South African higher education institutions (pp. 21–44). Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Walker, M. (2005). Simply not good chaps: Unravelling gender equity in a South African university. In C. Marshall (ed.), Feminist critical policy analysis II (pp. 38–55). London, England: Falmer Press. Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Reaching higher: The power of expectations in schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weinstein, R.S., Soulé, C.R., Collins, F., Cone, J., Mehlhorn, M., & Sintontacchi, K. (1991). Expectations and high school change:Teacher-researcher collaboration to prevent school failure. American Journal of Community Psychology, 19(3), 333–363. Weinstein, R.S., Gregory, A., & Strambler, M.J. (2004). Intractable self-fulfilling prophecies fifty years after Brown v. Board of education. American Psychologist, 59(6), 511–520. Wiggan, G. (2007). Race, school achievement, and educational inequality: Toward a student-based inquiry perspective. Review of Educational Research, 77(3), 310–333. Wittrup, A.R., Hussain, S.B., Albright, J.N., Hurd, N.M.,Varner, F.A., & Mattis, J.S. (2019). Natural mentors, racial pride, and academic engagement among black adolescents: Resilience in the context of perceived discrimination. Youth & Society, 51(4), 463–483. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X16680546. Wolff, J. & Himes, H. (2010). Purposeful exclusion of sexual minority youth in Christian higher education: The implications of discrimination. Christian Higher Education, 9(5), 439–460. https://doi-org. ezproxy.uct.ac.za/10.1080/15363759.2010.513630 Woods, R.L. (2001). “Oh sorry, I’m a racist”: Black student experiences at the University of Witwatersrand. In R.O. Mabokela, K.L. King, & R.F. Arnove (eds.), Apartheid no more: Case studies of South African universities in the process of transformation (pp. 91–110). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Zuma, B. (2014). Contact theory and the concept of prejudice: Metaphysical and moral explorations and an epistemological question. Theory & Psychology, 24(1), 40–57.

183

13 STEREOTYPES In the head, in language and in the wild Kevin Durrheim

The sharedness of stereotypes makes them powerful instruments of human sociality.The fact that we have the same stereotype about an object allows us to have shared views about the object, agree about how the object should be treated, and coordinate our behavior toward that object. And the fact that we know we share the stereotype means that we can do all this without explicitly communicating our thoughts, reasons, and intentions. I know that you know what they are like, and this unstated agreement can be the basis of mutual understanding, solidarity, and collective action. At the same time, knowing others hold stereotypes can lead to disagreement and contestation; and failure to recognize stereotypes that should be shared can lead to censure and social exclusion. Questions arise, however, about how the sharedness of stereotypes comes about. What are stereotypes’ means of “effective diffusion” across a group (Tajfel, 1981, p. 147)? A growing body of research has suggested that communication plays an important role in the diffusion of stereotypes. People talk about the changing situations they confront, making the unfamiliar familiar, developing a shared understanding of the situation and how to act in it (Moscovici, 1988). They also communicate stereotypes strategically as they seek to influence the situation, justifying their own actions or mobilizing others to action (Klein, Spears, & Reicher, 2007). Communication research suggests that people show a “stereotype consistency bias” in their communications about others. Mirroring stereotypical thinking, people “communicate about behaviors and characteristics that are in line with existing social category stereotypes” (Beukeboom & Burgers, 2019, p. 21). Communication strengthens stereotypes and undermines stereotype inconsistent information, making cognitive and perceptual biases public. This chapter reviews stereotype communication research that has developed in social psychology since the 1980s. It begins with a brief introduction to show how the emphasis on the sharedness of stereotypes can be traced back to the early roots of the literature. It then shows how the focus on language and communication helped to explain the subtle as opposed to crude means of stereotype communication, based on the idea that category-trait associations are carried in language. Finally, the chapter draws out two consequences of this view, namely that stereotypes are slippery and they exist in the wild and not only in language and cognition. By this I wish to draw attention to collaborative cognition—the “interactional scaffolding, joint construction, and distributed inhibition” of stereotypes between speakers (Condor & Figgou, 2012, p. 297)—as

184

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-13

Stereotypes

well as the material scaffolding, construction, and inhibition of stereotypical distinctions in the history and materiality of intergroup relations.

Stereotypes as shared cognitions The shared nature of stereotypes was recognized right from the earliest beginnings of stereotype research. Lippmann (1922) famously described stereotypes as “pictures inside the head”, but these individual cognitions were deemed “at least partially culturally determined” (Brigham, 1971, p. 16). In Lippmann’s view, stereotypes were elements of a group mind that bound members of a community together and gave them a shared, commonsense way of perceiving and evaluating the world. Katz and Braly’s (1933) research with the adjective checklist supported this view. They asked a sample of Princeton students to say which of a list of 84 traits “were necessary to characterize” each of 10 national or ethnic groups. They found high agreement or uniformity in the assignment of traits to ethnic groups: 84% viewed “Negroes” as superstitious, 78% viewed Germans as scientifically minded, and 79% viewed the Jews as shrewd. Thus, early researchers believed that stereotypes were culturally shared category-trait associations: “The American stereotype of the Germans… the American stereotype of the Turks”, and so on (Klineberg, 1951, p. 505, emphasis added). Subsequent research showed that shared stereotypes were remarkably stable over time. Many of the category-trait associations that Katz and Braly (1933) identified still had currency in the USA decades later (Gilbert, 1951; Karlins, Coffman, & Walters, 1969). But there were also noteworthy shifts. Princeton students believed the Japanese to be intelligent, industrious and progressive in 1933, but imitative, sly, and nationalistic after the Second World War (Gilbert, 1951), and then again industrious, ambitious, and efficient in the context of 1960s industrialization (Karlins et al., 1969). Likewise, analysis of word embeddings for 100 years of text data in the USA found that stereotypes of women and Asians were responsive to events such as the women’s movement and Asian immigration in the 1960s. Stereotypes for both groups closely tracked demographic changes in actual occupation participation rates over the twentieth century (Garg, Schiebinger, Jurafsky, & Zou, 2018). The cultural determination of stereotypes thus appears to originate in the nature of the economic and political relations between groups and even veridical perceptions of the social world, from the perspective of peoples’ location within it (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). But this veridical perception theory can only provide part of the explanation of the origin of shared stereotypes. In many instances, people’s stereotypes were unrelated to their experiences. For example, Eysenck and Crown (1948) found “considerable agreement” between the stereotypes of “Negroes” held by Katz and Braly’s Princeton sample and a middle-class white sample in England who were unlikely to ever have met a black person. Likewise, Bayton (1941) found that African American college students shared the stereotype of their Princeton peers that “Negroes” were superstitious and lazy, whereas their black college peers were unlikely to demonstrate these qualities. What could explain the shared stereotypes of such disparate samples who have such different experiences and intergroup relations with the stereotyped target group? Both Eysenck and Crown (1948) and Bayton (1941) made the obvious suggestion that stereotypes were shared because they were communicated widely in cultural and media representations that crossed the Atlantic and group boundaries. They might know the stereotype without necessarily endorsing it (Devine & Elliot, 1995). By the 1970s, research on shared stereotype content had reached something of a dead end (Brigham, 1971). The literature was primarily descriptive, “littered with reports of stereotypes of Group A by Group B” (Schneider, 2004, p. 11). The focus of the research literature shifted from

185

K. Durrheim

stereotype content to the individual cognitive and perceptual processes associated with social categorization and stereotyping (Bruner, 1957; Hamilton. & Trolier, 1986). Lippmann’s view that stereotypes were pictures in the head of perceivers became the predominant view among social psychologists.

Linguistic bias Semin and Fiedler’s (1988) linguistic category model played a pivotal role in focusing stereotype research on interactional dynamics.They were primarily interested in the way category-trait associations could be communicated in language. Language provided the tools for expressing stereotypes, “extend[ing] cognition into communication” (Semin, 2012, p. 315). They distinguished five linguistic categories that can be used to describe interpersonal events and showed how these result in divergent attributions (see Table 13.1). The five categories of linguistic resources range from most concrete (Descriptive Action Verbs) to most abstract (Adjectives). Anne Maass and her colleagues (1989, 1995) showed that these resources could be used to communicate intergroup bias. Ingroup favoring category-trait associations could be subtly communicated by abstract depictions of positive ingroup (Lucy is helpful) and negative outgroup behaviors (Annie is unreliable). In contrast, concrete depictions of negative ingroup (Lucy didn’t reply) and positive outgroup behaviors (Annie opened the door) would promote situational rather than category-based attributions. Maass and her colleagues (1995, 1996) also found a more general process at work in which linguistic abstraction was used to confirm stereotypes, independent of valence. People tend to describe stereotypical, expectancy-consistent behaviors in abstract terms but use concrete language to describe expectancy-inconsistent behaviors. Together, linguistic intergroup bias and expectancy bias work to communicate stereotypes, portray the ingroup favorably, bolster stereotypical interpretations, and discount counter-stereotypical evidence (Beukeboom & Burgers, 2019). In addition, stereotypes can be primed by the use of nouns, pronouns, and other ways of subtly invoking categories (see, e.g., Dillon, Mishler, Slogett, & Phillips, 2013; Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, & Sczesny, 2007). More generally, the work on linguistic bias suggests that stereotypes are as much in language as in the heads of individual perceivers. The research shows that people consciously or unconsciously formulate stereotypical impressions in language and communicate these impressions to others. These biases are then picked up by recipients who make stereotypical attributions based on the abstractness or concreteness of the descriptions they hear. Stereotypes are thus “generated and maintained not only within an individual but also between individuals” (Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000, p. 16). Linguistic bias exists both in the heads of individuals—in cognitions and perceptions—and in communication, in the social spaces between individuals, speakers, and hearers. Table 13.1  Classes of interpersonal linguistic terms Linguistic category

Features

Examples

Descriptive action verbs Interpretive action verbs State action verbs State verbs Adjectives

Refer to concrete actions Refer to a general class of behavior Express the emotional consequences of action Refer to mental and emotional states Refer to abstract person dispositions

Call, kiss, talk Help, cheat, reply Surprise, anger, excite Like, hate, envy Honest, helpful, unreliable

Source: Semin and Fiedler (1988, p. 560).

186

Stereotypes

Stereotypes and social connection If linguistic bias connects individuals to stereotypes—giving them shared perceptions—it can also serve to connect individuals to each other.This has been the central message of a program of work of Janet Ruscher and her colleagues. Because stereotypes are shared, Ruscher and Hammer (2006) argue, they provide conversational common ground to forge social solidarity (Ruscher & Hammer, 2006). Dyads thus spend more time discussing stereotype-consistent than stereotypeinconsistent information when they are striving to establish solidarity, consensus, or social connection. Ruscher, Hammer, and Hammer (1996) found that unacquainted dyads were more likely to describe an “alcoholic” or a “paraplegic” in stereotypic terms when they were instructed to reach consensus. People also discuss stereotypical information when they have other reasons for creating common ground, such as being newly acquainted or when establishing closeness (Ruscher, Cralley, & O’Farrell, 2005). In contrast, when unique viewpoints or new information are valued, counter stereotypic information is communicated more frequently (Clark & Kashima, 2007; Klein, Jacobs, Gemoets, Licata, & Lambert, 2003). Stereotyping has special relevance in social contexts where communication of (especially negative) stereotypes about outgroups can “foster camaraderie and social connectivity” (Kurz & Lyons, 2009, p. 198). Likewise, stereotypical mocking among close friends can help to build ingroup norms and strengthen identification (Robles, 2019). Much of the effect depends on the nature of the interpersonal and intergroup situation (Harasty, 1997; Karasawa, Asai, & Tanabe, 2007; Wigboldus, Spears, & Semin, 2005). For example, same-sex dyads are more likely to communicate negative stereotypes of outgroup than ingroup members (Harasty, 1997; cf. Wigboldus et  al., 2005); and peripheral group members express prejudice toward outgroups to promote acceptance, credibility, and a sense of group belonging (Douglas & McGarty, 2001; Klein et al., 2003; Noel, Wann, & Branscombe, 1995). But stereotypes can divide as well as unite and lead to exclusion as much as acceptance. People thus generally avoid stereotyping outgroup targets to outgroup audiences (Kurz & Lyons, 2009) but instead stereotype their ingroup or use outgroup enhancement strategies (Kwok, Wright, & Kashima, 2007). Similarly, Wigboldus et al. (2005) found that their participants spoke about their friends’ desirable behaviors abstractly but resisted gossiping about negative traits of their friends.These results suggest that stereotype expression is a form of human sociality, governed by social norms, politeness, and interpersonal demands to enhance “one’s own and the interaction partner’s faces” (Kwok et al., 2007, p. 123; see also Schaller & Conway, 1999). To use stereotypes successfully to forge solidarity, therefore, speakers need to determine the “degree to which fellow communicators buy into the stereotype” (Ruscher, 2001, p. 54; cf. Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). They tailor their expressions to their audience, taking into account the groups being stereotyped (Kurz & Lyons, 2009; Ruscher & Hammer, 2006), the communicability of the traits (Harasty, 1997; Schaller, Conway, & Tanchuk, 2002), and nature of the communication context (Kashima, 2008). Kurz and Lyons (2009) argue that stereotype expressions need to be explained in a “more nuanced way than is currently offered by accounts of the cognitive activation of stereotypes”. In addition to priming and the activation of cognitive schema, communication of stereotypes depends on judgments about the “social appropriateness of communicating particular stereotypes in particular communicative contexts” (p. 901).

Stereotyping by implication and omission Stereotypical associations in language and culture provide a means for achieving the nuance necessary to satisfy the countervailing demands to use stereotypes but not to cause offense. The 187

K. Durrheim

possibility for subtlety and nuance arises from the inferences that language carries. Speakers can communicate stereotypes indirectly by invoking context-sensitive cultural associations with the language they use. Linguistic bias is an instance of this more general phenomenon. Outgroupderogating stereotypes need not be expressed directly, but can nonetheless be communicated by abstract formulations. Such language “may lead to undetected or undetectable forms of discrimination in everyday life” (Wigboldus et al., 2000, p. 17), allowing hearers to get the sense of toxic stereotypes without stating them directly. Such indirect and subtle communications are often necessary when the context places multiple and divergent demands on speakers to express and repress stereotypes. In some circumstances, however, linguistic abstraction might not be subtle enough to avoid accusations of stereotyping and prejudice. A relatively new body of research shows that stereotypes may then be communicated by innuendo and omission (Bergsieker, Leslie, Constantine, & Fiske, 2012; Kervyn, Bergsieker, & Fiske, 2012). The innuendo effect is possible also because of the associations that language carries. Stereotypes are embedded in social and semantic networks, having links with social categories, prototypical individuals, events, and other stereotypes. Simply mentioning one part of an associated network can bring the rest to mind also. The implicit prejudice literature teaches us that “black” goes with “lazy” and “white” with “intelligent” for the same reasons that “bread” goes with “butter” and “doctor” with “nurse”: the concepts are linked in racist culture, where the mere presence of the category can prime the corresponding trait, creating an implicit, automatic or unconscious stereotype (Banaji & Greenwald, 1994; Durrheim, 2012). The now-substantial literature on the stereotype content model (Fiske, 2015) shows that warmth and competence traits are often linked in complementary and compensatory ways where the presence of one trait implies the absence of the other (Yzerbyt, 2016). People have a propensity to judge high-status groups and individuals as being more competent and agentic but also less loving, warm, and community-minded. Likewise, those judged more warm are also judged to be less competent. Given these associations, it is possible to imply the negative stereotype by stating only the positive. For example, describing a politician as warm-hearted can lead to attributions that the politician is also less competent (see Koch & Obermaier, 2016). A negative stereotypical innuendo may then be communicated by an explicit statement of the positive stereotype together with pointed omission of the negative. For example, after being told that a prospective working group member, Pat, seemed like a “very nice, sociable, and outgoing person”, experimental participants correctly judged Pat to be warm but also judged Pat to be low in competence and ultimately unsuitable for inclusion into the workgroup (Kervyn et al., 2012). By this mechanism, positive stereotypes can produce negative effects. A real-life Pat might be deemed unfit for a category of employment based purely on a comment about how warm and friendly she is (see Czopp, Kay, & Cheryan, 2015); positive stereotypes—for example, about women’s communality—can produce competence-related stereotype threat effects, leading to impaired maths performance (Kahalon, Shnabel, & Becker, 2018); and women’s tennis can be devalued relative to men’s by positive descriptions of the grace and beauty of their shots (Quayle et al., 2017).

Stereotypes in the wild The literature reviewed above has underscored the power of language as the carrier of implications and the tool for communicating stereotypes subtly, indirectly, and even by omission. It also situates such language use in the interpersonal and intergroup context of social interaction.This work has begun to develop a focus on stereotypes “in the wild” as opposed to “in the head” (see Semin, 188

Stereotypes

2008). Studies of language suggest that stereotypes can originate and circulate in the spaces between people as cultural implications carried in words (Kashima, Fiedler, & Freytag, 2008). Research on linguistic bias has helped us understand that abstract formulations carry stereotypical associations and that by sharing language individuals can act together in prejudiced ways even in the absence of explicit stereotyping (Beukeboom, 2014). Moreover, the content and form of the stereotype communication will depend on the interpersonal and intergroup dynamics of the situation. In the wild, stereotypes take the form of cultural associations, reproduced and put to work in socially situated communications (see Condor & Figgou, 2012). This section will add two qualifications to this exciting new trajectory of stereotyping research. First, in communication, stereotypes are often slippery, and researchers need to study their slipperiness rather than dispelling it by presuming to know what is and is not a stereotype. Second, stereotypes can reflect features of our world and thus provide tools for understanding but also for reproducing or challenging our history, institutions, and our way of life. In the wild, stereotypes are then as much in the world—between people and in our institutions and routines—as they are in our language or in our heads.

Stereotypes are slippery The associative powers of language allow certain topics to be alluded to but remain unsaid; and when participants in a conversation collectively leave something unsaid but alluded to, that topic may be characterized as being slippery (Murray & Durrheim, 2019). Like a bar of soap in a bath, the unsaid theme might seem graspable but it slips away when grasped too firmly. Speakers can allude to the stereotype and hearers can allude to having heard it, but any accusations of stereotyping will be denied on justifiable grounds that the stereotype was never uttered and that the accusation itself might indicate a prejudice. Stereotypes can then remain unsaid and their resulting slipperiness can pose challenges for the researcher. For example, Durrheim, Greener, and Whitehead (2015) studied responses to the use of the phrase a “bunch of savages” (p. 88) to describe violent student protesters at a South African university. A lecturer had used the characterization in a closed online discussion forum and it sparked a vigorous exchange of justification and criticism. The author was criticized for using “insulting and inflammatory” language, and even for “indefensible prejudicial idiocy”. Others underscored the author’s right to freedom of speech and defended the use of the word savages as an appropriate depiction of the students’ behavior. Two days and 14 posts later, the author conceded that “some of my words were not great due to a historical usage of a certain word” (p. 93). What remained unsaid by all was the hearable colonial stereotype of restless African savages, which is a racist taboo, too toxic to utter even in criticism (cf. Goodman & Burke, 2010). A hearable silence formed around an irresolvable ambiguity: Did the term savages refer to the students’ behaviors or to the inherent traits of the black protesters? The explicit referent was the protesters’, but the racist stereotype was also hearable and was alluded to in the subsequent criticism and justification, although never explicitly brought to the fore (for other examples, see Durrheim & Murray, 2020; Stokoe, 2015; Whitehead, 2017). Cases like this reveal a huge difference between the way researchers and ordinary people talk about stereotypes. Researchers typically define stereotypes as probabilistic category-trait associations like “Librarians are bookish and quiet” (McGarty, 2002, p. 18). They ask participants in their studies to complete adjective checklists, ticking off traits linked to specific categories; they use scales to measure stereotypical beliefs about the warmth and competence of different groups; and they analyze their participants’ talk to identify stereotype-consistent or stereotypeinconsistent information. In all measurements and in written reports, researchers presume to 189

K. Durrheim

know what the stereotype is and they use this to say whether the subjects they study are stereotyping or not. Sometimes people do make explicit prejudicial characterizations of “them” and “us”, but most often concerns about politeness and prejudice-avoidance mean that ordinary conversation is characterized by the absence of explicit stereotyping (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003; Schaller & Conway, 1999). This raises a fundamental question about the method and objective of studying stereotypes in the wild. Stereotypes might be identifiable and measurable in the lab but their slipperiness in the wild makes them elusive. The problem is not that people are saying (or thinking) bad things about others. Rather, they are doing their best to avoid saying (and thinking) bad things about others. This requires a fundamental shift in the objective of stereotype research. From its earliest origins, the primary objective of stereotyping research has been to identify prejudiced or biased ways of thinking and perceiving (Jussim, Crawford, & Rubinstein, 2015). Stereotypes have been treated as cognitive biases or faulty generalizations (Bruner, 1957; Hamilton & Trolier, 1986), distorted ways of thinking and perceiving that we now know can be communicated implicitly in language, transferred from person to person and across society. The slipperiness of stereotypes in the wild, however, means that it might not be easy to say definitively that a stereotype has been applied or a prejudice expressed. In the wild, researchers don’t have the upper hand in saying what is biased, prejudiced, or stereotyped (Durrheim, Quayle, & Dixon, 2016). Ordinary people are perfectly able to say for themselves that is biased or not, they use their knowledge of science to do so, and they are able to argue back, treating with scorn expert or elite attempts to undermine the slipperiness of unsaid stereotypes or to make implications explicit (Durrheim et al., 2018;Yen, Durrheim, & Tafarodi, 2018). We might be able to study stereotype content directly in the lab, but in the wild, we have to contend with ambiguity, polysemy, circumlocution, and stereotype denial and avoidance. Studies of conversations and stereotypes in the wild cannot help us determine whether participants privately (consciously or unconsciously) see the world in stereotyped terms and are prejudiced. We have to be content with studying what people do and the effects of what they do. Slippery stereotyping is commonplace and the focus of research might include a study of what such activity accomplishes. As the literature on linguistic bias and stereotyping by innuendo show, silences can provide a powerful form of communication. A positive account of Pat’s friendliness can also communicate her incompetence. So too, claiming that a domestic worker is “like family” can, at once, both repress and express colonial stereotypes and racial inequalities (Murray & Durrheim, 2020). Silences can speak without being spoken, they can implicate without being implicated, and they can account without being drawn to account for themselves. Slipperiness gives the unsaid its vitality. (Murray & Durrheim, 2019, p. 10) We might not have access to explicit stereotypes in the wild, but we do have access to the collaborative silences that mark out implicit stereotypes; and we can show how slipperiness gives stereotypes their vitality to be shared and to do their work, producing effects in the world.

Stereotypes are in the world The use of innuendo and allusion reveals something important about stereotypers: the main thing is not that they are prejudiced, but they have developed a subtle, cultivated reading and 190

Stereotypes

understanding of their world and a way of communicating and organizing their lives within it. They are thoroughly familiar with the associations between categories and between categories and traits that allow them to conduct themselves in sensible and defensible ways. In their study of racial segregation on a post-apartheid beach in South Africa, for example, Durrheim and Dixon (2005a) found that white beachgoers managed their time of arrival and departure and placement on the beach in such a way as to reduce contact between themselves and black beachgoers.When asked whether they objected to sitting next to black people, they denied prejudice, saying things like: “It won’t bother us at all … as long as they behave themselves” (Durrheim, 2012). It is left up to the hearer to imagine (stereotypical) categories of misbehavior, while any accusation of stereotyping remains ultimately deniable and fireproofed. One of the kinds of “misbehaviour” that was a repeated concern for the white beachgoers was that black people were “taking over” the previously whites-only apartheid beach and “pushing us out”. This was not simply a prejudiced stereotype but a point of view that had a basis in reality. As one interviewee confidently predicted: “all the white people are going to leave now you’ll just see” (Durrheim & Dixon, 2005b, p. 453). The stereotype about blacks crowding and taking over the beach was not merely a biased cognition or a cultural association. It was also founded on the reality of the post-apartheid beach in which whites arrived early and gradually left as black beachgoers arrived. The stereotype, the behavioral predictions, and the subsequent routines of collective migration played a role in producing the reality that made the stereotype true. Stereotypical racial behavior was not simply the product of prejudiced minds, conveyed in implicit associations. It had its basis in the reality of life on the beach.The stereotypes were in the world, and so the allusions that stereotypes carry are both about traits associated with categories and about the world that is so structured (Durrheim & DIxen, 2018). The same is true for the stereotype of Africans as savages. From an outsider’s point of view, the student protesters were behaving in an “extremely violent, wild or frightening” manner that defines the term “savage” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/savage). At the same time, in South Africa, it is almost always black students who protest in this manner. The stereotypical association is in reality, not only in prejudiced cognitions or linguistic associations. The reason should be obvious. In comparison with black students, white students are relatively privileged beneficiaries of the system who have little investment to disrupting the university, let alone in frightening ways. The same was true of the colonial system out of which the racist association with “savage” emerged. In comparison with the opulence and security of the “European sector”, the “native sector” was a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people … a famished sector hungry for bread, meat, shoes, coal, and light … a sector that crouches and cowers, a sector on its knees, a sector that is prostrate. It’s a sector of niggers, a sector of towelheads. The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist’s sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession … (Fanon, 1963, pp. 4–5) To say that stereotypes are in the world is not the same as saying they are true. Jussim and his colleagues (Jussim, Cain, Crawford, Harber, & Cohen, 2009; Jussim et al., 2015; Jussim, Harber, Crawford, Cain, & Cohen, 2005) have argued against the longstanding idea that stereotypes are merely prejudiced representations, claiming that they contain substantially more than a kernel of truth. They cite data to support the idea that men are aggressive, Jews are wealthy, and African Americans are “more likely to be both perpetrators and victims of crime” (Jussim et al., 2005, p. 90). No doubt, investigations would find black people displacing whites on the post-apartheid 191

K. Durrheim

beach and black students engaging in more violent protest than white students at universities in South Africa. The problem with the idea that stereotypes are true is not simply that it legitimizes the stereotype, but that it neglects “the historical and discursive practices through which the social realities that we “perceive” are actively constructed and institutionalized”. (Dixon, 2017, p. 1). It lacks a systemic and historical perspective about how we got to the here and now or how the status quo is maintained! It also does not question the role that the stereotype plays in constituting this reality. Slippery stereotyping is a communicative and interpretive practice through which individuals can describe and explain the world, locate themselves in it, and mobilize others to defend or change it (Durrheim et al., 2016). Slippery stereotypes help us grasp the world gently in shared conventional terms which also allow deniable stereotypes to circulate silently and powerfully. This silence helps to keep toxic themes present but unsaid, giving stereotypes their productive vitality (Durrheim & Murray, 2020).

Conclusion Social psychologists’ understanding of stereotypes has undergone substantial change over the past 100 years. Early researchers and theorists conceptualized stereotypes as culturally shared category-trait associations that were carried in the heads of individuals. They used the adjective checklist to determine the stereotypical beliefs that groups held about each other. However, interest in stereotype content all but died out by the 1970s as the focus shifted to the cognitive and perceptual dynamics of stereotyping. When stereotype content research revived in the 1980s and 1990s, the focus was on the structure of beliefs, not simply the content of who believed what about whom.The stereotype content researchers investigated associations between warmth and competence as two primary dimensions of stereotype content; and the linguistic action researchers studied the way language structures carried stereotypical meaning. Both traditions were interested in how social structure, status, intergroup relations, norms, etc. affected the expression of stereotype beliefs. This work opened the way to remove stereotypes from the head and place them in the world. First and foremost, the understanding of stereotypes as cultural associations that are developed and carried in language shifted the focus from perception and interpretation to interaction. Linguistic bias and the innuendo effect develop the idea that one person formulates a subtle message which another interprets. At the same time, this interaction between speaker and hearer was situated in strategic and normative contexts of interpersonal and intergroup relations, where people sought to use stereotypes to build relations while avoiding prejudice and the giving and taking of offense. Yet, this research has remained largely wedded to the cognitivist tradition. This can be seen from two related features of the methods used. First, the research often prioritizes interpretation over interaction. Stereotypes are seldom studied in the wild in naturalistic talk and ordinary conversations. Instead, researchers seek to understand how individuals interpret these subtle messages, focusing attention on mental acts of encoding the stereotypes and the behavioral implications that follow. Communication is treated as an interested transmission of a message from one speaker to another (see critique by Edwards, 1997). Second, researchers always presume to know what the stereotype is. In the early research, stereotypes were treated as crude categorytrait associations, but even in the work in implication and innuendo, researchers know what stereotypes people really believe. In contrast, this chapter has argued that, in the wild, stereotypes can be slippery. This slipperiness warrants attention. Our approach should not be to resolve the ambiguity, saying what 192

Stereotypes

stereotypes people really hold and adjudicating about the accuracy versus prejudice of the stereotype.The primary thing is not whether these stereotypes are present “in the heads” of individuals or whether they are prejudiced.The primary thing is what Tajfel (1981) referred to as their means of “effective diffusion” (p. 147). It is by these means and arts of indirection that stereotypes are shared and also slip from view; they are constituted in world-forming practices that often elude scrutiny.

References Banaji, M.R. & Greenwald, A.G. (1994). Implicit stereotyping and prejudice. In M.P. Zanna & J.M. Olson (eds.), The psychology of prejudice:The Ontario symposium (Vol. 7, pp. 55–76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bayton, J. (1941). The racial stereotypes of Negro college students. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 36, 97–102. Bergsieker, H.B., Leslie, L.M., Constantine,V.S., & Fiske, S.T. (2012) Stereotyping by omission: Eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0027717. Beukeboom, C.J. (2014). Mechanisms of linguistic bias: How words reflect and maintain stereotypic expectancies. In J. Laszlo, J.P. Forgas, & O.Vincze (eds.), Social cognition and communication (pp. 313–330). New York: Psychology Press. Beukeboom, C.J. & Burgers, C. (2019). How stereotypes are shared through language: A review and introduction of the social categories and stereotypes communication (SCSC) framework. Review of Communication Research, 7, 1–37. doi: 10.12840/issn.2255-4165.017. Brigham, J.C. (1971). Ethnic stereotypes. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 15–38. Bruner, J.S. (1957). On perceptual readiness. Psychological Review, 64, 132–133. Clark, A.E. & Kashima,Y. (2007). Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 1028–1039. Condor, S. & Figgou, L. (2012). Rethinking the prejudice problematic: A collaborative cognition approach. In J. Dixon, & M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change (pp. 200–222). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Crandall, C.S. & Eshleman, A. (2003). A Justification–Suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 414–446. Czopp, A.M., Kay, A.C., & Cheryan, S. (2015). Positive stereotypes are pervasive and powerful. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 10, 451–463. doi:10.1177/1745691615588091. Devine, P.G. & Elliot, A.J. (1995). Are racial stereotypes really fading? The Princeton trilogy revisited. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1139–50. Dillon, B., Mishler, A., Slogett, S., & Phillips, C. (2013). Contrasting intrusion profiles for agreement and anaphora: Experimental and modeling evidence. Journal of Memory and Language, 69, 85–103. Dixon, J. (2017). “Thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant?” transcending the accuracy–inaccuracy dualism in prejudice and stereotyping research. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 4–27. Douglas, K.M. & McGarty, C. (2001). Identifiability and self-presentation: Computer-mediated communication and intergroup interaction. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 399–416. Durrheim, K. (2012). Implicit prejudice in mind and interaction. In J. Dixon, & M. Levine (eds.), Beyond the prejudice problematic (pp. 179–199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durrheim, K. & Dixon, J. (2005a). Racial encounter: The social psychology of contact and desegregation. London: Psychology Press. Durrheim, K. & Dixon, J. (2005b). Studying talk and embodied practices:Toward a psychology of materiality of “race relations”. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 15, 446–460. Durrheim, K. & Dixon, J. (2018). Intergroup contact and the struggle for social justice. In P.L. Hammack Jr. (ed.), Oxford handbook of social psychology and social justice. OUP. ISBN: 9780199938735. Durrheim, K., Greener, R., & Whitehead, K. (2015). Race trouble: Attending to race and racism in online interaction. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54, 84–99. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12070. Durrheim, K. & Murray, A.J. (unpublished).The haunting quality of “racism”: A four stage cycle for studying the unsaid as social action. Durrheim, K., Okuyan, M., Twali, M.S., García-Sánchez, E., Pereira, A., Portice, J.S. … Keil, T. (2018). How racism discourse can mobilize right-wing populism: The construction of identity and alliance

193

K. Durrheim in reactions to UKIP’s Brexit “Breaking Point” campaign. Journal of Applied and Community Social Psychology, 28, 385–405. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2347. Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of “prejudice”: “Prejudice” expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37, 17–35. doi: 10.1111/pops.12310. Edwards, D. (1997) Discourse and cognition. London: Sage. Eysenck, H.J., & Crown, S. (1948). National stereotypes: An experimental and methodological study. International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, 2: 339–341. Fanon, F. (1963). Wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Fiske, S.T. (2015) Intergroup biases: A focus on stereotype content. Current Opinion in Behavioral Science, 3, 45–50. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.01.010. Garg, N., Schiebinger, L., Jurafsky, D., & Zou, J. (2018). Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(16), E3635–E3644. Gilbert, G.M. (1951). Stereotype persistence and change among college students. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 46, 245–254. Goodman, S. & Burke, S. (2010) “Oh you don’t want asylum seekers, oh you’re just racist”: A discursive analysis of discussions about whether it’s racist to oppose asylum seeking. Discourse and Society, 21, 325–340. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509360743. Hamilton, D.L. & Trolier, T.K. (1986). Stereotypes and stereotyping: An overview of the cognitive approach. In J.F. Dovidio & S.L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination and racism (pp. 127–157). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Harasty, A. (1997). The interpersonal nature of social stereotypes: Differential discussion patterns about in-groups and out-groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 270–284. Jussim, L., Cain, T., Crawford, J., Harber, K., & Cohen, F. (2009). The unbearable accuracy of stereotypes. In T. Nelson (ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 199–227). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Jussim, L., Crawford, J.T., & Rubinstein, R.S. (2015). Stereotype (in)accuracy in perceptions of groups and individuals. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 490–497. Jussim, L., Harber, K.D., Crawford, J.T., Cain, T.R., & Cohen, F. (2005). Social reality makes the social mind: Self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotypes, bias, and accuracy. Interaction Studies, 6, 85–102. Kahalon, R., Shnabel, N., & Becker, J.C. (2018). Positive stereotypes, negative outcomes: Reminders of the positive components of complementary gender stereotypes impair performance in counterstereotypical tasks. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 482–502. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12240. Karasawa, M., Asai, N., & Tanabe,Y. (2007). Stereotypes as shared beliefs: Effects of group identity on dyadic conversations. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10, 515–532. Karlins, M., Coffman,T., & Walters, G. (1969). On the fading of social stereotypes: Studies in three generations of college students. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 1–16. Kashima,Y. (2008).A social psychology of cultural dynamics: Examining how cultures are formed, maintained and transformed. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 107–120. Kashima,Y., Fiedler, K., & Freytag, P. (2008). Stereotype dynamics: Language-based approaches to stereotype formation, maintenance, and transformation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Katz, D. & Braly, K. (1933). Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 30, 175–193. Kervyn, N., Bergsieker, H.B., & Fiske, S.T. (2012). The innuendo effect: Hearing the positive but inferring the negative. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 77–85. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.09.001. Klein, O., Jacobs,A., Gemoets, S., Licata, L., & Lambert, S.M. (2003). Hidden profiles and the consensualization of social stereotypes: How information distribution affects stereotype content and sharedness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 755–777. Klein, O., Spears, R., & Reicher, S. (2007). Social identity performance: Extending the strategic side of SIDE. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 28–45. Klineberg, O. (1951). The scientific study of national stereotypes. International Social Science Bulletin, 3, 505–515. Koch, T. & Obermaier, M. (2016).  With heart and (no) mind? How recipients negatively infer missing information about politicians and how this affects the assessment of the speaker.  Communication Research, 43, 972–995. doi: 10.1177/0093650214565005. Kurz, T. & Lyons, A. (2009). Intergroup influences on the stereotype consistency bias in communication: Does it matter who we are communicating about and to whom we are communicating? Social Cognition, 27, 893–904.

194

Stereotypes Kwok, W.W., Wright, B., & Kashima,Y. (2007). Constructing intergroup relationships in social communication. Japanese Psychological Research, 49, 121–135. Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Harcourt Brace. Maass, A. (1999). Linguistic intergroup bias: Stereotype perpetuation through language. In M.P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 31, pp. 79–121). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Maass, A., Ceccarelli, R., & Rudin, S. (1996). Linguistic intergroup bias: Evidence for ingroup-protective motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 512–526. Maass, A., Milesi, A., Zabbini, S., & Stahlberg, D. (1995). Linguistic intergroup bias: Differential expectancies or ingroup protection? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 116–126. Maass, A., Salvi, D., Arcuri, L., & Semin, G. (1989). Language use in intergroup contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 981–993. McGarty, C. (2002). Stereotype formation as category formation. In C. McGarty,V.Y.Yzerbyt, & R. Spears (eds.), Stereotypes as explanations: The formation of meaningful beliefs about social groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moscovici, S. (1988). Notes towards a description of social representations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 211–250. Murray, A.J., & Durrheim, K. (2019). Introduction: A turn to silence. In A.J. Murray & K. Durrheim (eds.), Qualitative studies of silence:The unsaid as social action. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Murray, A.J. & Durrheim, K. (2020). Maintaining the status quo through repressed silences: The case of paid domestic labour in post-apartheid South Africa. Sociology, 55, 283–299. Noel, J.G.,Wann, D.L., & Branscombe, N.R. (1995). Peripheral ingroup membership status and public negativity toward outgroups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 127–137. Oakes, P.J., Haslam, S.A., & Turner, J.C. (1994). Stereotyping and social reality. Oxford: Blackwell. Quayle, M., Wurm, A., Barnes, H., Barr, T., Beal, E., Fallon, M., & Flynn, R. et al. (2017). Stereotyping by omission and commission: Creating distinctive gendered spectacles in the televised coverage of the 2015 Australian Open Men’s and Women’s tennis singles semi-finals and finals. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 54, 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690217701889. Robles, J.S. (2019). Building up by tearing down. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 38, 85–105. Ruscher, J.B. (2001). Prejudiced communication: A social psychological perspective. New York: Guilford. Ruscher, J.B., Cralley, E.L., & O’Farrell, K.J. (2005). How newly acquainted dyads develop shared stereotypic impressions through conversation. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8, 259–270. Ruscher, J.B. & Hammer, E.D. (2006). The development of shared stereotypic impressions in conversation: An emerging model, methods, and extensions to cross-group settings. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 25, 221–243. Ruscher, J.B., Hammer, E.Y., & Hammer, E.D. (1996). Forming shared impressions through conversation: An adaptation of the continuum model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 705–720. Schaller, M. & Conway, L.G. (1999). Influence of impression-management goals on the emerging contents of group stereotypes: Support for a social-evolutionary process. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 819–833. Schaller, M., Conway, L.G., & Tanchuk, T.L. (2002). Selective pressures on the once and future contents of ethnic stereotypes: Effects of the communicability of traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 861–877. Schneider, D.J. (2004). The psychology of stereotyping. New York: The Guildford Press. Semin, G.R. (2008). Stereotypes in the wild. In Y. Kashima, K. Fiedler, & P. Freytag (eds.), Stereotype dynamics: Language-based approaches to the formation, maintenance and transformation of stereotypes (pp. 11–28). London: Erlbaum. Semin, G.R. (2012). The linguistic category model. In P.A.M. Van Lange, A. Kruglanski, & E.T. Higgins (eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 309–327). London: SAGE. Semin, G.R. & Fiedler, K. (1988). The cognitive functions of linguistic categories in describing persons: Social cognition and language. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 558–568. Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (ed.), Social communication (pp. 163–187). New York: Psychology Press. Stokoe, E. (2015). Identifying and responding to possible “-isms” in institutional encounters: Alignment, impartiality and the implications for communication training. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 427–445. Tajfel, H. (1981). Social stereotypes and social groups. In J.C. Turner, & H. Giles (eds.), Intergroup behaviour (pp. 144–167). Oxford: Blackwell.

195

K. Durrheim Whitehead, K.A. (2017). Managing the moral accountability of stereotyping. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 1–22. doi: 10.1177/0261927X17723679. Wigboldus, D.H., Semin, G.R., & Spears, R. (2000). How do we communicate stereotypes? Linguistic bases and inferential consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 5–18. Wigboldus, D., Spears, R., & Semin, G.R. (2005). When do we communicate stereotypes? Influence of the social context on the linguistic expectancy bias. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8, 215–230. Yen, J., Durrheim, J., & Tafarodi, R.W. (2018).“I’m happy to own my implicit biases”: Public encounters with the implicit association test. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 505–523. https://doi.org/10.1111/ bjso.12245. Yzerbyt, V. (2016). Intergroup stereotyping. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 90–95. doi: 10.1016/j. copsyc.2016.06.009.

196

14 IMPLICIT BIAS Iain Walker and Susie Wang

Late in 2019, the California legislature passed a bill requiring all continuing education courses for physicians, surgeons, and nurses to include, by 2022, material specifically covering the role of implicit bias in contributing to racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes. The bill states ‘Implicit bias contributes to health disparities by affecting the behavior of physicians and surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, and other healing arts licensees’ (AB-241 Implicit Bias, 2019). Also in 2019, Australia’s primary national funder of health and medical research, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) encouraged all its external peer reviewers ‘… to complete an online Implicit Association Test (IAT) for gender and science … [to]… help participants identify any implicit associations they may have between gender and participation in a science career’.1 The NHMRC initiative comes from a strong global concern about systematic gender biases in all aspects of science and its institutions, including hiring and promoting, awarding grants, assessing manuscripts for publication, and serving in key positions in learned societies and editorial boards. To its credit, the journal Nature, an international flagship journal in science, recognised the problem even in its own practices, and has introduced changes to its practices to address its problems (Nature Editorial, 2018). In 2017, the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government published a report summarising the results of a simulated trial project designed to remove implicit and explicit bias against women and other minorities in senior public service hiring decisions by the Australian Public Service. Paradoxically, the trial found that, compared to experimental conditions in which all information about candidates’ gender, race, and ethnicity were removed from applications, public servants were more likely to shortlist candidates when they knew the candidates’ gender or minority status. This effect was strongest when candidates were identified as Indigenous and female. Male reviewers and older reviewers showed more positive ‘discrimination’ than did their counterparts (Hiscox et al., 2017). The concept of implicit bias is topical in contemporary Western societies. It has moved out of psychology laboratories and into popular discourse. It is affecting organisations’ behaviour, countless organisational consultants offer implicit bias training workshops, and, at least in

1 The online implicit association test for gender and science is freely available at: https://implicit.harvard. edu/implicit/Study?tid=-1.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-14

197

I. Walker and S. Wang

California, legislative efforts are being made to eliminate implicit bias. But what is implicit bias? And what is its scientific basis? The California legislation offers as good a definition as any of implicit bias: ‘Implicit bias, meaning, the attitudes or internalised stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other characteristics.’ (AB-241, Implicit Bias, 2019). The idea that we humans can hold ‘attitudes or internalized stereotypes’ that can unconsciously affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions is hardly new. In one early experimental demonstration, Pettigrew, Allport, and Barnett (1958) provided stereoscopic images of people from each of the four major ‘racial’ groups in South Africa at the time, to participants from each of those four groups. On some experimental trials, the image presented to one eye was of a person from one group and the image to the other eye was of a person from a different group. Our perceptual systems resolve ‘binocular rivalry’ by fusing two different images into a single image that is consciously perceived. In this case, White South African participants, especially Afrikaners, demonstrated ‘perceptual vigilance’ by being more likely to ‘see’ ‘racially’ discrepant stimuli as either ‘pure European’ or as ‘full-blooded African’ than did the experimental judges from other groups. For Pettigrew et al. these results suggest that people displaying ‘racial apprehension’ are especially vigilant and defensive about the group categorisation of other people, and are motivated to maintain a kind of categorical hygiene by judging people as belonging strictly to one and only one group. This motivated perceptual pattern resembles the profile of people who are highly authoritarian (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Bizumic, 2019). Such people have a strong tendency to perceive the world in rigid, inflexible, black-andwhite categories. A second set of early experiments by Word, Zanna, and Cooer (1974) shows again how ‘attitudes or internalized stereotypes’ can unconsciously affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions, this time through the operation of self-fulfilling prophecies. In their first experiment, white participants purportedly interviewed either white or black2 job applicants.The participants in the role of interviewer sat further away, made more speech errors, and ended the interview sooner when they were interviewing black than white interviewees. In a second experiment, white interviewers were trained to act as the interviewers of either the black or the white applicants had in the first experiment. They then interviewed naïve white applicants, randomly assigned to one interview style or the other, and the interviews were recorded. Those white applicants who were interviewed in the ‘black’ interview style were judged by independent assessors to have done worse in the interview than those in the ‘white’ interview style. The applicants themselves ended up sitting further away from the interviewer and rated this interviewer as less adequate and less friendly. The studies by Pettigrew et al. (1958) and Word et al. (1974) are just two of many demonstrating the ubiquity of prejudicial sentiments against minority group members across a range of behaviours (Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980). The designs of many of these studies mean that

2 We fully recognise the use of descriptors such as ‘black’ and ‘white’ is problematic, and do not wish to imply these describe natural groupings of humans that have a biological basis. We use these, and related, terms throughout the chapter consistent with the use by authors in the work we are reporting. Similarly, we use ‘race’ consistent with the use made by other authors, while accepting the term is socially constructed and not biologically based.

198

Implicit bias

it is highly unlikely that the people exhibiting the prejudicial responses could have been aware of their bias. Social psychology has known for decades that prejudice operates non-consciously or implicitly, that ‘attitudes or internalized stereotypes … affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner’.The effects have been repeatedly demonstrated empirically, and theories about modern racism (McConahay, 1982, 1986), symbolic racism (Sears & McConahay, 1973), ambivalent racism (Katz & Hass, 1988), aversive racism (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986), and subtle racism (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995) have all offered explanatory accounts of the phenomenon (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Pearson, 2017). So, what is new about ‘implicit bias’? What is new with the implicit bias approach to understanding prejudice is the tacit explanation it offers for how and why people come to display prejudice.The earlier frameworks referred to in the previous paragraph turn to a range of mechanisms, such as the psychological conflict arising from holding conflicting sets of beliefs, compliance with changing norms about egalitarianism, motivated perception, and anticipated anxiety about intergroup interactions, to explain changing patterns of prejudice.The implicit bias approach rests instead on the idea that we acquire through socialisation an insistent association between particular groups and sets of attributes, usually valenced. These associations persist unrecognised in memory, and quietly shape our expectations of members of different groups. These in turn shape our evaluations of behaviours performed by group members. In this respect, the implicit bias model is not dissimilar to the early dissociation model developed by Devine (1989). However, the Devine model differentiates between people high and low in prejudice, and suggests that those low in prejudice actively inhibit stereotypic thinking once they become aware of it. In contrast, the implicit bias model applies equally to all, regardless of the level of prejudice. In the rest of this chapter, we will discuss what is meant by implicit bias, and some theoretical issues in the implicit bias literature, before pointing to a few limitations of implicit bias research.

What is implicit bias? Imagine doing the following task. Seated before a computer screen you are shown a series of words and you have to press one of two buttons in response to each word. Every time the word refers to a young person you are to press a button on the left; if the word refers to an old person, you are to press the button on the right. The computer records the time elapsed between when the word is presented on the screen and when you press the button. Not all the words refer to young or old people though. Some words are ‘good’ and some are ‘bad’. For good words, you press the button on the left. For bad words, you press the button on the right. Most people find this task easy – hit the left button if the word is either ‘young’ or ‘good’, and the right button if the word is either ‘old’ or ‘bad’. Most people also find the task harder – and respond more slowly – when the response sets are alternated such that ‘young’ and ‘bad’ lead to a left button response and ‘old’ and ‘good’ to a right button response. The longer response time is taken to indicate a response incompatibility. Comparing the average response times for compatible and incompatible sets of words indicates the relative strength of the pairing of ‘good’ with ‘young’ and ‘bad’ with ‘old’, or, in other words, the strength of the implicit bias. This is the basic paradigm of the IAT developed by Greenwald and Banaji (1995). The paradigm has been used to examine implicit biases affecting a wide range of groups defined by race, gender, age, weight, sexuality, and others. The word sets paired with group descriptors are not always simple ‘good/bad’ sets of words. Science descriptors, for example, have been used to examine the implicit associations between male/female and science.The Project Implicit website

199

I. Walker and S. Wang

(https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) allows researchers, organisations, and members of the public to assess the implicit biases people have with many different groups.3 Clearly, the notion of ‘implicit bias’ rests critically on what we understand both ‘implicit’ and ‘bias’ to mean. It is often useful to start with dictionary definitions. The Cambridge Dictionary defines bias as ‘the action of supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way, because of allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment’, and implicit as ‘suggested but not communicated directly’. Bias, defined this way, differs from the related concept of prejudice. In social psychology, definitions of prejudice usually flow from Allport’s classic words that prejudice is ‘an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization’ (1954, p. 9). Prejudice is affective, and usually negative. Prejudice is not behavioural. That is usually labelled discrimination. Bias, defined as above, is an action. It is behavioural. Importantly, bias can ‘support’ or ‘oppose’; that is, it can be either positive or negative in its effect. Social psychology typically focuses on discrimination caused by outgroup antipathy, although Greenwald and Pettigrew (2014) argue convincingly that intergroup discrimination most typically follows from ingroup favouritism, not outgroup hostility. Greenwald and Pettigrew (2014) also make the important point that the design of most studies in social psychology means that researchers cannot tell whether differences in the evaluations of different groups represent ingroup favouritism or outgroup derogation, because they only compare the two group evaluations and lack an absolute benchmark.This telling point afflicts much of the research on implicit bias, too – it does not distinguish bias in favour of one group from bias against another. Turning now to consider the meaning of ‘implicit’, the literature is conceptually muddy and variously describes ‘implicitness’ as: (1) a psychological construct, such as implicit attitudes; (2) a procedure, such as implicit measures; (3) a function, in that the brain makes implicit associations; or a combination of each of these (Corneille & Hütter, 2020). The sense of implicit as ‘suggested but not communicated directly’ is, superficially, widely adopted, if not explicitly addressed, in the literature. But we quickly encounter inconsistencies once we consider how implicitness is operationalised. Tied up in these different conceptualisations are different ways of understanding implicitness: as unconsciously held beliefs; as responses that are indirectly measured; as automatic responses; and as associations (Corneille & Hütter, 2020). None of these conceptualisations necessarily implies any of the others. Implicit biases have gained attention largely due to the fame of measures such as the IAT. Implicit measures are held in contrast to explicit attitudes and behaviours, which are measured directly. The separation of the two can be traced to theoretical approaches to cognition, such as dual process theory (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Stanovich, West, & Toplak, 2014), which separate cognition into implicit processes, which can be understood as automatic, fast, and not amenable to conscious control, and explicit processes, which are more deliberate, slow, and subject to conscious control. One of the most common assumptions about implicit biases is that they are unconscious. Implicit biases are thought to affect behaviour, without conscious awareness.This can happen when there is no opportunity for deliberation because of cognitive demands from time pressures or other tasks being done simultaneously, or there is no requirement to deliberate, or there is no willingness to do so, or there is no awareness of any need to do so. However, there is growing scepticism of the assumption that implicit biases are unconsciously held, for a few reasons.

3 Further information on the causes and impacts of implicit associations can also be found through The Royal Society’s video Understanding Unconscious Bias, available at https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/ publications/2015/unconscious-bias/.

200

Implicit bias

Some evidence suggests people may be aware of their implicit biases, possibly rendering those biases more explicit than implicit. People can predict their scores on implicit association tests prior to doing the task (Hahn, Judd, Hirsh, & Blair, 2014). If we assume that scores reflect implicit biases, this suggests that we can be aware of these biases, and indirectly measured responses are not always outside of our awareness. In fact, Greenwald and Banaji (2017), the developers of the IAT, have dismissed the definition of implicit as unconscious. A ‘lack of awareness’ does not always distinguish implicit from explicit views – awareness of what is a key consideration. For instance, people may know that they like something (and be able to say so explicitly), and yet not be aware of the origin of this preference (Gawronski, 2019). Gawronski also notes the need to distinguish between different ways in which biases can be ‘unconscious’, for instance by separating awareness of the contents underlying responses to implicit measures, or the origins of these contents, from how they affect judgments and behaviour. As noted above, the inventors of the IAT dismiss the idea that implicit measures represent unconscious processes. Greenwald and Banaji (2017) have argued that implicit measures are unrelated to mental processes. But, if implicit measures do not illuminate mental processes, what is their function? The second conceptualisation of ‘implicit’ is procedural, that implicit measures are indirectly measured and hence able to measure implicit phenomena. However, defining implicit as ‘indirect’ means establishing what is necessarily a fuzzy boundary between indirect and direct measures (Corneille & Hütter, 2020). Some measures, such as the IAT are clearly ‘indirect’, and questionnaires assessing attitudes towards other social groups can reasonably be described as ‘direct’ measures. But it is not always so clear – for instance, unobtrusive measures such as the distance that someone chooses to sit from an outgroup member (as in the study by Word et al., 1974 described above), or questionnaires designed to measure attitudes subtly (as with as the Modern Racism Scale or the Subtle-Blatant prejudice scales) cannot be so clearly categorised. Greenwald and Banaji’s view that implicit measures are agnostic to psychological processes raises the problem that implicit measures (including, but not limited to, the IAT) do not provide process-pure measurements of implicit bias. Tasks that measure implicit bias also tend to involve cognitive factors, such as task-switching ability, recoding and feedback responsiveness, and impulse inhibition (Forscher, Mitamura, Dix, Cox, & Devine, 2017). Behavioural measures such as interpersonal seating distance, as in the Ward et  al. study, may reflect implicit biases, but may also reflect many other things, implicit and explicit, besides. With such process-messy operationalisations, it will always remain difficult to make the conceptual inferences necessary for theory to advance. In Schimmack’s (2019) words, the IAT is ‘a method in search of a construct’. Some researchers contend that a task or a measurement procedure cannot be implicit in and of itself. It is the bias that is implicit, not the procedure used to demonstrate or measure it. What are sometimes referred to as implicit measures might better be referred to as unobtrusive measures (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, & Sechrest, 1966). Although the structure of a task may be described as indirect or direct, implicitness should refer to the way in which a response is elicited. A judgment is implicit if it is ‘unintentional, resource-independent, unconscious or uncontrollable’ (Gawronski & De Houwer, 2014, p. 284). Some theorists have suggested that responses measured by so-called implicit tasks are simply associative, reflexive responses learned in social contexts and unconnected to cognitive processes, attitudes, or behaviours (De Houwer, 2019; Forscher et al., 2017; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2014; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). Implicit bias is seen as a side effect of experiencing frequent pairings of information in a social environment. The ease with which someone associates a word or concept with a social category (e.g., ‘competent’ with ‘male’ and ‘warm’ with ‘female’) reflects that person’s social environment rather than necessarily indicating their unconscious 201

I. Walker and S. Wang

endorsement of the association.This view echoes a founding premise of Devine’s (1989) dissociation model of stereotype activation and resonates with common experience – everyone in a culture knows the stereotypes of groups, whether they endorse those views or reject them. In a sense, then, the patterns of valenced associations are primarily social representations, not cognitive processes (Augoustinos, Walker, & Donaghue, 2014, pp. 247–248). Although in principle social representations can come to be cognitive processes from the slow accrual from repeated associations, there is little empirical support for the formation of automaticity of attitudes through repeated associations (Corneille & Hütter, 2020), and the activation of ‘automatic’ attitudinal responses can be influenced in counter-theoretical ways by changing the judgement task at hand (Gawronski, Morrison, Phills & Galdi, 2017; Locke & Walker, 1999).

Summary The conceptual and methodological confusion in the implicit bias literature does not render the study of implicit bias uninformative or irrelevant – it simply indicates that more work needs to be done in conceptual clarification. We tentatively suggest the notion of implicit bias contained within the Californian legislation described at the start of the chapter holds up as a useful definition, across all the different ways researchers have used the construct. ‘Implicit bias …[is]… the attitudes or internalized stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other characteristics.’ Implicit bias: • • • • •

is an internal cognitive process (an attitude or a stereotype); influences those around us by affecting our perceptions, actions, and decisions; thereby leading to unequal treatment of others because of group memberships; often disallows awareness of those influences; and is internalised from broader, external social environments.

Because of all these features, and because it is counter-normative to express overt group-based bias (at least in Western, English-speaking countries and cultures), subtle, unobtrusive techniques are required to be able to measure it.

So what? How can it help us? As social psychologists, many of us are ultimately concerned with using our understanding of the phenomena we study to improve human welfare. To this end, many researchers have used implicit bias frameworks and methods to demonstrate and understand the operation of implicit biases in a range of real-world settings. Many have also tried to change implicit biases with the goal of changing behaviour. Research on implicit bias has been applied to policing (Spencer, Charbonneau, & Glaser, 2016; Plant & Peruche 2005), health care (Cooper et al., 2012; Hagiwara, Dovidio, Eggly, & Penner, 2016), clinical education (Motzkus, Wells, Wang, Plummer, & Sabin, 2019), the justice system and jurors (Reynolds, 2013), employment contexts (Pager & Western, 2012), and many others. Sadly, the results are generally as one might predict. Recent meta-analyses suggest that implicit biases are changeable, but do not necessarily result in changes in explicit actions (Forscher et al., 2017), that there is little evidence for the durability of implicit bias interventions (Lai et al., 2016; Vuletich & Payne, 2019), and that changing implicit bias has a rather small effect on behaviour (Cameron, Brown-Iannuzzi, & Payne, 2012; Friese, Hofmann, & Schmitt, 2008; Greenwald, 202

Implicit bias

Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009; Kurdi et al., 2019; Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, & Tetlock, 2013; Perugini, Richetin, & Zogmaister, 2010). Each of these points will be explained further in the sections below, alongside some wider limitations of research in this field.

Malleability of implicit bias A recent meta-analysis (Forscher et al., 2017) looking at a range of implicit measures and experimental manipulations shows that implicit bias is malleable and changeable, either directly (using experiences that affirm or counter biases) or indirectly (perspective-taking). Overall, effect sizes were small (Cohen’s d < 0.35; Forscher et al., 2017). Crucially, changing implicit biases does not necessarily lead to changes in explicit biases, or to changes in behaviour. Changes in implicit biases were small but significant, whereas overall changes to explicit biases were not significantly different from zero, and changes to behaviour were marginal. In both cases, there was a much greater variance in effect sizes than for implicit bias (Forscher et al., 2017). Overall, this paints a picture of implicit biases being relatively malleable and changeable, but with weak links downstream to changes in explicit bias or behaviour.

Relationship to behaviour One reason why there is so little evidence for the downstream impacts of changing implicit biases may be a low correspondence between implicit biases and explicit actions to begin with. One of the defining features of implicit bias is its role in affecting our behaviour in ways we may not be aware of. However, the literature tends to find only a small to medium relationship between implicit bias scores and explicit behaviours. A meta-analysis of the predictive validity of IAT on discrimination behaviour found that IATs were poor predictors of behaviour, and only related to brain activity (Oswald et al., 2013).The correlation between IAT scores and behaviour was lower (r = 0.148) than that found in an earlier meta-analysis (Greenwald et al., 2009), which reported a small correlation (r = 0.274). In response to this, Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek (2015) have pointed out that even small experimental effects can have large societal consequences. When orchestrated across countless settings, from decisions in the workplace to the judgments of police and the justice system to treatment in school and healthcare, even small effects can have a cumulative, disruptive, or destructive impact on those not favoured by the implicit biases of the majority. One potential moderator in this case is the degree of correspondence, cognitive matching, or the similarity between the implicit measure and the behaviour with which it was correlated (Gawronski, 2019). Implicit biases relate more strongly to behaviour measured in a similar way – for example, IAT scores have a higher degree of correspondence to spontaneous non-verbal behaviour than to deliberate verbal behaviour (Payne, Burkley, & Stokes, 2008). The degree of correspondence between race IAT scores and non-verbal, affective ratings of black and white participants is likely to be closer than between race IAT scores and perceptions of the warmth of a social interaction (Greenwald et al., 2015). Although the evidence relating the IAT to behaviours is equivocal, some have pointed to the considerable body of research on implicit methods other than the IAT, such as affective priming or linguistic analysis (Fazio & Olson, 2003), the shooter-bias paradigm (Correll et al., 2002), or resume/ audit studies (Bendick & Nunes, 2012) that have greater correspondence to real life behaviours, and that to do seem better at predicting behavioural outcomes (Fisher & Borgida, 2012). Paradoxically, recent meta-analyses show that the largest effects for changing implicit bias tend to come from IAT studies (Forscher et al., 2019). This may potentially be driven by the fact 203

I. Walker and S. Wang

that IAT measures typically have greater reliability than other implicit measures (Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2014; Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000), and that more studies use the IAT than other measures (64.7% of sample vs., 10.5% using priming studies, and 20.1% using ‘other’ methods). This points to the need for more systematic research using other measures of implicit bias in behavioural interventions.

Interventions and training Interventions that invoke goals, involve associations between concepts, or tax mental resources lead to the greatest changes in implicit bias. Threat induction, affirmation of identity (i.e., feedback that you are moral and unbiased) or emotion/mood manipulations produce relatively small changes (Forscher et al., 2017). Further, research on implicit bias training shows mixed results, A systematic review of interventions designed to reduce implicit biases in real-world settings (as opposed to experimental settings; FitzGerald, Martin, Berner, & Hurst, 2019) found that common methods such as perspective-taking, imagining interracial contact, and empathic responding were largely ineffective, with exposure to counter-stereotypical examples (examples that contradict prevalent stereotypes of a group) showing some promise, albeit with a need for more intervention research. The authors conclude that many interventions to change implicit bias are ineffective and that their use ‘cannot be described as evidence-based’ at present (notably, their review was limited only to studies that used the IAT). It is an open question whether this kind of training can lead to change in implicit biases alone and whether any such effects can be distinguished from impacts on explicit biases, or increased awareness of injunctive norms and practices. Recent work builds upon classic research on value confrontation (Rokeach & Cochkane, 1972) to argue that ‘bias awareness’ may increase our understanding of individual differences in responsiveness to training. The idea is that awareness of personally held biases (and willingness to admit to having them, rather than responding defensively) is a critical step in reducing explicit prejudice and actions (Perry, Murphy, & Dovidio, 2015) with some previous research showing that when White people become aware of their racial biases, they adjust their behaviour and attitudes to be more egalitarian and compensate for prejudiced behaviour (Monteith, 1993; Monteith, Arthur & McQueary Flynn, 2010; Monteith, Mark, & Ashburn-Nardo, 2010). Crucially, those who have high levels of awareness of their own implicit biases are more responsive to feedback about biased behaviour, and are more likely to respond in a compensatory way. Considering the popularisation of ‘implicit bias training’, it is also worth considering the impact of its role in popular discourse on subsequent training outcomes. Although early studies argued that implicit biases were resistant to intentional or goal-directed responses (Banse, Seise, & Zerbes, 2001; Egloff & Schmukle, 2002; Kim, 2003), more recent studies show that it is possible to respond strategically, in this case, particularly to IATs (Fiedler & Bluemke, 2005; Lai et al., 2014; Stewart & Payne, 2008).

Durability Very few studies of implicit bias interventions study the durability of effects. In their metaanalysis, Forscher et  al. (2017) identified that only 6.6% of samples were conducted longitudinally, and only 3% involved manipulations over multiple sessions, pointing to a gap in our understanding of any lasting effects. In this case, the sample size of studies investigating durability effects was so small that it could not be included in the meta-analysis. 204

Implicit bias

To date, the most comprehensive study of the durability of implicit bias is from Lai et  al. (2016), who showed that nine interventions over 18 university campuses in the United States led to temporarily reduced racial bias. However, none of these effects were present after a delay of only 1–2 days. These findings largely point to the stability of people’s implicit biases, and that individual associations and biases are resistant to relatively mild interventions. An important alternative explanation is structural: individual attitudes may be relatively malleable, but the wider social context constrains overall change (Vuletich & Payne, 2019).Vuletich and Payne (2019) separately analysed individual implicit bias scores and campus-level aggregates, using campus-level ‘structural inequality’ as a moderator (operationalised as the presence of a Confederate monument on campus, the under-representation of minority faculty, and social mobility of students, represented by the percentage of students occupying the highest income quintile whose parents occupied the poorest income quintile). They found that individual IAT scores fluctuated in both intervention and control conditions (although not systematically), suggesting that the interventions themselves were not the cause, but campus mean scores returned to baseline levels as a function of structural inequality. IAT means were higher on campuses with a Confederate monument, and lower on campuses with more faculty diversity, and more social mobility.

Limitations in sampling There is clearly a need for more research on the effects of implicit bias interventions, but limitations in sampling should be addressed in future work. Most research in psychology is conducted by White researchers using White participants, and journal papers are handled by White editors (Roberts, Bareket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie, & Mortenson, 2020). A major limitation in the implicit bias literature, as with most research in psychology, is that researchers primarily rely on WEIRD populations (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). A meta-analysis of implicit bias studies found that 53.0% of the studies were conducted in the United States, 81.7% of samples were entirely composed of university students and 76.2% were White (Forscher et al., 2017). Real-world intervention studies are overwhelmingly conducted in the United States (FitzGerald, Martin, Berner, & Hurst, 2019). It is, of course, important to study the biases of the privileged because they are often the ones in decision-making roles in which biases may create disparities. But it cannot be assumed that implicit biases work in the same way for minority or disadvantaged groups. For example, Stone, Moskowitz, Zestcott and Wolsiefer (2020) conducted active learning training workshops with first-year medical students to reduce implicit stereotyping of Hispanic patients as medically noncompliant. While the training was successful in reducing implicit stereotyping among the majority (White medical students) group, there was no effect on minority groups (e.g., Asian medical students). An additional branch of research deserving greater attention concerns whether the bias in question relates to one’s ingroup. For example, research with Black individuals finds evidence of negative implicit attitudes towards Black people (Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002; Powers & Ellison, 1995), likely a consequence of exposure to a social and cultural context in which negative Black stereotypes are prevalent (Fazio & Olson, 2003; Kubota, Peiso, Marcum, & Cloutier, 2017; Nosek et al., 2002; Weisbuch, Pauker & Ambady, 2009).

Broader context and a note of caution The California legislation mentioned at the start of this chapter focuses on the individual as the origin of prejudice and discrimination. Consistent with psychological levels of analysis, and with 205

I. Walker and S. Wang

a general neoliberal agenda, it locates prejudice and discrimination within the operation of the individual psyche and therefore locates the risks and the social, legal, and moral responsibilities for change also within the individual. This dangerously ignores or discounts the ‘implicit biases’ operating within social structures and processes, within organisations and institutions. We can certainly accept that the decisions and behaviours (implicit and/or explicit) of individual health practitioners help produce adverse health outcomes for people belonging to a range of marginalised and stigmatised groups. But what about the health disparities arising from the location and availability of health services? What about the implications of funding disparities between different areas within and between cities? What about the relative lack of health services in rural, regional, and remote areas, especially in countries as vast and sparsely populated as Australia? What about the systematic inequities produced by lack of access to health insurance among relatively poor and disadvantaged groups? These all affect health outcomes for members of disadvantaged, stigmatised, oppressed groups, but they do not typically arise from any individual-level bias, explicit or implicit. They reflect the operation of implicit biases, and much else, at supra-individual levels. Overcoming the pernicious effects of implicit (and explicit) bias among individual health practitioners also requires overcoming the same biases at organisational, institutional, and cultural levels. Our opening example showing Australian public servants (particularly male, older reviewers) being most likely to shortlist female Indigenous candidates (Hiscox et al., 2017) may illustrate a success story, but implicit bias at the individual level is just one factor in a more complex system. Perhaps due to affirmative action hiring policies, the Australian public service is the second largest employer of Indigenous Australians. Crucially, this figure has been shown to be due to continual recruitment and turnover, rather than good retention (Lahn & Ganter, 2018). Those who left their employment identified a combination of reasons for leaving, but the overriding shared experience was of ‘unmet expectations’. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public servants felt underused and undervalued by the public service system in service to affirmative action targets, and saw greater potential value of their recruitment to making a difference to the wellbeing of Indigenous communities (Lahn & Ganter, 2018). Overcoming implicit (and explicit) biases of majority-group members is just one of a great many individual, organisational, and structural factors that must be changed to ensure equality and fairness of opportunity for all. Finally, we might also wonder why training workshops addressing implicit or unconscious bias have become de rigueur, at least in the English-speaking nations of the overdeveloped world. If studies to reduce implicit bias struggle to show anything but small, short-lived effects, why are training workshops so popular? We can only speculate that their popularity stems from their cultural palatability (Yen, Durrheim, & Tafarodi, 2018). They serve to displace the blame for bias away from the perpetrator. They offer organisations a quick cure, or at least its illusion. And, without wishing to reify social processes, we suggest metaphorically they function to implicitly deflect attention from structural, institutional, and historical factors.

Conclusion The last quarter of a century has seen a remarkable explosion of interest in the phenomenon of implicit bias. This interest has flowed from research labs timing responses of participants in milliseconds, through popular discourse, into countless organisational consultants running training workshops to reduce implicit bias among employees, into changes in organisational policy and behaviour such as the editorial practices of prestigious journals such as Nature and the advice to grant assessors from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, and into legislation such as the Californian legislation with which we started this chapter. 206

Implicit bias

The research literature on implicit bias has some significant conceptual challenges demanding to be resolved. Research is also needed to establish the boundary conditions of the p­ henomenon – when and where are implicit biases triggered, with what effects, and for how long? We also do not know whether implicit biases are content-neutral – do they operate independently of the target group (e.g., do implicit biases based on race operate the same as those based on gender or age or sexuality or religion or body weight) and if not, what group-based features influence their operation? There can be no doubt that implicit bias research has positively influenced the nature of intergroup relations around the globe, if for no other reason than that it has made the operation of implicit biases explicit, for many people and organisations. But it remains to be shown that changes in the operation of implicit biases lessen discrimination. It is, frankly, hard to imagine that changes in implicit biases can overcome structural, institutional, and historical aspects of intergroup relations. If all implicit biases and attitudes were to disappear overnight, would the fate of disadvantaged groups change? ‘Suppose a magic pill were invented, or perhaps an enterprising entrepreneur developed The Ultimate Diversity Seminar, one so effective that it would completely eliminate unkind thoughts, stereotypes, and misimpressions harboured by its participants towards persons of other races.The president’s civil rights advisor prevails on all the nation’s teachers to introduce it into every K–12 classroom, and on the major television networks and cable network news to show it on prime time.Would life improve very much for people of color?’ (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, p. 16).

Acknowledgement We thank Carly Andrews for her library work towards this project.

References AB-241 Implicit Bias (2019). Kamlager-Dove. Implicit bias: Continuing education: Requirements, CA. Stat. §§. 2190.1, 3524.5, 2736.5. Accessed: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient. xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB241. Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J., & Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper. Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Augoustinos, M., Walker, I., & Donaghue, N. (2014). Social cognition: An integrated introduction (3rd edn.). London: Sage. Banse, R., Seise, J., & Zerbes, N. (2001). Implicit attitudes towards homosexuality: Reliability, validity, and controllability of the IAT. Zeitschrift fur experimentelle Psychologie: Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Psychologie, 48(2), 145–160. Bar-Anan,Y. & Nosek, B.A. (2014). A comparative investigation of seven indirect attitude measures. Behavior research methods, 46(3), 668–688. Bendick, M. & Nunes, A.P. (2012). Developing the research basis for controlling bias in hiring. Journal of Social Issues, 68(2), 238–262. Bizumic, B. (2019). Ethnocentrism: Integrated perspectives. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Bosson, J.K., Swann,W.B. Jr., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2000). Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: The blind men and the elephant revisited? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 631–643. Cameron, C.D., Brown-Iannuzzi, J.L., & Payne, B.K. (2012). Sequential priming measures of implicit social cognition: A meta-analysis of associations with behavior and explicit attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(4), 330–350. Cooper, L.A., Roter, D.L., Carson, K.A., Beach, M.C., Sabin, J.A., Greenwald, A.G., & Inui, T.S. (2012). The associations of clinicians’ implicit attitudes about race with medical visit communication and patient ratings of interpersonal care. American Journal of Public Health, 102: 979–988.

207

I. Walker and S. Wang Corneille, O., & Hütter, M. (2020). Implicit? What Do You Mean? A Comprehensive Review of the Delusive Implicitness Construct in Attitude Research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, . Corneille, O. & Hütter, M. (2020). Implicit? What do you mean? A comprehensive review of the delusive implicitness construct in attitude research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 24(3), 212–232. Correll, J., Park, B., Judd, C.M., & Wittenbrink, B. (2002). The police officer’s dilemma: Using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1314–1329. Crosby, F., Bromley, S., & Saxe, L. (1980). Recent unobtrusive studies of Black and White discrimination and prejudice: A literature review. Psychological Bulletin, 87, 546–563. De Houwer, J. (2019). Implicit bias is behavior:A functional-cognitive perspective on implicit bias. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(5), 835–840. Delgado, D. & Stefancic, J. (2001) Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: NYU Press. Devine, P.G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18. Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., & Pearson, A.R. (2017). Aversive racism and contemporary bias. In C.G. Sibley & F.K. Barlow (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of the psychology of prejudice (p. 267–294). Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/9781316161579.012. Dunham, Y., Chen, E.E., & Banaji, M.R. (2013). Two signatures of implicit intergroup attitudes developmental invariance and early enculturation. Psychological Science, 24, 860–868. Egloff, B. & Schmukle, S.C. (2002). Predictive validity of an implicit association test for assessing anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1441–1455. Fazio, R.H. & Olson, M.A. (2003). Implicit measures in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297–327. Fiedler, K. & Bluemke, M. (2005). Faking the IAT: Aided and unaided response control on the implicit association tests, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 27 (4), 307–316. Fisher, E. & Borgida, E. (2012). Intergroup disparities and implicit bias: A commentary. Journal of Social Issues, 68(2), 385–398. FitzGerald, C., Martin,A., Berner, D., & Hurst, S. (2019). Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: A systematic review. BMC Psychology, 7(29), 1–12. Forscher, P., Lai, C.K., Axt, J.R., Ebersole, C.R., Herman, M., Devine, P.G., & Nosek, B. (2019). A metaanalysis of procedures to change implicit measures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(3), 522–559. Forscher, P.S., Mitamura, C., Dix, E.L., Cox, W.T.L., & Devine, P.G. (2017). Breaking the prejudice habit: Mechanisms, timecourse, and longevity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 133–146. Friese, M., Hofmann, W., & Schmitt, M. (2008). When and why do implicit measures predict behaviour? Empirical evidence for the moderating role of opportunity, motivation, and process reliance. European Review of Social Psychology, 19(1), 285–338. Gaertner, S.L. & Dovidio, J.F. (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism: Problems, progress, and promise. In J.F. Dovidio, & S.L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 315–332). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Gawronski, B. (2019). Six lessons for a cogent science of implicit bias and its criticism. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(4), 574–595. Gawronski, B. & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731. Gawronski, B. & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2014). The associative – propositional evaluation model: Operating principles and operating conditions of evaluation.  In J. W. Sherman, B. Gawronski, & Y. Trope (eds.), Dual-process theories of the social mind (p. 188–203). New York: The Guilford Press. Gawronski, B. & De Houwer, J. (2014). Implicit measures in social and personality psychology. In H. T. Reis & C. M. Judd (eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (p. 283–310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gawronski, B., Morrison, M., Phills, C.E., & Galdi, S. (2017). Temporal stability of implicit and explicit measures: A longitudinal analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(3), 300–312. Greenwald, A.G. & Banaji, M.R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102, 4–27. Greenwald, A.G. & Banaji, M.R. (2017). The implicit revolution: Reconceiving the relation between conscious and unconscious. American Psychologist, 72(9), 861–871.

208

Implicit bias Greenwald, A.G., Banaji, M.R., & Nosek, B.A. (2015). Statistically small effects of the implicit association test can have societally large effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(4), 553–561. Greenwald, A.G. & Pettigrew, T.F. (2014). With malice toward none and charity for some: Ingroup favouritism enables discrimination. American Psychologist, 69, 669–684. Greenwald, A.G., Poehlman, T.A., Uhlmann, E.L., & Banaji, M.R. (2009). Understanding and using the implicit association test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 17–41. Hagiwara, N., Dovidio, J.F., Eggly, S., & Penner, L.A. (2016). The effects of racial attitudes on affect and engagement in racially discordant medical interactions between non-Black physicians and Black patients. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 19, 509–527. Hahn, A., Judd, C.M., Hirsh, H.K., & Blair, I.V. (2014). Awareness of implicit attitudes. Journal of experimental psychology. General, 143(3), 1369–1392. Henrich, J., Heine, S.J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83. Hiscox, M.J., Oliver, T., Ridgway, M., Arcos-Holzinger, L., Warren, A., & Willis, A. (2017). Going blind to see more clearly: Unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes. Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government: Report. Accessed 28 June 2020. https:// behaviouraleconomics.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/projects/unconscious-bias.pdf. Katz, I. & Hass, R.G. (1988). Racial ambivalence and American value conflict: Correlational and priming studies of dual cognitive structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 893–905. Kim, D.-Y. (2003).Voluntary controllability of the implicit association test (IAT). Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(1), 83–96. Kubota, J.T., Peiso, J., Marcum, K., & Cloutier, J. (2017). Intergroup contact throughout the lifespan modulates implicit racial biases across perceivers’ racial group. PLOS ONE, 12(7), e0180440. Kurdi, B., Seitchik, A.E., Axt, J.R., Carroll, T.J., Karapetyan, A., Kaushik, N. … Banaji, M.R. (2019). Relationship between the implicit association test and intergroup behavior: A meta-analysis. American Psychologist, 74(5), 569–586. Lai, C.K., Skinner, A.L., Cooley, E., Murrar, S., Brauer, M., Devos, T., & Nosek, B.A. (2016). Reducing implicit racial preferences: II. Intervention effectiveness across time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1001–1016. Lahn, J. & Ganter, E. (2018).Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander people in public service roles: Representation, recognition and relationships in Australian government bureaucracies. Journal of Australian Political Economy, 82, 133–48. Lai, C.K., Marini, M., Lehr, S.A., Cerruti, C., Shin, J.E., Joy-Gaba, J.A., Ho, A.K., Teachman, B.A., Wojcik, S.P., Koleva, S.P., Frazier, R.S., Heiphetz, L., Chen, E.E., Turner, R.N., Haidt, J., Kesebir, S., Hawkins, C.B., Schaefer, H.S., Rubichi, S., Sartori, G., Dial, C.M., Sriram, N., Banaji, M.R., Nosek, B.A. (2014) Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4):1765–1785. Locke, V. & Walker, I. (1999). Stereotypes, processing goals, and social identity: Inveterate and fugacious characteristics of stereotypes. In D. Abrams, & M.A. Hogg (eds.), Social cognition and social identity (pp. 164–182). Oxford: Blackwell. McConahay, J.B. (1982). Self-interest versus racial attitudes as correlates of anti-busing attitudes in louisville: Is it the buses or the blacks? Journal of Politics, 44, 692–720. McConahay, J.B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale. In J.F. Dovidio & S.L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 91–125). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Monteith, M., Arthur, S., & McQueary Flynn, S. (2010). Self-regulation and bias. In J.F. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, & P. Glick (eds.), The SAGE handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination (pp. 493–507). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Monteith, M.J. (1993). Self-regulation of prejudiced responses: Implications for progress in prejudicereduction efforts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 469–485. Monteith, M.J., Mark, A.Y., & Ashburn-Nardo, L. (2010). The self-regulation of prejudice: Toward understanding its lived character. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13, 183–200. Motzkus, C., Wells, R.J., Wang, X., Plummer, D., & Sabin, J., et  al. (2019) Pre-clinical medical student reflections on implicit bias: Implications for learning and teaching. PLoS ONE, 14(11), e0225058. Nature Editorial (2018, June 20). Nature’s under-representation of women: Women continue to form too small a proportion of this journal’s authors and referees. Nature, 558, 344.

209

I. Walker and S. Wang Nosek, B.A., Banaji, M.R., & Greenwald, A.G. (2002). Harvesting intergroup attitudes and stereotypes from a demonstration website. Group Dynamics:Theory, Research & Practice, 6, 101–115. Oswald, F.L., Mitchell, G., Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., & Tetlock, P.E. (2013). Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: A meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(2), 171–192. Pager, D. & Western, B. (2012). Identifying discrimination at work: The use of field experiments. Journal of Social Issues, 68(2), 221–237. Payne, B.K., Burkley, M., & Stokes, M.B. (2008).Why do implicit and explicit attitude tests diverge? The role of structural fit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 16–31. Perry, S.P., Murphy, M.C., & Dovidio, J.F. (2015). Modern prejudice: Subtle, but unconscious? The role of bias awareness in White’s perceptions of personal and others’ biases. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 64–78. Perugini, M., Richetin, J., & Zogmaister, C. (2010). Prediction of behavior. In B. Gawronski & B.K. Payne (eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications (pp. 255–277). New York: The Guilford Press. Pettigrew, T.F., Allport, G.W., & Barnett, E.O. (1958). Binocular resolution and perception of race in South Africa. British Journal of Psychology, 49, 265–278. Pettigrew, T.F. & Meertens, R.W. (1995). Subtle and blatant prejudice in Western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 57–75. Plant, E.A., & Peruche, B.M. (2005). The consequences of race for police officers’ responses to criminal suspects. Psychological Science, 16(3), 180–183. Powers, D.A. & Ellison, C.G. (1995). Interracial contact and Black racial attitudes: The contact hypothesis and selectivity bias. Social Forces, 74(1), 205–226. Reynolds, C. (2013). Annual). Implicit bias and the problem of certainty in the criminal standard of proof. Law and Psychology Review, 37, 229+. Roberts, S.O., Bareket-Shavit, C., Dollins, F.A., Goldie, P.D., & Mortenson, E. (2020). Racial inequality in psychological research: Trends of the past and recommendations for the future. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1–15. doi: 10.1177/1745691620927709. Rokeach, M. & Cochkane, R. (1972). Self-confrontation and confrontation with another as determinants of long term value change. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2, 283–292. Schimmack, U. (2019). The implicit association test: A method in search of a construct. Perspectives on Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619863798. Sears, D.O. & McConahay, J.B. (1973). The politics of violence: The new urban blacks and the watts riot. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Spencer, K.B., Charbonneau, A.K., & Glaser, J. (2016). Implicit bias and policing. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10, 50–63. Stanovich, K.E., & West, R.F. (2014). The assessment of rational thinking: IQ ≠ RQ.  Teaching of Psychology, 41(3), 265–271. Stewart, B.D. & Payne, B.K. (2008). Bringing automatic stereotyping under control: Implementation intentions as efficient means of thought control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(10), 1332–1345. Stone, J., Moskowitz, G.B., Zestcott, C.A., & Wolsiefer, K.J. (2020). Testing active learning workshops for reducing implicit stereotyping of Hispanics by majority and minority group medical students. Stigma and Health, 5(1), 94–103. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-31604-001. Vuletich, H.A. & Payne, B.K. (2019). Stability and change in implicit bias. Psychological Science, 30(6), 854–862. Yen, J., Durrheim, J., & Tafarodi, R.W. (2018). ‘I’m happy to own my implicit biases’: Public encounters with the implicit association test. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 505–523. Sechrest (1966). Unobtrusive measures: Nonreactive research in the social sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally. Weisbuch, M., Pauker, K., & Ambady, N. (2009). The subtle transmission of race bias via televised nonverbal behavior. Science, 326, 1711–1714. Word, C.O., Zanna, M.P., & Cooer, J. (1974). The nonverbal mediation of self-fulfilling prophecies in interracial interaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 109–120.

210

PART IV

Prejudice, intergroup relations and emotions

15 BEYOND PREJUDICE AS ANTIPATHY Understanding kinder, gentler forms of discrimination John Dixon and Darren Langdridge

Introduction Classic definitions of prejudice treat antipathy as its emotional and cognitive hallmark. In The Nature of Prejudice, for example, Allport (1954, p. 7) defined prejudice as: ‘A hostile attitude towards a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to that group’. In so doing, he captured two conceptual features that have dominated later psychological research on the topic. First, prejudice involves the expression of deep-seated negative feelings about other groups. Second and related, it involves attributing pejorative stereotypes to members of such groups, often in an inflexible, over-generalised or irrational way. Many of the key questions of the field have flowed from this starting point. Why don’t we like one another? Why do we ascribe ‘objectionable qualities’ to one another in the first place? How can we be persuaded to like one another more and stereotype one another less? We do not dispute that these are central questions to the field. Understanding the nature and origins of negative intergroup evaluations is, and will remain, fundamental to the social psychology of prejudice, as richly illustrated by many chapters in this book. Moreover, understanding how to change such evaluations is essential if wider problems of intergroup conflict, discrimination and inequality are to be tackled. Bearing in mind these qualifications, our chapter nevertheless highlights some potential limitations of reducing prejudice to negative evaluation (see also Czopp, Kay & Cheryan, 2015; Dixon, Durrheim, Kerr, & Thomae, 2013; Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012). Many forms of unequal and discriminatory intergroup relations are characterised by attitudinal complexity rather than ‘unalloyed antipathy’ (Glick & Fiske, 2001, p. 109).Warmth, inclusion, and positive stereotyping often intertwine with antipathy, exclusion, and negative stereotyping. In addition, growing evidence indicates that reducing prejudice may leave intact wider patterns of discrimination, and sometimes it may even entrench social inequalities. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the historical evolution of the work on prejudice as antipathy and outlines the assumptions that underpin its associated model of social change.The second section presents some critical alternatives to, or elaborations of, DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-15

213

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

the traditional concept of prejudice, drawing illustratively on developments in work on ambivalent sexism, benevolent heterosexism, positive and complementary stereotyping, and intergroup helping behaviour. The third section explores some potentially ironic consequences of prejudice reduction, focussing on the so-called sedative effects (Cakal, Hewstone, Schwär, & Heath, 2011) of positive intergroup contact on the political attitudes of historically disadvantaged groups.

Why don’t we like one another? Prejudice as negative evaluation As Table 15.1 illustrates, the idea that prejudice entails negative evaluation has a long history. In the years following the end of the second world war, this idea inspired what Samelson (1978) called an ‘abrupt reversal’ in how social psychologists understood societal problems such as racism, antisemitism and genocide and, in later decades, sexism, homophobia and ageism. In a relatively brief space of time, research affirming the idea of ‘natural’ intergroup hierarchies on dimensions such as intelligence gave way to research focussed on the deficiencies of the prejudiced mind. Research blaming the targets of discrimination for the hostility they suffered gave way to research on the bigotry of historically advantaged groups. Research legitimating exclusionary policies on racial segregation and immigration control gave way to research on how to produce more tolerant and equal societies. The contribution of this reversal was, in short, nothing less than a scientific and political revolution, its moral urgency captured in the famous preface to the Authoritarian Personality, published in the aftermath of the holocaust: ‘How could it be that in a culture of law, order and reason there could have survived the irrational remnants of ancient racial and religious hatreds? How to explain the willingness of great masses of people to tolerate the mass extermination of their fellow citizens?’ (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950, p. v). In addressing this challenge, researchers developed varying explanations of the nature of prejudice, which Dovidio (2001) has arranged chronologically. In the first wave of research, prejudice was treated as an aberration of ‘normal’ human psychology, generating so-called rotten apple (Henriques et al., 1984) perspectives on the problem. Adorno et al.’s (1950) Authoritarian Personality Theory and Rokeach’s (1960) Dogmatic Personality Theory, for instance, demonstrated how abnormal psychological processes may lead individuals to displace negative feelings onto scapegoat groups or formulate rigid beliefs about such groups. In the second wave of prejudice research, by contrast, prejudice was treated as the regrettable by-product of all too ordinary psychological processes.Work in this phase highlighted the ‘normality of prejudgement’ (Fiske, 2005), showing how prejudice can arise through basic cognitive operations such as social Table 15.1  Some definitions of prejudice … feelings of intergroup hostility (Allport & Kramer, 1946, p. 9). … an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalisation (Allport, 1954, p. 10). … a negative attitude towards members of a minority group (Levin & Levin, 1982, p. 66). … a negative attitude towards members of socially defined groups (Stephan, 1983, p. 417). … the holding of derogatory social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the expression of negative affect or the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group (Brown, 1995, p. 8). … an unjustified, usually negative, attitude directed towards others because of their social category or group membership (Sampson, 1999, p. 4). … the human individual’s psychological tendency to make unfavourable evaluations about members of other social groups (Ibanez, Haye, González, Hurtado, & Henríquez, 2009, p. 81). 214

Beyond prejudice as antipathy

categorisation, attribution and stereotyping. The third phase of prejudice research increasingly emphasised its subtle, often unconscious nature, as revealed by new methods (e.g. the Implicit Association Task) for tapping the ‘hidden biases of good people’ (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013). This phase also generated new models of the prejudiced person. Dovidio and Gaertner’s (2004) Aversive Racism Theory explored, for instance, how conscious sympathy with disadvantaged communities may be offset by unconscious hostility, expressed in situations when it is involuntarily elicited or can be rationalised as fair.

The prejudice reduction model of social change Across these historical phases, the core idea that prejudice is characterised by negative evaluations of others persisted, albeit with changing conceptions of the prejudiced person. This idea also guided interventions to reduce prejudice. Although such interventions have taken diverse forms (e.g. promoting empathy arousal, cooperative interdependence and intergroup contact), they have generally espoused a model of social change that has three common features (Dixon, Durrheim, Stevenson, & Cakal, 2016; Wright & Lubensky, 2009). First, they have sought to transform the responses of historically advantaged groups, who are generally conceived as the main perpetrators of prejudice. Second, they have sought to encourage members of such groups to form more positive evaluations of the historically disadvantaged, who are generally viewed as the main victims of prejudice.Third, they have sought not only to transform individuals’ thoughts and feelings but also broader patterns of discrimination and inequality. By encouraging us to like one another more, the argument goes, prejudice reduction lays the foundations for fairer and more tolerant societies. The social and political dynamics through which the latter process occurs, however, are often treated rather obliquely in the prejudice literature. They are presumed rather than evidenced or fully explained; as such, they have become a subject of recent debate (e.g. Dixon et al., 2016; Saguy, 2018; Wright & Lubensky, 2009). Whereas overtly negative attitudes towards others have declined in some societies, social inequality and discrimination have generally endured, raising questions about the relationship between prejudice reduction and wider forms of social change. This can be illustrated by research on racism conducted in the US. Evidence that white Americans’ self-reported racial attitudes have improved on some dimensions is persuasive. The data depicted in Figures 15.1 and 15.2, for example, would seem to indicate a steady historical shift towards greater racial tolerance and equality. They suggest not only that crude racial stereotypes about African Americans’ ambition, criminality, intelligence and inferiority are declining over time (Figure 15.1) but also that the majority of White Americans now endorse the principle of racial equality in domains such as schooling and interracial marriage

Figure 15.1  Historical shifts in white on black stereotyping in the US Source:  Adapted from data presented by Gaertner and Dovidio (1986, p. 5).

215

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

Figure 15.2  Historical shifts in white support for integrated schooling and interracial marriage in the US Source:  Taken from Krysan and Moberg (2016).

(Figure 15.2). In the case of interracial marriage, for example, we have moved from a situation where less than 5% of white Americans are supportive to a situation where over 85% are supportive – a dramatic historical shift. Other data complicate this simple narrative of progress, however. For one thing, racial inequality and discrimination – though declining on some indices – remain enduring problems in the US, as evidenced by continuing high levels of racial inequality in homeownership, wealth and income, employment and educational attainment (see e.g. Grusky,Varner & Mattingly, 2017). Moreover, and closely related, a stark disjunction remains between White Americans’ ‘… gradual elevation to lofty racial policy principles and their meagre support for policies designed to implement those principles (Jackman, 1996, p. 760)’. As Figure 15.3 indicates, there is a principleimplementation gap in racial attitudes. Equality may be accepted as an abstract ideal, but state or federal policies designed to achieve it continue to be opposed by substantive numbers of white Americans (for a review, see Dixon, Durrheim, & Thomae, 2017). The interpretation of such complex and ostensibly contradictory strands of evidence has generated considerable debate. Some commentators maintain intergroup prejudices are indeed in decline and that this process will gradually reduce levels of discrimination in the US and elsewhere. This is a theme, for example, of Pinker’s (2018) recent book Enlightenment Now, which proclaims that formerly widespread patterns of hostile prejudices, and associated forms of inequality, are now ‘sinking into oblivion’. Other commentators have produced evidence suggesting such a decline may not reflect genuine attitudinal change, but rather a shift in moral norms regarding the overt expression of prejudice (e.g. see Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002). Trends based on self-report measures (see, e.g. Figures 15.1 and 15.2 above) may thus express a faking rather than a fading of levels of prejudice. This raises the uncomfortable thought that old-fashioned bigotry is alive and well but has simply been driven underground. Most directly relevant to the present chapter are arguments both that prejudice has historically changed in form (see, e.g. Bobo, 2011; Bobo, Charles, Krysan, & Simmons, 2012; Dovidio & Gaetner, 1998) and that, by focussing exclusively on intergroup hostility, prejudice researchers 216

Beyond prejudice as antipathy

Figure 15.3  Historical patterns in white support for policies designed to implement racial equality in the US Source:  Taken from Krysan and Moberg (2016).

have underplayed its more paternalistic, ‘positive’ and inclusive expressions (e.g. Dixon et  al., 2012; Glick & Fiske, 2001; Jackman, 1994, 2005). No longer, according to such arguments, can prejudice be equated with the expression of uniform antipathy towards others. No longer can it be equated with crude stereotypes about ‘their’ biological inferiority or with blanket resistance to the principles of social equality. On the contrary, prejudice is now assuming kinder, gentler forms (cf. Bobo, Klugel, & Smith, 1997) than the stark expressions of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism on which researchers have traditionally focussed.

‘What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?’ How positive evaluations of others help to maintain discrimination and social inequality Most men like women. They often like them a lot. They crave their attention, form meaningful relationships with them, and spend a good proportion of their adult lives with them, in one way or another. Even when those relationships are unsuccessful, many men spend time wishing they could find a woman to love, befriend or simply talk to. Moreover, research shows that men generally hold positive intergroup attitudes towards women. Indeed, they tend to like them more, as a collective, than they like other men – a finding sometimes called the ‘women are wonderful’ effect (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989, 1993).Yet men also discriminate against women. They entangle them in relations that are unequal or degrading; they resist, or are apathetic towards, policies designed to create gender equality; and they are sometimes physically and emotionally abusive towards them. Men, in short, are often ‘prejudiced’ against women.Yet the nature of that prejudice is curious: it mingles warm feelings, positive stereotypes and desire for inter-gender contact with hostility, negative stereotypes, and both indirect (e.g. resistance to gendered forms of social change) and direct (e.g. sexual violence) forms of discrimination. 217

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

Ambivalent sexism Seeking to explain this complex pattern, Glick and Fiske (2001) have developed an influential theory of Ambivalent Sexism, which suggests that sexist attitudes assume two fundamental forms. Hostile Sexism designates antipathy towards women who challenge male power or step outside conventional gender roles (Glick et al., 2004), a conception that fits with the traditional definition of prejudice as negative evaluation. By contrast, Benevolent Sexism designates ostensibly supportive and warm attitudes towards women, treating them as ‘wonderful fragile creatures who ought to be protected and provided for by men’ (Glick et al., 2004, p. 715), but also, revealingly, as lacking agency and independence. According to Glick and Fiske, the duality of hostile and benevolent sexism both expresses and sustains the duality of gender inequality that is underpinned by patriarchy. On the one hand, men rely on women for childcare, domestic labour, emotional support, sexual gratification, and status differentiation. Because these benefits are not readily secured by hostility alone (see also Jackman, 1994), gender inequality is maintained by supportive evaluations of women who ‘know their place’, whose conformity to traditional gender roles inspires admiration, idealisation, and warm feelings. On the other hand, women who threaten the gender hierarchy and transgress traditional gender roles are targeted for old-fashioned prejudice; that is, they attract negative attitudes, stereotypes or even violence. Perhaps for this reason, societies high in gender inequality also tend to have higher national averages on measures of both benevolent and hostile sexism: after all, these two forms of sexism work as complementary, if ambivalent, forces in the reproduction of gender inequality. Ambivalent sexism theory, in short, challenges the assumption that intergroup prejudice is simply a matter of negative evaluation. Hostile emotions and stereotypes are, at best, only part of the story. Indeed, benevolent forms of sexism are arguably more insidious in that they are less easily recognised as sexism by both men and women (Hopkins-Doyle, Sutton, Douglas & Calogero, 2019), yet sustain an array of gender discriminatory beliefs, attributions and behaviours (e.g. see Chapleau, Oswald, & Russell, 2007; Rye & Meaney, 2010; Sibley, Overall, & Duckitt, 2007). Moreover, to anticipate a theme developed later in this chapter, women’s experiences of these more ‘chivalrous’ expressions of sexism tend to reduce their willingness to engage in collective action to promote gender equality (Becker & Wright, 2011). Being put on a pedestal or targeted for male admiration makes it more difficult for women to recognise and challenge sexism or to view men as the beneficiaries of gender inequality.

Benevolent heterosexism The notion of benevolent sexism has been extended and applied to other settings, including with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer (LGBTQ). Building on the work of Glick and Fiske, Massey (2010) introduced the notion of benevolent heterosexism, meaning an attitude, belief or behaviour that is ostensibly positive but leads to the disempowerment of members of the LGBTQ community. For instance, whilst Louderback and Whitley (1997) found a positive correlation between the eroticisation of lesbians and pro-lesbian attitudes, this ostensibly positive attitude reduces lesbians to objects of a heterosexual male gaze and is therefore better understood as a pernicious form of benevolent heterosexism. The erotic objectification of lesbians by heterosexual men may not be socialising positive attitudes towards lesbians in general amongst heterosexual men; rather, it may be resulting in a variety of negative outcomes (see Hegarty & Beuchel, 2011). Attempts to measure sexual prejudice from the 1970s onwards have tended to ground their theories in what has been termed a minoritizing framework (Hegarty & Massey, 2006; Massey, 2009), 218

Beyond prejudice as antipathy

where the focus is of primary concern to the minority itself. This is in contrast to a universalising position where the issues are cast as being of interest to people including but also beyond the specific minority group in question. The notion of a minoritising-universalising framework stems from Segwick (1990), who drew a distinction between minoritising and universalising positions in part to highlight how a universalising stance offers the chance to better engage with possibilities for subversion of the majority by a minority. That is, the minoritising perspective may well offer up some gains for the minority in question by treating them as if they were ‘just like’ the majority. However, it leaves little space to realise the radical possibilities to subvert and transform the majority position itself. Langdridge (2018) provides a concrete example of how psychological research on sexuality adopting a minoritising position may inadvertently engage in benevolent heterosexism and the erasure of a politically engaged subject. Through a critical examination of foundational (Cass, 1979) and contemporary (Savin-Williams, 2011) work on models of sexual ‘coming-out’, he argues that these models serve to produce a sexual subject that is politically disengaged. Coming out has not only been an important aspect of LGBQ personal history but also a vitally important element in LGBQ political campaigning and the development of LGBQ social movements (Plummer, 1995; Weeks, 2007). Within the context of an ostensibly benevolent (liberal) ­perspective on contemporary LGBQ life, contemporary models of sexual development, such as that of Savin-Williams (2011), prescribe an endpoint in which the subject becomes ‘just like one of us’ – the ‘us’ being white, middle-class, heterosexual subjects. With this move, comes the loss of the universalising potential to fundamentally transform the ‘us’ and also – more perniciously – the loss of a radical sexual subject sufficiently motivated to engage in the political action needed to bring about further change (Langdridge, 2018). Needless to say, this same argument might be extended further, notably to contemporary debates about life for people who are transgender and/or those otherwise challenging traditional gender categories.

Positive and complementary stereotyping The attitudinal complexity that marks expressions of ambivalent sexism and benevolent heterosexism marks other kinds of intergroup relations, as evidenced by research on positive and complementary patterns of intergroup stereotyping. As Czopp et al. (2015) have highlighted in their recent review, positive intergroup stereotypes (e.g. ‘black people are athletic’) are generally more pervasive than negative stereotypes, and they may carry some benefits for the targets of discrimination (e.g. identity enhancement). However, such stereotypes may also perpetuate status hierarchies and social inequality in ways that go unnoticed precisely because they tend to ‘fly under society’s constant antibias radar’ (Czopp et al., 2015, p. 453). To begin with, stereotypes that are positive in an abstract sense may have negative consequences in concrete situations, thereby enabling subtle forms of discrimination. Stereotypes affirming the emotional sensitivity of members of a particular social group, for example, may subtly undermine its members’ chances of selection for high-status jobs or leadership roles (see, e.g. Eagly & Diekman, 2012) or even discourage them from applying for such positions in the first place (Czopp et al., 2015). Relatedly, positive and negative stereotypes may also work in a complementary fashion to justify the status quo.This is exemplified by research informed by Systems Justifications Theory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), a perspective that explores how cognitive and motivational processes may rationalise systemic inequalities. In their survey of stereotyping in Poland, for example, Chichocka, Winiewski, Bilewicz, Bukowski, and Jost (2015) found that respondents who attributed complementary stereotypes to ethnic minority groups (e.g. by evaluating them as high in morality, but 219

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

low in competence) also tended to justify wider societal inequalities. Similarly, using an experimental paradigm, Kay and Jost (2003) found that exposure to complementary stereotypes of economically deprived and advantaged groups (e.g. ‘poor but happy’ versus ‘rich but miserable’) promoted recipients’ acceptance of the status quo. Conversely, exposure to criticisms of systemic discrimination led recipients to respond defensively by employing a combination of benevolent and complementary stereotypes, e.g. describing obese people as ‘lazier but more sociable’ than non-obese people (Kay, Jost, & Young, 2005). In such ways, complementary stereotyping encourages the acceptance of inegalitarian social systems.

Intergroup helping As a final example of a kinder, gentler form of discrimination, consider work on intergroup helping. Because we tend to assist ingroup members more readily than outgroup members, helping members of other groups is often portrayed as a quintessential expression of solidarity. However, as the work conducted by Arie Nadler and colleagues demonstrates, helping behaviour can have a darker side (see, e.g. Halabi, Dovidio, & Nadler, 2008; Nadler, 2002; Nadler & Chernyak-Hai, 2014; Nadler & Halabi, 2006). When members of a powerful group help members of a less powerful group, they tend to affirm status relations between them. How this process unfolds varies across different ideological conditions. Under conditions where the existing status hierarchy is stable and secure, helping relations tend to maintain the status quo. By catering to the needs of a lower status group, members of a higher status group in effect reconfigure relations of power and advantage into relations of moral obligation and welfare. In turn, the recipients of such assistance are encouraged to respond with gratitude, acquiescence and tacit acknowledgement of their dependency. By accepting help, they are also implicitly accepting the legitimacy of the social order. By contrast, under ideological conditions where the status hierarchy is insecure and unstable, helping may serve as a mechanism for re-establishing status differences that are perceived by a dominant group to be under threat. Under such conditions, research evidence suggests that high and low-status groups tend to favour provision of quite different forms of helping and the nature of that difference is revealing (see Nadler, 2010). High-status groups prefer to offer chronic, longer term help that re-establishes relations of dependency and control and stabilises extant power relations. Lower status groups favour the provision of help that grants them collective autonomy and self-reliance and therefore do not entrench the status quo (for an experimental extension of this theme see Nadler & Chernyak-Hai, 2014). None of this, of course, means that intergroup helping behaviour has wholly negative outcomes or that it is invariably pernicious. Nor does it mean that individuals who provide such help have Machiavellian motives. Rather, it highlights the central point of this part of the chapter, namely that ostensibly ‘positive’ attitudes and behaviours towards others can sometimes reproduce unequal and discriminatory relations. The overwhelming focus on prejudice as negative evaluation captures part of the picture at best; at worst, it may promulgate a highly limited model of social change.

Let them eat harmony? The inherent limitations of a prejudice reduction model of social change As noted already, a conception of prejudice as antipathy underpins a model of social change based on encouraging people to think nicer thoughts and hold warmer feelings towards others. Historically, interventions to produce these effects have targeted the beneficiaries of unequal 220

Beyond prejudice as antipathy

Figure 15.4  The concept of prejudice and its relationship with prejudice reduction Note:  Prejudice is typically viewed as evaluations rooted in Cell D, combining negative affect with biased and false beliefs about others. Prejudice reduction is typically conceived as a problem of transforming negative and inaccurate evaluations (Cell D) into positive and more accurate evaluations (Cell A).

and discriminatory relations, namely members of historically advantaged groups. The main aim of such interventions is captured in Figure 15.4. That is, they have sought to shift prejudiced individuals from holding cognitively biased and emotionally hostile attitudes towards others to holding less biased and more positive attitudes. An important corollary assumption is that this shift also reduces wider practices of discrimination (e.g. hiring decisions in job interviews) and thus gradually undermines social inequality. However, as we have seen, this contention has been subject to recent debate, with some commentators raising questions about the model of social change it presupposes. Research on intergroup contact has been a focus of this emerging debate.

Intergroup contact The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) is one of the oldest and most important attempts by psychologists to reduce prejudice. Its argument is intuitive and straightforward. If members of different social groups are given the opportunity to interact more frequently with one another, particularly under favourable conditions (e.g. friendship, equality of status), then they tend to develop more positive intergroup attitudes. This in turn is believed to combat societal problems such as racial discrimination, segregation and inequality (Vezzali & Stathi, 2017). So many studies have confirmed the promise of this simple idea (see, e.g. Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) that Hewstone and Swart (2011) recommend the contact ‘hypothesis’ be upgraded to the status of a well-validated theory. Positive contact, they hold, has been shown to reduce prejudice across a range of social and cultural contexts and types of intergroup relations. Research has also clarified how and why contact works. Notably, it reduces prejudice by promoting positive emotions such as intergroup empathy, diminishing negative emotions such as intergroup threat and anxiety, and providing richer information about others, thereby undermining the basis for negative stereotyping (see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). 221

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

Like most research on prejudice reduction, however, research on intergroup contact has focussed mainly on its role in changing the attitudes of members of advantaged groups. We know far less about its effects on the historical targets of discrimination, namely members of disadvantaged groups.Yet interventions to promote contact inevitably also impact those targets; that is, they shape how the disadvantaged feel about other groups, appraise their own group’s socio-political situation and perceive the legitimacy of wider relations of status and power. Recent research has suggested that such interventions may have some unacknowledged and ironic consequences.

The sedative effects of contact on minority political attitudes Drawing on nationally representative surveys conducted in South Africa, Dixon and colleagues examined the effects positive racial contact has on black and white South Africans’ intergroup attitudes, support for policies designed to address the legacy of apartheid and perceptions of racial discrimination (see, e.g. Dixon, Durrheim & Tredoux, 2007; Dixon et al., 2010a, 2010b; Durrheim & Dixon, 2010). For both groups, more frequent and positive contact was generally associated with more positive intergroup attitudes on dimensions such as perceived trustworthiness and sympathy (see, e.g.Table 15.2). However, they found a contrasting pattern of results with regards to the other outcome variables.

Table 15.2  Correlations between the quantity and quality of contact and white and black south Africans’ prejudice and policy attitudes

Note: *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Source: Table taken from Durrheim and Dixon (2010, p. 283).

222

Beyond prejudice as antipathy Table 15.3  Correlations between the quantity and quality of interracial contact and black South African’s perceptions of racial discrimination and injustice 1 1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8. 

Contact quantity Contact quality Personal discrimination Racial attitudes Group discrimination Black relative deprivation White relative deprivation Comparative racial injustice

− .41*** −.05 −.03 −.04 .00 −.04 .02

2

3

4

5

− −.32*** − −.42*** .28*** − −.22*** .47*** .23*** − −.13** .11** .09* .09* .12** −.05 −.07 .01 −.18*** .12** .01 .05

6

7

8

− .04 − .67*** −.71*** −

Note: *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. Source: Table adapted from Dixon et al. (2010a, p. 412).

For white South Africans, more frequent and positive contact was generally associated with increased support for race-targeted policies, though the effects for compensatory policies (designed to develop longer term opportunities for black South Africans to succeed, e.g. via skills development) were generally stronger than the effects for preferential policies (designed to more directly change unequal outcomes, e.g. via affirmative action in the workplace) (see especially Dixon et al., 2010b). It was also associated with a heightened sense of the severity of ongoing racial injustice and racial discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa. For black South Africans, by contrast, more frequent and positive contact was generally associated with decreased support for race-targeted policies, such as land restitution, redistribution of wealth and educational scholarships (Durrheim & Dixon, 2010; Dixon et al., 2017). Moreover, As Table 15.3 indicates, positive contact with whites was also associated with reduced perceptions of the severity of racial discrimination and injustice in post-apartheid South Africa (Dixon et al., 2010a). In sum, these surveys suggested that the effects of contact on political attitudes are characterised by a paradox. On the one hand, contact seems to promote support for social change and heighten awareness of discrimination amongst members of a historically advantaged group (in this case white South Africans). On the other hand, it seems to reduce support for social change and decrease awareness of discrimination amongst members of a historically disadvantaged group (in this case black South Africans). Given that social change is often driven by collective action undertaken by disadvantaged groups, which is in turn impelled by recognition of inequality and a heightened sense of collective injustice (c.f. Wright & Lubensky, 2009), the latter finding has concerned a number of researchers, generating an array of follow up work. This work has been conducted across a range of contexts and types of intergroup relations. Amongst other relations, it has explored contact between Jews and Arabs in Israel, Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans and whites in the US, Hindus and Muslims in India and whites and Maoris in New Zealand (see, e.g. Carter et al., 2018; Dixon et al., 2017; Glasford & Calcagno, 2011; Saguy & ChernyakHai, 2012; Sengupta & Sibley, 2013; Tropp et al., 2012). Its central message is straightforward. The promotion of intergroup harmony via prejudice reduction interventions such as the contact hypothesis may well improve intergroup attitudes. However, it also often has a ‘sedative’ (Cakal et al., 2011) effect on the political attitudes and behaviours of the disadvantaged, undermining their motivation to recognise, reject and collectively challenge inequality. Ironically, it seems, fostering intergroup harmony has the potential to inhibit as well as promote social change. 223

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

Explaining the sedative effects of contact Why is this the case? Several potential explanations have emerged in the literature on intergroup contact and on related work on the promotion of intergroup hope (e.g. Hasan-Aslih, Pliskin, Halperin, van-Zomeren, & Saguy, 2019), reconciliation (e.g. Saguy, 2018), and common identification (e.g. Dovidio, Gaertner & Saguy, 2009).1 We sketch here some possibilities that have yet to be theoretically integrated but represent promising avenues for further research. First, experiences of positive contact with members of historically advantaged groups tend to reduce individuals’ perceptions that they are personally targets of discrimination. By generalising from such experiences, individuals may underestimate the extent to which the rest of their group remains disadvantaged (Dixon et al., 2010a) and, by implication, become less motivated to challenge the status quo. Second, positive intergroup contact tends to nurture bonds of affection and decrease negative intergroup stereotypes. Whatever other benefits it entails, this process arguably makes it more difficult to perceive the historically advantaged as beneficiaries or even potential perpetrators of inequality. Again, this may dampen the motivation of disadvantaged group members to actively promote social change. Third, positive contact may feed into broader forms of system justification (see also Sengupta & Sibley, 2013). For example, ‘chivalrous’ interactions in which traditional gender roles are affirmed may quietly reproduce the ideology of benevolent sexism and make it less likely that either male or female participants recognise gender discrimination (Hopkins-Doyle et  al. 2019). In the same way, contact in which members of dominant groups ostensibly display the obligation to assist members of subordinate groups may sometimes both mask and reproduce paternalistic status relations, as Durrheim, Jacobs and Dixon’s (2014) study of interactions between black domestic servants and their white employers has demonstrated. Fourth, according to Greenland et  al. (2019), positive contact in the form of close friendship may even shift the boundaries of what counts as discrimination. In their study, for instance, both majority and minority participants used constructions of contact as ‘friendship’ to define events of potential discrimination as mere misunderstandings or errors. Alongside these specific processes, interventions to promote harmonious contact may simply discourage participants from broaching uncomfortable issues of intergroup differences and inequalities in the interest of keeping the peace. This carries the benefit of fostering good interpersonal relationships; however, it may leave intact wider institutional power structures and impede forms of social change that are best achieved via creative conflict and direct challenge. Maoz’s (2011) review of the history and outcomes of planned encounter programs between Arab and Jewish Israelis is instructive in this respect. For over 20 years, such programs have mainly been informed by the so-called Coexistence Model – sometimes branded the ‘falafel and humous’ model by its critics – which is designed to promote intergroup commonalities and to downplay the grimmer realities of intergroup hierarchy and deprivation in Israeli society. Whilst relatively successful in terms of improving intergroup attitudes, Maoz warns this model has also perpetuated ‘… existing asymmetrical power relations by focusing on changing individual-level prejudices while ignoring the need to address collective and institutionalised bases of discrimination’ (p. 118). 1 Our focus in this section is on the contact literature. However, we refer the reader to these convergent and significant areas of work, as they are clearly interconnected with the core theme of our chapter – as indeed is the work on helping behaviour, benevolent sexism and intergroup help that we discussed earlier in the chapter.

224

Beyond prejudice as antipathy

In conclusion, it is worth highlighting that these sedative effects of contact on the political attitudes and behaviours of the disadvantaged are not inevitable. Research suggests that the nature and content of the interactions that constitute ‘contact’ are crucial in this respect. Becker, Wright, Lubensky and Zhou’s (2013) work, for example, showed that contact only reduced disadvantaged group members’ motivation to engage in collective action when dominant group members either defended the legitimacy of the status quo or kept their political opinions to themselves. When they acknowledged openly the illegitimacy of social inequality in the course of intergroup contact then the sedative effects of contact disappeared. Their wider research group later documented a similar pattern of results for relations between immigrants and Canadian residents (Droogendyk, Louis, & Wright, 2016) and between gay men (though not lesbian women) and their heterosexual friends (Techakesari et al., 2017). Other researchers have since argued that this kind of contact may also increase the motivation of advantaged group members to strive for social change beyond the promotion of social harmony (MacInnis & Hodson, 2018; Vezzali et al., 2017).

Conclusion We have argued for a broader conception of prejudice, which encompasses the role of positive and ambivalent intergroup evaluations in maintaining discrimination and inequality. A simple negative conception, we have suggested, ignores how prejudice has evolved beyond simple hostility and crude stereotypes about biological differences. As Dovidio and Gaertner (1998, p. 2) have noted with respect to shifting expressions of race prejudice, for example, racism is like ‘a virus that has mutated’ developing into ‘forms that are more difficult not only to recognise but also to combat’. In order to capture this kind of complexity, researchers have developed new lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry, some of which have been discussed in our chapter. Work on topics such as the principle-implementation gap in attitudes towards equality, ambivalent sexism, benevolent heterosexism, complementary and positive stereotyping, and intergroup helping all highlight the limits of treating prejudice as ‘unalloyed antipathy’ (Glick & Fiske, 2001, p. 109). Such work also highlights the potential limits of a prejudice reduction model of social change. If positive emotions and stereotypes are part of the very nature of prejudiced expressions, and central to understanding their deleterious consequences, then fostering such emotions and stereotypes need not in itself lead to social change. Indeed, as emerging work on the contact hypothesis suggests, prejudice reduction may leave intact wider structures of inequality. In some contexts, ironically, it may even undermine participants’ motivation to challenge the status quo. We want to conclude with two important qualifications, which complicate this argument. First, most prejudice research has been conducted in what Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan (2010) have termed WEIRD societies; i.e. societies that are Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. This includes work on the supposed demise of ‘old-fashioned’ prejudices and the rise of the kinder, gentler prejudices prioritised in this chapter. Beyond these WEIRD societies, Bilewicz (2012) rightly warns, old-fashioned prejudices may play a more central role in maintaining discrimination and in fuelling extreme forms of intergroup violence and inequality. Relatedly, even within WEIRD societies, it is important to recognise that hostile emotions and stereotypes continue to shape relations between groups. The resurgence of right-wing populism and anti-immigration movements is arguably now exacerbating this process. The aim of our chapter, then, has not been to dismiss the significance of negative intergroup emotions and beliefs. Rather, to echo Jackman (2005), we have sought to ‘dethrone hostility’ as the necessary,

225

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge

primary or exclusive mechanism through which problems such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia are maintained. Second and related, our chapter should not be misread as an attempt to dismiss wholesale the value of prejudice reduction interventions such as the contact hypothesis. In many contexts, we agree that such interventions have intrinsic value as a mechanism for preventing intergroup violence, encouraging positive interactions and building a more tolerant society (see also Dixon et  al., 2016). Instead, we have argued that in contexts marked by relatively stable forms of intergroup hierarchy and inequality, prejudice reduction may prove insufficient to promote social change. This is especially true in contexts where the power relations are embedded in paternalistic structures and ideologies, combining hostility and exclusion with a ‘velvet glove’ (Jackman, 1994) of warmth and inclusion. A closing example, which we will frame as a question, may reinforce this point. As it stands, there remains an unequal division of domestic labour between men and women in many supposedly egalitarian societies. Even women in full-time employment tend to complete what Hochschild and Machung (1990) once evocatively labelled a ‘second shift’. Furthermore, even in societies where gender equality in employment is mandated by government legislation, a gender pay gap between men and women typically endures. Our concluding question is this: Does it seem likely that interventions to encourage men to like women more (i.e. to reduce traditional gender prejudice) will eradicate these forms of gender discrimination and inequality any time soon? Rather than dismissing traditional work on prejudice, our chapter has aimed to highlight the importance of addressing this kind of question and of considering the potential limitations of a prejudice reduction perspective on social change.

References Adorno, T., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J., & Sanford, R.N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper. Allport, G.W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Allport, G.W. & Kramer, B.M. (1946). Some roots of prejudice. Journal of Psychology, 22: 9–39. Banaji, M.R. & Greenwald, A.G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York: Delacorte Press. Becker, J.C. & Wright, S.C. (2011). Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 62–77. Becker, J.C., Wright, S.C., Lubensky, M.E., & Zhou, S. (2013). Friend or ally: Whether cross-group contact undermines collective action depends on what advantaged group members say (or don’t say). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39: 442–455. Bilewicz, M. (2012). Traditional prejudice remains outside of the WEIRD world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35: 427. Bobo, L.D. (2011). Somewhere between Jim Crow & post-racialism: Reflections on the racial divide in America today. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 140: 11–36. Bobo, L.D., Charles, C.Z., Krysan, M., & Simmons, A.D. (2012). The real record on racial attitudes. In P.V. Marsden (ed.), Social trends in the United States: Evidence from the general social survey since 1972 (pp. 38–83). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bobo, L., Kleugel, J.R., & Smith, R.A. (1997). Laissez-faire racism: The crystallization of a kinder, gentler, anti-black ideology. In S.A. Tuch, & J.K. Martin (eds.), Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and change (pp. 15–42). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Brown, R. (1995). Prejudice: Its social psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Buechel, P. (2011). ‘What blokes want lesbians to be’: On FHM and the socialization of pro-lesbian attitudes among heterosexual-identified men. Feminism & Psychology, 21: 240–247. Cakal, H., Hewstone, M., Schwär, G., & Heath, A. (2011). An investigation of the social identity model of collective action and the ‘sedative’ effect of intergroup contact among Black and White students in South Africa. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50: 606–627.

226

Beyond prejudice as antipathy Carter, E.R., Brady, S.T., Murdock-Perriera, L.S., Gilbertson, M.K., Ablorh,T., & Murphy, M.C. (2018).The racial composition of students’ friendship networks predicts perceptions of injustice and involvement in collective action. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3: 49–61. Cass,V. (1979). Homosexual identity formation: A theoretical model. Journal of Homosexuality, 4: 210–235. Chapleau, K.M., Oswald, D.L., & Russell, B.L. (2007). How ambivalent sexism towards women and men supports rape myth acceptance. Sex Roles, 57: 131–136. Chichocka, A.,Winiewski, M., Bilewicz, M., Bukowski, M., & Jost, J.T. (2015). Complementary stereotyping of ethnic minorities predicts systems justification in Poland. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 18: 788–800. Crandall, C.S., Eshleman, A., & O’Brien, L. (2002). Social norms and the expression and suppression of prejudice: The struggle for internalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82: 359–378. Czopp, A.M., Kya, A.C., & Cheryon, S. (2015). Positive stereotypes are pervasive and powerful. Perspectives on Psychology Science, 10: 451–463. Dixon, J., Cakal, H., Kahn, W., Osmany, M., & Majumdar, S. (2017). Contact, collective action and political solidarity: An Indian case study of relations between historically disadvantaged communities. Journal of Applied Social and Community Psychology, 27: 83–95. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., Kerr, P., & Thomae, M. (2013).‘What’s so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding’? Further reflections on the limits of prejudice reduction as a model of social change. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 1: 239–252. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., Stevenson, C., & Cakal, H. (2016). From prejudice reduction to collective action: Two psychological models of social change (and how to reconcile them). In F. Barlow & C. Sibley (eds.), Cambridge handbook of the psychology of prejudice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., & Thomae, M. (2017).The principle-implementation gap in attitudes towards racial equality (and how to close it). Advances in Political Psychology, 38: 91–126. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., & Tredoux, C. (2007). Intergroup contact and attitudes towards the principle and practice of racial equality. Psychological Science, 18, 867–872. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., Tredoux, C.G., Tropp, L.R., Clack, B., & Eaton, L. (2010a). A paradox of integration? Interracial contact, prejudice reduction and blacks’ perceptions of racial discrimination. Journal of Social Issues, 66: 401–416. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K.,Tredoux, C.G.,Tropp, L.R., Clack, B., Eaton, L., & Quayle, M. (2010b). Challenging the stubborn core of opposition to equality: Racial contact and policy attitudes. Political Psychology, 31: 831–856. Dixon, J., Levine, M., Reicher, S., & Durrheim, K. (2012). Beyond prejudice: Are negative evaluations the problem and is getting us to like one another more the solution? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35: 411–425. Dovidio, J.F. (2001). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The third wave. Journal of Social Issues, 57: 829–49. Dovidio, J.F. & Gaertner, S.L. (eds.) (1986). The aversive form of racism. Prejudice, discrimination and racism (pp. 61–8). Academic Press. Dovidio, J.F. & Gaertner, S.L. (1998). On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The causes, consequences, and challenges of aversive racism. In J. Eberhardt, & S.T. Fiske (eds.), Confronting racism:The problem and the response (pp. 3–32). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Dovidio, J.F. & Gaertner, S.L. (2004). Aversive racism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 36: 1–52. Dovidio, J.F., Gaertner, S.L., & Saguy, T. (2009). Commonality and the complexity of ‘we’: Social attitudes and social change. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13: 3–20. Droogendyk, L., Louis, W.R., & Wright, S.C. (2016). Empowering disadvantaged group members to engage in collective action: The role of supportive contact and shared supportive emotions. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 48: 317–327. Durrheim, K. & Dixon, J. (2010). Race contact and change in South Africa. Journal of Social Issues, 66: 273–288. Durrheim, K., Jacobs, N., & Dixon, J. (2014). Explaining the paradoxical effects of intergroup contact: Paternalistic relations and systems justification in domestic labour in South Africa. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 41: 150–164. Eagly, A.H. & Diekman, A.B. (2012). Prejudice in context departs from attitudes toward groups. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35: 431. Eagly, A.H. & Mladinic, A. (1989). Gender stereotypes and attitudes toward women and men. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15: 543–558.

227

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge Eagly, A.H. & Mladinic, A. (1993). Are people prejudiced against women? Some answers from research on attitudes, gender stereotypes and judgments of competence. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 1–35). New York: Wiley. Fiske, S.T. (2005). Social cognition and the normality of prejudgment. In J.F. Dovidio, P. Glick and L.A. Rudman (eds.), On the nature of prejudice: 50 years after Allport. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford. Gaertner, S.L. & Dovidio, J.F. (1986). The aversive form of racism. In F. Dovidio, & L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 61–89). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Glasford, D.E. & Calcagno, J. (2011).The conflict of harmony: Intergroup contact, commonalty and political solidarity between disadvantaged groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48: 323–328. Glick, P. & Fiske, S.T. (2001). An ambivalent alliance: Hostile and benevolent sexism as complementary justifications for gender inequality. American Psychologist, 56: 109–118. Glick, P., Lameiras, M., Fiske, S.T., Eckes, T., Masser, B., & Volpato, C. et al. (2004). Bad but bold: Ambivalent attitudes toward men predict gender inequality in 16 nations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86: 713–728. Greenland, K., Augoustinos, M., Andreouli, E., & Taulke-Johnson, R. (2019). Cross-group friendships, the irony of harmony and the social construction of discrimination. Ethnic and Racial Studies. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1648845. Grusky, D.B.,Varner, C., & Mattingly, M. (eds.) (2017). The poverty and inequality report. Pathways: A magazine on poverty, inequality and social policy. The Stanford Centre on Poverty and Inequality. Halabi, S., Dovidio, J.F., & Nadler, A. (2008). When and how high status groups offer help: Effects of social dominance orientation and status threat. Political Psychology, 2: 841–858. Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., Halperin, E., van-Zomeren, M., & Saguy, T. (2019). A darker side of hope: Harmony-focused hope decreases collective action intentions among the disadvantaged. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45: 209–223. Hegarty, P., & Buechel, C. (2011). ‘What blokes want lesbians to be’: On FHM and the socialization of pro-lesbian attitudes among heterosexual-identified men. Feminism & Psychology, 21(2), 240–247. Hegarty, P. & Massey, S. (2006). Anti-homosexual prejudice … as opposed to what? Journal of Homosexuality, 52: 47–71. Henrich, J., Heine, S.J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33: 61–135. Henriques, J., Hollway,W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., & Walkerdine,V. (1984) Changing the Subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity, London: Methuen. Hewstone, M. & Swart, H. (2011). Fifty-odd years of intergroup contact: From hypothesis to integrated theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50: 374–386. Hochschild, A. & Machung, A. (1990). The second shift. New York: Avon Books. Hopkins-Doyle, A., Sutton, R.M., Douglas, K.M., & Calogero, R.M. (2019). Flattering to deceive: Why people misunderstand benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116: 167–192. Ibanez, A., Haye, A., González, R., Hurtado, E., & Henríquez, R. (2009). Multi-level analysis of cultural phenomena. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 39: 81–110. Jackman, M. (1994) The velvet glove: Paternalism and conflict in gender, class, and race relations. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jackman, M.R. (1996). Individualism, self-interest and white racism. Social Science Quarterly, 77: 760–767. Jackman, M.R. (2005). Rejection or inclusion of outgroups? In J.F. Dovidio, P. Glick and L.A. Rudman (eds.), On the nature of prejudice: 50 years after Allport. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford. Jost, J., Banaji, T., & Nosek, M. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25: 881–919. Kay, A.C. & Jost, J.T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of ‘poor but happy’ and ‘poor but honest’ stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85: 823–837. Kay, A.C., Jost, J.T., & Young, S. (2005). Victim derogation and victim enhancement as alternate routes to system justification. Psychological Science, 16: 240–46. Krysan, M. & Moberg, S. (2016). Trends in racial attitudes. University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Retrieved from http://igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racial-attitudes. Langdridge, D. (2018). Benevolent heterosexism and the ‘less-than-queer’ citizen subject. In P.L. Hammack (ed.), The Oxford handbook of social psychology and social justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levin, J. & Levin, W.C. (1982). The functions of prejudice and discrimination. New York: Harper & Row.

228

Beyond prejudice as antipathy Louderback, L.A. & Whitley, B.D. (1997). Perceived erotic value of homosexuality and sex-role attitudes as mediators of sex differences in heterosexual college students’ attitudes towards lesbians and gay men. The Journal of Sex Research, 34: 175–182. MacInnis, C.C. & Hodson, G. (2018). Extending the benefits of intergroup contact beyond attitudes: When does intergroup contact predict greater collective action support. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3: 11–22. Maoz, I. (2011). Does contact work in protracted asymmetrical conflict? Appraising 20 years of reconciliationaimed encounters between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Journal of Peace Research, 48(1), 115–125. Massey, S. (2009). Polymorphous prejudice: Liberating the measurement of heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Journal of Homosexuality, 56: 147–172. Massey, S.G. (2010).Valued differences or benevolent stereotypes? Exploring the influence of positive beliefs on anti-gay and anti-lesbian attitudes. Psychology & Sexuality, 1: 115–130. Nadler, A. (2002). Inter-group helping relations as power relations: Helping relations as affirming or challenging inter-group hierarchy. Journal of Social Issues, 58: 487–503. Nadler, A. (2010). Interpersonal and intergroup helping relations as power relations: Implications for realworld helping. In S. Sturmer & M. Synder (eds.), The psychology of prosocial behavior (pp. 269–287). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Nadler, A. & Chernyak-Hai, L. (2014). Helping them stay where they are: Status effects on dependency/ autonomy oriented helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0034152. Nadler, A. & Halabi, S. (2006). Intergroup helping as status relations: Effects of status stability, identification, and type of help on receptivity to High Status Group’s help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91: 97–110. Pettigrew, T.F. & Tropp, L.R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90: 751–783. Pettigrew, T.F. & Tropp, L.R. (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38: 922–934. Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, progress and humanism. New York: Penguin Books. Plummer, K. (1995). Telling sexual stories: Power, change and social worlds. London: Routledge. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and the closed mind. New York: Basic Books. Rye, B.J. & Meaney, G.J. (2010). Self-defense, sexism, and etiological beliefs: Predictors of attitudes toward gay and lesbian adoption. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 6: 1–24. Saguy, T. (2018). Downside of intergroup harmony? Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5: 75–81. Saguy, T. & Chernyak-Hai, L. (2012). Intergroup contact can undermine disadvantaged group members’ attributions to discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48: 714–720. Samelson, F. (1978). From ‘race psychology’ to ‘studies in prejudice’: Some observations on the thematic reversal in social psychology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14: 265–278. Sampson, E.E. (1999). Dealing with differences: An introduction to the social psychology of prejudice. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Savin-Williams, R.C. (2011). Identity development among sexual-minority youth. In S.J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. Vignoles (eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 671–689). New York: Springer. Sedgwick, E.K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sengupta, N.K. & Sibley, C.G. (2013). Perpetuating one’s own disadvantage: Intergroup contact enables the ideological legitimation of inequality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39: 1391–1403. Sibley, C.G., Overall, N.C., & Duckitt, J. (2007). When women become more hostilely sexist toward their gender: The system-justifying effect of benevolent sexism. Sex Roles, 57: 743–754. Stephan, W.G. (1983). Intergroup relations. In D. Perlman & P. Cozby (eds.), Social psychology (pp. 414–441). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Techakesari, P., Droogendyk, L., Wright, S.C., Louis, W.R., & Barlow, F.K. (2017). Supportive contact and LGBT collective action: The moderating role of membership in specific groups. Peace and Conflict: Journal of peace psychology, 23, 307–316. Tropp, L.R., Hawi, D., van Laar, C., & Levin, S. (2012). Perceived discrimination, cross ethnic friendships and their effects on ethnic activism over time: A longitudinal investigation of three ethnic minority groups. British Journal of Social Psychology, 51, 257–272.

229

J. Dixon and D. Langdridge Vezzali, L., Andrighetto, L., Capozza, G., Di Bernardo, A., & Saguy,T. (2017). Discussing differences between groups: The content of intergroup contact encounters and the motivation for social change amongst members of advantaged groups. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 1, 52–59. Vezzali, L. & Stathi, S. (eds.) (2017). Intergroup contact theory: Recent developments and future directions. Current Issues in Social Psychology book series. Routledge. Weeks, J. (2007). The world we have won. Abingdon, England: Routledge. Wright, S.C. & Lubensky, M. (2009). The struggle for social equality: Collective action vs. prejudice reduction. In S. Demoulin, J.P. Leyens, & J.F. Dovidio (eds.), Intergroup misunderstandings: Impact of divergent social realities (pp. 291–310). New York: Psychology Press.

230

16 THE POLITICS AND HISTORY OF NUMBERS IN INTERGROUP RELATIONS AND CONFLICT RESEARCH Philippa Kerr

Introduction Overwhelmingly, social psychologists have conceptualized and studied intergroup relations in binary terms.That is, they have studied – and often reified for the purposes of the research – pairs of (unequal) groups, such as blacks and whites, advantaged and disadvantaged groups, women and men, minorities and majorities, or ingroups and outgroups (Subašić, Reynolds & Turner, 2008).This binary understanding of group relationships has been the basis for many foundational intergroup relations paradigms, including social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), realistic conflict theory (Sherif, 1966), intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), and more recent debates about collective action, contact, and social change (e.g. Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012; Wright & Baray, 2012), which are largely concerned with interactions between one disadvantaged and one advantaged group (for a brief review of the two-group approach, see Zagefka, 2018). However, there is now also an emerging body of intergroup relations work that looks outside this two-group framework to consider relationships among three or more parties (for a review, see Dixon et al., 2020). This work has considered such things as the role of intermediate-status groups in promoting or undermining change (Caricati, 2018); a number of models of third party solidarity with a group that is disadvantaged or threatened by a powerful outgroup (Klavina & van Zomeren, 2018; Radke, Kutlaca, Siem, Wright, & Becker, 2020; Simon & Klandermans, 2001; Subašić, Reynolds & Turner, 2008), and design recommendations for studying three-way interactions experimentally (Zagefka, 2018). Context-specific case studies have described the emergence of multiple sub-groups among crowds in conflict with the police during student and environmental protests in the UK (Drury & Reicher, 2000; Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2003); allegations of favouritism and exploitation in relationships between South African fruit farmers and the South African and immigrant Zimbabwean labourers they employ (Kerr, Durrheim, & Dixon, 2017); strategies used by a civil society movement for democratic reform to forge solidarity among the Indian, Chinese, and Malay communities in Malaysia (Selvanathan, Khoo, & Lickel, 2019); and citizens’ and political parties’ understandings of the Sudanese government’s Arabization identity project, which attempts to construct being Sudanese as being Muslim and DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-16

231

P. Kerr

Arab – identities which do not fit well for Black, Nubian, Christian, non-Arabic-speaking, and other diverse Sudanese subgroups (Moss, 2017). This is a diverse body of work which engages with different local contexts and theoretical literature. However, its collective value is to open up avenues of enquiry into the emergent properties of complex intergroup situations without trying to reduce these to binary relationships for the sake of theoretical or methodological simplicity. Indeed, self-categorization theory (Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994) to some extent laid the foundation for this more complex understanding of social relations with its insight that all people are potentially members of numerous subordinate and superordinate groups simultaneously; a number of studies of complex intergroup relationships draw on this insight (e.g. Subašić, Reynolds and Turner, 2008). Others have added the observation that each of those super- and subordinate groups is also simultaneously in relationship with numerous others, not necessarily just one, thus ‘dealing with intergroup relations on more than one front’ (Kerr et al., 2017). Such complexity can produce emergent dynamics of ‘loyalty, solidarity, favouritism, collusion and betrayal’ (Kerr et al., 2017, p. 47), dynamics which are not easily reducible to a two-way relationship of domination and/ or resistance between one advantaged majority and one disadvantaged minority in isolation. Dixon et al. (2020) have argued more specifically that the two-group approach overlooks the legacy of divide and rule strategies in post-colonial societies, where policies aiming to create, and then undermine solidarity among, separate disadvantaged groups were legislated and their effects have continued to mutate and evolve in the post-colonial period (e.g. Adhikari, 2009; Goldin, 1984; Mamdani, 2001). Thus, Dixon and colleagues argue, ‘the self-evident nature of intergroup binaries must be treated as a problem to be explained rather than an organic starting point for psychological research’ (2020, p. 66). The main aim of this chapter, however, is not to offer a comprehensive review of intergroup relations work that transcends the majority-minority approach. Nor is it necessary to advocate or make specific recommendations for further such work. Rather, it takes up Dixon et al.’s (2020) more general point that the nature of group boundaries is not self-evident or simply given, but a matter of political contestation, and these boundaries can be enforced, resisted, and changed over time – and that this argument applies also to constructions of three-way intergroup relationships. Indeed, it is an old but often ignored argument in social psychology that presupposing which groups are in fact involved in an intergroup relationship and what the nature of that relationship is can have the political consequence of naturalizing the status quo (Reicher & Haslam, 2013). This is because presupposing can preclude an analysis of how the groups came to be seen in these terms in the first place (Dixon & Reicher, 1997; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001); and it can foreclose an imagination of how the social world could be differently organized (Reicher, 2004; cf. Moss, 2017). Moreover, it can overlook the fact that asymmetry in participants’ own views about these relationships is itself an inherent feature of intergroup conflict: Intergroup relations research presupposes that we know who is confronting whom: black people versus white people, women versus men, Catholics versus Protestants, and so on. Yet … the nature of the sides is often a matter of dispute, and the differences between the views of the different parties can be a crucial part of the elaboration of the conflict. (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 394) This means that deciding analytically whether an intergroup conflict implicates two groups or more than two groups, and what their respective roles in that conflict are, can be matters of contestation that are inextricable from the conflict itself (cf. Kerr et al., 2017). 232

Intergroup relations and conflict research

This chapter applies these insights to an instance of group-based discrimination in which third parties are often invoked – the phenomenon of anti-immigrant or xenophobic violence in contemporary democratic South Africa. It presents an instance of anti-immigrant discourse which construes African ‘immigrants’ or ‘foreigners’ as a third party which is interfering in more longstanding political, racial, and class-based relationships among South Africans – and how this construction becomes a justification for anti-immigrant violence. It then challenges this construction of salient intergroup relationships in three ways: by showing (a) how constructions of South African citizens as victims of this interference obscure and justify the often violent victimization of migrants (cf. Solomon, 2019); (b) how the current taken-for-granted distinction between ‘citizens’ and ‘foreign nationals’ was not always there but gained its significance in the transition from apartheid (Neocosmos, 2006); and (c) how groups with varying politics on the issue of xenophobia have differently construed the nature of the groups implicated in anti-immigrant violence, for example downplaying the citizen-foreigner divide in favour of class- and race-based solidarities (Solomon, 2019). Indeed, some of the intergroup relations work which moves beyond two-group terms remains in an ahistorical paradigm where little attention is given to how the groups acquired the status they currently have, or to how this status is contingent and potentially changeable in the future. The chapter concludes by considering implications of this case study for intergroup relations work moving beyond the two-group approach: even constructions of three-way relationships need not be taken at face value but should be historicized and located in their rhetorical and political context. In this way, it reiterates the need for a ‘historical social psychology’ (Gergen & Gergen, 1984) of intergroup relations, which treats national and other groups as historical and changeable constructs, and discourse about intergroup relationships as a palimpsest reflecting some of those layers of historical change.

Xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa When it comes to group-based discrimination, South Africa is probably most well-known for its racist apartheid policies. Between 1948 and 1994, a white minority government – building on several preceding centuries of colonial rule – violently dispossessed ‘non-white’ South Africans from their land, engineered grand-scale racial segregation, excluded black people from the franchise and exploited their labour to serve the white-owned economy (Biko, 2004; Posel, 1991; Wolpe, 1972). What may be less well-known is that since the beginning of the democratic dispensation, a new form of nationalistic, anti-immigrant discrimination has emerged – also sometimes accompanied by brutal violence – which is typically described as ‘xenophobia’ (Landau, 2011; Neocosmos, 2006). Indeed, as I write this chapter in mid-September 2019, a spate of attacks and looting of foreign-owned shops is underway in Johannesburg, prompting the Nigerian government to offer free flights home for fearful Nigerians living in South Africa (Alfa Shaban, 2019; Bornman, 2019). This violence is also racialized – albeit in more complex ways – as the immigrant communities who are its targets are almost always African and Asian, rather than European, migrants – leading some academics to describe it as ‘Afrophobia’ (Gqola, 2008; Mngxitama, 2008); but also, it is most often carried out in black, rather than white, South African poor communities. Migrants from all around sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have experienced xenophobic discrimination and violence, with specific communities that have been targeted including Somali and Bangladeshi shopkeepers, migrant farmworkers from Zimbabwe, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigerian traders, among many others (Crush & Ramachandran, 2014a; Kerr & Durrheim, 2013; Steinberg, 2015). Other studies have addressed more ‘routine’ forms of discrimination against African immigrants, for example in the 233

P. Kerr

state health system, at the Department of Home Affairs, and in schools and universities (Crush & Tawodzera, 2014; Sichone, 2006; Zihindula, Meyer-Weitz, & Akintola, 2017). Critics have argued that the South African government is both highly xenophobic and in denial about the extent of xenophobia among South Africans (Crush & Ramachandran, 2014b). In this way, xenophobia and racism have come to mean two different things in contemporary South Africa. Crudely, racism is understood as anti-black discrimination mainly by white South Africans directed at black (South) Africans – which is a factor still shaping many facets of South African society (Durrheim, Mtose, & Brown, 2011; Msimang, 2018; Van der Merwe & van Reenen, 2016) – whereas xenophobia is understood as anti-immigrant discrimination mainly perpetuated by black South Africans directed at Africans and Asians who are not citizens of South Africa or seen as ‘foreigners’. This is an oversimplification of a more complex reality,1 but it is also an important distinction to make, because, unlike in Europe where indigeneity and racism are associated with whiteness and migrancy and foreignness associated with blackness, in South Africa indigeneity and racism have historically been associated with two different groups (black and white South Africans, respectively), while more recently, both perpetrators and victims of anti-immigrant violence have most times been black African. Making a distinction between racism and xenophobia also turns out to be important because claims to victimhood on the basis of ongoing racial exploitation, or of bearing the burden of apartheid’s legacy of racialized poverty, are often invoked by (black) South Africans as reasons for wanting immigrants to leave the country, and as justifications for steps taken to enact this wish (e.g. Solomon, 2019). Moreover, contemporary xenophobic violence is often embedded in repertoires of violent ‘struggle’ whose origins are in the anti-apartheid era but which have carried over into the democratic era in contemporary, ongoing political struggles by marginalized South African communities (e.g. Monson, 2015). Thus, reflecting on a round of anti-immigrant attacks that took place in South African cities in 2015, Achille Mbembe (2015, n.p.) described South Africa as having entered a ‘negative moment’ when ‘new antagonisms emerge while old ones remain unresolved’.

Accounts of three-way intergroup relationships implicated in anti-immigrant discourse The following section analyses an instance of anti-immigrant discourse produced in an interview which I, (a white South African woman) conducted in 2009 with a black South African man who was selling pies in the centre of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, as part of a research project on xenophobia. From the perspective of a social psychologist interested in relationships among more than two groups, this account has elements of obvious interest:

Extract 1: PHILIPPA:  And what do you think about foreigners being here in South Africa? ANDILE:  I don’t have much of a big problem with that, it’s just that it seems they are taking every

job because they can’t resist … if they need a job they can work even for thirty Rand and a 1 It is a simplification because representative-sample attitude surveys suggest xenophobic attitudes have been widely prevalent among all sectors of the South African population (Crush, 2000, 2008), and white racist violence is sometimes ambiguous in the sense that it is directed at black people who also happen to be immigrants (see Crush, 2000; Roos, 2019). Also, the same black communities where xenophobic violence happens are often sharply divided about the ethics of this violence, and there are numerous instances of communities or sections of thereof mobilizing to avert it (e.g. Kirshner, 2012; Sinwell, 2011; Solomon, 2019).

234

Intergroup relations and conflict research

whole day for twenty Rand. [Philippa: ja] But we as South Africans we know it’s not good to work for that kind of money you know. … After a long while we were working together and our boss now tells us eyi, I won’t give you nothing for at the end of the year, there’s nothing like this, I, that, I don’t givePHILIPPA:  ((interrupts)) Like Christmas bonus ANDILE:  Ja bonuses, I don’t give bonuses here, just you are labourers, [Philippa: okay] you see, just dig trenches for me, if the job is over it’s over. … They [foreigners] agree to this. [Philippa: ja] We never agree with something like that, we say no, we have three months now working here, we rather get something, you see [Philippa: ja], after a while, after we, if if you are closing your company you must give us something, a little bit something. [Philippa: ja] They never minded, he never gave us nothing because he said we were complaining, and then we saw that he never close his company, other than that he found another more foreigners PHILIPPA ((interrupting)): Oh, really? So he, so he chucked out you guys and took ANDILE:  Ja because we were complaining too much, he said we were complaining too much every day. [Philippa: Okay] But you understand now, okay, it’s because they agree everything. …Because they say they are desperate. We desperate too here in South Africa, us we are working, we are looking for jobs some of us … How does this South African man construe his relationship to ‘foreigners’? While I asked about his views on ‘foreigners being here in South Africa’, the anecdote that follows is actually largely about his relationship with his employer, or boss, in a previous job. In the anecdote, foreign workers feature for how they interfere in this relationship: they are rivals for job opportunities and are preferred by the boss because they are willing to work uncomplainingly for as little as R30 a day (about $3 in 2009), thus facilitating exploitation by the employer. The upshot of the story about South Africans who asked for a bonus at the end of their work period is that they got cheated: the employer simply pretended to close his business as a way of getting rid of the ‘complaining’ South African workers, and then replaced them with foreign workers. Although the race of the employer in the anecdote is not mentioned (but is potentially hearable as being white – cf. Durrheim, 2012), the extract is thus read as a critique of the ongoing exploitative use of black labour by capital in post-apartheid South Africa. And so, rather than being a simple two-way expression of prejudice between citizens and immigrants in South Africa, the speaker’s construction of his relationship with ‘foreigners’ is inextricable from his understanding of his relationship with his employer and fellow South African workers, and thus from his understanding of his place in a broader network of intergroup race and class relationships. The extract also contains a number of classic features of prejudice discourse (Billig, 2012; Billig et al., 1988). First, the speaker presents himself as abiding by the moral and ideological imperative of non-prejudice. In answer to the question ‘And what do you think about foreigners being here in South Africa’, he is careful to use the caveat ‘I don’t have much of a big problem with that’ and the qualification ‘it’s just that it seems they are taking every job’ (resembling the formula ‘I’m not prejudiced, but …’), thus also presenting his reasons for objecting to ‘foreigners’ as the conclusion of a disinterested observation rather than of personal prejudice. Alongside the imperative against prejudice and irrationality, however, is another ideological and moral imperative: the imperative to struggle. The moral high ground in this struggle is occupied by South Africans, with foreigners allegedly violating the imperative to struggle (cf. Billig et al., 1988): ‘we as South Africans we know it’s not good to work for that kind of money’, whereas ‘foreigners’ are ‘taking every job because they can’t resist’. The man makes a display of considering possible reasons for this lack of resistance – ‘they say they are desperate’ – but immediately counters this with ‘we desperate too here in South Africa, us we are working, we are looking for jobs some of us’ – thus, 235

P. Kerr

on balance, not conceding that the claim of being desperate is a good enough reason to accept any conditions of work. Moreover, he attends to and dismisses potential alternative reasons – such as South Africans’ laziness – for why employers might prefer migrants: ‘we are working, we are looking for jobs some of us …’. In this way, the account presents working-class South Africans as engaged in a noble struggle for decent work, and collusion between immigrant workers and employers as undermining this struggle. It is not difficult to conclude with this speaker – as the interviewer to some extent did – that working-class (black) South Africans have been the victims of post-apartheid immigration (cf. Solomon, 2019).

Who is the victim? But what are we missing by taking this account of a three-way relationship between foreign workers, local workers and their employers – produced to some extent collaboratively by interviewers and respondent (cf. Condor, 2006) – at face value? For Solomon (2019) ‘the danger of this rhetoric of victimization is that it discounts and justifies the victimization and abuse of migrants’ (p. 164). Consider this extract from later in the same interview, with Sanele, another interviewer:

Extract 2: ANDILE: We

must fight the employers and report them that no, he employed us and then he doesn’t want to give us money … here in South Africa there are many institutions like, uh, what’s this they called, mm, COSATU,2 things that PHILIPPA: Trade unions ANDILE:  … Unions, yes yes … fight for the labourers or PHILIPPA:  Ah, so they should, you should be fighting the employers ANDILE:  Ja I think that’s the best thing, not fighting each other. SANELE:  But what if they are not willing to engage in that process? ANDILE:  Mm, that’s where it’s getting worse now and bad. ((Sanele laughs)) Because … they will agree to work. SANELE:  Ja ja ja … and wena ((you)), you will be told, if you don’t want to work, hhayi get the hell out uyabo’ ((you see)). ANDILE:  Ja ja SANELE:  And then what do you do wena ((yourself))? ANDILE: We call them now, amagundane ((rats)) … And then they get beaten. In this second extract from later in the interview the interviewee concedes, ‘We must fight the employers and report them that no, he employed us and then he doesn’t want to give us money…I think that’s the best thing, not fighting each other’. This nod to solidarity among workers is, however, overridden as the interview plays out, with Sanele pressing him about what he personally does ‘if they [foreign workers] are not willing to engage in that process’. The answer is violence: ‘we call them now, amagundane … and then they get beaten’. ‘Amagundane’ literally means rats but figuratively means sell-outs, and is the same word that was often used to call black South Africans who collaborated with the apartheid government, for example by being an informer. The word has inherent associations of violence, as punishment 2 COSATU is the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

236

Intergroup relations and conflict research

for being a suspected sell-out was sometimes administered through forms of mob justice (e.g. Laubscher & Mbuqe, 2020). In this sense, the anti-apartheid imperative to engage in struggle, like the enlightenment imperative not to be prejudiced, has a dark side (Palmary, 2016; cf. Billig, 2012). In this interview, the imperatives to struggle and not to be a sell-out were co-opted into an explicit justification for anti-immigrant violence in the democratic era. Indeed, no matter how reasonable the man’s critique of racial inequality and labour exploitation initially seems, as the man himself eventually concedes, the discourse of poor South Africans as victims of immigration (Solomon, 2019) has repeatedly been used to justify rounds of xenophobic violence since the late 1990s, including in May 2008, when 62 people were killed in attacks around the country in the space of a month, and tens of thousands displaced (Landau, 2011; cf. Harris, 2002). Ambivalent concessions by South Africans that it isn’t right to use violence against foreigners are often made in the same breath as qualifications that the things foreigners do also aren’t right, such as selling drugs and increasing crime (Solomon, 2019), and similar constructions of immigrants as denying South Africans their hard-won freedom have been used to justify such violence (Palmary, 2016). Thus, the dilemma is that this critique of ongoing (possibly racialized) labour exploitation is inseparable from justifications for anti-immigrant violence. Again, Solomon (2019) recognizes this dilemma but also finds a crack in the argument: there is legitimate concern from marginalized black South Africans who have yet to experience the economic benefits of the democratic transformation of South Africa. They continue to be victims of inequality and an unresponsive government that has been beset by corruption, so their sense of insecurity, to an extent, is justified. The problem is that African migrants are not the sources of that insecurity. (Solomon, 2019, pp. 163–164) Indeed, social scientists in South Africa have debated whether poverty and inequality can be considered ‘causes’ of xenophobia, or whether they are merely being used as a justification or excuse for it (Amisi, Bond, Cele & Ngwane, 2011; Crush & Ramachandran, 2014a, 2014b; Hadland, 2008; Kerr, Durrheim, & Dixon, 2019; Neocosmos, 2008; Sinwell, 2011). Michael Neocosmos’s (2008) response to this is that ‘poverty can be and has historically been the foundation for the whole range of political ideologies, from communism to fascism and anything in between … [so] how do we logically move from there to stereotyping the foreign other?’ (pp. 586–587).

The historical origins of citizens and foreigners Neocosmos’s own answer to this question leads to a second way by which the discourse of South Africans as victims of collusion between foreign workers and employers can be challenged. This is to historicize the very categories of citizen and foreigner that are taken for granted in this discourse. Neocosmos (2006) is one of the few xenophobia scholars in South Africa who has attempted a historical explanation for xenophobia, not starting from the premise that there are in fact ‘citizens’ and ‘foreigners’ and then examining the relationships between them, but asking how this distinction gained its significance in the first place. He argues that the current strong distinction between black people who are South African citizens and black people who are non-citizens or ‘foreign nationals’ is something that only emerged in the transition from apartheid. This distinction was not made strongly during apartheid either by the

237

P. Kerr

state or by the anti-apartheid movement, because the state was attempting to ‘denationalise’ all black people anyway by making them citizens of separate ‘homelands’, also called ‘Bantustans’. These Bantustans were the outworking of grand apartheid: small areas of land within South Africa each set aside for black people of a particular ‘ethnicity’, four of which were granted independence in the 1970s until 1994 (though South Africa was the only country to recognize their status as independent states). From there, the state-regulated the presence of black people migrating into ‘white South Africa’ according to how it could make use of their labour (Legassick, 1974). In this way, black people within South Africa were rendered ‘both foreign and migrant’ (Pillay, 2013, p. 78) – and treated much the same as African migrant labourers from further afield. Indeed, the four independent homelands of Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana were actually modelled on the neighbouring Southern African ethnic nationstates of Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana (Neocosmos, 2006). This ‘mode of domination’ by the apartheid state meant that bonds of solidarity were developed between all Africans in the region and beyond, so that the struggle against apartheid was very much conceived … as a fight of all Africans and their allies against the apartheid state. The concept of “nation” thus developed tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive of Africans from the region. (Neocosmos, 2006, pp. 30–31) While there were other forms of violence within black communities during especially the latter years of apartheid, these occurred around political, ethno-linguistic or urban-rural migrant identities (e.g. Minnaar, 1992); they were not framed in terms of a distinction between who was and was not a South African citizen. So xenophobia was not an inevitable outcome for post-apartheid South Africa, but, as the new state chose to treat its population as ‘passive … subjects of state or white largesse’ (Neocosmos, 2006, p. 77), a distinction then needed to be made between those living in South Africa who qualified for state assistance and those who did not.The dividing line for this distinction was new South African citizenship: Under apartheid all rural migrants whether emanating from South African territory or not, were interpellated as foreign through the medium of tribal identification. Postapartheid, only those emanating from beyond South Africa’s borders are interpellated as foreign, as the Bantustans are simply struck off the map. It is no longer ethnic identity but national (and increasingly black African) identity which enables access to resources. (p. 19) Thus, a new set of reconfigured borders delineating foreigners from citizens replaced the old ones; and simultaneously a new category of denationalized outsiders was created amongst those living within South Africa’s borders. Thus, the transition from apartheid to democracy can be seen as ‘a transition between two different forms of xenophobia, simultaneously with continuity between state practices’ (2006, p. vi).

Contested categorizations and the possibility of alternatives This kind of historical account of the emergence of contemporary group identities is what is missing from many social psychological studies of intergroup conflict, which try to explain intergroup conflict without knowing where the salient group identities even came from (Dixon 238

Intergroup relations and conflict research

& Reicher, 1997).3 This is important because ‘those who wish to promote particular forms of social relation above others cannot be content with simply advancing one version of social identity among many. They must ensure that their version is seen as the sole authentic rendering of identity – in other words, that it isn’t a “version” at all’ (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, p. 390). Indeed the banal nationalism (Billig, 1995) which underpins xenophobic violence – the assumption that the world is in fact divided into citizens, and foreigners – is now so entrenched and taken for granted in South Africa that we have almost lost sight of the possibility of alternatives. But consider as an alternative the politics of the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo (literally, residents of shacks), an organization of poor people based mainly in the city of Durban who are locked in an ongoing struggle with the ANC government in that province over land, housing, state corruption, and the freedom to organize independently of the ANC (Abahlali baseMjondolo, 2015; Clarke, 2018). Abahlali have taken an explicitly anti-xenophobic stance in many of their political mobilizations (e.g. Abahlali baseMjondolo, 2015). In this struggle, rather than emphasizing a strong distinction between those who are and are not technically South African citizens, Abahlali have ‘used their experience of being marginalized as “illegal” squatters to challenge the distinction between citizens and noncitizens in the country’ (Solomon, 2019). For instance, they draw attention to similarities between refugee camps, ‘squatter’ settlements, repatriation centres and other dumping grounds for unwanted or ‘illegal’ people. In this view, the de facto rightlessness of landless citizens who live outside of formal housing and whose rights are in practice routinely denied means such citizens have more in common with ‘illegal’ and other immigrants who are persecuted by the ANC-led state: When we try to unite and to take to the streets to assert that every person is a person, that everyone counts, we are openly beaten by the police. Once again we say that there is no democracy for the poor in this country. It does not matter which country you were born in, or what part of South Africa you come from, or what language you speak. If you are poor and black you are excluded from this democracy with the open use of violence. (Abahlali baseMjondolo, 2015) In this way, Abahlali have reconfigured the boundaries between insiders and outsiders by emphasizing not formal citizenship – from which they themselves are in practice excluded – but rather by building solidarity among the excluded poor. In this way, Solomon notes that ‘by calling themselves the “people of nowhere”… Abahlali’s anti-xenophobia work challenges the prevailing geography of citizenship’ (167). The shack dweller’s movement thus pursues a different kind of struggle to that described by the Pietermaritzburg man quoted above. Rather than claiming that ‘foreigners’ and immigrant workers undermine the ongoing struggle of South Africans for decent work, Abahlali are critical of the state insofar as it oppresses the black and ‘illegal’ poor, and they call for solidarity on the basis of de facto shared rightlessness (Solomon, 2019). Thus, while some kinds of anti-xenophobia discourse have continued to take the categories as given, and simply tried to ascribe different characteristics to them (e.g. see Kerr & Durrheim, 2013), others have attempted a more radical reconfiguring of the very nature of the groups. 3 Self-categorisation theory (SCT) in its early forms was unable to do justice to this question: SCT theorists recognized that out of a myriad different possible identities, only certain ones will be salient in particular interactions; but the best they could offer was a cognitivist account which tried to explain salience through a pseudo-mathematical formula involving ‘fit’ and ‘metacontrast ratio’ (Hornsey, 2008). This still does not explain where latent or possible identities come from in the first place, nor why some are ‘accessible in the moment’ or ‘chronically accessible’ (p. 208) while others are not.

239

P. Kerr

Conclusion This chapter has offered a critical analysis of a particular kind of intergroup relations discourse that is current in democratic South Africa. This is the discourse of xenophobia, in which ‘foreign’ Africans are construed as interfering detrimentally in more longstanding race, class, and political relations among South Africans (cf. Kerr et al., 2017, 2019; Monson, 2015; Palmary, 2016) – an interference which supposedly justifies violence against immigrants as a response. This chapter has done this by interrogating what this discourse of victimization hides, as much as by highlighting what it shows; by historicizing the categories of ‘citizen’ and ‘foreigner’ and how they emerged in the transition from apartheid to democracy (Neocosmos, 2006); and by examining alternative ways of configuring intergroup boundaries that do not lead to xenophobia (Abahlali baseMjondolo, 2015; Solomon, 2019). It has illustrated how reading all intergroup relationships in South Africa primarily in terms of race and racism can obscure a critique of other, newer forms of discrimination and violence – including ones which are justified under the banner of resisting racism and racial exploitation (cf. Durrheim, 2020). This chapter has also made the case that moving beyond the problems of the two-group paradigm – the problem of arbitrarily dividing up the social world into two (unequal) groups – will involve more than simply designing increasingly complex studies which include greater numbers of groups. If the groups continue to be treated in a taken-for-granted or ahistorical manner, then the addition of more groups can start to seem arbitrary – even bewildering – and the problems of the two-group paradigm are simply repeated rather than resolved. Even though some social psychological models of change involving multiple groups or triadic intergroup relationships do treat the nature and boundaries of groups as potentially changeable (e.g. Subasic et al., 2008), in practice they still require us to know in advance the status of the real-life groups we are studying, and they assume that when the model is applied, the abstract categories of (say) minority, authority and majority groups will be filled by actual groups who obviously and unambiguously fit these positions. This overlooks how the very nature of the groups in conflict is essentially a matter of contestation (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), as well as the political work that goes into the creation of group identities, divisions, and solidarities (e.g. Moss, 2017; Selvanathan et al., 2019). In this sense, this chapter joins the call for a historical social psychology (cf. Billig, 1991; Gergen, 1973; Gergen & Gergen, 1984; Parker, 2013; Reicher & Haslam, 2013; Sherif, 1966; Sullivan, 2020; Tileaga & Byford, 2014), which treats intergroup relations as meaningful in their longer historical context, and which is able to appreciate how layers of historical change are made present in the material and discursive content of contemporary intergroup relationships. In South Africa, contemporary xenophobia draws on older ideological imperatives of struggle, and newer democratic imperatives of citizens’ entitlement – which are being re-worked together in the present, often to devastating effect. This kind of historical sensitivity will mean that efforts to move beyond the two-group paradigm can avoid the arbitrariness of simply adding more groups to our research designs in a manner which leaves the historical and political significance of group formations unquestioned.

Acknowledgements This research was funded by SARCHI/NRF grant number 86450 and by an NRF postdoctoral fellowship grant number 120749.The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the NRF. 240

Intergroup relations and conflict research

References Abahlali baseMjondolo (2015). Abahlali baseMjondolo statement on the ongoing xenophobic attacks. 14 April. Available at: http://abahlali.org/node/14685/ (accessed 29 March 2019). Adhikari, M. (2009). Burdened by race: coloured identities in Southern Africa. Cape Town: UCT Press. Alfa Shaban, A.R. (2019). More Nigerians repatriated. Africa News, 18 September. Accessed from https:// www.africanews.com/2019/09/19/no-justification-for-xenophobic-attacks-south-african-presidentau-chief/. Allport, G.W. (1954) The Nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley. Amisi, B., Bond, P., Cele, N., & Ngwane,T. (2011). Xenophobia and civil society: Durban’s structured social divisions. Politikon, 38, 59–83. Biko, S.B. (2004). I write what I like. Johannesburg: Picador Africa. Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions: Studies in rhetorical psychology. London: Sage. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Billig, M. (2012). The notion of ‘prejudice’: Some rhetorical and ideological aspects. In J. Dixon and M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D., & Radley, A. (1988). Ideological dilemmas: A social psychology of everyday thinking. London: Sage. Bornman, J. (2019). The people who sparked the xenophobic violence. Daily Maverick, 11 September. Retrieved from https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-11-the-people-who-sparkedthe-xenophobic-violence/. Caricati, L. (2018) Considering intermediate-status groups in intergroup hierarchies: A theory of triadic social stratification. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 2: 58–66. Crush, J. (2000). The dark side of democracy: Migration, xenophobia and human rights in South Africa. International Migration, 38(6): 103–133. Clark, C. (2018). Why is there so much conflict between Abahlali and the state? GroundUp, 20 September. Available at: https://www.groundup.org.za/article/why-there-so-much-conflict-between-abahlaliandstate-kzn/ (accessed 30 March 2019). Condor, S. (2006). Public prejudice as collaborative accomplishment: Towards a dialogic social psychology of racism. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 1–18. Crush, J. (2008). The perfect storm:The realities of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa. Cape Town: Idasa. Crush, J. & Ramachandran, S. (2014a). Migrant entrepreneurship, collective violence and xenophobia in South Africa. Migration policy series No. 67. Cape Town: SAMP and IMRC. Crush, J. & Ramachandran, S. (2014b). Xenophobic violence in South Africa: Denialism, minimalism, realism. Migration policy series No. 66. Cape Town: SAMP and IMRC. Crush, J. & Tawodzera, G. (2014). Medical xenophobia and Zimbabwean migrant access to public health services in South Africa. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40 (4): 655–670. Dixon, J., Elcheroth, G., Kerr, P., Drury, J., Albzour, M., Durrheim, K., & Green, E. (2020). It’s not just ‘us’ versus ‘them’: Moving beyond binary perspectives on intergroup processes. European Review of Social Psychology, 31(1), 40–75. Dixon, J., Levine, M., Reicher, S., & Durrheim, K. (2012). Beyond prejudice: Are negative evaluations the problem and is getting us to like one another more the solution? Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 35 (6): 411–425. Dixon, J. & Reicher, S. (1997). Intergroup contact and desegregation in the new South Africa. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36: 361–381. Drury, J. & Reicher, S. (2000). Collective action and psychological change: The emergence of new social identities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39: 579–604. Drury, J., Reicher, S., & Stott, C. (2003).Transforming the boundaries of collective identities: From the ‘local’ anti-road campaign to ‘global’ resistance? Social Movement Studies, 2 (2): 191–212. Durrheim, K. (2012). Implicit prejudice in mind and interaction. In J. Dixon and M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durrheim, K. (2020). The beginning and the end of racism – And something in-between. In J. Solomos (ed.), Routledge International handbook of contemporary racisms. Routledge. Durrheim, K., Mtose, X., & Brown, L. (2011). Race trouble: Race, identity and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

241

P. Kerr Gergen, K.J. (1973). Social psychology as history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26(3), 309–320. Gergen, K. & Gergen, M. (1984). Historical social psychology. Hove: Psychology Press. Goldin, I. (1984). The poverty of coloured labour preference: Economics and ideology in the Western Cape. SALDRU Working Paper no. 59. University of Cape Town: Southern African Labour and Development Unit. Retrieved from http://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/563/1984_goldin_ swp59.pdf?sequence=1. Gqola, P.D. (2008). Echoes, negrophobia, masculinist violence. In S. Hassim, Y. Kupe, & E. Worby (eds.), Go home or die here: Violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in South Africa (pp. 209–224). Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Hadland, A. (2008). Violence and xenophobia in South Africa: Developing consensus, moving to action. Human Sciences Research Council and High Commission of the United Kingdom. Retrieved from http://ecommons.hsrc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11910/5188/5504_Hadland_Violenceand xenophobiainSA.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Harris, B. (2002). Xenophobia: A new pathology for a new South Africa? In D. Hook & G. Eagle (eds.), Psychology and social prejudice. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Hornsey, M. (2008) Social identity theory and self-categorization theory: A historical review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2 (1): 204–222. Kerr, P. & Durrheim, K. (2013). The dilemma of anti-xenophobia discourse in the aftermath of violence in De doorns. Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(3): 577–596. Kerr, P., Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2017). Beyond the two-group paradigm in studies of intergroup contact, conflict and inequality:Third parties and intergroup alliances in xenophobic violence in South Africa. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56: 47–63. Kerr, P., Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2019). Xenophobic violence and struggle discourse in South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 54 (7): 995–1011. Kirshner, J. (2012). “We are Gauteng people”: Challenging the politics of xenophobia in khutsong. South Africa. Antipode, 44(4): 1307–1328. Klavina, L. & van Zomeren, M. (2018). Protesting to protect ‘us’ and/or ‘them’? Explaining why members of third groups are willing to engage in collective action. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. doi: 10.1177/1368430218796930. Landau, L. (2011). Exorcising the demons within: Xenophobia, violence and statecraft in contemporary South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Laubscher, L. & Mbuqe, S. (2020). A case study of ‘necklacing’:When the case has a face. Psychology in Society, 59: 66–87. Legassick, M. (1974). Legislation, ideology and economy in post-1948 South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 1(1): 5–35. Mamdani, M. (2001). When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mbembe, A. (2015). Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. Aula magistral proferida. Minnaar, A. (1992). Patterns of Violence: Case Studies of Conflict in Natal. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Mngxitama, A. (2008). We are not all like that: Race, class and nation after apartheid. In S. Hassim,Y. Kupe, & E. Worby (eds.), Go home or die here:Violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in South Africa (pp. 189–208). Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Monson, T. (2015). Everyday politics and collective mobilization against foreigners in a South African shack settlement. Africa, 85: 131–153. Moss, S.M. (2017). Identity hierarchy within the Sudanese superordinate identity: Political leadership promoting and demoting subordinate groups. Political Psychology, 38(6): 925–942. Msimang, S. (2018). All is not forgiven: South Africa and the scars of apartheid. Foreign Affairs, 97: 28–34. Neocosmos, M. (2006). From foreign natives to native foreigners: Explaining xenophobia in Post-apartheid South Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Neocosmos, M. (2008). The politics of fear and the fear of politics. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(6): 586–594. Palmary, I. (2016) Gender, sexuality and migration: Governing morality. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave McMillan/ Springer. Parker, I. (2013). Discourse analysis: Dimensions of critique in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 10: 223–239.

242

Intergroup relations and conflict research Pettigrew, T.F., & Tropp, L.R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. Pillay, S. (2013). Anxious urbanity: Xenophobia, the native subject and the refugee camp. Social Dynamics, 39(1), 75–91. Posel, D. (1991). The making of apartheid, 1948-1961: Conflict and compromise. Oxford University Press. Radke, H., Kutlaca, M., Siem, B.,Wright, S., & Becker, J. (2020). Beyond allyship: Motivations for advantaged group members to engage in action for disadvantaged groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 24(4): 291–315. Reicher, S. (2004). The context of social identity: Domination, resistance and change. Political Psychology, 25(6): 921–945. Reicher, S. & Hopkins, N. (2001). Psychology and the end of history: A critique and a proposal for the psychology of social categorisation. Political Psychology, 22(2), 383–407. Reicher, S. & Haslam, A. (2013). Towards a ‘science of movement’: Identity, authority and influence in the production of social stability and social change. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 1(1): 112–131. Reicher, S., & Hopkins, N. (2001). Psychology and the end of history: A critique and a proposal for the social psychology of categorisation. Political Psychology, 22(2): 383–407. Roos, N. (2019). Saturday night at the speedway: Class, race, gender and a ‘lynching’. Acta Academica, 50(2): 75–91. Selvanathan, H.P., Khoo, Y.H., & Lickel, B. (2019). The role of movement leaders in building intergroup solidarity for social change: A case of the electoral reform movement in Malaysia. European Journal of Social Psychology. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2598. Sherif, M. (1966). Group conflict and co-operation:Their social psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Sichone, O.B. (2006). Globalisation and internationalisation of higher education in South Africa: The challenge of rising xenophobia. Journal of Higher education in Africa, 4(3): 33–53. Simon, B. & Klandermans, B. (2001). Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis. American Psychologist, 56(4): 319–331. Sinwell, L. (2011). Obtaining ‘peace’, searching for justice: Evaluating civil society and local government responses to xenophobia in Alexandra. Politikon, 38(1): 131–148. Solomon, R. (2019). Xenophobic violence and the ambivalence of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa. Citizenship Studies, 23(2): 156–171. Steinberg, J. (2015). A man of good hope. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Subašić, E., Reynolds, K., & Turner, J. (2008). The political solidarity model of social change: Dynamics of self-categorization in intergroup power relations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12: 330–352. Sullivan, D. (2020). Social psychological theory as history: Outlining the critical-historical approach to theory. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 24(1): 78–99. Tajfel, H. & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey: Brooks/Cole. Tileaga, C. & Byford, J. (2014). Introduction: Psychology and history – Themes, debates, overlaps and borrowings. In C. Tileaga, & J. Byford (eds.), Psychology and history: Interdisciplinary borrowings (pp. 1–12). Cambridge: CUP. Turner, J., Oakes, P., Haslam, S.A., & McGarty, C. (1994). Self and collective: Cognition and social context. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(5): 454–463. Van der Merwe, J.C. & van Reenen, D. (2016). Transformation and legitimation in post-apartheid universities: Reading discourses from ‘Reitz’. Bloemfontein: Sun Press. Wright, S. & Baray, G. (2012). Models of social change in social psychology: Collective action or prejudice reduction? Conflict or harmony? In J. Dixon and M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zagefka, H. (2018). Triadic intergroup relations: Studying situations with an observer, an actor, and a recipient of behavior. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3(1): 62–74. Zihindula, G., Meyer-Weitz, A., & Akintola, O. (2017). Lived experiences of Democratic Republic of Congo refugees facing medical xenophobia in Durban, South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 52(4): 458–470.

243

17 SENTIMENTS OF THE DISPOSSESSED Emotions of resilience and resistance Colin Wayne Leach and Fouad Bou Zeineddine

Inequality organized along the lines of group membership is a central feature of many societies (for a review, see Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). In addition to the material (income, wealth, health, environment) and political (power, status, access) detriments of being disadvantaged, those lower in societal hierarchies are often socially devalued as well (for reviews, see Bulhan, 1985; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). One arm of the work in psychology on stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination focuses on their possible psychological effects on the disadvantaged (for reviews, see Bulhan, 1985; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001;Vollhardt, 2020). Another arm of the work in psychology focuses on the ways in which stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination alter the psychology of the societally advantaged. In addition to examining topics such as desired dominance, how power corrupts or blinds, and pride in privilege, theory and research also examines topics such as guilt and shame about advantage, anti-prejudice and egalitarian orientation, and solidarity with the dispossessed (as amply shown in this volume). In this chapter, we focus on the sentiments of the dispossessed with a special interest in what emotion can tell us about the social and psychological meaning individuals and groups give to their societal disadvantage. Although it is true that societal disadvantage can sometimes lead the dispossessed to self-hatred or despondency (for discussions, see Bulhan, 1985; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001) this appears to be quite rare (for reviews, see Leach, 2020b; Leach and Livingstone, 2015; Montero & Sonn, 2009; Phillips, Adams, & Salters, 2015).The more common experiences of societal disadvantage and devaluation are resilience and resistance. This is not surprising given the overwhelming evidence that the most serious and sustained adversity causes little lasting psychological or social damage to individuals (for a discussion, see Leach, 2020b; Leach and Livingstone, 2015). Disadvantaged people – like all people – tend toward resilience and resistance. Emotion concepts characterize resilience and resistance in existential terms. Anger, shame, hope, optimism, and awe are not mere reactions to, or experiences of, societal devaluation. These emotions represent, in poignant and pregnant language, the ways in which the dispossessed give meaning to their “being-in-the-world” as Heidegger called it (see Lazarus, 1991; Leach, 2016).To describe someone as angry, for instance, is to characterize them as standing in active opposition to someone or something they believe is wrong. Anger suggests the action potential of one (or 244

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-17

Sentiments of the dispossessed

many) poised to confront believed injustice, as circumstances permit (for reviews, see Lazarus, 1991; Parkinson, Fischer, & Manstead, 2005). In contrast, shame suggests a weighty and sad look inward as a result of criticism from ourselves, or from others whose opinion we must consider.To be ashamed is to be moved to escape a klieg light of criticism either by denial or defense, or by creative destruction of the failed self to make room for a renewed and redeemed self (Gausel & Leach, 2011; Leach, 2016). Thus, in both shame and anger, one can see the revolutionary potential of emotion. These ways of being-in-the-world also point to how we wish to be in the world and, importantly, how we wish the world to be. Because societal devaluation is a social experience, shared to some degree by those who are members of a devalued category, we should think of the sentiments of the dispossessed as groupbased emotions (Iyer & Leach, 2008; Parkinson et  al., 2005; Smith & Mackie, 2015). That is, anger, shame, pride, awe about societal devaluation are emotions embedded in this particular group’s reality and experience. Like all emotions, group-based emotion is dynamic – it changes over time in an ever-evolving life cycle of meaning making and doing (Lazarus, 1991). Part of this dynamism comes from the fact that emotion is a form of being-in-the-world.Thus, emotion shifts and changes as the ups and downs, ins and outs, of societal devaluation are experienced by the dispossessed in everyday feeling, thinking, and action. This vitality of emotion – its constant energy, whether a smolder or an inferno – is what makes emotion similar to the closely related concepts of cognitive (re)appraisal, stress, and coping (see Lazarus, 1991). In the sentiments of the dispossessed, we can see the inevitable, undeniable, human capacity to be a subjective agent in an objective world of existential threats and challenges (see Leach, 2020b). To feel anger, pride, awe, despair is to be a person even in the face of a curtain of doom aiming to deny one’s very personhood. In this way, the emotions of resilience and resistance are the emotions of life for the dispossessed. We begin the discussion below by first reviewing relevant theory and research on empathy, the quintessential social-emotional process that connects people to each other psychologically. We then discuss unpleasant emotional states, with special attention to anger and shame. This is followed by a discussion of pleasant emotional states, such as pride, hope, and optimism. We also briefly cover transcendent emotions, such as awe, and the place of (sardonic, “black”) humor. We close by drawing out some general themes and concerns and identify potentially interesting and important areas for future work.

Empathy Empathy can be thought of as a set of psychological processes underlying the vicarious experience of others’ states (Eisenberg, Eggum, & Di Gunta, 2010; Iacoboni, 2009). It can be experienced as either pleasant or unpleasant (Condon & Feldman-Barrett, 2013) and it can be understood as either a temporary state or a more stable trait (for a review, see Eisenberg et al., 2010). Empathy can lead to a variety of emotions and motivations, including compassion, distancing, and helping (de Waal, 2008; Eisenberg et  al., 2010). One important empathy-related emotion is compassion – the “feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help” (for a review, see Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010).This can also be called sympathy. Most research has examined how empathic processes can improve intergroup relations by reducing dominant groups’ prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination against subordinate groups (e.g., Vescio, Sechrist, & Paolucci, 2003; for a review, see Batson & Ahmad, 2009). And, protest by members of advantaged groups in solidarity with the disadvantaged has been related 245

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine

to empathy-related emotions such as sympathy and compassion (e.g., Lindenberg, Fetchenhauer, Flache, Buunk, 2006; Stephan & Finlay, 1999; Mallet, Huntsinger, Sinclair, and Swim, 2008; Saab, Tausch, Spears, & Cheung, 2015; Thomas, McGary, & Mavor, 2009; for a review, see Leach, Snider, & Iyer, 2002). Interestingly, however, the vicarious experience of disadvantage can also cause aversive distress in the advantaged. Therefore, empathy can also prevent solidarity with the disadvantaged (Leach et al., 2002; for general discussions, see Eisenberg et al., 2010; Goetz et al., 2010). Putting oneself in another’s shoes is no guarantee that one will feel compassionate or wish to help. One may rather wish to exit poorer shoes for the safety and comfort of one’s own footwear (for reviews, see de Waal, 2008; Iyer & Leach, 2008; Leach et al., 2002). In addition to potentially causing aversive distress in the advantaged, efforts to reduce prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination by bringing the societally advantaged into contact with the disadvantaged can undermine a sense of grievance among the disadvantaged partly by facilitating their empathy, understanding, and liking for the advantaged (e.g., Hasan-Aslih, Pliskin, van Zomeren, Halperin, & Saguy, 2019; for discussions, see Dixon, Durrheim, Thomae, Tredoux, Kerr, & Quayle, 2015; Wright & Lubensky, 2009). Thus, empathy between groups divided by enmity and/or structural inequality is no panacea. As a process of perspective taking and vicarious experience, empathy is a possible route to a number of different emotions and motivations whose effects on the relations between advantaged and disadvantaged can be best understood in the context of the nature of their (competitive, cooperative, expropriative and dependent) relationship (see Leach, 2016; Leach et al., 2002). In principle, empathic processes can also affect the relations between societally disadvantaged groups, perhaps by providing a basis for political solidarity and coalition-building. For instance, Craig and Richeson (2016) argued that noticing other groups’ structural disadvantage can sometimes enhance identification, empathy, and coalitional thinking among members of disadvantaged in-groups. And, studies show that highlighting similar experiences of discrimination (Cortland et al., 2017) or similarity in general (Burson & Godfrey, 2018) increased positivity and support between minority groups. For instance, Cortland et al. (2017) showed that highlighting shared societal devaluation experiences can increase empathy across identity dimensions, and argue that this closeness based on shared experience increases the likelihood of coalitional attitudes and behaviors forming. This is consistent with a wide range of evidence that (physical, psychological and social) similarity enhances empathic responding between parties (see Batson & Ahmad, 2009; de Waal, 2008; Eisenberg et  al., 2010). Similarity, however, has its limits. Craig and Richeson (2014) found that racial minorities who attended to racism against their in-group had increased sympathy for and identification with other racial minorities, but were less positive toward sexual minorities. And, Burson and Godfrey (2018) found that minority group members did not display inter-minority support for a minority group that was believed to be less disadvantaged than their own. In fact, the belief that one minority group was less disadvantaged appeared to fuel competitiveness, rather than solidarity, between these groups.

Intra-group empathy In addition to being important to inter-group relations with advantaged, and other disadvantaged, groups, empathy among the dispossessed may also operate in important ways within the group. Here too empathy is a double-edged sword that can either help or harm, depending on the emotional experience generated and the relational context between the parties involved. Empathic emotional contagion or mirroring, as well as empathic distress, may be expected to produce unpleasant and aversive emotional states that individuals wish to avoid by distancing themselves

246

Sentiments of the dispossessed

from the distress of fellow members of their disadvantaged group (e.g., Goetz et  al., 2010). Theoretically, such distress and distancing should reduce social support, cooperation, and collective mobilization among disadvantaged in-groups. On the other hand, there is ample evidence in the literature that empathy for fellow members of a disadvantaged in-group can empower individuals socially and politically. Indeed, empathic concern for fellow in-group members who also suffer the effects of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination may be a central route by which members of disadvantaged groups come to form a sense of collective grievance (Iyer & Leach, 2008; Parkinson et  al., 2005; Smith & Mackie, 2015). It is this shared sense of grievance that is a psychological basis for collective resistance to disadvantage (for a review, see van Zomeren, Leach, & Spears, 2012). More specifically, Rucker, Galinsky, and Magee (2018) argued that social support and communion with in-group members are potential sources of resilience among the disadvantaged whose lower societal power may facilitate empathic processing. In the case of social class, for example, Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, and Keltner (2012) argued that lower-class individuals are more attuned to others’ emotions and thus more compassionate in response to others’ suffering. They explain that limited status and resources encourage the use of empathy and communal cooperation as a way to cope with societal disadvantage. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that individuals with low power are more emotionally empathic, more compassionate, and affiliative in response to others’ distress (e.g., van Kleef et al., 2008). Some qualitative research on political movements identifies a kind of “transformative” empathy between victims of prejudice and discrimination that appears to operate in similar ways.Transformative empathy for victims of system mistreatment (e.g., the sexual harassment and assault of subordinate women) appears to enhance resilience by increasing victims’ social support for each other. One can see this in operation in the #MeToo movement where women create opportunities for mutual social support by identifying themselves as survivors of gender oppression that would have remained secret otherwise (Rodino-Colocino, 2018). The empathy that can operate within societally disadvantaged groups to create social and political solidarity is similar to what has been examined as “trait” empathy in psychology more generally. For example, Decety and Yoder (2016) showed that individuals higher on trait empathic concern and perspective taking are more sensitive to injustice toward others. This was not the case for individuals more susceptible to emotional contagion. And, Cosley, McCoy, Saslow, and Epel (2010) found that trait compassion lowers social stress reactivity when social support is available. In a similar vein, studies show that compassion training increases psychological resilience to the witnessing of others’ suffering. In addition, compassion training increases the efficacy of altruistic responses aimed at reducing others’ suffering (e.g., Klimecki, Leiberg, Lamm, & Singer, 2012; Singer & Klimecki, 2014). In sum, intra-group empathy may enhance resilience to stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination, as well as facilitate intra-group cooperation in dealing with the societally advantaged and systems of inequality that promote stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Nevertheless, more direct and rigorous tests of these ideas are needed. More generally, future research would do well to focus on the intra-group dynamics of empathy among the societally devalued and disadvantaged.

Unpleasant emotions For a long time, many scholars across the disciplines presumed that the societally disadvantaged and devalued would experience their position mainly in the form of the unpleasant emotional

247

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine

states of frustration and sadness (i.e., dejection, depression and relative deprivation). And, in concert with this, it was often assumed that such frustration and sadness would eat away at the disadvantaged psychologically, leading them to feel inferior (for discussions, see Bulhan, 1985; Leach, 2020b; Montero & Sonn, 2009; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). This widespread view of internalized stigma is partly based on a longstanding view of societal devaluation as leading to shame (see Gausel & Leach, 2011). Not surprisingly, it has also been argued that the psychological health of the societally devalued suffers as a result, in the form of low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and PTSD, (for a review, see Leach & Livingstone, 2015). These views of societal devaluation as causing psychological dysfunction remain quite popular despite the very limited evidence in support and the substantial evidence against (for reviews, see Leach, 2020b; Leach & Livingstone, 2015). Of course there is every reason to expect that the devalued will be upset by the fact of their devaluation. Indeed, emotion theory presumes that unpleasant emotions are the experience of an unwanted or undesirable state of affairs (Lazarus, 1991; Parkinson et al., 2005). Emotion theory does not, however, presume that unpleasant emotions are inherently debilitating. Indeed, many approaches to emotion argue that unpleasant states can signal the need for those suffering them to alter their aversive relationship to the world so as to alter their aversive emotional state (see Lazarus, 1991). In general, it is wise not to presume that unpleasant emotional states are socially or psychologically debilitating or otherwise counter-productive. Both unpleasant and pleasant emotional states can lead to counter-productive – or even destructive – motivation and action (for discussions, see Leach, 2016, 2020a). In fact, the social and psychological implications of unpleasant states are not inherent to their unpleasantness. We illustrate this broader point in a discussion of two emotions that are thought to be among the most common ways to experience societal devaluation – shame and anger.

Shame In the social sciences, and to some degree psychology, shame has long been considered the quintessential experience of devaluation by others (for a review, see Gausel & Leach, 2011). It has long been thought to be the psychological consequence of social scorn, rebuke, and rejection. And thus shame is widely thought of as the painful and debilitating internalization of social stigma; an intense rejection and scorn of the self, resulting from one’s agreement with other’s views of one as inferior and inadequate (see Bulhan, 1985; Gausel & Leach, 2011; Lazarus, 1991). The thing is, shame is not particularly common among the disadvantaged or among anyone (for a review, see Gausel & Leach, 2011). Also, shame is not necessarily debilitating psychologically. Although dominant western, individualistic, views of emotion presume that intensely unpleasant states such as shame undermine the self and prevent constructive action, this is based on a far-reaching but exaggerated assumption that human beings are inherently hedonistic – pleasure loving and pleasure seeking (Leach, 2020a). Other views of humanity emphasize the productive power of prolonged and profound self-criticism as an essential means to self-improvement (for discussions, see Allen & Leach, 2018; Leach, 2020a). Shame in response to other’s scorn or rejection needs not be internalized and thus need not produce psychological damage (Gausel & Leach, 2011). In fact, many societally devalued groups have come to identify with the marks once used to stigmatize their identity and now use them to mark the absurdity of their societal devaluation (see Bulhan, 1985). Think of “Slut walks,” “Black is beautiful,” “#Me too,” and the re-appropriation of derogatory labels such as “bitch,” “white trash,” “queer” and “negro.” In such instances we see psychological and social resistance enacted by taking insults meant to provoke shame and turning them into expressions of pride (see Leach 248

Sentiments of the dispossessed

& Livingstone, 2015). Such assertions of a devalued identity may be seen as resilient and resistant being-in-the-world (e.g., “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!).

Anger Anger is another unpleasant emotion that has long been thought to be prevalent among the societally disadvantaged and devalued. But, here too there is a history of misunderstanding the nature and consequences of the sentiments of the dispossessed.Their anger has often been framed as untoward and combustible – the kind of anger that supposedly leads to violent revenge in the form of riots and rebellions (see Bulhan, 1985; Leach, 2008; Montero & Sonn, 2009). There is something to this of course. Anger is a state of agitation. It is about an unwanted and undeserved state of affairs that one wishes to confront or otherwise alter (Lazarus, 1991; Parkinson et al., 2005). Thus, it makes sense that the dispossessed should be angry at their position in society and want to confront it somehow. This may make anger seem dangerous. And that is why a great deal of popular and scholarly thinking on the anger of the oppressed characterizes it as illegitimate and misdirected rage at the advantaged and at the world at large (for a review, see Leach, 2008). The anger of the societally disadvantaged and devalued has been called envy, jealousy, ressentiment, bitterness, vengeful anger, and shame-rage. These states of frustrated, embittered, anger are thought to provoke a destructive desire in the oppressed to tear down society and those advantaged in it. Many bloody revolutions, rebellions, and riots have been attributed to so-called explosions of such “rage against the machine.” These include the French Revolution, the Haitian revolution, slave rebellions, and anti-colonial radical resistance in North Africa, in South Africa, and across the globe. If one listens closely to popular media one can hear echoes of this discourse in recent diagnoses of the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, the so-called Arab Spring, and Gezi Park/Taksim Square. Characterizing the anger of the oppressed as vengeful and dangerous is a surefire way to challenge its moral and political legitimacy. After all, revenge is not a decent reason to rebel. Right? By explaining anger at societal disadvantage and devaluation as a product of vengeful envy or inferiority, one directly undermines claims that the anger is a righteous one rooted in desire for justice (Leach, 2008). There is, of course, a different take on the anger of the oppressed. Across the social sciences, anger at societal disadvantage and devaluation has been examined as central to collective grievance and protest, variously called moral outrage, righteous indignation, or relative deprivation (see Iyer & Leach, 2008; Leach, 2008; van Zomeren et al., 2012). Prevailing models of the motivation to protest oppression view anger as an important route paralleled by a more practical judgment of what is actually possible or likely to be achieved by protest that is called efficacy (for a review, see van Zomeren et al., 2012).This is an “anger of hope,” in contrast to the vengeful “anger of despair” discussed above (see Leach, 2008, 2016). Righteous anger is potentially dangerous for societal systems of injustice as the agitated state of outrage is what social and political movements seek to direct to aims of redress or revolution. Many movements have first sought to rile up righteous anger in the dispossessed as a necessary psychological step toward social and political organizing and action (for reviews, see Bulhan, 1985; Leach & Livingstone, 2015; Montero & Sonn, 2009). Central to this mission is the social sharing of critical views of societal injustice and disapproval of it in the form of a morally outraged anger (Bulhan, 1985). By sharing sentiments such as anger, the dispossessed come to share a collective way of being-in-the-world that begins to identify a better world to be. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore that this solidarity in anger must often be paralleled by a solidarity in plan and purpose if the oppressed are to effectively strategize on what to do with the anger they feel (for a review, see van Zomeren et al., 2012; see also Bulhan, 1985). 249

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine

Pleasant emotions Theory and research on emotion generally tend to focus on unpleasant states and to say less about pleasant states, which also tend to be less differentiated from each other conceptually and empirically (for reviews, see Lazarus, 1991; Leach, 2020a; Parkinson et al., 2005). This bias is based to some degree in the widely shared (functionalist) view that unpleasant states have greater importance to human adjustment to danger or adversity (for reviews, see Lazarus, 1991; Parkinson et al., 2005; for discussions, see Allen & Leach, 2018; Leach, 2020a). As a result, there is also much less theory and research on the pleasant emotional experiences of membership in a societally disadvantaged or devalued group (for reviews, see Leach, 2020b; Vollhardt, 2020), despite the obvious reality of it (Allen & Leach, 2018; Leach & Livingstone, 2015). This may be due, in part, to somewhat implicit assumptions that emotions such as shame and anger are more characteristic of the experience of societal devaluation than pleasant emotions such as joy, pride, awe, or inspiration (see Allen & Leach, 2018; Bulhan, 1985; Leach & Livingstone, 2015; Montero & Sonn, 2009).Whatever their actual frequency, transcendent emotions such as awe, flow, or peak experiences are interesting and potentially important existential and experiential possibilities for the societally devalued (see Allen & Leach, 2018; Leach & Livingstone, 2015; McDonald, Wearing, & Ponting, 2009). Humor is another intriguing state for the dispossessed as it may provide an important alternative to desperation and despondency, perhaps through sardonic, sarcastic, or sassy jokes that critique the absurdity of arbitrary injustices through a wry smile or quiet chuckle (see Leach & Livingstone, 2015; Riquelme et al, 2019; Sørensen, 2017). Play has its place in the “art of resistance,” as Oshinski (2018) argued in the case of Palestinian graffiti on the Israeli border wall isolating the West Bank. As seen below, most existing work on pleasant emotions among the dispossessed has focused on pride, hope, and optimism. These states have important links to the less explored state of inspiration whereby the societally disadvantaged are encouraged – by someone or something – to imagine a better world not yet seen. One can think of the continuing inspiration the Haitian revolution, for example, has provided oppressed people around the world since its unexpected success culminated in independence in 1804 (see Hallward, 2004). The inspired act of imagining alternatives to disadvantage and devaluation is essential to expecting better treatment and outcomes (e.g., Cropanzano & Folger, 1989; Kalisch, Müller, & Tüscher, 2014). And, in many ways, imagined alternatives for the better can feed psychological resilience, problem solving, solution generation, coping, and resistance (for a discussion, see Bou Zeineddine, 2015). Thus, it is important to see inspiration as potentially embedded in the seemingly less imaginative emotions of pride, hope, and optimism.

Pride Simply put, pride is the opposite of shame. Thus, pride is a pleasantly experienced, self-focused, emotion deriving from the belief that an achievement can be attributed to one’s abilities, efforts (see Lazarus, 1991; Tracy & Robins, 2014) or moral benevolence (Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007). Importantly, pride can arise not just from one’s individual achievements or identity, but also from a collective’s success, power, status, or identity (Leach et  al., 2002; Parkinson et  al., 2005). Williams and DeSteno (2008) argued that pride motivates action, incentivizing perseverance in difficult or costly tasks aimed at developing skills and status. If collective pride functions in a similar way, then there should be evidence that collective pride provides a means of coping with the difficulties encountered when facing prejudice and discrimination, and that such pride motivates action oriented toward challenging prejudice and discrimination. 250

Sentiments of the dispossessed

Bannon, McKay, Chacko, Rodriguez, and Cavaleri (2009) found that when African American parents more strongly reinforced cultural pride, their children exhibited lower anxiety, and were buffered against mental health risk factors. Likewise, a qualitative study in Canada showed that Salvadoran mothers saw the need to strengthen their daughters’ ethnic pride as a way to resist discrimination and that fostering such pride helped their daughters cope with acculturation pressures and discrimination (Carranza, 2007). In another qualitative study, Singh and McKleroy (2011) showed that expressions of collective pride among transgender people of color were central to resilience in response to traumatic life events (including hate crimes). In a quantitative study, Ratner, Halim, and Amodio (2013) found that greater in-group pride among Black and Latina women in the United States was associated with higher basal dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a hormone taken as a marker of resilience to stressors. Likewise, Lee (2005) found that Korean Americans’ ethnic pride enhanced psychological resilience in the form of enhanced selfesteem. Ethnic pride also enhanced psychological resilience by minimizing the effects of believed discrimination on depressive symptoms and social disconnectedness. Pride may not only promote resilience; it may also motivate resistance. As in individual pride, collective pride plays a role in building determination, persistence, and agency to oppose societal devaluation in groups (e.g., Sabucedo & Vilas, 2014). Pearlman (2013) argued that pride promotes optimistic assessments of future outcomes, risk acceptance, and feelings of personal efficacy. She showed how feelings of pride can encourage protest by oppressed people, in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, even in unfavorable conditions. Tausch and Becker (2013) went further by presenting evidence that in-group pride actually increased belief in the in-group’s efficacy to change their conditions. And, such efficacy fueled future intentions to protest collectively for societal improvement. While many of the above studies were conducted with European students protesting educational cuts or costs, there is also some evidence that pride is important for structurally disadvantaged groups resisting prejudice and discrimination. Krane, Barber, and McClung (2002) found that the increased pride and sense of belonging LGBT athletes felt at participating in the Gay Games motivated subsequent desire to challenge LGBT discrimination. Collective pride then may empower members of disadvantaged groups and increase their motivation for collective opposition and protest. Thus, pride, like compassion, may be an important part of how members of disadvantaged groups cope with prejudice and discrimination, and pride may motivate and mobilize resistance to discrimination and other forms of societal devaluation. Although not always focused explicitly on the emotion of pride, a great deal of work on strong and “positive” identification with societally devalued groups also shows it to be important to psychological resilience and to social and political resistance (for a review, see Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2004). Whether called evaluation, affirmation, or (private) self-regard, satisfaction with membership in a societally devalued group is linked to a wide variety of psychological and physical health indicators as well as to a commitment to improving the position of the group through protest or other collective action (for reviews, see Ashmore et al., 2004; Leach et al., 2008). Interestingly, a growing body of work suggests that social and political commitment to a societally devalued group also serves to reinforce and extend pride and other aspects of positive identity in what may operate as a virtuous circle of dynamic reinforcement (see van Zomeren et al., 2012). As far as we are aware there is little to no research examining the way that pride in membership in a societally devalued group may promote social or political solidarity with other disadvantaged groups (for reviews, see Ashmore et al., 2004; Leach et al., 2008). However, there is reason to expect that pride in group membership may feed solidarity especially when it is accompanied by pride in an overarching, potentially politicized, category that includes the disadvantaged 251

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine

in-group together with similarly situated out-groups (e.g., the dispossessed, the global south, the 99%, the workers or proletariat). Another interesting avenue for future theory and research is the potential for pride among the advantaged to be a basis for solidarity with the disadvantaged. In a series of experiments, van Leeuwen and colleagues exposed Dutch students to reminders of guilt-inducing Dutch complicity with the Nazis or with pride-inducing Dutch resistance (e.g., van Leeuwen, van Dijk, & Kaynak, 2013). Pride at in-group resistance to oppression led to greater support for the disadvantaged out-groups most hurt by the Nazis, such as Jews. Given the importance of believed morality to in-group pride (Leach et al., 2007), future work might examine the possibility that advantaged groups who feel a morality-based pride for being benevolent are more committed to helping the disadvantaged and to challenging unfair systems that produce societal inequality. Groups that define themselves in terms of a moral commitment to justice or kindness appear to experience this sort of pride in addressing, and redressing, the harm of societal inequality (e.g., Doctors without Borders, Red Crescent Society, Oxfam).

Hope and optimism Generally, hope is defined as an emotionally pleasant motivational state deriving from the belief that one has the agency to successfully pursue a goal and a pathway available to achieve it (Snyder, Cheavens, & Michael, 2005; cf. Lazarus, 1999).This is why some scholars use the terms hope and optimism interchangeably (e.g., Bruininks & Malle, 2005). Here, we define hope as the pleasant emotional state accompanying the aspiration and expectation that negative circumstances can and will change (Bar-Tal, Halperin, & de Rivera, 2007), and we define optimism as the more stable predisposition to feel hopeful regardless of circumstances (Scheier & Carver, 1992). There are clear links between hope, optimism, and religious, spiritual, or other faith that provides a basis for aspiration and expectation that the future will be better than the past or present (e.g., Ciarrocchi, Dy-Liacco, & Deneke, 2008). Hope and optimism have long been linked to resilience, coping, and empowerment (e.g., Lazarus, 1999; Zimmerman, 1990), as well as more recently to protest and effort at societal improvement (e.g., Cohen-Chen, van Zomeren, & Halperin, 2015; Sabucedo & Vilas, 2014; Wlodarczyk, Basabe, Paez, & Zumeta, 2017). Very few studies, however, have examined hope specifically among the societally disadvantaged in response to discrimination and prejudice. Nevertheless, Singh and McKleroy (2011) identified hope for the future as an important theme in the ways that transgender people of color express resilience to extreme discrimination and other traumatic experiences. Hope has also been linked to better coping with the stressors of racism for African Americans (Adams et al., 2003). Danoff-Burg, Prelow, and Swenson (2004) found that African American college students with high hope coped more efficaciously with race-related stressors and used more problem-focused coping than those with low hope. ShorterGooden (2004) also identified faith as one of the main ways in which African-American women cope with sexism and racism. In their review of LGB individuals’ resilience to societal devaluation, prejudice, and discrimination, Hill and Gunderson (2015) identified general hopefulness, optimism, and hopes for the future as factors likely to increase reliance on positive emotion regulation strategies and to increase resilience. Kaiser, Major, and McCoy (2004) found that (both men and women) optimists appraised sexism directed against their gender as less stressful and believed they had more resources for coping with it, compared to pessimists. Overall, there seems to be ample evidence that hope, optimism, and related constructs such as faith and future orientation, increase resilience to societal devaluation. Hope is also very relevant for resistance to societal devaluation. Social and political opposition to societal devaluation requires hope that societal improvement is possible, even when the odds 252

Sentiments of the dispossessed

seem to be against it (e.g., Wlodarczyk et al., 2017; for a general discussion, see van Zomeren et  al., 2012). Collective hope, then, is an important foundation for social movements toward social equality (e.g., Aminzade & McAdam, 2001; Greenaway, Cichoka, van Veelen, Likki, & Branscombe, 2016). It is as yet unclear where exactly hope fits in existing psychological process models of resistance, but it seems that hope fuels opposition to disadvantage and devaluation through its impact on a shared sense of collective efficacy (e.g., Cohen-Chen & van Zomeren, 2018; Greenaway et al., 2016; Wlodarczyk et al., 2017). Unlike efficacy, however, hope can in principle be maintained, perhaps even magnified, when the odds of improvement appear poor (e.g., Wlodarczyk et  al., 2017; for a general discussion, see Lazarus, 1991). This suggests hope as an alternative motivator of resistance to oppression in the face of circumstances that undermine a sense of efficacy to alter unfortunate circumstances (see Allen & Leach, 2018; Leach & Livingstone, 2015). It may be important to note that the relationship between hope and resistance may be nuanced, and, at times, delicate. This is illustrated in four recent studies by Hasan-Aslih et al. (2019). They found that African Americans’ and Israeli-Palestinians’ hope for equality tended to be positively associated with motivation to protest for it, as previously found in many other contexts. On the other hand, hope for harmony between groups was negatively associated with protest motivation among those weakly identified with their in-group.Thus, it seems that context, the specific goals set by disadvantaged groups, and the strength of in-group identification all determine whether hope can empower groups to resist their disadvantage and/or devaluation. This is an important reminder that attempts to understand the role of emotion in the experience of, and reaction to, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination must take seriously the nature of the oppression and the wide variety of ways that emotions can be experienced and expressed as individuals and groups figure out how to best manage their position in light of their material, psychological, and social circumstances (Leach, 2016;2020; Leach & Livingstone, 2015).

Conclusion Unpleasant emotions such as anger, shame and distress are not necessarily reactive, aggressive and/or (self)-destructive and can in fact be constructive, based on the nature of the relationship between groups (Leach, 2016). Likewise, pleasant emotions – such as pride (de Figuereido & Elkins, 2003) or hope (Hasan-Aslih et al., 2019) – are not necessarily constructive and can be destructive to the self, ingroup or outgroups. Societal devaluation is a complex phenomenon, as are responses to it (for a review, see Leach, 2020b). Negative reactions and direct confrontation are important aspects of how people react to such devaluation, but societal devaluation can elicit increased motivation for counter-stereotypic behavior or for achievement generally (Carter, 2008), increased solidarity with others in similar positions (e.g., Cortland et al., 2017), or can alternatively increase prejudice or discrimination (e.g., toward third party groups, scapegoats, other targets of devaluation; e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014). The evidence we have reviewed emphasizes that prejudice and discrimination elicit emotions and that these emotions can facilitate the empowerment of devalued groups through resilience or resistance, and not simply lead to distress and negative outcomes. However, very little research examines the role of preexisting emotional states on the perceptions, appraisals, and responses to prejudice and discrimination (for a discussion, see Parkinson et al., 2005). This is a potentially important area for future research. Another important issue deserving of further theory and research is the effect of societal devaluation on disadvantaged groups’ treatment of groups above and below them in the hierarchy (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014; Rucker & Richeson, this volume; Wright & Lubensky, 2009). 253

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine

The ways in which the experience of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination can facilitate or thwart mistreatment of the worse off seems especially important. This question is being examined across psychology under the rubric of collective victimization (Vollhardt, 2020). But, there remains a great deal of work to be done on this topic. Close attention to the (many) sentiments of the dispossessed enables us to examine and understand the quality of the experience of societal disadvantage and devaluation. As agentic, existential, socially embedded, states of being-in-the-world, emotions are indispensable concepts (and linguistic markers) of human experience. However, emotions cannot be fully understood outside of the context in which they arise (Leach, 2016; Parkinson et al. 2005). The sentiments of the dispossessed that we have discussed here are about societal disadvantage and devaluation and thus they must be understood as examples of resilience and resistance (occasionally resignation) to disadvantage and devaluation shared by a category of people whose existence is at least partly defined by the limits and possibilities of oppression.

References Adams, V.H., Rand, K.L., Kahle, K., Snyder, C.R., Berg, C., King, E.A., & Rodrigues-Hanley, A. (2003). African Americans’ hope and coping with racism stressors. In R. Jacoby, & G. Keinan (eds.), Between stress and Hope: From a disease-centered to a Health-centered perspective (pp. 235–249). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Allen, A.E. & Leach, C.W. (2018). The psychology of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “creative maladjustment” at societal injustice. Journal of Social Issues, 74: 317–336. Aminzade, R. & McAdam, D. (2001). Emotions and contentious politics. In R. Aminzade, J.A. Goldstone, D. McAdam, E.J. Perry, W.H. Sewell, S. Tarrow, & C. Tilly (eds.), Silence and voice in the study of contentious politics (pp. 14–50). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Ashmore, R.D., Deaux, K., & McLaughlin-Volpe,T. (2004). An organizing framework for collective identity: Articulation and significance of multidimensionality. Psychological Bulletin, 130: 80–114. Bannon, W.M. Jr, McKay, M.M., Chacko, A., Rodriguez, J.A., & Cavaleri, M. Jr (2009). Cultural pride reinforcement as a dimension of racial socialization protective of urban African American child anxiety. Families in society, 90: 79–86. Bar-Tal, D., Halperin, E., & De Rivera, J. (2007). Collective emotions in conflict situations: Societal implications. Journal of Social Issues, 63: 441–460. Batson, C.D. & Ahmad, N.Y. (2009). Using empathy to improve intergroup attitudes and relations. Social Issues and Policy Review, 3: 141–177. Bou Zeineddine, F. (2015). Social mutualism as the psychology of alter-cultural praxis. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Connecticut. Bruininks, P. & Malle, B.F. (2005). Distinguishing Hope from optimism and related affective States. Motivation and Emotion, 29: 324–352. Bulhan, H.A. (1985). Frantz fanon and the psychology of oppression. New York, NY: Plenum. Burson, E. & Godfrey, E.B. (2018). The State of the Union: Contemporary interminority attitudes in the United States. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 40: 396–413. Carranza, M.E. (2007). Building resilience and resistance against racism and discrimination among Salvadorian female youth in Canada. Child & Family Social Work, 12: 390–398. Carter, D. (2008). Achievement as resistance: The development of a critical race achievement ideology among Black achievers. Harvard Educational Review, 78: 466–497. Ciarrocchi, J.W., Dy-Liacco, G.S., & Deneke, E. (2008) Gods or rituals? Relational faith, spiritual discontent, and religious practices as predictors of hope and optimism. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3: 120–136. Cohen-Chen, S. & van Zomeren, M. (2018).Yes we can? Group efficacy beliefs predict collective action, but only when hope is high. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 77, 50–59. Cohen-Chen, S., van Zomeren, M., & Halperin, E. (2015). Hope(lessness) and collective (in)action in intractable intergroup conflict. In E. Halperin & K. Sharvit (eds.), Peace psychology book series: Vol. 27. The social psychology of intractable conflict: Celebrating the legacy of Daniel Bar-Tal (Vol. 1, pp. 89–101). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

254

Sentiments of the dispossessed Condon, P. & Feldman-Barrett, L. (2013). Conceptualizing and experiencing compassion. Emotion, 13: 817. Cortland, C.I., Craig, M.A., Shapiro, J.R., Richeson, J.A., Neel, R., & Goldstein, N.J. (2017). Solidarity through shared disadvantage: Highlighting shared experiences of discrimination improves relations between stigmatized groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113: 547. Cosley, B.J., McCoy, S.K., Saslow, L.R., & Epel, E.S. (2010). Is compassion for others stress buffering? Consequences of compassion and social support for physiological reactivity to stress. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46: 816–823. Craig, M.A. & Richeson, J.A. (2014). Discrimination divides across identity dimensions: Perceived racism reduces support for gay rights and increases anti-gay bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55: 169–174. Craig, M.A. & Richeson, J.A. (2016). Stigma-based solidarity: Understanding the psychological foundations of conflict and coalition among members of different stigmatized groups. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25: 21–27. Cropanzano, R. & Folger, R. (1989). Referent cognitions and task decision autonomy: Beyond equity theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74: 293–299. Danoff-Burg, S., Prelow, H.M., & Swenson, R.R. (2004). Hope and life satisfaction in Black college students coping with race-related stress. Journal of Black Psychology, 30: 208–228. de Figueiredo Jr, R. J., & Elkins, Z. (2003). Are patriots bigots? An inquiry into the vices of in‐group pride. American Journal of Political Science, 47(1), 171–188. De Waal, F.B.M. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59: 279–300. Decety, J. & Yoder, K.J. (2016). Empathy and motivation for justice: Cognitive empathy and concern, but not emotional empathy, predict sensitivity to injustice for others. Social Neuroscience, 11: 1–14. Dixon, J., Durrheim, K., Thomae, M., Tredoux, C., Kerr, P., & Quayle, M. (2015). Divide and rule, unite and resist: Contact, collective action and policy attitudes among historically disadvantaged groups. Journal of Social Issues, 71: 576–596. Eisenberg, N., Eggum, N.D., & Di Gunta, L. (2010). Empathy-related responding: Associations with prosocial behavior, aggression, and intergroup relations. Social Issues Policy Review, 4(1): 143–180. Gausel, N. & Leach, C.W. (2011). Concern for self-image and social-image in the management of moral failure: Rethinking shame. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41: 468–478. Goetz, J.L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary Analysis and empirical review. Psychological bulletin, 136: 351. Greenaway, K.H., Cichocka, A., van Veelen, R., Likki, T., & Branscombe, N.R. (2016). Feeling hopeful inspires support for social change. Political Psychology, 37: 89–107. Hallward, P. (2004). Haitian inspiration. Radical Philosophy, 123: 2–7. Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E., & Saguy, T. (2019). A darker side of hope: Harmony-focused hope decreases collective action intentions among the disadvantaged. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45: 209–223. Hill, C.A. & Gunderson, C.J. (2015). Resilience of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in relation to social environment, personal characteristics, and emotion regulation strategies. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 2: 232. Iacoboni, M. (2009). Imitation, empathy, and mirror neurons. Annual review of psychology, 60, 653–670. Iyer, A. & Leach, C.W. (2008). Emotion in inter-group relations. European Review of Social Psychology, 19: 86–125. Kaiser, C.R., Major, B., & McCoy, S.K. (2004). Expectations about the future and the emotional consequences of perceiving prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30: 173–184. Kalisch, R., Müller, M.B., & Tüscher, O. (2014). A conceptual framework for the neurobiological study of resilience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38: 1–49. Klimecki, O.M., Leiberg, S., Lamm, C., & Singer, T. (2012). Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training. Cerebral cortex, 23: 1552–1561. Krane, V., Barber, H., & McClung, L.R. (2002). Social psychological benefits of gay games participation: A social identity theory explanation. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 14: 27–42. Lazarus, R.S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press. Lazarus, R. (1999). Hope:An emotion and a vital coping resource against despair. Social Research, 66, 653–678. Leach, C.W. (2008). Envy, inferiority and injustice: Three bases of anger about inequality. In R.H. Smith (ed.), Envy:Theory and research (pp. 94–116). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

255

C.W. Leach and F.B. Zeineddine Leach, C.W. (2016). The meta-theory of examining emotion in social relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 27: 113–116. Leach, C.W. (2020a). After motivational hedonism: Feeling bad can be good | Feeling good can be bad. In D. Bain, M. Brady, & J. Corns (eds.), The philosophy of suffering: Metaphysics, value, and normativity. London and New York: Routledge. Leach, C.W. (2020b). Ways of coping with collective victimization. In J. R. Vollhardt (ed.), The social psychology of collective victimhood. New York: Oxford University Press. Leach, C.W. & Livingstone, A. (2015). Contesting the meaning of inter-group disadvantage: Towards a psychology of resistance. Journal of Social Issues, 71: 614–632. Leach, C.W., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue:The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(2), 234–249. Leach, C.W., Snider, N., & Iyer, A. (2002). Poisoning the consciences of the fortunate: The experience of relative advantage and support for social equality. In I. Walker, & H.J. Smith (eds.), Relative deprivation: Specification, development, and integration (pp. 136–163). New York: Cambridge University Press. Leach, C.W., van Zomeren, M., Zebel, S., Vliek, M., Pennekamp, S.F., Doosje, B. … Spears, R. (2008). Group-level self-definition and self-investment: A hierarchical (multi-component) model of in-group identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95: 144–165. Lee, R.M. (2005). Resilience against discrimination: Ethnic identity and other-group orientation as protective factors for Korean Americans. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52: 36. Lindenberg, S., Fetchenhauer, D., Flache, A., & Buunk, B. (2006) Solidarity and prosocial behavior: A framing approach. In: Fetchenhauer D., Flache A., Buunk B., Lindenberg S. (eds.), Solidarity and prosocial behavior. Critical issues in social justice. Springer, Boston, MA. Mallett, R.K., Huntsinger, J.R., Sinclair, S., & Swim, J.K. (2008). Seeing through their eyes: When majority group members take collective action on behalf of an outgroup. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 11: 451–470. McDonald, M.G., Wearing, S., & Ponting, J. (2009). The nature of peak experience in wilderness. The Humanistic Psychologist, 37: 370–385. Montero, M. & Sonn, C.C. (eds.) (2009). Psychology of liberation: Theory and applications. New York, NY: Springer. Oshinski, C. (2018). The Art of Resistance: “Sumud,” Graffiti, and the Palestinian Contestation of the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank (Doctoral dissertation). Parkinson, B., Fischer, A.H., & Manstead, A.S.R. (2005). Emotion in social relations: Cultural, group, and interpersonal processes. New York: Psychology Press. Pearlman, W. (2013). Emotions and the microfoundations of the Arab uprisings. Perspectives on Politics, 11: 387–409. Phillips, N.L., Adams, G., & Salters, P. (2015). Beyond adaptation: Decolonizing approaches to coping with oppression. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1): 365–387. Ratner, K.G., Halim, M.L., & Amodio, D.M. (2013). Perceived stigmatization, ingroup pride, and immune and endocrine activity: Evidence from a community sample of Black and Latina women. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4: 82–91. Riquelme, A.R., Carretero-Dios, H., Megías, J.L., & Romero-Sánchez, M. (2019). Subversive humor against sexism: Conceptualization and first evidence on its empirical nature. Current Psychology, 1–14. Rodino-Colocino, M. (2018). Me too, #MeToo: Countering cruelty with empathy. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15: 96–100. Rucker, D.D., Galinsky, A.D., & Magee, J.C. (2018). The agentic–communal model of advantage and disadvantage: How inequality produces similarities in the psychology of power, social class, gender, and race. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 58: 71–125. Saab, R., Tausch, N., Spears, R., & Cheung, W.Y. (2015). Acting in solidarity: Testing an extended dual pathway model of collective action by bystander group members. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54: 539–560 Sabucedo, J.M. & Vilas, X. (2014). Anger and positive emotions in political protest. Universitas Psychologica, 13: 829–837. Scheier, M.F. & Carver, C.S. (1992). Effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being:Theoretical overview and empirical update. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16: 201–228. Shorter-Gooden, K. (2004). Multiple resistance strategies: How African American women cope with racism and sexism. Journal of Black Psychology, 30: 406–425.

256

Sentiments of the dispossessed Sidanius, J. & Pratto, F. (2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singer, T. & Klimecki, O.M. (2014). Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 24: R875–R878. Singh, A.A. & McKleroy,V.S. (2011). “Just getting out of bed is a revolutionary act” the resilience of transgender people of color who have survived traumatic life events. Traumatology, 17: 34–44. Smith, E.R., & Mackie, D.M. (2015). Dynamics of group-based emotions: Insights from intergroup emotions theory. Emotion Review, 7: 349–354. Snyder, C.R., Cheavens, J.S., & Michael, S.T. (2005). Hope theory: History and elaborated model. In J.A. Eliott (ed.), Interdisciplinary perspectives on hope (pp. 101–118). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers. Sørensen, M.J. (2017). Laughing on the way to social change: humor and nonviolent action theory. Peace & Change, 42: 128–156. Stellar, J.E., Manzo,V.M., Kraus, M.W., & Keltner, D. (2012). Class and compassion: Socioeconomic factors predict responses to suffering. Emotion, 12: 449–459. Stephan, W.G. & Finlay, K. (1999). The role of empathy in improving intergroup relations. Journal of Social issues, 55: 729–743. Tausch, N. & Becker, J.C. (2013). Emotional reactions to success and failure of collective action as predictors of future action intentions: A longitudinal investigation in the context of student protests in Germany. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52: 525–542. Thomas, E.F., McGarty, C., & Mavor, K.I. (2009). Transforming “apathy into movement”: The role of prosocial emotions in motivating action for social change. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13: 310–333. Tracy, J.L. & Robins, R.W. (2014). Conceptual and empirical strengths of the authentic/hubristic model of pride. Emotion, 14: 33–37. Van Kleef, G.A., Oveis, C.,Van Der Löwe, I., LuoKogan, A., Goetz, J., & Keltner, D. (2008). Power, distress, and compassion: Turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. Psychological science, 19: 1315–1322. van Leeuwen, E., van Dijk, W., & Kaynak, Ü (2013). Of saints and sinners: How appeals to collective pride and guilt affect outgroup helping. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 16: 781–796. van Zomeren, M., Leach, C.W., & Spears, R. (2012). Protesters as “passionate economists”: A dynamic dual pathway model of coping with collective disadvantage. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16: 180–199. Vescio, T.K., Sechrist, G.B., & Paolucci, M.P. (2003). Perspective taking and prejudice reduction: The mediational role of empathy arousal and situational attributions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33: 455–472 Vollhardt, J.R. (ed.) (2020). The social psychology of collective victimhood. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, L.A. & DeSteno, D. (2008). Pride and perseverance: The motivational role of pride. Journal of personality and social psychology, 94: 1007. Wlodarczyk, A., Basabe, N., Páez, D., & Zumeta, L. (2017). Hope and anger as mediators between collective action frames and participation in collective mobilization: The case of 15-M. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5: 200–223. Wright, S.C. & Lubensky, M.E. (2009). The struggle for social equality: Collective action versus prejudice reduction. In S. Demoulin, J.-P. Leyens, & J.F. Dovidio (eds.), Intergroup misunderstandings: Impact of divergent social realities (pp. 291–310). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Zimmerman, M.A. (1990).Toward a theory of learned hopefulness: A structural model analysis of participation and empowerment. Journal of Research in Personality, 24: 71–86.

257

PART V

The language of prejudice

18 ELITE POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS The language of social exclusion Katarina Pettersson and Martha Augoustinos

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. (Donald Trump, June 16, 2015) I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world. (President Trump, July 31, 2019) These two quotes from President Trump encapsulate a core feature of contemporary political discourse on race and ethnicity: the expression of negative sentiments or ‘othering’ of minorities and the denial of a prejudiced identity. The turn of the 21st century has witnessed a surge of public debate and polarization on matters pertaining to race, immigration, and refugees. Political discourse has been front and center of such debates as governments of all persuasions are entrusted to enact policies that address increasingly culturally and ethnically diverse societies.The recent rise of far-right populism around the world has changed the political contours of such debates: what were once considered socially unacceptable views, at least in the public sphere, now proliferate widely in public spaces. In this chapter, we examine how political discourse, defined as any text or talk by political leaders and/or actors, functions to justify and legitimate the social exclusion of minorities. This chapter will focus primarily on political discourse pertaining to refugees and asylum seekers: a diverse group of peoples who have attracted widespread political and media attention. In doing so we also aim to compare and contrast discourse on this polarizing issue from the far-right and from those purported to represent the political center to highlight differences and commonalities that can be seen in discursive practices of ‘othering’ across the political spectrum.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-18

261

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos

Racism at the top As Wodak and van Dijk (2000) demonstrated in their analysis of parliamentary discourse in six European states, ‘racism at the top’ is widespread and not limited to extreme political parties. It goes without saying that what our political leaders say matters. Having unfettered access to mass communication, their capacity to frame the parameters of debate and to exercise social influence is considerable. There is now a considerable body of research in discursive and rhetorical psychology on the ‘language of asylum’ and its rhetorical properties (Hanson-Easey & Augoustinos, 2010; Kirkwood, Goodman, McVittie, & McKinlay, 2016; Sakki & Pettersson, 2018). Whether these rhetorical appeals are effective in achieving their goals is of course another matter. Given the recent widespread adoption of restrictive asylum policies by liberal democratic governments and the support they have received from the wider polity, it is fair to conclude that despite vociferous criticism from some sections of society and international humanitarian agencies, this political rhetoric has been significantly successful.

Far-right political discourse In the introductory words to his influential book Fascists: A social psychological view of the National Front, Michael Billig concludes: ‘Regrettably attention must be given once more to the psychology of fascism (Billig, 1978, p. 1). Billig’s definition of fascism includes the elements of nationalism, anti-Marxism and communism, statism and the maintenance of capitalism, combined with an ideological expression of these features in a way that threatens the democratic society (Billig, 1978, pp. 6–7). Despite the fact that fascism as an ideology has been soundly repudiated in the aftermath of the Second World War, the National Front, founded in Britain in 1967, reached substantial electoral successes in the 1970s through its anti-immigration and anti-black propaganda. In his book, Billig analyzes the propaganda and ideology of the National Front as well as interviews with its members, demonstrating the ideological continuity of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis in the party’s ideology and actions. At the time of writing the present chapter, Billig’s concerns about the growing influence of fascist ideology seem once again to be timely. During the first two decades of the 21st century, populist radical right, anti-immigration, and nationalist parties have become major players on the national political arenas of countries across Europe and beyond, as well as within the European Parliament. In contrast to outright fascist movements discussed by Billig, these parties are difficult to place on a traditional socioeconomic left-right-wing scale. What unites them is an ideology that takes an authoritarian stance on sociocultural issues, expressed in terms of skepticism toward, for instance, sexual minority rights and gender equality, combined with a strong propagation for the maintenance of an ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation-state and traditional family values (e.g. Mudde, 2007). During the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, populist radical right parties vigorously resisted the reception of asylum seekers and refugees to their respective countries. Some statements were extreme enough to have individual politicians charged and prosecuted for criminal hate-speech. The parties’ hostile rhetoric has typically been directed at refugees and asylum seekers, particularly members of the Muslim community (e.g. Pettersson, 2019; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016; Verkuyten, 2013; Wood & Finlay, 2008). Such statements occasionally meet the requirements for criminal hate-speech, yet, as legal definitions of hate-speech vary and are always subject to interpretations, distinguishing between penal hate-speech and other forms of harmful, insulting speech is a difficult matter (Bader, 2014). Illustrative of such rhetoric, nevertheless, is the omission of references to individual human beings, and the replacement of these with talk about incompatible differences 262

Refugees and asylum seekers

between cultural and ideological differences between Western, liberal and democratic values on the one hand, and allegedly authoritarian, primitive and misogynist Islamic values, on the other (cf. Hopkins, Reicher, & Levine, 1997; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016; Verkuyten, 2013). As we shall see below, liberal-practical arguments are likewise a commonly deployed rhetorical trope in discourse of politicians of the center when arguing against asylum seeking and humanitarian immigration. The anti-Islamic discourse of far-right parties is often combined with anti-Semitic discourse, as studies for instance in the British context have demonstrated (e.g. Burke, 2018; Burke, Diba, & Antonopoulos, 2020). Further, far-right discourse carries elements of conspiracy theories, resting on the idea that liberal and leftist politicians, proponents of multiculturalism and established ‘mainstream’ media have joined together in a plot that threatens the existence of the sovereign nation-state and the ‘pure’ and ‘ordinary’ people (e.g. Pettersson, 2017; Wood & Finlay, 2008). The success of populist radical right parties can at least partly be explained by their focused and skilled use of social media channels for communicating their messages and mobilizing electoral support for their anti-immigration agendas (e.g. Atton, 2006; Bratten, 2005; Pettersson, 2017, 2019; 2020). In the online context, the threshold for expressing prejudiced and racist views may indeed be lower than in face-to-face situations, yet it does not render such expressions less harmful (Bilewicz & Soral, 2020).The societal and political consequences of the increased impact of the hostile rhetoric of populist radical right parties are multiple and complex. In the era of digitalization and the ‘hybrid media system’ (Chadwick, 2013), narratives of conspiracy and hate, directed at religious and cultural minority groups, easily and rapidly spread to other levels of society, including everyday discussions in online forums (e.g. Nortio, Niska, Renvik, & JasinskajaLahti, 2020). Furthermore, violent extremist groups may breathe new air in a discursive climate in which influential politicians engage in discriminatory rhetoric against minorities, as indicated by the increase in anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the Nordics. As we will demonstrate later, it has been argued that hostile discursive expressions online have spread to the political main stage, inflicting and sharpening the tone of parliamentary debates and speeches by national political leaders (cf. Sakki & Pettersson, 2018).

Populist radical right discourse on refugees and asylum seekers In what follows, contemporary populist radical right discourse will be discussed in further detail through case examples from the context of Finland, where the populist radical right Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) has become one of the major and most influential political parties during the 21st century. The quote below is that of Juha Mäenpää, Member of the Finnish Parliament as a representative of the Finns Party, on June 12, 2019. Mäenpää was discussing the so-called European refugee crisis and criticizing the Social Democratic-led government for insufficient measures to prevent excessive immigration and asylum seeking to Finland. In the following extract Mäenpää cites a precept from the government’s program that stipulates Finland’s commitment to protect declining environmental biodiversity, but uses the precept to suggest that the government is failing to protect the nation from immigrants and asylum seekers in the same way: This government programme has one good precept. It states:‘We will tackle the issue of invasive alien species more effectively through legislation and greater funding for preventive measures’. Unfortunately, this statement is placed in the wrong section.1 1 Finnish language original: ’Täällä hallitusohjelmassa on yksi hyvä kirjaus. Täällä lukee: Tehostetaan vieraslajien torjuntaa sekä lainsäädännöllä että torjuntatoimenpiteiden rahoitusta lisäämällä. Tämä valitettavasti lukee väärässä kohdassa’.

263

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos

Mäenpää’s statement caused a storm of criticism in social media, by other politicians and by human rights experts, as the general interpretation was that Mäenpää had compared asylum seekers to ‘invasive alien species’ that should be exterminated. Eventually, Mäenpää was accused of incitement to racial hatred, one of the forms of criminal hate-speech recognized by the constitution of Finland (Finnish Criminal Code, Chapter 11, Sections 10–11). Mäenpää’s case is special in the sense that in Finland, in order to secure the freedom of speech of MPs, the Prosecutor General cannot raise charges against an MP unless a 5/6 majority of parliament votes in agreement thereof. In practice, as the Finns Party holds 39 out of 200 seats in the Finnish Parliament, they alone could stop charges from being raised – a measure that the party leader Jussi Halla-aho indeed proclaimed that the party would take, as his statement was considered ‘indisputable and clear’ (Stenroos, Sundman, Hanhinen, & Uusitalo, 2020). In the end, as 121 MPs out of 200 voted in favour of raising charges, the 5/6 majority verdict was not reached, and no charges were raised against Mäenpää. Some months later, in spring 2020, at a conference in Estonia connecting European nationalists, the vice president of the Finns Party youth organization, Toni Jalonen, gave a speech in which he announced that he is ‘an ethnonationalist, traditionalist and a fascist (Raita-aho, Hemmilä, & Hartikainen, 2020). Again, public outburst ensued. This time, the Finns Party leadership reacted differently than in Mäenpää’s case, eventually deciding that the party cuts all ties with the youth organization and founds a new one that needs to abide by the principles stipulated by the party. Although not unequivocally condemning Jalonen’s statement, the party leader Halla-aho concluded that the Finns Party ‘does not tolerate Nazism or fascism’. Jalonen later resigned from his post but did not publicly take back or apologize for his statement. Both of these examples illuminate central aspects of contemporary radical right political discourse. First, through the diverging reactions of the party leadership in the two cases, they exemplify the rhetorical tightrope that radical right parties have to walk in order to cater to the more moderate as well as the radical factions of their voters (e.g. Hatakka, Niemi, & Välimäki, 2017). Second, they capture the complex and contested nature of the debate about the boundaries between hate-speech and freedom of speech; politics and law (e.g. Pettersson, 2019). Third, they show clearly that the norms against prejudice are starting to wane, as expressions of blatant racism are not necessarily unanimously condemned (Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Billig, 2002; Durrheim, Quayle, & Dixon, 2016; Goodman, 2008; Pettersson, 2017). Indeed, returning to the case of the Finnish Parliamentarian Juha Mäenpää discussed above, when prompted about his statement by journalists, Mäenpää denied that he had committed a crime. He concluded that comparing Muslim asylum seekers to foreign species is not criminal, that the context was that of ‘spontaneous discussion in parliament’, and that ‘what is said is said’ (Hakahuhta & Pinola, 2019). Such mitigating expressions serve to, in Potter’s (1996) terms, discursively minimize one’s actions or statements, constructing them as trivial incidents caused by the specificity of the situation (cf. Pettersson, 2019). Yet, Mäenpää’s obvious likening of asylum seekers to harmful, foreign species constitutes a prime example of animalistic dehumanization (Haslam, 2006). Such rhetoric, in which human attributes are denied to others, is often used in intergroup contexts with the purpose of constructing the ingroup as superior and the outgroup as harmful and dangerous, thus justifying aggression toward that outgroup. The present example is particularly troublesome, as it concerns a statement by a politician who holds a considerable position of power, against a vulnerable group. The second example presented above, where the young politician referred to himself as a fascist, renders Billig’s worries 40 years ago about the continuity of fascist ideology within farright parties strikingly timely. In an interview with the largest Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, where Jalonen was urged to explain himself, he said that he did not regret his statement, as he ‘think(s) of fascism as it was before the world war, an Italian-style strong national identity; 264

Refugees and asylum seekers

the people working together for their own good’. According to Jalonen, fascism ‘is a good ideology to support, although it has been associated with negative connotations’ (Raita-aho et al., 2020). The subsequent reactions of the party leadership – condemning fascism and Nazism per se, but not the individual politician and his statement – demonstrates the party’s attempt to manage the ideological dilemma (Billig et al., 1988) between perceived extremism, on the one hand, and a politics of moderation, on the other. As is the case with many populist radical right parties, members of the Finns Party, including Jalonen himself, have tight connections to nationalist and extreme-right movements (e.g. Sakki, Hakoköngäs & Pettersson, 2018). At the same time, the party has become part of the political establishment and is thus a central actor when it comes to preserving the democratic system. As previous research (e.g. Hatakka et al., 2017) has shown, in order to accommodate the vast ideological distribution of their (presumptive) voters into their public image, populist radical right parties in the 21st century need to react strategically to their members’ racist scandals. Further still, politicians who become prosecuted for criminal hate-speech are not necessarily discouraged from radical outbursts in the future. On the contrary, individual politicians have used their sentences strategically to represent themselves as martyrs who have stood up for freedom of speech and the rights of ‘the people’ against unwanted and dangerous ‘others’ (Pettersson, 2019). This allows convicted politicians to capitalize upon the concept of free speech, and to construct their sentence for hate-speech as an example of a ‘witch-hunt’ against those who dare to ‘speak the truth’ (see also,Wodak, 2015).This is particularly clearly demonstrated in the discourse of the Finns Party MP Sebastian Tynkkynen, who has twice been prosecuted for hate-speech (incitement to racial hatred and breach of the sanctity of religion) because of statements about Muslims he made in the social media that the court considered racist and slandering. On February 10th, 2020, Tynkkynen wrote on Facebook: ‘I will soon again have enough savings (in order to pay the fines if and when prosecuted for hate-speech) to further the political views of my voters in public. Finland in 2020’. Such formulations allow the speaker to present himself as the ‘Voice of reason’, a true champion of freedom of expression, who shows the courage to speak up about sensitive issues – the alleged danger to the Finnish people posed by Islam – in times when the ‘multicultural conspiracy’ of the government and leftist politicians tries to silence people like him (cf. Pettersson, 2019). The phenomenon of reframing criminal hate-speech as political victories has implications for the discursive climate – at the political as well as the societal level – and for the debate on the limits between hate-speech and freedom of speech. Further, it sheds light upon the fact that legal repercussions alone may not suffice to silence political expressions of racism and prejudice (cf. Bader, 2014; Pettersson 2019, 2020).

Political discourse of the center In contrast to explicit and blatant expressions of racism prevalent in far-right political discourse, mainstream political discourse on race and identity is significantly more subtle and oriented to increasing social taboos against open expressions of prejudice. It is primarily characterized by the language of tolerance, moderation, and balance. Nonetheless, as Wetherell and Potter (1992) argue, language does not have to be explicitly racist to have exclusionary and oppressive consequences. Indeed, talk that removes overt signs of racism in favor of language that is perceived as rational and reasonable possesses distinct advantages over classic racial tropes. Such talk is more difficult to challenge and prejudice can be strategically denied by the speaker. 265

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos

Discursive research has identified several ways in which minority groups can be constructed negatively in both text and talk without recourse to racialized language (see Augoustinos & Every, 2007). In this chapter, we focus specifically on just three of these discursive strategies that are typically found in mainstream political discourse: deracialization, invoking reason and rationality, and the use of liberal arguments for illiberal policies. It is important to emphasize at the outset that the discursive patterns we have singled out for special attention are not exhaustive nor do they appear independently from each other. As will be evident from the examples below, these features often appear together, are combined flexibly, and sometimes in contradictory ways to justify and explain.

Deracialization Reeves (1983) first identified deracialization as text and talk about minorities that were negative and exclusionary, but unlike far-right discourse did not contain language that was explicitly racist. In particular, racial categories were attenuated, eliminated, or substituted with other terms, and racial explanations were deemphasized or omitted altogether. Specifically, many researchers have noted that the category of ‘nation’ has become a convenient alternative to talking about ‘race’ and ethnicity and as such is a strategic way to sanitize political discourse about minorities (Barker, 1981; Gilroy, 1987; Reeves, 1983). Although nationalist discourse is typically associated with populist right-wing parties, it is also mobilized ubiquitously by parties of the center. As Anderson (1991, p. 3) has argued, ‘nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’. So entrenched is the notion of nationhood in everyday commonsense that Billig (1995) speaks of the ‘ideological consciousness of nationhood’. In contrast to traditional understandings of nationalism, which are typically associated with extreme political groups, Billig coins the term ‘banal nationalism’ to refer to everyday and ordinary practices of citizens, which serve to reproduce nation-states and national distinctions as unproblematic and ‘taken-for-granted’ realities. Talk of the nation and national sovereignty has become a pervasive and recurring feature of parliamentary discourse in western democracies on immigration (Van der Valk, 2003; van Dijk, 1993; 2000; Wodak & van Dijk, 2000) and more recently, in public debates about refugees and asylum seekers (e.g. Lynn & Lea, 2003; O’Doherty & Augoustinos, 2008). Indeed, the treatment of asylum seekers has dominated Australian domestic politics for the last 20 years. Since 2001, asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia have been represented as threatening to Australia’s national sovereignty, security, and culture in ways that have recently been evidenced in Europe by the Syrian refugee crisis. On October 28, 2001 Prime Minister John Howard justified his government’s restrictive policies toward asylum seekers arriving by boat by the following nationalist catch cry: ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’. This slogan became the cornerstone of his government’s policy platform in the 2001 federal election and appeared on television and full-page newspaper advertisements, campaign posters and leaflets that were mailed to homes across Australia. In addition to the indirect way in which the nation is invoked by the collective ‘we’ used by Howard, Australians here are constructed as occupying a privileged position of entitlement to a national will in deciding who belongs to the nation-state (Hage, 1998). Likewise, Goodman and Burke (2011) demonstrated how non-racial reasons are typically mobilized in political debates about refugee and asylum seeker policies in the UK.These included economic arguments, differences in culture, the threat of terrorism and refugees’ supposed inability to integrate into host societies. All these explanations were offered as practical and common-sense rationalizations that erased racial considerations. Such non-racial considerations 266

Refugees and asylum seekers

are evidenced in the Extract below in a speech given by Teresa May to the 2015 Conservative Party Conference as Home Secretary. In this extract we can see May using a comprehensive list of practical problems that can result when limits are not placed on immigration to the UK. While we must fulfil our moral duty to help people in desperate need we must also have an immigration system that allows us to control who comes to our country. Because when immigration is too high when the pace of change is too fast it’s impossible to build a cohesive society. It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know for people in low paid jobs wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether. Unlike far-right political discourse which does not refrain from the use of racial categories and slurs, May’s language can be seen to be measured and restrained – indeed it attends to Britain’s moral obligations of assisting those in ‘desperate need’. At the same time, as many critics of her speech noted, this extensive list of practical problems makes clear that immigration poses extensive threats to what is described as a ‘cohesive society’. As we will see further below this purported threat to social cohesion has become a common trope in recent debates about the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

The language of reason and rationality The common-sense notion of ‘prejudice’ – to pre-judge – has become associated with irrationality, poor reasoning and unexamined views (Billig, 1991). Prejudice is thus perceived as violating a common-sense belief in the values of reason and rationality – the very foundations of a democratic society. Presenting one’s views as reasonable, rational, and thoughtfully arrived at is a pervasive feature of mainstream political discourse. Indeed, it is often pitted against far-right political discourse which is derided by centrists as irrational, extreme, and driven by emotion and not facts.We can see features of this reasonable discourse in the example above: May uses the language of reason and moderation to argue that weak borders threaten social cohesion. Unlike their far-right political counterparts, immigrants and asylum seekers are not explicitly disparaged as ‘alien species’, but they are nonetheless implicitly positioned as undesirable and a threat to a well-functioning society. In a study comparing the Finnish and Swedish Prime Ministers’ discourse during the year of the European ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, Sakki & Pettersson (2018) demonstrated that the PMs’ discourse about refugees and asylum seekers shifted from an initial ‘discourse of pathos and ethos, describing refugees in terms of individualism and humaneness, to a discourse of logos, emphasizing rationality, justifying sharpened immigration policies, and homogenizing refugees’ (p. 406). The study shed light upon how the discourse of the PMs – representing center-right and social democratic parties – gradually took the character of populist radical right politicians’ harsh discourse about refugees and asylum seekers. Invoking facts to justify particular policies is common in mainstream political discourse. It is also a strategic way in which speakers can externalize their views as being based on the material world rather than a potentially prejudiced psychology. Again, such discourse is central to inoculating speakers from allegations of prejudice and frequently co-occurs with explicit denials of prejudice. For example, in the extract below Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews is asked to justify the Australian government’s decision in August 2007 to reduce the intake of humanitarian refugees from Africa by radio host Philip Clarke. Clarke asks him to substantiate claims that this was because some groups, in particular, Sudanese young men are not settling easily into Australia. 267

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos

Minister Andrews interview with Philip Clarke 2GB Radio, October 3, 2007 CLARKE: 

Okay .h now( ) there has been some controversy in the past about African (.2) refugee resettlement ( . ) and the ability of .hh some particularly ah () young men from the Sud::an (.4) and their ability to-to ah to settle easily into Australian society=was that a factor in this decision? (.3) ANDREWS: ye=yes it was a factor (.)Philip ah (.5) one of the things which we’ve been (1.1) ah mindful of over the ah (.)last year(.7) i:s the additional challenges with some (.5) peoplefrom-ah Africa. h(.5) that we know for example if we’re talking about the (.) Sudanese (.) and this is not=to demonize them (.2) it’s just to.hh face the reality that we’ve got (.5) they have ah very (.9) low levels of education (.)ah on average we’re looking at about grade three level (.3) that’s a lot lower than any other group of refugees(1.0) you’ve got people ah particularly young men in their teens and early twenties (.3) ahh (.) difficult therefore for many of them to (.) get a job=they (.3) tend to drop out of school(.3)a lot earlier and then there’s a whole lot of other (.3) cultural issues CLARKE: hmm ANDREWS:  coming from Africa (.3) compared to modern Australia. Andrews enthusiastically confirms the reason offered by Clarke despite the fact the government faced implicit and explicit accusations that they were invoking the ‘race card’ for political gain (Topsfield & Rood, 2007). Andrews justifies the controversial decision by listing numerous social deficits that rendered this group especially problematic compared to other refugee groups. Note how he represents his government (through the use of the collective ‘we’) as mindful of the additional challenges faced by young Sudanese men. In the face of being labeled ‘racist’, Andrews deploys a pre-emptive defense (disclaimer), denying that he is ‘demonizing’ the Sudanese in any way. This disclaimer serves to avoid a problematic identity for Andrews, mitigating against claims of unfair treatment and racism against a refugee group. These potential claims of racism are also subtly discredited through their comparison with the ‘reality’ that the Sudanese pose for Andrews and his government. Andrews’ policy is thus presented as responsible, measured, and, most importantly, necessitated by the behavior of the refugees themselves. Allegations of racism are hence glossed over as irrational, unrealistic, and lacking credibility.

Liberal-practical arguments to justify illiberal ends In a seminal text on the language of racism, Wetherell and Potter (1992) identified ten commonplace arguments that were typically deployed by majority group members to justify existing intergroup relations in New Zealand. These commonplace arguments, based on liberal egalitarian principles such as freedom, equality and individualism, were recurrently used by speakers to rationalize their views. Taken-for-granted arguments such as ‘everybody should be treated equally’, ‘minority opinion should not carry more weight than majority opinion’, and ‘you have to be practical’, constituted a tool-kit of ‘practical politics’ that were used flexibly in both formal and informal discourse in New Zealand in talk about race and inequality.What this research, and that of others, has demonstrated is that liberal-egalitarian principles can be used in contradictory ways to justify and rationalize the exclusion of minorities. The self-sufficient rhetorical argument ‘you have to be practical’ is perhaps just as ubiquitous in political discourse as the denial of prejudice. While on the one hand speakers invariably espouse egalitarian principles and ideals, on the other, these principles are undermined by 268

Refugees and asylum seekers

practical considerations. Such ‘practical talk’ is deployed in ways that, again, function primarily to justify and legitimate existing inequalities, and in the case of asylum seeker and refugee policy, why significant restrictions are necessary.This principle/practice dichotomy in which a principle is cited, but then is immediately undercut by the impracticalities that the upholding of this principle would entail can be seen in both Theresa May’s speech and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s response above. On the one hand they are sympathetic to the plight of immigrants and refugees and their moral obligations to help those in need, but on the other, practical problems and realities prevent these from being realized. Despite vociferous criticisms and challenges to Australia’s restrictive asylum seeker policies, the ‘Australian model’ is now being touted as a solution to the refugee crisis in Europe. Again, the use of nationalist discourse has been central in justifying these policies. Ironically though, it is also being argued that restrictive border control policies are critical to the very foundations of a successful multicultural society – an identity that Australia has promoted to the outside world for the last 50 years. This argument was mobilized by PM Turnbull in 2017 in a speech entitled, In Defence of a Free Society. Malcolm, Turnbull, 2017. Disraeli Prize Speech: In Defence of a Free Society, Transcripts from the Prime Ministers of Australia, 10 June 2017. As Europe grapples today with unsustainable inflows of migrants and asylum seekers, the Australian experience offers both a cautionary tale and the seeds of a potential solution. The lesson is very clear: weak borders fragment social cohesion, drain public revenue, raise community concerns about national security, and ultimately undermine the consensus required to sustain high levels of immigration and indeed multiculturalism itself. Ultimately, division. Like Theresa May above, Turnbull equates weak borders with a multitude of threats, including social cohesion. Moreover, representing those who cross borders as a threat to multiculturalism itself is a strategy that enables Turnbull to adopt an anti-racist identity: after all he is a champion of multiculturalism so why would he and his government be motivated by racist intentions? By positioning weak borders as a threat to multiculturalism and indeed high levels of immigration, the very social and economic fabric of the nation-state is at stake in this representation.

Conclusion This chapter has explored and compared political discourse about refugees and asylum seekers by far-right politicians, on the one hand, and politicians representing the center, on the other. As the examples and our discussion above illustrate, it is possible to discern similarities as well as differences between these discourses. In concluding, we discuss these issues and share some thoughts on the implications of our findings. The lessons learned from the horrors of World War II led to a post-war period in which blatant racism was strongly and unanimously denounced by parties across the political spectrum. This period however seems to have come to an end as the examples of populist radical right political rhetoric against asylum seeking and humanitarian immigration presented above illustrate. In this chapter we have argued that the discursive climate has shifted in the 21st century – both in the political arena and in societies at large. Although the reasons behind this development remain multiple and complex, it has certainly been triggered by the global rise of populist radical right parties – especially since the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 – and by the evolution of social media as a public sphere in which discriminatory statements and overt hate-speech may easily 269

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos

be expressed, and rapidly circulated. This paints a gloomy picture of the current discursive climate: the social opprobrium against dehumanizing minorities and openly identifying as ‘fascist’ have weakened. Indeed, what was once an unspeakable identity – ‘fascist’ – has been increasingly reclaimed as a heroic stand against the purported tyranny of the liberal democratic state. For contemporary populist radical right parties that at the same time strive to establish an image of credibility and moderation, such extreme statements by their members function to reach out to both the more moderate and extreme factions of their voters. Furthermore, not only may such expressions remain without repercussions, but political representatives who are prosecuted for hate-speech against minorities are not necessarily publicly repudiated and shamed. Instead, their transgressions are represented as their capacity to stand up for ‘the people’ and for democratic ideals such as freedom of speech. In this way, politicians of all persuasions are able to mobilize liberal ideological resources to manage the inherent dilemmas between equality and humanitarianism on the one hand and individual rights on the other. The language of reason and practicality therefore is not limited to the political mainstream; it is also mobilized effectively by those on the right to reject immigrants and asylum seekers. Mainstream political discourse and that of the far-right also share a strong reliance on nationalist tropes, of nationhood, identity, and history. However, centrist leaders strategically differentiate and distance themselves from imputations of extremism. It is convenient for mainstream politicians to dodge the identity of prejudice by contrasting themselves to the ‘true face’ of racism on the right. This is integral to their self-presentation as rational, reasonable and benevolent political actors who adhere to the values of liberal democracy. Indeed, the far-right is often used strategically by those of the center to project and build their own identities in stark contrast to those on the right. This is evident in the way in which centrist leaders attend very judiciously to upholding a non-prejudiced identity. As we have demonstrated above, this is accomplished both by denials of prejudice and political justifications premised on liberal-practical arguments but so too in avoiding explicit derogatory and disparaging language. Nevertheless, such discourse although seemingly moderate and restrained unlike that of the far-right, also functions to legitimate and rationalize discriminatory and exclusionary policies against minorities, as these policies become represented as measures to preserve national cohesion, democracy, and safety. Despite the seemingly tolerant nature of mainstream political discourse around issues of racial diversity, immigration, and refugees that have dominated the postwar period, we conclude by expressing concerns about the increasing rise of nationalist rhetoric and policies of exclusion during the 21st century. As our chapter demonstrates, the centrist and far-right discourse on refugees and asylum seekers are sometimes difficult to differentiate and are beginning to resemble each other (e.g. Sakki & Pettersson, 2018). Far-right discourse on these issues has begun to spill over into the political mainstream, as political parties of all persuasions see the electoral gains that may be won by mobilizing the language of us and them and by either explicitly or implicitly demonizing displaced persons seeking refuge. After all, scapegoating and blaming powerless minorities for a host of ills – unemployment, poverty, crime, terrorism, pandemics, and the collapse of society itself – is as old as the hills. Potential solutions to countering this ‘slippery slope’ such as implementing laws against hate-speech or racism are important: they aim to establish clear limits between the right to freedom of speech, on the one hand, and discriminatory and harmful hate-speech, on the other. They also function to highlight the unequal power-relations involved in political hate-speech ‘from the top’, that is, in the talk of powerful politicians representing the majority population, directed at vulnerable minority groups (cf. Bader, 2014). However important they are, legal measures are complicated, however, by the lack of agreed-upon definitions of hate-speech at the international as well as the national levels. Furthermore, research has shown that legal sentences for hate-speech may, if implemented 270

Refugees and asylum seekers

without other forms of repercussions, be sadly inefficient in terms of altering ways of speaking about minority groups such as refugees and asylum seekers (e.g. Bader, 2014; Pettersson, 2019; van Noorloos, 2014). Therefore, in order for legal sentences to fulfill their function, it seems that other measures, such as strong and unanimous condemnation by the media and the political community, are needed as well. The present chapter has highlighted the need for such condemnation and unfortunately given us cause to be concerned about the extent to which it exists.

References Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London:Verso. Atton, C. (2006). Far-right media on the internet: Culture, discourse and power. New Media & Society, 8: 573–587. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007). The language of ‘race’ and prejudice a discourse of denial, reason, and liberal-practical politics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26(2): 123–141. Bader,V. (2014). Free speech or non-discrimination as trump? Reflections on contextualised reasonable balancing and its limits. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40: 320–338. Barker, M. (1981). The new racism. London: Junction Books. Bilewicz, M, & Soral, W. (2020). Hate speech epidemic: The dynamic effects of derogatory language on intergroup relations and political radicalization. Advances in Political Psychology. doi: 10.1111/ pops.12670. Billig, M. (1978). Fascists: A social psychological view of the national front. London: Academic Press. Billig, M. (1991). Ideology and opinions. Studies in rhetorical psychology. London: Sage. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Billig, M. (2002). Henry Tajfel’s ‘cognitive aspects of prejudice’ and the psychology of bigotry. British Journal of Social Psychology, 41: 171–188. Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D., & Radley, A. (1988). Ideological dilemmas: A social psychology of everyday thinking. London, UK: Sage. Bratten, C. (2005). Online zealotry: La France du peuple virtuel. New Media & Society, 7(4): 517–532. Burke, S. (2018).The discursive ‘othering’ of Jews and Muslims in the Britain first solidarity patrol. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 28(5): 365–377. Burke, S., Diba, P., & Antonopoulos, G. (2020). ‘You sick, twisted messes’:The use of argument and reasoning in Islamophobic and anti-Semitic discussions on Facebook. Discourse and Society, 31: 374–389. Chadwick, A. (2017). The hybrid media system: Politics and power (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of ‘Prejudice’: ‘Prejudice’ expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37: 17–35. Finnish Criminal Code. Chapter 11, Sections 10–11. Retrieved March 15th 2020 from http://www.finlex. fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1889/en18890039.pdf. Gilroy, P. (1987). “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack”: The cultural politics of race and nation. London: Hutchinson. Goodman, S. (2008). The generalizability of discursive research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 5(4): 265–275. Goodman, S. & Burke, S. (2011). Discursive deracialization in talk about asylum seeking. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 21(2): 111–123. Hage, G. (1998). White nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society. Sydney: Pluto Press. Hakahuhta, A. & Pinola, M. (2019). Perussuomalaisten Sebastian Tynkkyselle toinen tuomio kiihottamisesta kansanryhmää vastaan – Halla-aho: Nakertaa oikeuslaitoksen uskottavuutta. Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, October 10th 2019. Retrieved March 15th 2020 from https://yle.fi/ uutiset/3-11013740. Hanson-Easey, S. & Augoustinos, M. (2010). Out of Africa: Accounting for refugee policy and the language of causal attribution. Discourse & Society, 21: 295–323. Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10: 252–264. Hatakka, N., Niemi, M.K., & Välimäki, M. (2017). Confrontational yet submissive: Calculated ambivalence and populist parties’ strategies of responding to racism accusations in the media. Discourse & Society, 28: 262–280.

271

K. Pettersson and M. Augoustinos Hopkins, N., Reicher, S., & Levine, M. (1997). On the parallels between social cognition and the ‘new racism’. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36(3): 305–329. Kirkwood, S., Goodman, S., McVittie, C., & McKinlay, A. (2016). The language of asylum. Refugees and discourse. McMillan: UK: Palgrave. Lynn, N. & Lea, S. (2003). ‘A phantom menace and The new apartheid: The social construction of asylumseekers in The United Kingdom’. Discourse & Society, 14(4): 425–52. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nortio, E., Niska, M., Renvik, T.A., & Jasinskaja-Lahti, I. (2020). ‘The nightmare of multiculturalism’: Interpreting and deploying anti-immigration rhetoric in social media. New Media & Society. O’Doherty, K. & Augoustinos, M. (2008). Protecting the nation: Nationalist rhetoric on asylum seekers and the Tampa. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 18: 576–592. Pettersson, K. (2017). Save the nation! A social psychological study of political blogs as a medium for nationalist communication and persuasion. University of Helsinki: Department of Social Research. Pettersson, K. (2019). ‘Freedom of speech requires actions’: Exploring the discourse of politicians convicted of hate-speech against Muslims. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(5): 938–952. Pettersson, K. (2020). The discursive denial of racism by Finnish populist radical right politicians accused of anti-Muslim hate-speech. In: O.C. Norocel, A. Hellström, & M. Bak Joergensen (eds.), Nostalgia and Hope: Intersections between politics of culture, welfare, and migration. SpringerOpen. Potter, J. (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London, UK: Sage. Raita-aho, S., Hemmilä, I., & Hartikainen, J. (2020). Perussuomalaisten Toni Jalonen julistautui fasistiksi, näin hän selittää: ‘Oikein hyvä ideologia kannattaa, vaikka siihen on liitetty negatiivisia merkityksiä’, Helsingin Sanomat, February 24th 2020. Retrieved March 15th 2020 from https://www.hs.fi/ politiikka/art-2000006417822.html. Reeves, F. (1983). British racial discourse: A study of British political discourse about race and race related matters. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sakki, I., Hakokongas, E., & Pettersson, K. (2018). Past and present nationalist political rhetoric in Finland: Changes and continuities. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(2): 160–180. Sakki, I. & Pettersson, K. (2016). Discursive constructions of otherness in populist radical right political blogs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 46: 156–170. Sakki, I. & Pettersson, K. (2018). Managing stake and accountability in prime Ministers’ accounts of the ‘refugee crisis’: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 28(6): 406–429. Stenroos, M., Sundman, R., Hanhinen, H., & Uusitalo, K. (2020). Valtakunnansyyttäjä pyytää eduskunnalta lupaa asettaa perussuomalaisten Juha Mäenpää syytteeseen – Jussi Halla-aho: Tulemme estämään syyteoikeuden. Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, January 23rd 2020. Retrieved March 15th 2020 from https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11172099. Topsfield, J. & Rood, D. (2007, October 4). Coalition accused of race politics. The Age. Retrieved from http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/coalition-accused-of-race-politics/2007/10/03/ 1191091193835.html. Van der Valk, I. (2003). Political discourse on ethnic minority issues. A comparison of the right and the extreme right in the Netherlands and France (1990–97). Ethnicities, 3: 183–213. Van Dijk, T.A. (1992). Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse & Society, 3: 87–118. Van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Elite discourse and racism. London: Sage. Van Dijk, T.A. (2000). New(s) racism: A discourse analytical approach. In S. Cottle (ed.), Ethnic minorities and the media (pp. 33–49). Buckingham: Open University Press. Van Noorloos, M. (2014). The politicisation of hate speech bans in the twenty-first-century Netherlands: Law in a changing context. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40: 249–265. Verkuyten, M. (2013). Justifying discrimination of Muslim immigrants: Outgroup ideology and the five-step social identity model. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52: 345–360. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. London, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear:What right-wing populist discourses mean. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Wodak, R. & van Dijk,T.A. (eds.)2000). Racism at the top: Parliamentary discourses on ethnic issues in six European states. Austria: Drava Verlag. Wood, C. & Finlay, W.M. (2008). British national party representations of Muslims in the month after the London bombings: Homogeneity, threat, and the conspiracy tradition. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47: 707–726.

272

19 INTERACTIONAL APPROACHES TO DISCRIMINATION AND RACISM IN EVERYDAY LIFE Jessica S. Robles and Natasha Shrikant

At the time of writing this chapter, it is impossible to ignore that racism has been brought to the forefront in public discourse. A global pandemic has caused disproportionate deaths in Black and ethnic minority populations (Laughland & Zanolli, 2020), and international protests have erupted in the wake of police murdering numerous Black people in the United States (O’kane, 2020). Protestors orient to these events not as singular instances of racist actions or racial inequality, but as part of a broader pattern of racism that shapes social life. Many studies in psychology and the social sciences illustrate the ways racism occurs through macro-political, institutional, or structural processes (e.g., Berard, 2008; Crenshaw, 2019; Tate & Page, 2018). This chapter highlights the role that everyday interaction plays in perpetuating or resisting racism. Everyday interaction is often the source of the most insidious, repetitive ways that racism pervades everyday life and therefore is an important avenue through which scholars should explore issues of racism and prejudice.

How to identify “racism” in everyday interaction There are many definitions of the concept of discrimination. Hill (2008) outlines ways that everyday people’s definition of racism differs from ways that scholars might define the term. Everyday (white) people often orient to racism as only occurring when a mal-intentioned person who hates minority groups says something negative about minority groups. This orientation only acknowledges overt forms of racism (i.e., a hateful person using racial slurs) as “real” racism and positions racist incidences as aberrations from an otherwise equal society (i.e., Hodges, 2015). Scholars analyzing discourses of racism and prejudice, however, acknowledge that racist language occurs in many covert ways and focus on highlighting types of language use that sustain racial inequality even while the participants using this language deny that they – or their language use – is racist (Augoustinos & Every, 2007b; Hill, 2008; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). In this chapter, we illustrate some ways in which discrimination is upheld in everyday life through reviewing studies that analyze how racism or discrimination are produced in interaction, especially through implicit, covert, or normalized practices. Our review highlights how an interactional approach is felicitously positioned to help make such covert racist practices more visible. DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-19

273

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant

Interactional approaches to discourse Interactional approaches – also known as language and social interaction or discourse analysis – analyze how language is used in specific situations (Tracy, 2015). This kind of research encompasses many disciplines including interactional sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, social psychology, communication, and sociology (see Fitch & Sanders, 2004; Wood & Kroger, 2000). Unlike approaches that analyze how people reflect on their retrospective experiences or the results of their participation in experiments, interactional approaches analyze audio- or video-recorded conversations where participants use racist discourses. Furthermore, while we acknowledge racist language as perpetuating inequalities between dominant white groups and marginalized minority groups, interactional approaches can show how members of any group can participate in discourses that perpetuate – or question – racial inequality. In other words, interactional approaches emphasize how participants themselves treat one another’s discourse as racist, regardless of the race of the interlocutors. This chapter will focus primarily on approaches that developed from ethnomethodology and discursive psychology (see Heritage, 2013 and Tileagă & Stokoe, 2015, respectively). These approaches analyze context as relevant to interaction if participants display an orientation to that context. These approaches do not orient to racism as an external structure that shapes interaction, but rather as a construct that participants make relevant in particular interactional moments through the use of specific discursive strategies (Whitehead, 2020). A challenge for this approach to context, however, is that many forms of discrimination are covert and easily denied by the participants themselves (Augoustinos & Every, 2007b; Rawls & Duck, 2020; Sambaraju & Minescu, 2019; Whitehead, 2020). Two approaches developed from ethnomethodology and discursive psychology – membership categorization analysis (MCA) and conversation analysis (CA) – have emerged as rigorous empirical methods that can show how utterances are oriented to as racist even if the participants themselves (whether challenged in the interaction or were they to be asked about it after the fact) might deny the relevance of racism to their interactions. MCA focuses on how participants organize their social worlds through the ways they name, characterize, and position identity categories (Hester & Eglin, 1997; Housley & Fitzgerald, 2015; Sacks, 1972, 1989). Although categories have a long history of interest in sociology (as social variables) and psychology (as mental schemata), MCA shifts the emphasis toward categories as constructed in discourse. According to Sacks (1989), membership categories (i.e., “white”, “black”) are “inference rich”, in that a “great deal of the knowledge that members of a society have about the society is stored in terms of these categories” (p. 272). Participants store knowledge through orienting to categories as constituting a broader collection – or membership categorization device. Membership categorization devices are heuristics for understanding how people associate activities and categories of people in interpretations and descriptions. For example, people orient to the category “black” as containing certain kinds of qualities in relation to other categories in the device of “race.” Past work has shown how participants accomplish social actions – like accounting for behavior – through the mere mentioning of a racial category, in part because of shared knowledge about a category (Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). People might also construct hierarchies among racial categories to make racism visible in contexts where people think racism is not an issue (i.e., “white people” are “targeting” “parents of color” and “Black and Native families” through policing their parenting practices) (Shrikant, 2020). When language treats a classification or type of people as meaningfully grouped, as analysts, scholars have a foothold for interrogating on what basis such a grouping is being made. More implicitly, participants can mention a characteristic (i.e., “dangerous”) associated with racial categories and still make relevant the device – and associated knowledge – of race. MCA is also useful because 274

Discrimination and racism in everyday life

it aligns with processes of distinction that sometimes give rise to different evaluations – “we” are better than “they” are, or people “from there” aren’t “like us” (e.g., Sambaraju et al., 2017). CA focuses on the social actions participants accomplish turn-by-turn in naturally occurring conversation (Schegloff, 2007; Sidnell & Stivers, 2012). The importance of language is its grounding in situated use in some local environment where participants display through various means how they treat what’s been said as doing some action, such as requesting, complaining, challenging, etc. However, CA focuses on analyzing these actions in the sequence of interaction between and among participants, through the back-and-forth of social interaction.This emphasis demonstrates how meaning and action are advanced jointly across participants and progressively across turns. CA is especially focused on the minute ways in which actions are brought off, which is why the transcription of data demands detailed notations incorporating exact pronunciations and timings of discourse, and where available, information about the precise visual and embodied movements of participants (e.g., Hepburn & Bolden, 2013; Mondada, 2018). A requirement of CA is that the analyst cannot make a claim independent of what can be demonstrated through the empirical record.This means that when participants explicitly invoke racism, such as through the use of slurs or by calling someone else racist, the case is easier to make (Robles, 2019). The matter of describing race or attributing racism explicitly, therefore, offers clearer materials for analysis, whereas implicitly producing oneself “as a race” or orienting to behavior as racist, is not as straightforward. Since accusing another of using stereotypes or self-identifying as racist are largely stigmatized, participants’ references to racial identities can highlight the salience of race to do some action, without saying anything obviously problematic. Whitehead (2015) shows this in an analysis of a radio call-in in which a caller makes no explicit negative judgment attributed to race, but a racist stance is attributed by the call taker. Thus, when racism is embedded or not “surfaced” (made visible) explicitly in the discourse, the analyst must show that the participants orient to what was said as an instance of what Whitehead has called “possible racism.” This phraseology is not designed to cast doubt on whether or not racism is taking place in the data, but rather, to show that racism may not be explicitly called out by the participants, and therefore is provisionally racist until it has been empirically established as relevant to the interaction. A strength of MCA and CA is that both descriptions of actions as racism or stereotypes, and productions of actions as stereotypical, can be more closely examined.This makes both approaches productive when combined (see Stokoe, 2012). For example, in the comment “Mexicans don’t drink tea, they drink beer,” an association is proposed between what Mexican people categorically do or do not do (Robles, 2015a). Combining this categorical association with the sequential focus of CA demonstrates that the category “Mexican” is not a mere description, but mobilizes a stereotype of what Mexicans are presumed to drink or not drink in order to reject an attribution of “Mexicanness” to the speaker. Combining MCA and CA helps highlight how the way a category is produced is procedurally relevant – that it has consequences for a conversational action being done (Schegloff, 2007). In the following sections, we present some of the specific practices participants use in constructing racist discourse. Through close analysis of participants’ category use and conversational actions as they occur in sequence, the studies below show how interactional analysis reveals the instantiations of racism and prejudice in everyday life.

Racism and discrimination in discourse The examination of racism and discrimination through discourse flourished in the late 1980s, when a “discursive turn” was spreading across the academic landscape in almost all social science disciplines (see Harré, 2001). This lineage, evolving out of the previous linguistic turn, privileged 275

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant

the importance of language in socially constructing meaning (c.f., Carter, 2013). In the following sections, we review the contributions some of this research has made to the study of the specific, fine-grained (micro) practices participants use to accomplish racism and discrimination in discourse. We review various examples of interactional research based on a variety of contexts and data (see Whitehead, 2017 for a review of different types of data in which race and racism have been discursively analyzed) to describe several (not mutually exclusive) dimensions of discrimination in interaction.

Ideological functions of discourse Racism is understood to be a form of ideology, and ideological analysis has typically been the domain of critical research. Research in critical discourse studies and critical discursive psychology over the years (e.g., Ajiboye & Abioye, 2019; Richardson & Wodak, 2009; Xu, 1995) has analyzed ways in which discourse can be problematic in many social contexts. Interactional research is less likely to use the term ideology, but it is absolutely a way of catching ideology in action. Interactional approaches in general tend to avoid starting with critical theory or assumptions about power, and CA in particular has a strong proscription against applying analysts’ terms or assumptions to data (Billig & Schegloff, 1999). While there is nonetheless a tradition of researchers who have examined issues of power and identity using interactional approaches such as CA (e.g., Kitzinger, 2007), this empiricist injunction has largely resulted in most research that examines these social problems in interaction starting with explicit references to or descriptions of sexism, racism, and so forth. For example, there is a significant body of research that has examined gender, sex, and sexism as it arises in the way people use explicit gendered term or talk in gendering ways about others (e.g., Attenborough, 2014; Speer, 2002; Stokoe & Smithson, 2001; Weatherall, 2015). There is less research that has examined race as it arises in everyday conversation (and even less for other often-stereotyped identities such as class, ability, nationality, etc.). As van Dijk (1992) proposed, it may be that there is an awareness of race as a problematic topic of discussion in many parts of the world that leads people to be far more indirect about how they orient to it in ordinary conversation, thence making it hard to pin down analytically. One way of tackling this challenge has been to examine interviews or radio/television programs in which race is topicalized. A slew of studies in discursive psychology that appeared in the late 1980s through the early 2000s analyzed how race was discussed in interview interactions (e.g., Edwards, 2003; Potter & Wetherell, 1988; Wetherell, 2003). This research challenged “attitude-based” social psychological studies in favor of examining the social and rhetorical context within which racism might arise (Potter & Wetherell, 1988). Institutional settings also tend to be contexts where race might be made more explicit because of the business at hand or because of some antagonistic frame (see the special issue on -isms in interaction edited by Whitehead & Stokoe, 2015). Another approach to what van Dijk (1987) calls the “needle in the haystack” problem of analyzing such suppressed phenomena involves a meet-in-the-middle strategy in which more top-down and bottom-up analyses are put in conversation. This is the case where research combines elements of CA with critical stances (e.g., Kitzinger, 2007; Korobov, 2001), or combines self-reports of prejudice with analyses of reported themes respecified as participants’ discursive actions (e.g., Kurylo & Robles, 2015). These studies demonstrate how ideological phenomena – enactments, descriptions, and accusations of a belief in (white) racial superiority – may be put on the record, or even form part of the official business, in a particular social context. This makes the task of an interactional analysis somewhat easier. But interactional methods are useful for dealing with implicit ideological 276

Discrimination and racism in everyday life

functions as well, precisely because the analyst is not allowed to take any interpretation for granted. For example, Whitehead (2020) describes how callers complaining about crime on a radio program provide resources so that a racist stance might be inferable without going on record to articulate the stance itself, as shown in excerpt 4 from the article. At the beginning of the call, the caller self-identifies with the categories “colored” and “mixed” to position herself as non-white, then goes on to launch the context for her complaint: 8 C: .hhh So what I actually wanted to say that um, (0.5) .hh 9 (0.5) I was raised in apartheid (1.2) uh era, h (0.5) .h and 10 I’ve rais:ed my four sons and my daughter, (0.8) also in 11 thuh: (.) apartheid era, (.) .hh and we weren’t uh (0.7) 12 afr↑aid to go out, we didn’t live in fear, (.) as we 13 are living now, Whitehead describes how the caller contrasts a description of not being “afraid to go out” nor living “in fear” during apartheid (lines 11–12) versus the fear they are “living now” (line 13) in the post-apartheid era. Because the apartheid was a period of segregation in South Africa that overwhelmingly benefitted the nation’s minority white population, any positive evaluation of the period could suggest that the caller benefitted from that period. This might indicate that the caller is white and that the contrast is a complaint about the loss of white power – therefore, explicitly claiming a non-white identity provides a defense against that possible reading and recasts the complaint as being about personal safety rather than as upholding a racist ideology. However, the very fact that all this work is done shows how the nature of the talk is accountable: the caller displays some sensitivity to how their comments may come across as racist.The fact that they do all this work shows that the commentary can be interpretable as racist while smuggling that possible interpretation in the cloak as something more innocent. As Wetherell and Potter (1993) note in their book on the language of racism, an analysis of discourse can expose how language creates and maintains power relations. In addition to highlighting where such talk makes race and racism overt, they also point to the ways in which descriptions of and accounts for social problems make visible the racist explanations underlying talk in which race may not be made explicit. Subsequent research in discursive psychology (described above, but see also, Augoustinos & Every, 2007a; O’Doherty & LeCouteur, 2007; Rapley, 1998) shows how purportedly individualistic mental phenomena including racist beliefs and personal prejudices are social practices; as well as how purportedly broad sociocultural ideologies can be observed in the course of their production in interaction.

Denying and erasing racism Perhaps ironically, one set of strategies for accomplishing racism includes denying that one is racist, or denying that racism toward minority groups more generally even exists. An important paper by van Dijk (1992), through analyzing interview data, illustrates how one strategy for denial is to reconstruct the target of racism: Listen, they always say that foreigners are being discriminated against here. No, we are being discriminated against. It is exactly the reverse. (p. 99) The interviewee here voices the opposing viewpoint that “foreigners” are “being discriminated against” and then denies racism through reconstructing “we” (white people) as the victims of 277

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant

discrimination. In doing so, the participant accomplishes racist talk while denying that racism exists. van Dijk also shows how participants deny that they themselves are racist through prefacing it with a disclaimer (“I’m not racist, but”), and then saying something racist. Similarly, Billig (2001) shows how participants add metadiscourse (i.e., “it’s just a joke”), which reframes a racist utterance as “not racist” (because it is a joke). This research compellingly demonstrates the way in which certain formulations, phrasings and framings are involved in attempting to deny racist discourse. An important aspect of interactional research is that it doesn’t only analyze words and turns, but also shows how meaning is jointly produced across turns and across participants. For example, Condor et al. (2006) illustrate how denying racism is a collaborative effort, where one person can deny that another person is racist after that person has said something racist (i.e., “I’m sorry about that. He’s not xenophobic”). This denial that racism exists also occurs as a strategy when negatively evaluating institutional processes – such as multicultural seminars (Whitehead & Wittig, 2004). Through negatively evaluating and dismissing anti-racist training in these seminars as uninteresting, students deny that racism is a problem at all. Another implicit dimension of denying racism (where participants suppress the relevance of race and racism) aligns with colorblind ideologies about racism by constructing possible racism as explainable by individual failures (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Bucholtz, 2010; Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). Strategies that erase racism perpetuate a worldview that is experienced mostly by White people. Thus, one area of research on racist discourse highlights the implicit ways that the white category is oriented to as relevant (by white or minority groups) even when it is not overtly mentioned. Whitehead & Lerner (2009) point out what they term practical asymmetry, where white categories are often not mentioned (even when relevant) because they are considered neutral or normal, whereas minority categories are overtly mentioned as accounts for reasonable or unreasonable behavior. Other studies document ways participants reproduce the normative status of white identity through the stances they take about racism: people delay racial categories (Bucholtz, 2010), include parentheticals that index white identity (Whitehead, 2020), deny that race is relevant when asked about diversity in institutional contexts (Shrikant, 2018), or use non-raced devices when talking about racial inequality, such as nationhood, culture, or class (Augoustinos & Every, 2007a). Some studies highlight conversational actions accomplished by the overt mention of the white category (Shrikant, 2019; Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). For example, Shrikant (2020) analyzes neighbors discussing racism in their neighborhood and shows how they reject being categorized as white by deploying absurdist (see also Antaki, 2003) responses to alleged white stereotypes: “I am white … also a single mother … I don’t have a whole lot of economic power. Love the parade and the community. I also am not ‘artsy’ and I don’t garden, in fact I have a black thumb, sorry neighbors about my perpetually ugly yard.” By oversimplifying previous claims about the structural nature of racism in the neighborhood through using a personal example, supplemented with extreme language like “black thumb” and “perpetually ugly yard,” participants deny that racism is a relevant frame for understanding their individual actions. These examples of research show, as van Dijk (1992) suggested, that forms of racism, prejudice, and discrimination are denied even where a careful analysis shows such logic persists. These studies also show how categorization is relevant to various methods because it surfaces what participants may be keeping implicit. For example, Fitzgerald, Housley, and Butler (2009) show how unstated “common knowledge” categories are resources for identifying people; and Edwards and Stokoe (2011) show the difference between explicit (stated) categories and implicit (enacted) categories. These reinforce what Sacks (1992) said from the beginning: that categories mobilize shared, tacit cultural knowledge, and that categories can be both attributed, and presumed. 278

Discrimination and racism in everyday life

Negatively evaluating minority groups The previous section examined some of the ways in which racism and discrimination are produced in a context where the possibility of that attribution is denied. In this section, we describe some of the ways that people indirectly negatively evaluate or exclude minority groups. One strategy involves narratives, in which minority categories are described in ways that suggest they are deserving of racism or as unreasonably upset about racism, especially in comparison to the reasonable white category (Foster, 2009; van den Berg et al., 2003). Other studies show how people tell narratives that reproduce popular cultural models about racial minorities (i.e., black men are dangerous; Muslims are terrorists) (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Bucholtz, 2010; Gaudio & Bialostok, 2005; Jones, 2016; van Dijk, 1993). Another strategy is when participants draw on tropes of democracy (i.e., equality) and use those tropes to oppose services provided to minority groups to remedy racial inequality (i.e., questioning affirmative actions or reparations as “unfair” because only minorities get them) (Augoustinos & Every, 2007b). Participants also negatively evaluate minority groups through negatively evaluating racial minority dialects, accents, and/or languages or through crossing into these accents when enacting “thug” or “lazy” or other stereotypical negative identities associated with minorities (Barrett, 2006; Blackledge, 2006; Collins, 2017; Hill, 2008; Rosa & Flores, 2017; Subtirelu, 2015; Urciuoli, 1996; Zentella, 1997). A key element of interactional research is that it takes a fine-grained approach to the production of the talk itself. Tileagă (2005) for example shows how a negative assessment of a group is worked up as reasonable and warranted. The analysis examines in detail an interview with a Romanian woman who blames Romanies (also known as gypsies or travelers) for the prejudice they endure. Using discursive psychology, Tileagă shows how the woman, called here Carla, accomplishes a prejudiced stance against Romanies in the interactional context of the interview (only the English version of the transcript is produced below, from page 611). 70 Chris Hm (.) Do you think that there is discrimination against 71 (.) against Romanies or (.) or not really? 72 (1.2) 73 Carla .Hh (.) What can I say (.) so, it depends (.) and (.) 74 °I don’t know° (1.2) Maybe there is (.) in a way (.) 75 there is discrimination (.) I mean, against Romanies (.) 76 it (.) could be, but (0.2) as I have said, 77 >it i(h)s o(h)nly b(h)ecause of themthat they don’t really want< (.) 83 -really want it either (.) Tileagă (2005) builds on van Dijk’s (1992) research by showing how the participant Carla does a form of “conceding” (“there is in a way,” “there is discrimination,” “yes, there is”: lines 74, 75, 80); but rather than the “apparent concessions” described by van Dijk (which are not retracted), Carla’s concessions are explicitly undermined by placing the responsibility for discrimination onto the Romanies (“it’s only because of them,” “they don’t really want”: lines 77, 82). Furthermore, the paralinguistic production of Carla’s talk – the pauses, restarts, and “disfluencies” – portray her as someone who is attempting to be sensitive and even-handed. By examining how Carla produces 279

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant

through these micro-resources her account of how Romanies “deserve” discrimination, Tileagă shows how an extreme and negative stance against this group is accounted for and portrayed as reasonable. This example demonstrates what can be revealed when a carefully produced transcript incorporates not just what a person has said, but how they have said it. Another example in Robles (2019) shows the importance of sequence in how participants say phrases at each other in languages in which they are not fluent speakers. By speaking in formulaic erroneous phrases that do not respond intelligibly to the prior turns, participants indirectly categorize (and challenge the categories) of others while attempting to assert their own identities and rights to know those languages (however imperfectly). Not only do the speakers implicitly index national and racial identities by invoking particular languages (such as Japanese and German), they also index locally established associations between certain ethnic identities, valued associations with those identities (such as being able to “hold one’s liquor”), and ideological norms for masculinity. The studies reviewed in the previous sections have shown the creative ways in which an MCA approach to categories and action, and/or a CA approach to finely transcribed sequences of action, has proven effective at addressing the challenge of implicit discrimination by providing the tools to examine how race and racism are both directly described, and indirectly produced, in social interaction. In contrast with more critical approaches to discrimination, interactional scholars do not typically take an evaluative stance toward these activities, but rather show how the participants themselves take such a stance. This point is the subject of the next section.

Future directions and implications The above studies illustrate that racism and discrimination are bound up with participants’ orientation to morality – what is good and bad, or right and wrong. We discussed how interactional approaches can reveal racist ideologies in action, how participants can suppress racism in denials of racism, and how racism can be composed of negative assessments of groups. In this section we start by discussing how the morality of discrimination can be further explored. Moral assessments are often done through categorization (this is attested in numerous studies, e.g., Jayyusi, 2013; Nikander, 2000; Rapley, McCarthy & McHoul, 2003; Stokoe, 2003; Tileagă, 2010), but the assessment doesn’t have to be made explicit to be embedded in the deployment of a category. This rings true with the idea that generating stereotypes and participating in racism are immoral acts, as well as with racist ideas themselves, which promote certain groups’ interests over others. We end the chapter by considering the advantages of an interactional approach to racism and discrimination.

The morality of discrimination In social interactional research, the concept of morality is applied in a number of ways, for example, starting with cultural assumptions of right and wrong, or starting with how certain practices are treated when they do not conform to expectations (see Bergmann, 1998; Robles, 2015b). Researchers have examined how morality is a feature of impoliteness, aggression, and accountability (e.g., Márquez-Reiter & Haugh, 2019; Márquez-Reiter & Kádár, 2015; Parvaresh & Tayebi, 2018; Robles & Castor, 2019; Sneijder & te Molder, 2005), or more indirectly, as in intersubjectivity, or in relation to specific interactional phenomena such as repair or epistemics (e.g., Arminen, 1996; Stivers, Mondada & Steensig, 2011). Morality is often conceived of as a stance that participants take toward a topic, situation, person or action (Goodwin, 2007). When 280

Discrimination and racism in everyday life

discrimination happens, it is typically conceived of as being done by one group toward another, which can be described as a stance as well as a form of categorization. By almost any definition of morality, categories are moral even before they are visible as discriminatory. One only need be so bold as to hop onto social media and suggest a hotdog is a sandwich to find out just how invested people are in drawing boundaries. Almost any opinion can be controversial, but purported distinctions seem especially sensitive to producing judgment, especially when people are being talked about. By simply invoking a specific category (Black), for example, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been met with the accusation by some that BLM privileges that category, resulting in counter-statements such as All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter (the latter for American police officers) (see Carney, 2016). Another (gendered) example is “not all men” (when someone complains about sexism, for example, someone might complain that “not all men” do the sexist act described). Both counter-protest examples miss the point about what the invoked category is doing. This is because when a category is produced, it is never produced in isolation, but treated against the larger cultural background in which it operates in relation to other categories. By highlighting a category, it is available to be treated as an emphasis that precludes attention to other (perhaps contrastive) categories. This is clearly not a literal reading, as nothing in the statement “Black Lives Matter” suggests that other human lives don’t matter. Indeed, many other possible readings exist: that Black lives do matter; that Black lives must matter; that Black lives should matter; and so forth. These reformulations should be accepted fairly readily in a society that disclaims racism. Instead, the statement is treated by some as a breach. As Garfinkel (1967) showed, breaches violate an interactional rule and reveal taken-forgranted expectations in social life. Breaches cause trouble because they show how a so-called normal dimension of life is normative, or moral: it is not natural or universal, but rather imbued with hidden “rules.” This is why, in Garfinkel’s experiments, those who went out breaching into the world were met with confusion, frustration, or even anger. Breaches peel back the curtain. Is the universal and incomparable mattering of white lives what is revealed in this case? Rejecting a statement for which there is an uncontroversial or even inspiring reading certainly suggests it is being treated as an insult. From an interactional perspective, interpretations are not automatic, neutral, or random, but are designed to do some action. Maybe uncharitable readings are a form of provocation. There is a strong link between morality and normativity (e.g., Stokoe, 2003). Work by Jayyusi (1995, 2013) uses moral order and normative standards fairly interchangeably. Sidnell (2010) makes the point that morality and ethics infuse all language and interaction, because these things are already moral and ethical – largely because they are social. As Goffman (1969) proposed, all social interaction involves commitments, and therefore, all social interaction is inherently accountable (see also Enfield & Sidnell, 2017; Rawls, 1989). But it seems worth distinguishing that there are levels or intensities of morality: that the fervor of an argument over whether a hot dog is a sandwich is somehow less important, less meaningful, or less consequential than the sense of injustice that pervades arguments about who gets to count as a human being. As Tileagă (2015) argues, prejudice and moral exclusion are not only matters of antipathy, but forms of harm and indignity produced as a rejection of people’s moral status or moral worth. Categorization on the level of humanity or normality of humanness may be one way of examining people’s worth, as being treated “as a person” is demonstrably implied or invoked as a members’ method for distributing intelligibility and respect – withheld from humans seemingly in violation of it, and accorded to those not always defined as persons (such as ethical vegans talking about animals, or pro-life advocates talking about fetuses). As a social and interactional practice, categorization seems well-placed to allow research to examine how distinctions and discriminations, or what Jayyusi calls contrastive work, is involved in the moral ordering of persons 281

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant

as good or bad, better or worse, worthy or not. This seems an important area for research that engages categorization, interaction, and normativity.

Studying language and social interaction matters This review highlights the incredible benefits of language and social interaction as a lens through which to understand racism. Language is a living thing, and like the living things that wield it, language can be shaped for various ends: good, evil, or otherwise. Its creativity and flexibility can also produce ambiguity and evasiveness. Part of what underlies whatever is deemed non-obvious is defeasibility. Something is defeasible when someone can (apparently) validly reject it. This is what’s really at the heart of the “micro” of microaggression, or what is meant by “symbolic” violence or suggestions that racism occurs covertly: not that these practices are somehow less harmful than in the past, but that they are designed to be dissembled.The target of such behavior will feel it, and often recognizes it for what it is, but the practice itself – ambiguous in the context of wider hegemony – can be denied or even go unnoticed by others (c.f., Bazana & Mogotsi, 2017; Weiner et al., 2019). It is a longstanding accusation toward academic research in general, and largely empirical work in particular, that it avoids involving itself in real improvements in social life. Critiques of interactional approaches to critical issues that focus on minutiae of language and practice suggest these may be a reasonable starting point, but do not go far enough toward producing material changes (e.g., Campbell, 1993). Others suggest the theoretical assumptions of discourse and interaction research make a real, embodied sense of social problems such as racism and therefore a real embodied way of addressing such problems impossible (e.g., Hook, 2006). It may very well be the case that interactional research could push itself further to interrogate social justice issues – to follow the path of the research outlined above by showing it can be done, but also by (1) incorporating the value of interactional research into social problems into pedagogy; (2) doing applied academic research; or (3) sharing research results with nonacademic audiences.What results these might have is very much an unfinished argument. Whether or not interactional results can make an enduring difference to society is, as conversation analysts are fond of saying, ultimately an empirical question.

References Ajiboye, E. & Abioye, T. (2019). When citizens talk: Stance and representation in online discourse on Biafra agitations. Discourse & Society, 30(2), 117–134. Antaki, C. (2003). The uses of absurdity. In H. van den Berg, M. Wetherell, & H. Houtkoop-Steenstra (eds.), Analyzing race talk: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the research interview (pp. 85–102). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Arminen, I. (1996). On the moral and interactional relevancy of self-repairs for life stories of members of alcoholics anonymous. Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 16(4), 449–480. Attenborough, F. (2014). Jokes, pranks, blondes and banter: Recontextualising sexism in the British print press. Journal of Gender Studies, 23(2), 137–154. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007a). Contemporary racist discourse: Taboos against racism and racist accusations. In Language, discourse and social psychology (pp. 233–254). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007b). The language of “race” and prejudice: A discourse of denial, reason, and liberal-practical politics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26(2), 123–141. Barrett, R. (2006). Language ideology and racial inequality: Competing functions of Spanish in an Angloowned Mexican restaurant. Language in Society, 35(2), 163–204. Bazana, S. & Mogotsi, O.P. (2017). Social identities and racial integration in historically White universities: A literature review of the experiences of Black students. Transformation in Higher Education, 2, 25. Berard, T.J. (2008). The neglected social psychology of institutional racism. Sociology Compass, 2(2), 734–764.

282

Discrimination and racism in everyday life Bergmann, J.R. (1998). Introduction: Morality in discourse. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 31(3–4), 279–294. Blackledge, A. (2006). The racialization of language in British political discourse. Critical Discourse Studies, 3(1), 61–79. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Billig, M. (2001). Humour and hatred: The racist jokes of the Ku Klux Klan. Discourse & Society, 12(3), 267–289. Billig, M. & Schegloff, E.A. (1999). Critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis: An exchange between. Discourse Society, 10, 543. Bucholtz (2010). White kids: Language, Race, and styles of youth identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, C. (1993). Book review. M. Wetherell & J. Potter (eds.), Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Carney, N. (2016). All lives matter, but so does race: Black lives matter and the evolving role of social media. Humanity & Society, 40(2), 180–199. Carter, P.M. (2013). Poststructuralist theory and sociolinguistics: Mapping the linguistic turn in social theory. Language and Linguistics compass, 7(11), 580–596. Collins, J. (2017). Dilemmas of race, register, and inequality in South Africa. Language in Society, 46(01), 39–56. Condor, S., Figgou, L., Abell, J., Gibson, S., & Stevenson, C. (2006).“They’re not racist”: Prejudice mitigation and suppression in dialogue. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 441–462. Crenshaw, K.W. (ed.) (2019). Seeing race again: Countering colorblindness across the disciplines. Oakland, California: University of California Press. Edwards, D. (2003). Analysing racial discourse: The discursive psychology of mind/world relationships. In H. van den Berg, M. Wetherell, & H. Houtkoop-Steenstra (eds.), Analysing race talk: Multidisciplinary approaches to the interview (pp. 31–48). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, D. & Stokoe, E. (2011). “You don’t have to answer”: Lawyers’ contributions in police interrogations of suspects. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 44(1), 21–43. Enfield, N.J. & Sidnell, J. (2017). On the concept of action in the study of interaction. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 515–535. Fitch, K.L. & Sanders, R.E. (2004). Handbook of language and social interaction. New Jersey: Psychology Press. Fitzgerald, R., Housley, W., & Butler, C.W. (2009). Omnirelevance and interactional context. Australian Journal of Communication, 36(3), 45. Foster, J.D. (2009). Defending whiteness indirectly: A synthetic approach to race discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 20(6), 685–703. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gaudio, R.P. & Bialostok, S. (2005). The trouble with culture: Everyday racism in white middle-class discourse. Critical Discourse Studies, 2(1), 51–69. Goffman, E. (1969). Interaction ritual. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Goodwin, C. (2007). Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse & Society, 18(1), 53–73. Harré, R. (2001). The discursive turn in social psychology. In D. Tannen, H. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 688–706). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hepburn, A. & Bolden, G.B. (2013). The conversation analytic approach to transcription. The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, 57, 76. Heritage, J. (2013). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Hester, S. & Eglin, P. (1997). Culture in action: Studies in membership categorization analysis (No. 4). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hill, J.H. (2008). The everyday language of White racism. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. Hodges, A. (2015). Ideologies of language and race in US media discourse about the Trayvon Martin shooting. Language in Society, 44(3), 401–423. Hook, D. (2006). Pre-discursive’ racism. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 16(3), 207–232. Housley, W. & Fitzgerald, R. (2015). Introduction to membership categorisation analysis. Advances in membership categorisation analysis, 1–22. Jayyusi, L. (1995). Language, moral order and political praxis. Argumentation, 9(1), 75–93. Jayyusi, L. (2013). Categorization and the moral order. Routledge.

283

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant Jones, L. (2016). “If a Muslim says ‘homo’, nothing gets done”: Racist discourse and in-group identity construction in an LGBT youth group. Language in Society, 45(1), 113–133. Kitzinger, C. (2007). Feminist conversation analysis: Research by students at the University of York. UK. Feminism & Psychology, 17(2), 133–148. Korobov, N. (2001, September). Reconciling theory with method: From conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis to positioning analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2, 3. Kurylo, A. & Robles, J.S. (2015). How should I respond to them? An emergent categorization of responses to interpersonally communicated stereotypes. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 44(1), 64–91. Lambek, M. (2010). The ordinary ethics of everyday talk. Ordinary ethics: Anthropology, language, and action, 123–139. Fordham University Press: New York. Laughland, O. & Zanolli, L. (2020, 25 April). Why is coronavirus taking such a deadly toll on black Americans?: Longstanding health and socio-economic disparities have made minorities more vulnerable to Covid-19. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/coronavirusracial-disparities-african-americans. Márquez-Reiter, R. & Haugh, M. (2019). Denunciation, blame and the moral turn in public life. Discourse, Context & Media, 28, 35–43. Márquez-Reiter, R. & Kádár, D.Z. (2015). (Im)politeness and (im)morality: Insights from intervention. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behavior, Culture, 11(2), 239–260. Mondada, L. (2018). Multiple temporalities of language and body in interaction: Challenges for transcribing multimodality. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(1), 85–106. Nikander, P. (2000). “Old” versus “little girl” a discursive approach to age categorization and morality. Journal of Aging Studies, 14(4), 335–358. O’Doherty, K. & Lecouteur, A. (2007). “Asylum seekers”, “boat people” and “illegal immigrants”: Social categorisation in the media. Australian Journal of Psychology, 59(1), 1–12. O’kane, C. (2020, June 8). “Say their names”: The list of people injured or killed in officer-involved incidents is still growing. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/say-their-names-list-peopleinjured-killed-police-officer-involved-incidents/. Parvaresh, V. & Tayebi, T. (2018). Impoliteness, aggression and the moral order. Journal of Pragmatics, 132, 91–107. Potter, J. & Wetherell, M. (1988). Accomplishing attitudes: Fact and evaluation in racist discourse. TextInterdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 8(1–2), 51–68. Rapley, M. (1998). ‘Just an ordinary Australian’: Self-categorization and the discursive construction of facticity in ‘new racist’ political rhetoric. British Journal of Social Psychology, 37(3), 325–344. Rapley, M., McCarthy, D., & McHoul, A. (2003). Mentality or morality? Membership categorization, multiple meanings and mass murder. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42(3), 427–444. Rawls, A.W. (1989). Language, self, and social order: A reformulation of Goffman and sacks. Human studies, 147–172. Rawls, A.W. & Duck, W. (2020). Tacit racism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Richardson, J.E. & Wodak, R. (2009). Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past: Right-wing discourses on employment and nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom. Critical Discourse Studies, 6(4), 251–267. Robles, J.S. (2015a). Extreme case (re)formulation as a practice for making hearably-racist talk repairable. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 390–409. Robles, J.S. (2015b). Morality in discourse. In K. Tracy (ed.), International encyclopedia of language and social interaction. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Robles, J.S. (2019). Building up by tearing down. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 38, 85–105. Robles, J.S. & Castor, T. (2019). Taking the moral high ground: Practices for being uncompromisingly principled. Journal of Pragmatics, 141, 116–129. Rosa, J. & Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621–647. Sacks, H. (1972). On the analyzability of stories by children. In R. Turner (ed.), Ethnomethodology (pp. 216–232). Middlesex, UK: Penguin Press. Sacks, H. (1989). Lecture six: The M.I.R. Membership categorization device. Human Studies, 12: 271–281. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.

284

Discrimination and racism in everyday life Sambaraju, R., McVittie, C., Goodall, K., & McKinlay, A. (2017). “Just an excuse people are just using these days”: Attending to and managing interactional concerns in talk on exclusion of immigrants. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 36(6), 654–674. Sambaraju, R. & Minescu, A. (2019). ‘I have not witnessed it personally myself, but …’: Epistemics in managing talk on racism against immigrants in Ireland. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(2), 398–412. Schegloff, E.A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis I (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Shrikant, N. (2018). The discursive construction of Race as a professional identity category in Two Texas chambers of commerce. International Journal of Business Communication, 55(1), 94–117. Shrikant, N. (2019). “Who’s the face?”: Communication and white identity in a Texas business community. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(2), 254–271. Shrikant, N. (2020). Membership categorization analysis of racism in an online discussion among neighbors. Language in Society. 1–22. doi:10.1017/S0047404520000846. Sidnell, J. & Stivers,T. (eds.) (2012). The handbook of conversation analysis (Vol. 121). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Sneijder, P., & te Molder, H.F. (2005). Moral logic and logical morality: Attributions of responsibility and blame in online discourse on veganism. Discourse & Society, 16(5), 675–696. Speer, S.A. (2002). Sexist talk: Gender categories, participants’ orientations and irony. Journal of sociolinguistics, 6(3), 347–377. Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (eds.) (2011). The morality of knowledge in conversation (Vol. 29). New York: Cambridge University Press. Stokoe, E.H. (2003). Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and membership categorization in neighbour disputes. Feminism & psychology, 13(3), 317–344. Stokoe, E. (2012). Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse studies, 14(3), 277–303. Stokoe, E.H. & Smithson, J. (2001). ’Making gender relevant: Conversation analysis and gender categories in interaction. Discourse and Society, 12(2), 243–69. Subtirelu, N.C. (2015).“She does have an accent but …”: Race and language ideology in students’ evaluations of mathematics instructors on RateMyProfessors.com. Language in Society, 44(1), 35–62. Tate, S.A. & Page, D. (2018). Whiteliness and institutional racism: Hiding behind (un)conscious bias. Ethics and Education, 13(1), 141–155. Tileagă, C. (2005). Accounting for extreme prejudice and legitimating blame in talk about the Romanies. Discourse & Society, 16(5), 603–624. Tileagă, C. (2010). Cautious morality: Public accountability, moral order and accounting for a conflict of interest. Discourse Studies, 12(2), 223–239. Tileagă, C. (2015). The nature of prejudice: Society, discrimination and moral exclusion. London: Routledge. Tileagă, C. & Stokoe, E. (eds.) (2015). Discursive psychology: Classic and contemporary issues. Routledge. Tracy, K. (2015). Editors introduction. In K. Tracy (ed.), The international encyclopedia of language and social interaction (pp. 1–22). Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. Urciuoli, B. (1996). Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. van den Berg, H.,Wetherell, M., & Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. (eds.) (2003). Analyzing race talk: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the research interview. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T.A. (1987). Communicating racism: Ethnic prejudice in thought and talk. London, England: Sage. van Dijk, T.A. (1992). Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse & society, 3(1), 87–118. van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Elite discourse and racism. London: SAGE. Weatherall, A. (2015). Sexism in language and talk-in-interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34(4), 410–426. Weiner, J.M., Cyr, D., & Burton, L.J. (2019). Microaggressions in administrator preparation programs: How Black female participants experienced discussions of identity, discrimination, and leadership. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, doi: 1942775119858655. Wetherell, M. (2003). Racism and the analysis of cultural resources in interviews. In H. van den Berg, M.S. Wetherell, & H. Houtkoop-Steenstra (eds.), Analyzing race talk: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the research interview (pp. 11–30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation of exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Whitehead, K.A. (2015). Everyday antiracism in action: Preference organization in responses to racism. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 374–389.

285

J.S. Robles and N. Shrikant Whitehead, K.A. (2017). Discursive approaches to race and racism. Escholarship.org. Whitehead, K.A. (2020). The problem of context in the analysis of social action: The case of implicit Whiteness in Post-apartheid South Africa. Social Psychology Quarterly, doi: 0190272519897595. Whitehead, K.A. & Lerner, G.H. (2009). When are persons "white"? On some practical asymmetries of racial reference in talk-in-interaction. Discourse and Society, 20, 613–641. Whitehead, K.A. & Stokoe, E. (2015). Producing and responding to-isms in interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34(4), 368–373. Whitehead, K.A. & Wittig, M.A. (2004). Discursive management of resistance to a multicultural education programme. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1(4), 267–284. Wood, L.A. & Kroger, R.O. (2000). Doing discourse analysis: Methods for studying action in talk and text. London: Sage. Xu, S. (1995). Cultural perceptions: Exploiting the unexpected of the other. Culture & Psychology, 1(3), 315–342. Zentella, A.C. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. New York: Wiley.

286

20 CENSURE AND MANAGEMENT OF RACIST TALK Stephen Gibson

Research on the language of prejudice and racism has long been concerned with the ways in which people seek to inoculate themselves against charges of prejudice (e.g. Augoustinos & Every, 2007a; van Dijk, 1992). As outlined by Augoustinos (this volume), this has often led to a focus on the denial of racism, or on the ways in which racist utterances are rationalised and justified in order to manage matters of stake and interest (Edwards & Potter, 1992). Specifically, if those who construct racialised outgroups in negative terms can frame their evaluations as rational, objective and as reluctantly arrived at, then there is less chance of their views being dismissed as arising from their own irrational, prejudiced, racist character. However, until relatively recently there has been notably less attention paid to the ways in which such attempts at denial and rationalisation of racism have been received, nor on the way in which racist talk may be censured or managed by other parties in an interaction. In this chapter, I will provide a selective overview of some recent developments in research on these issues, and sketch out some possible avenues for the further exploration of the ways in which the censure and management of racist talk may operate. In their seminal Mapping the Language of Racism,Wetherell and Potter (1992) provided a detailed overview of the ways in which their sample of Pākehā New Zealanders sought to ‘dodge the identity of prejudice’. Of particular note for present purposes is the observation that their interview participants could orient to questions about racism as potential accusations: During the course of the interview, most of our sample were asked the following question or some variant of it: do you think Pākehā New Zealanders are prejudiced? Is there much discrimination against Māori people? Our introduction of the topic and typical question format presented an accounting problem for our respondents. Given the negative identity attributed to prejudice, it sets up a certain kind of accusation, or was interpreted in this way.We could thus treat responses to this question as a set which orientated to a commonly occurring discursive situation: dealing with an unwelcome evaluation. (Wetherell & Potter, 1992, p. 212) Wetherell and Potter proceed to analyse the ways in which these implicit accusations were responded to by their participants, noting that interviewees often combined denials of prejudice with acknowledgements that where prejudice did exist it was a property of a pathological other. DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-20

287

S. Gibson

Thus racism-as-prejudice was treated as a problem confined to individuals, rather than as something more systemic and structural. Note, however, that in considering how accusations were responded to, the accusations themselves (which emanated from interview questions) were not subjected to analysis. In his classic paper on the denial of racism, van Dijk (1992) did highlight the difficulties faced by those who would make accusations of racism. Just as those who would make racist remarks find themselves faced with potential opprobrium, so those who would challenge racism run the risk of attracting criticism: Accusations of racism … soon tend to be seen as more serious social infractions than racist attitudes or actions themselves, e.g. because they disrupt ingroup solidarity and smooth ingroup encounters: they are felt to ruin the ‘good atmosphere’ of interactions and situations. Moreover, such accusations are seen to impose taboos, prevent free speech and a ‘true’ or ‘honest’ assessment of the ethnic situation. In other words, denials of racism often turn into counter-accusations of intolerant and intolerable anti-racism. (van Dijk, 1992, p. 90) As a result, accusations of racism may not typically be explicit, but rather softened and hedged in order to manage the identity of the accuser: Indeed, the very notion of ‘racism’ may become virtually taboo in accusatory contexts because of its strong negative connotations. If used at all in public discourse, for instance in the media, it will typically be enclosed by quotes or accompanied by doubt or distance markers such as ‘alleged’, signalling that this is a, possibly unwarranted if not preposterous, accusation, e.g. by minorities themselves or by (other) anti-racists. (van Dijk, 1992, p. 91) Nevertheless, van Dijk was similarly more concerned with the way in which racism was denied than with putting the accusations themselves under the analytic microscope. Indeed, despite these early observations, it is notable that the first wave of discursive research on racist discourse tended to repeat this focus on the way in which speakers denied and managed racism on their own behalf (Condor, Figgou, Abell, Gibson, & Stevenson, 2006). Augoustinos and Every’s (2007a) comprehensive review and summary of findings from this tradition of work identified five core strategies through which this could be accomplished, but it is notable that, at this stage, little research had considered either the way in which accusations themselves were made in practice, or the way in which speakers could attempt to manage accusations of racism on behalf of others. Two more recent traditions of work have sought to address these issues: First, a body of work has developed that focusses on accusations of racism in their own right; second, a dialogical perspective on racist discourse has moved the focus away from individuals denying racism on their own behalf, and instead considers the accusation, denial, management and enactment of racism as a collaborative accomplishment. I will consider these bodies of work in turn.

Accusations of racism Augoustinos and Every (2007b, 2010) identified the relative paucity of research on accusations of racism and initiated a body of work that has begun to pay careful analytic attention to how accusations are made and responded to (Chiang, 2010; Goodman & Burke, 2010; Goodman & Johnson, 2013; Hanson-Easey & Augoustinos, 2010; Riggs & Due, 2010). Of particular note, this 288

Censure and management of racist talk

research has confirmed van Dijk’s initial suggestion that accusations are seldom made directly, but rather that they are hedged, softened and attenuated. Indeed, the terms ‘race’ and ‘racism’ are often conspicuous by their absence as the taboo against ‘race’ talk applies not only to those who might leave themselves open to accusations of racism but also to those who would make such accusations. As an example, consider the following illustrative extract from a broadcast political debate in the UK, conducted during the 2015 General Election campaign, in which the Liberal Democrat politician Tim Farron criticises remarks made by the then-leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage, in which Farage had suggested that antidiscrimination laws may no longer be needed (Gibson, 2020)1:

Extract 1 1 (.h) yeah I er (.) >s- I was (.) on the road in< 2 (.) my (.) patch yesterday↑ (.) on the way up to: er 3 (.) Grasmere and I heard the (.h) er interview 4 (.) erm (.) er with Nigel Farage and he’s claimed 5 obviously since that he was misreported and 6 misquoted (.h) he absolutely wasn’t (.h) >er it< 7 was very clear: what he meant (.) and what he said 8 (.h) er in politics sometimes (.) you get people (.) 9 very often on the f- o-o (.) on the very right end 10 of (.h) British politics who will use (.h) what we 11 call (.) d-dog whistle messages (.h) >in other 12 words< subtle↑ (.) pretty nasty messages (.h) to be 13 picked up by a certain (.h) er audience shall we say 14 (.h) this was not dog whistle politics this was 15 foghorn politics (.h) this is about making absolutely 16 clear (.h) where (.) Nigel Farage’s Party stands (.h) 17 on the issue >of a< diverse (.) and racially equal 18 Britain (.) the notion that we don’t now need (.h) 19 race equality laws in the workplace >or anywhere 20 else< (.h) is absolutely nonsense (.h) and utterly 21 (.) offensive and it is a reminder (.h) that 22 nationalists of all kind (.h) are a huge danger to 23 our country because it’s al- (.) nationalism is 24 all: about (.h) pitting one group (.h) against 25 another (.h) rather than all of us (as) standing 26 together to try and make a better Britain (.h) 27 that we can all get behind There is much going on in this extract, but for present purposes I want to highlight two things. First, in the same way as those who run the risk of being accused of racism often go to great lengths to frame their claims as being based on rational, objective criteria, here we see such

1 In most of the illustrative data extracts presented in this chapter, some form of Jeffersonian or Jeffersonlite transcription notation is used (see Jefferson, 2004, for a full list of conventions). All extracts appear as they were presented in the publications in which they originally appeared.

289

S. Gibson

accusations themselves being warranted in a similar way. Farron’s narrative description of the context in which he heard the remarks (lines 1–4) frames him as engaged in ordinary, routine activity for a politician (‘on the road in my patch’), with the specific detail of his location (‘on the way up to … Grasmere’) functioning to enhance the credibility of his recollection (Potter, 1996). His formulation that he ‘heard’ the remarks is also notable in that hearing is a passive process – Farage’s comments were something that he happened to hear, rather than something that he was actively seeking out. This subtly manages his stake and interest (Edwards & Potter, 1992) in that he positions himself as having simply come across the comments whilst engaged in some other mundane activity, rather than having made any kind of concerted effort to find material with which to level accusations at Farage. Second, while Farron is highly critical of Farage, he at no point accuses him directly of racism or of being racist. Indeed, he uses a variety of other terms to characterise Farage’s position (e.g. ‘the very right end of British politics’; ‘nationalism’; ‘nasty’; ‘utterly offensive’). When we consider how these terms are woven together, an even more complex picture emerges. Farron clearly orients to issues of ‘race’, referring explicitly to Farage’s remarks as ‘making absolutely clear where Nigel Farage’s party stands on the issue of a diverse and racially equal Britain’ (lines 15–18), but he does not spell out where it is that UKIP stands. Similarly, in working up a contrast between ‘dog whistle politics’ and ‘foghorn politics’ (lines 10–15), Farron refers to the former as being designed to be ‘picked up by a certain (.h) er audience, shall we say’. Again, however, the audience is not specified, and indeed Farron makes a point of framing this formulation as a euphemism – the meta-discursive comment ‘shall we say’ marks his reference to ‘a certain audience’ as being studiedly diplomatic. This avoidance of naming racism may arise from the interactional difficulty in making direct accusations of racism, but the indirectness may also be precisely the point in that it allows Farron to construct Farage’s racism as common sense – as so obvious that it does not need to be stated explicitly. Other research has shown that even those who have been subjected to racism can, on occasion, be seen to exercise caution in how they describe racist incidents (e.g. Kirkwood, McKinlay, & McVittie, 2013; Verkuyten, 2005). For example, Kirkwood et al. (2013) consider the following extract from an interview with a refugee discussing his experience of being a victim of violence while seeking asylum in the UK:

Extract 2 1 R4 I had no troubles in [area of Glasgow] y’know but when I came here (3.0) °you 2 know° (.) I get I started getting people >calling me names< and stuff u::m= 3 INT =°okay° 4 R4 throwing stuff at me >sometimes you know< when I when I would be walking 5 down this road (2.0) some ↑bored people are out there 6 INT °yeah°= 7 R4 =you know when you’d walk past they’re thro:w things at [you 8 INT [right 9 R4 [>and stuff like that< 10 (.) I’m thinking that’s just (.) that’s probably about (.) my colour or >summin’ like 11 that< you have to think like this ‘cos there’s no other reason (.) but >some people 12 are just bored< they would probably= 13 INT =heh= 14 R4 =>do it to anybody< you know (Kirkwood et al., 2013, p. 752) 290

Censure and management of racist talk

The interviewee’s account of this violent incident, and the way in which his attackers’ motivations are formulated as being based on ‘my colour’ (line 10), highlight the hedged and softened way in which Kirkwood et al.’s participants broached the possibility of racism as a reason for the violence they had experienced. The initial account of being called names (line 2) and having ‘stuff ’ thrown at him (line 4) attributes boredom as a candidate explanation for these behaviours, before he subsequently invokes ‘my colour’ as an alternative. Kirkwood et al. note that the way in which this is done is telling in that it is hedged and softened in several ways. First, by prefacing his invocation of ‘colour’ with ‘I’m thinking’, the speaker frames this observation as a somewhat speculative account that has just occurred to him; second, the use of ‘probably’ hedges the racist motivation for the attacks; third, the generalising device ‘or summin’ like that’ immediately downplays the specificity of racist motivation; fourth, he further downplays people’s racist motivations by suggesting again that they ‘are just bored’ and would ‘would probably do it to anybody’. This concern for the delicate interactional choreography of accusations can be extended to highlight the broader implications of the ‘disappearance’ of racism. Riggs and Due (2010) consider a high-profile incidence of racism that occurred on the British television programme Celebrity Big Brother and explore how the racism that occurred in the programme was dealt with in subsequent interviews with contestants. In the following extract, the host Davina McCall is interviewing contestant Jade Goody about racist remarks she had made concerning fellow contestant Shilpa Shetty:

Extract 3 (to Goody) but in (1) that’s almost trying to excu:se the fact because you and the girls have been doing a bit of bitching behind Shilpa’s back and then you go and tell Shilpa what you’d said but its almost (1) that’s quite [cruel to go to somebody and say] (Riggs & Due, 2010, p. 265) As Riggs and Due note, McCall frames Goody’s actions not in terms of racism, but rather as ‘bitching’ and as being ‘cruel’.This reflects a tendency throughout the data for the incidents to be referred to by terms other than racism, such as bullying, mocking and offensive behaviour. While the interactional difficulty of making direct accusations of racism is certainly part of this story, Riggs and Due also note the importance of the ideological implications of this discursive phenomenon. In using these various euphemisms for racism, Riggs and Due argue that, McCall is rendered complicit in the relationships of power which enable racism to continue unchecked by not naming it as a relationship between privilege and disadvantage, whereby those of us who occupy privileged locations within racial hierarchies stand to benefit from them, regardless of our individual intent. (Riggs & Due, 2010, p. 269) Thus, the seeming disappearance of racism in accusatory talk may be a product not only of the interactional norms of polite conversation and civilised conduct but also of an ideological context in which racial privilege is taken for granted, with interpersonal failings (bullying, cruelty, etc.) being foregrounded at the expense of structural dis/advantage based around categories of ‘race’. 291

S. Gibson

Yet amongst these studies highlighting the disappearance of ‘race’, a cautionary note should be sounded. Stokoe and Edwards (2007) consider a number of direct accusations of racism in reports of disputes to the police and to a mediation service. In the following illustrative example of an interview between a police officer (P) and a suspect (S) who has been accused of creating a disturbance, the suspect makes an accusation of racism against the person who has made the initial accusation:

Extract 4 P: [Is there anythin’ else you wanna add.hh (0.2) P: Any- (0.2) .h [( )] S: [Ye:h I] would like you to investigate him. (0.2) S: → fo:*:r (.) racist remarks. Against my family:h (.) S: → Callin’ them (0.6) (Stokoe & Edwards, 2007, p. 346) Such stark examples of accusations of racism feature a direct labelling of the complainable matter as being concerned with racism, and indeed Stokoe and Edwards note that the initial characterisation of the ‘remarks’ as ‘racist’ frames the specific example that follows as racist (rather than, say, simply insulting or offensive). The use of reported speech (‘Calling them Paki bastards’) further enhances the credibility of the accusation, using specific terms rather than simply a general characterisation of the ‘remarks’. Such structural features were woven throughout the data considered by Stokoe and Edwards, and highlight the context-specificity of accusations of racism. While contexts such as research interviews, broadcast interviews and political debates may constitute occasions for careful management of anything that might be heard as an accusation of racism, the accusations considered by Stokoe and Edwards concern parties who are already in the midst of a dispute that has become serious enough to warrant the involvement of the police or other agencies. Moreover, the different ways in which accusations of racism are made and managed across these various contexts points to the need to consider a number of conceptual issues around dialogicality and the collaborative nature of the censure and management of racist talk.

A dialogical perspective In a series of papers, Susan Condor and her colleagues have outlined a dialogical perspective on racist and prejudiced discourse (Condor, 2006; Condor & Figgou, 2012; Condor et al., 2006). Condor (2006) notes that while it may seem odd to criticise discursive work for neglecting the specifically dialogical nature of prejudice expression, censure and mitigation, in practice much discourse analytic work on prejudice had tended to focus on individuals managing their own identity as non-racist on their own behalf. By contrast, Condor suggests that these processes might more typically be expected to be found in the interaction between individuals. Of particular note for present purposes, Condor et al. (2006) illustrate the ways in which racist talk may be managed in the course of multi-party interaction. Rather than the individual denying 292

Censure and management of racist talk

racism on their own behalf, Condor et al. instead point to the relatively neglected extent to which people can mitigate, deny or suppress racist talk on behalf of others, and indeed how these processes can therefore be understood as collaborative accomplishments. As an example, consider the extract below, in which a married couple taking part in a joint research interview conducted by Susan Condor are discussing ‘illegal’ immigration to the UK:

Extract 5 1 Jack: 2 3 Hilda: 4 5 Jack: 6 Hilda: 7 Jack: 8

[…] let’s face it, it’s not as if they’re wanted here. We have enough lowlife here already without importing [other people’s. [Jack! ((to Susan)) I’m sorry about that. He’s not xenophobic. It’s it’s not= =it’s not racist, no. We’ve never been racist, have we Hilda? No. We’ve got nothing against= =nothing against refugees. I have every sympathy for them. But you’d be mad not to ask, why are they all coming here? (Condor et al., 2006, p. 452)

In line 3, Hilda’s exclamation (‘Jack!’), followed by her apology to the interviewer, indicates both that Jack’s preceding turn has been oriented to as potentially hearable as xenophobic, and that such remarks stand as breaches of the social order. Notably, however, as in several of the examples above, Hilda does not frame Jack’s remarks in terms of potential racism, but rather in terms of xenophobia. Instead, it is Jack himself in his subsequent turn who denies racism, but in such a way as to shift the potential target of any possible accusation. Condor et al. point out how Jack subtly shifts the focus of a potential accusation of racism away from himself as an individual, drawing in Hilda to mount a collective denial of racism on behalf of them both (line 5: ‘We’ve never been racist, have we Hilda?’).This collective footing is then taken up by Hilda in line 6 (‘No. We’ve got nothing against …’. Jack then reverts to a personal footing (line 7: ‘I have every sympathy …’) before re-framing his concerns in generic terms (lines 7–8: ‘you’d be mad not to ask …). Thus not only can interactants respond to manage the identities of dialogic partners, but in doing so the nature of those charges can be subtly re-formulated so as to more firmly resist any potential accusations. Through consideration of this, and other examples, Condor et al conclude that ‘the occurrence of ‘racist discourse’ is likely to represent a collaborative accomplishment, the responsibility for which is shared jointly between the person of the speaker, and those other co-present individuals who occasion, reinforce or simply fail to suppress it’ (Condor et al., 2006, p. 459). If this example highlights how an admonishment can be swiftly followed by attempts at identity management from the same person who issued the admonishment, it is also instructive to consider an example of a case in which admonishment is not accompanied by attempts at identity management by the same people who have issued the admonishment. In such cases an individual who is accused of racism may be faced with managing their conversational rehabilitation without the explicit collaboration of others. Consider the following example, taken from a group interview with four 15-year-olds at their school. Prior to the stretch of talk featured in this extract, some of the children had been complaining about linguistic hygiene (e.g. supposed strictures against saying ‘black coffee’), and had worked up a complaint that it was unfair that ‘black people’ were able to use terms to refer to each other that would be considered highly offensive and racist if used by ‘a white person’ (see Gibson, 2017, for the full analysis). We join the discussion as the interviewer is attempting to intervene to provide a counter-argument: 293

S. Gibson

Extract 6 52 I do you think maybe because they’ve had (0.1) a lot of 53 [ (0.5) ][racism n stuff against them]= 54 CR [they’ve had [a lot of] 55 SH [ yeah ] [they’re fighting back at us] 56 I = they’re sort of (.) reclaiming that °maybe they’re°= 57 SH =yeah they’re just get- clai[ming what] 58 CL [((inaudible))] 59 AM [I don’t ((inaudible))] right I 60 just call them minstre:ls, 61 (0.1) 62 ? shsh[shsh! 63 AM [↑it’s better than using that [horrible↑] word though 64 CL [shush!] 65 AM innit= 66 CL °↑shut [up↑°] 67 SH [((inaudible))!] 68 CL °↑shut up↑°! 69 AM [I know but it’s better than saying] (.) a black person 70 CR [°(no) I am- I am not°] 71 AM [I’d rather say:: (.) li:ke,] 72 CR [°°you don’t think you’re racist at ↑all↑] do you?°° 73 AM ah! you know what I mean Prior to this extract, the speakers had been formulating their complaints in more general terms, but here Amy (AM) is censured by her peers in response to a direct admission of using a derogatory term (‘minstrels’) to refer to ‘them’. Amy’s censure by the very speakers with whom she has just been co-constructing complaints is occasioned by her adoption of a personal footing (Goffman, 1979). Whereas previous uses of offensive racial terms (ethnophaulisms) in this discussion had not been subject to censure, the key difference here is that Amy positions herself as using such a term personally. Interestingly, the delivery of the initial admonishment (line 62) is similar to that delivered by Hilda in the previous extract in that it is swift and urgent (as indicated by the exclamation marks in both cases). There is something here about the performance of admonishment that has to date received little attention in the literature (though see Potter & Hepburn, 2020, on shaming and admonishment). In order for co-present others to display their recognition that certain things are unacceptable, it may not be enough to simply point out that it is not acceptable, but instead it may need to be delivered in such a way as to perform a level of visceral shock at what has been said. This possibility would merit further analytic attention in future research. Of particular note here is the way in which Amy responds to the censure visited on her by her peers. Immediately after the initial admonishment, Amy attempts to frame her choice of terms as preferable to an unspecified alternative (line 63: ‘that horrible word’). These attempts at identity management are resisted by Claire (CL), whose admonishment takes the form of a literal attempt to silence Amy (line 64: ‘shush!’; lines 66 & 68: ‘shut up’). Undeterred, Amy continues to attempt to explain herself, this time through specifying the term to which ‘minstrels’ is preferable (line 69: ‘it’s better than saying a black person’), which occasions an intervention from Craig (CR) who explicitly invokes racism through implying that Amy is unaware of her own 294

Censure and management of racist talk

racism (line 72). Notably, and in line with many of the examples considered in the preceding section of the chapter, this accusation of racism is still enacted indirectly. Even though Craig explicitly invokes racism, he doesn’t go as far as to say something as direct as ‘you are racist’. In response, Amy frames the dispute as a matter of semantics (line 73: ‘ah! you know what I mean’), thereby reducing the problem to one of lack of clarity rather than being a matter of her character. By using a marker of common knowledge (‘you know’; Edwards & Mercer, 1987), she also subtly suggests that her peers may be being deliberately difficult – they know what she is getting at, and there is no need to continue criticising her for what is simply a matter of semantics. Again, however, lest the impression be created that censure inevitably leads to back-tracking and identity management work, it is worth considering an example in which racism is simply admitted. This comes from the work of Kevin Whitehead who, like Condor, has sought to explore the collaborative nature of talk concerning ‘race’ and racism.Together with his colleagues, Whitehead’s analyses (e.g. Durrheim, Greener, & Whitehead, 2015;Whitehead, 2009, 2012, 2013) have demonstrated the ‘moment-by-moment decision making and collaborative work required for actions to be realized as, for example, potentially racist but with no malicious intent (and thus not warranting direct antiracist intervention), versus culpably and maliciously racist (and thus requiring intervention)’ (Whitehead, 2015, p. 386). The example here comes from a South African talk radio show, in which a caller (C) formulates complaints about the practice of busing, a policy used to create racially diverse demographic profiles in schools:

Extract 7 1 C: 2 3 4 C: 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 H: 12 13 H: 14 C: 15 H: 16 C: 17 18 H: 19 C: 20 H: 21 22 C: 23 24 H: 25 C:

Okay now the w- the (.) what the lady was talking about busing, (.) what is happening is that there are schools in the township(s), .h but children are being bused from the black townships, (.) into the suburbs, (0.5) uh which is causing overcrowding in thee u:m (0.2) Model C schools in the suburbs, .h and the schools in the townships are being empty. (0.2) Bu- u- (.) bu: but I mean people have to go to school. (0.4) [ So::: ] [They have] to go to school. .h [What I]’m saying is they [Okay. ] are busing black children, (.) from the black areas, .h into the (0.4) erstwhi[le] w]hite areas, into the Model [.hh ] [C schools, (they’re overcrowding them,)] [ Bu- i- I you know I’m sorry. Millie, ] this: [this black areas ] and[Yes I’m a racist.] (0.2) Ah well then I’m not go[nna talk to you any]more. [( ) No no-] ((call is 295

S. Gibson

26 cut off)) 27 (0.3) 28 H: Bye Millie. ((host takes next call)) (Whitehead, 2015, pp. 383–384) Whitehead frames this exchange as an example of the way in which a speaker (in this case the Host [H]) can progressively withdraw the benefit of the doubt when another speaker is formulating complaints concerning the racialised other. In the host’s initial response (line 10), the disagreement is framed in terms of a general principle (‘people have to go to school’) without orienting to the racialised nature of the caller’s framing of the problem (i.e. line 6: ‘black townships’). Whitehead notes that this provides an opportunity for the caller to modify the way in which the complaint is framed so as to remove the racialised element, but does so in a way that avoids having to explicitly treat it as problematic in the first place. Again, the indirectness of anything that might be construed as an accusation of racism is notable here. Rather than back-tracking, however, the caller repeats and upgrades the racialised nature of her complaint (lines 16–17). We may note here a commonality with the previous extract, in which Amy’s shift from a generic to a personal footing was occasioned by the interviewer’s attempts to provide a counter-argument in such a way as to challenge what had been said without explicitly making an accusation of racism. In certain situations, therefore, such attempts at gently steering speakers away from increasingly racialised complaints may actually occasion an escalation in the articulation of more explicitly racist forms of accounting. The caller’s escalation of her complaint occasions a further escalation in the host’s disagreement, with the explicit problematisation of her use of racialised accounting (line 21: ‘this black areas’). While this constitutes an upgrade on his previous turn, Whitehead also notes how the dispreferred nature of his disagreement is still apparent insofar as it is prefaced with an apology (line 20). However at this point, in contrast with previous examples considered in the chapter, here the caller explicitly and unequivocally identifies herself as ‘a racist’ (line 22). There is no attempt at back-tracking or other forms of identity management work to ‘dodge the identity of prejudice’, but instead a bald affirmation that her complaint does indeed tell us something about her character, something which is then treated by the host as a warrant for immediate termination of the call (line 24). Given the volume of work that has explored how speakers engage in discursive work to manage their identity in order to avoid the implication that they may be racist, xenophobic or otherwise ‘prejudiced’ in some way, Whitehead’s example may seem to be somewhat unusual or surprising. However, some recent work on racist discourse has begun to draw attention to what appears to be increasingly numerous examples in which speakers admit to racism and/or prejudice (e.g. Durrheim, Quayle, & Dixon, 2016; Goodman & Rowe, 2014; Xenitidou & Sapountzis, 2018). Of particular note for present purposes, it is worth concluding this overview of research on the censure and management of racist talk through building on the initial observations noted above concerning the way in which racist talk is produced in part as a response to attempts to challenge racist forms of accounting. In this respect, Durrheim et al. (2016) have developed what they term an ‘identity performance model’ in which the strategic use of certain forms of accounting, and the way in which criticism of such accounting practices are responded to, can actually be used by speakers to mobilise supporters to their cause on the grounds that reasonable concerns are subject to unreasonable criticism in terms of racism. This can be illustrated through a brief example from Durrheim et al.’s (2018) fascinating study of the dialogic networks surrounding the 2016 UK referendum on membership of the European Union, and in particular the presentation of a controversial poster by the then-leader of the UK Independence Party, 296

Censure and management of racist talk

Nigel Farage. Durrheim et al. show how the poster (entitled ‘Breaking Point’) was subject to criticism on the grounds that it was racist, but also that Farage was able to use this to rhetorically turn the tables on his critics by extending the criticism from himself to all those who might be concerned about immigration. This can be understood as functioning to mobilise supporters by uniting them in opposition to those who would accuse them of racism. Durrheim et al. show the outcome of this dialogical network by considering how people posting comments in online discussion forums concerned with the controversy explicitly drew on racism as, in effect, an identity around which to rally:

Extract 8 Z1:  I

see uncontrolled immigration when I look around. If that makes me racist then so be it. I live in a predominantly racist country (many people share my view) so be it. If you want to call me a racist then go ahead but please don’t try to tell me up is down and down is up.

Durrheim et al. argue that, in this example and others like it, the ‘ironic ownership’ of racism in these apparent admissions in fact function to frame ‘accusations of racism as lacking in substance’ (p. 399), and/or as ignoring the truth of the matter at hand. Ultimately, they suggest that this ironic ownership of racism is a way of doing identity work that enables people to distance themselves from establishment viewpoints, instead positioning those who embrace this stigmatised identity as being the real victims of a lofty and dismissive elite who view ‘ordinary’, ‘real’ people with contempt. This begins to move us beyond the purview of a purely micro-interactional analysis, and into the realms of a more far-reaching analysis of political phenomena such as the oft-noted rise of populism in recent years (e.g. Jay, Batruch, Jetten, McGarty, & Muldoon, 2019). Indeed, by way of conclusion I will turn briefly to the broader analytic developments that are suggested by this burgeoning line of analysis.

Conclusion Research has shown how accusations of racism are often done indirectly, and this can be taken as evidence of a norm against making such accusations. This implies that the taboo against racism operates just as strongly for those who would challenge racism as for those who would find themselves subject to accusations of racism. However, things may be more complex if – as in extract 1 – the common-sense obviousness of some remark or other as racism can be worked up. This uses the indirectness of the accusation strategically in order to position the racist status of a remark, action or policy as so clearly racist to any reasonable observer that it does not need to be stated. Importantly, these two imperatives are not mutually exclusive. The taboo against making accusations of racism may well be in operation, but a speaker subject to this taboo can still frame the unsayable as nevertheless obvious. Indeed, this dynamic can arguably be seen even more clearly with respect to racism itself, with analyses such as Durrheim et al.’s now showing that the very unsayability of racism is available as a rhetorical resource to be drawn on by political leaders on the right who would seek to mobilise against the ‘elites’, the ‘political class’, or whatever. Building on detailed interactional analyses (e.g. extracts 6 and 7) that show how attempts to challenge racism can occasion an upgrading in racist language, the identity performance perspective points the way to a more wide-angle analysis in which such processes can be seen to function over extended periods of time (i.e. longitudinally) and over multiple inter-related forms of media (i.e. dialogical networks; Leudar & Nekvapil, 2004). Indeed, Condor (2006, p. 11) notes ‘once we begin to appreciate the ways in which dialogic episodes may become functionally 297

S. Gibson

imbedded and serially interconnected, we can begin to appreciate the radical indeterminacy of social action’. Just as attempts to challenge racism may, counter-intuitively, lead to an escalation in racist accounting, both at the local interactional (Gibson, 2017) and more distal (Durrheim et al., 2018) level, so the presentation of examples of racist discourse in academic publications and other outlets ‘may, indirectly and paradoxically, contribute in a small way to anti-racist outcomes’ (Condor, 2006, p. 11). The developing literature on the censure and management of racist discourse might therefore continue to be usefully extended through a fuller consideration of these dialogical processes. Early debates about the appropriate way in which to analyse discourse centred around the distinction between micro-analysis (e.g. approaches informed by conversation analysis) and those that were more concerned with broader-scale processes of ideology and/or culture (e.g. those that drew more heavily on one form or another of post-structural analysis) (e.g. Schegloff, 1997; Wetherell, 1998). Both micro and macro forms of discourse analysis tended, however, to see the focal point of analysis as coalescing around a single point in time (Condor, 1996), whether that was in terms of strict injunctions only to focus on discrete interactional episodes, or else on the ways in which the myriad forces of culture and ideology could be traced through the analysis of a collection of individual texts. What has often been missing from both approaches is a sense in which discrete interactional episodes and/or texts are interconnected in the form of dialogical networks. This goes beyond a call for greater attention to intertextuality in our analyses, and instead highlights a need for the forensic level of detail that is brought to the analysis of individual texts to be matched by an analytic goal of identifying the textual networks that allow for larger-scale social processes to unfold, an undertaking that is likely to require engagement with interdisciplinarity. Or, to put it in terms that may be more familiar to psychological audiences, what we really need are studies that aim to follow through close textual analysis in a longitudinal fashion. There is no reason why such an endeavour should be seen as incompatible with microanalytic approaches such as discursive psychology, and indeed the time may be right for us to begin to consider how we formulate a longitudinal approach to the discursive psychology of ‘race’ and racism.

References Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007a).The language of “race” and prejudice: A discourse of denial, reason, and liberal-practical politics. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26, 123–141. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007b). Contemporary racist discourse: Taboos against racism and racist accusations. In A. Weatherall, B.M. Watson, & C. Gallois (eds.), Language, discourse and social psychology (pp. 233–254). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2010). Accusations and denials of racism: Managing moral accountability in public discourse. Discourse & Society, 21, 251–256. Chiang, S.-Y. (2010). ‘Well, I’m a lot of things, but I’m sure not a bigot’: Positive self-presentation in confrontational discourse on racism. Discourse & Society, 21, 273–294. Condor, S. (1996). Social identity and time. In W.P. Robinson (ed.), Social groups and identities: Developing the legacy of Henri Tajfel (pp. 285–315). Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Condor, S. (2006). Public prejudice as collaborative accomplishment: Towards a dialogic social psychology of racism. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 16, 1–18. Condor, S. & Figgou, L. (2012). Rethinking the prejudice problematic: A collaborative cognition approach. In J. Dixon & M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change (pp. 200–221). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Condor, S., Figgou, L., Abell, J., Gibson, S., & Stevenson, C. (2006). “They’re not racist”: Prejudice denial, mitigation and suppression in dialogue. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 441–462. Durrheim, K., Greener, R., & Whitehead, K.A. (2015). Race trouble: Attending to race and racism in online interaction. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54, 84–99.

298

Censure and management of racist talk Durrheim, K., Okuyan, M., Twail, M.S., García-Sánchez, E., Pereira, A., Portice, J.S. … Keil, T. (2018). How racism discourse can mobilize right-wing populism: The construction of identity and alliance in reactions to UKIP’s Brexit “Breaking Point” campaign. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 28, 385–405. Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of “prejudice”: “Prejudice” expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37, 17–35. Edwards, D. & Mercer, N. (1987). Common knowledge:The development of understanding in the classroom. London: Routledge. Edwards, D. & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. London: Sage. Gibson, S. (2017). Everyday politics, everyday racism: Censure and management of racist talk. In. In C. Howarth & E. Andreouli (eds.), The social psychology of everyday politics (pp. 34–48). Abingdon: Routledge. Gibson, S. (2020). Accusations and denials of racism in dialogical context. In M. Demasi, S. Burke, & Tileaga, C. (eds.), Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goffman, E. (1979). Footing. Semiotica, 25, 1–30. Goodman, S. & Burke, S. (2010). ‘Oh you don’t want asylum seekers, oh you’re just racist’: A discursive analysis of discussions about whether it’s racist to oppose asylum seeking. Discourse & Society, 21, 325–340. Goodman, S. & Johnson, A. (2013). Strategies used by the far right to counter accusations of racism. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 6, 97–113. Goodman, S. & Rowe, L. (2014). “Maybe it is prejudice… but it is NOT racism”: Negotiating racism in discussion forums about gypsies. Discourse & Society, 25, 32–46. Hanson-Easey, S. & Augoustinos, M. (2010). Out of Africa: Accounting for refugee policy and the language of causal attribution. Discourse & Society, 21, 295–323. Jay, S., Batruch, A., Jetten, J., McGarty, C., & Muldoon, O.T. (2019). Economic inequality and the rise of far-right populism: A social psychological analysis. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 29, 418–428. Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcription symbols with an introduction. In G.H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kirkwood, S., McKinlay, A., & McVittie, C. (2013). ‘They’re more than animals’: Refugees’ accounts of racially motivated violence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 747–762. Leudar, I. & Nekvapil, J. (2004). Media dialogical networks and political argumentation. Journal of Language and Politics, 3, 247–266. Pettersson, K. & Augoustinos, M. (2021). Elite political discourse on refugees and asylum seekers: The language of social exclusion. In C. Tileagă, M. Augoustinos, & K. Durrheim (eds.), The Routledge international handbook of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping. London: Routledge. Potter, J. (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage. Potter, J. & Hepburn, A. (2020). Shaming interrogatives: Admonishments, the social psychology of emotion, and discursive practices of behaviour modification in family mealtimes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59, 347–364. Riggs, D.W. & Due, C. (2010). The management of accusations of racism in celebrity Big brother. Discourse & Society, 21, 257–271. Schegloff, E.A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discourse & Society, 8, 165–187. Stokoe, E. & Edwards, D. (2007). ‘Black this, black that’: Racial insults and reported speech in neighbour complaints and police interrogations. Discourse & Society, 18, 337–372. van Dijk, T.A. (1992). Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse & Society, 3, 87–118. Verkuyten, M. (2005). Accounting for ethnic discrimination: A discursive study among minority and majority group members. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 24, 66–92. Wetherell, M. (1998). Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue. Discourse & Society, 9, 387–412. Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the language of racism. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Whitehead, K.A. (2009). “Categorizing the categorizer”:The management of racial common sense in interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72, 325–342. Whitehead, K.A. (2012). Racial categories as resources and constraints in everyday interactions: Implications for racialism and non-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35, 1248–1265. Whitehead, K.A. (2013). Managing self-other relations in complaint sequences: The use of self-deprecating and affiliative racial categorizations. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46, 186–203. Whitehead, K.A. (2015). Everyday antiracism in action: Preference organization in responses to racism. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 374–389. Xenitidou, M. & Sapountzis, A. (2018). Admissions of racism in discourse on migration in Greece: Beyond the norm against prejudice? European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 801–814.

299

PART VI

Looking to the future

21 FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF RESEARCH ON PREJUDICE, STEREOTYPING AND DISCRIMINATION Cristian Tileagă, Kevin Durrheim and Martha Augoustinos

Dixon and Levine (2012) outlined some promising parameters of a new debate on the nature of prejudice that helped the field bridge the gap between a psychological and a sociological social psychology of prejudice. (1) the relational nature of intergroup attitudes and perceptions; (2) the political as well as the emotional and cognitive effects of prejudice reduction; (3) the importance of considering social context when evaluating models of change; and (4) the complex relationship between intergroup harmony and conflict in the transformation of historically unequal societies. (p. 320) We attempt here to reshape and restate some of these ideas by considering the possibility of and interrelationship between several social psychologies of prejudice.We discuss here what we think are five social psychologies of prejudice as future strands of a sociological social psychology of prejudice: politically oriented to (1) social change, and (2) collective action, and whose approach is (3) differential, (4) norm situated and (5) discursive. First, the starting point is social change. Expressions of prejudice and the resistance they provoke always originate in local issues and concerns, but they resonate with prejudices elsewhere. This is so because daily instances of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and so on, in all their varieties and extensions, share broader historical roots. They emerge, although not exclusively, from the legacy of colonial imperialism, which connected the world (Gilroy, 1995). When we see prejudice as a bias for one group against another, we can easily conclude that the object of scientific investigation is to understand the bias so as to eradicate it. Of course, this is true but misses the point that prejudice is not only a matter for the present but also for our pasts. Residues of our past are found in individual minds and culture, in the architecture of buildings, physical places, institutions, routines of movement, migrations, segregations, curricula, scientific theories, rules and regulations, laws, policies and procedures. Racism is embedded in the “structure of everyday worlds” (Salter, Adams, & Perez, 2018). In their case study of the University of Cape Town, Cornell and Kessi (this volume) show how black students at UCT DOI: 10.4324/9780429274558-21

303

C. Tileagă, K. Durrheim and M. Augoustinos

continue to “feel black”, marginalized, and out of place, even though the university had been transformed to include a majority black body of South African students, substantial minorities of black staff, name changes to buildings, and so on. The colonial and apartheid legacies that structure the everyday world of students are not so easily eroded. In a similar vein, Aldridge Deacon & Aldridge (this volume) show that discrimination experienced by unaccompanied asylumseeking children is reflective of an environment that has become increasingly hostile to migrants and people classed as non-citizens of all kinds, whereas Harper & Vikili (this volume) discuss the influence of structures and arrangements of biomedical dominance that shape the experiences of people with psychiatric diagnoses. The primary objective of prejudice studies is not so much the elimination of bias as it is to promote social change by deconstructing and dismantling systems of oppression and dominance. The answer to the question: “how can we create an inclusive world that gives equal opportunity, dignity and value to all?” is, most of the times, an answer that points to the influence, and history, of governance systems, structures and arrangements that question, alter and transform the dignity of human beings. The second of these psychologies is driven by concerns with the mechanism for social change, namely, collective action. This kind of social psychology is collective in the sense that it explores macro-contexts holistically and studies the expression of prejudice as a basic problem of collective definition (Tileagă, 2014), that is to say, a basic problem of defining the boundaries of common social experience. A focus on collective action engages with prejudice as a vehicle for political action (Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012; Drury, 2012). We live at a time when we see how, fueled by elites and misinformation on social media, prejudice enters public opinion and is tainting the political process. Partisanship politics, at least in some parts of the world, is now more than the expression of issue preferences but rather the expression of a more insidious link between prejudice and party or community politics. Prejudice has become an instrument of government (see Durrheim, 2020). Bilewicz (this volume) explores various societal repertoires about the meaning and resurgence of antisemitism in Europe as a powerful political tool in times of uncertainty and turmoil. Bilewicz addresses the specificity of anti-Jewish hatred in terms of tropes that cannot be found in other forms of bigotry: displacement of responsibility, competition for victimhood, conspiracy theories, epistemic reaction to deprivation, or form of control restoration. He adds substantive evidence to arguments that depict conspiracy theories as particularly attractive means of mobilization of public opinion (see also Byford, 2011). A collective social action approach also brings into view the importance of stratified social orders. Greenland (this volume) discusses the long history of intergroup contact research in social psychology as a means to challenge and reduce discrimination. She describes some of the limitations of prejudice-reducing approaches that ignore structural inequalities and power dynamics, focusing instead on the daily lived experience of contact. A society’s categorization of its people into those worthy and those unworthy of equal treatment has the potential to mobilize ethnic, racial and other kinds of prejudices. The question is not so much why prejudice enters into and shapes modern politics but rather how and with what consequences. Irrespective of whether one considers historical prejudices or how structural inequalities influence everyday encounters, the principal goal of social-psychological analyses is to reveal how social stratification feeds into grassroots as well as elite political decisions and influences the psychological and material welfare of people. A collective action social psychology of prejudice engages with political emotions, especially emotions of resilience and resistance, as a key dimension of experiencing destitution and unequal power relations, but also empowerment. Leach and Bou Zeineddine have made a convincing 304

Prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination

case in this volume for the importance of what they call the “sentiments of the dispossessed” for understanding “the social and psychological meaning individuals and groups give to their societal disadvantage”. Both unpleasant (anger, shame, and distress) and pleasant emotions (pride, hope) contribute to the nature of the relationship between groups (cf. also Leach, 2016), not least because they are the motivating forces and outcome of collective action and social change. It may be that, in order to account for complex contemporary forms of prejudice and discrimination, we may need to see a reversal of our explanations – away from psychological predispositions and more towards realistic struggles for social/material and symbolic resources between groups whose allegiances are a reflection of a stratified social structure and “positional arrangement” (Blumer, 1958, p. 4) of groups. What may hold future promise for a societal social psychology of prejudice based on collective action is a “broadening the theoretical focus to embrace the forces for social change as well as social stability, to find ways of explaining why the present does not persist and history does not end, of how people are driven to react and change by the present” (Turner, 2006, p. 45). The third of these psychologies is differential. Its primary aim is to find out how different groups and individuals experience prejudice as a problem in their lives and how different contexts influence the experience and expression of prejudice. Here the focus is on targets of prejudice, responses to prejudice and discrimination, as well as assumptions about the nature of prejudice and intergroup relations. It is in the particularities of targets’ perspectives that are to be found the seeds of collective action and social change. Several chapters in this handbook highlight the significance of researching not just the perpetrators of prejudice but the targets or victims of prejudice. Contributions address familiar concerns with exclusion and inclusion. However, the focus is on structural/systemic as well as individual barriers to exclusion and inclusion. Wagner, Kotzur and Friehs (this volume) discuss the history of anti-immigrant prejudice and discrimination in Europe and the fundamental contradiction between political practice and group ethical ideals of fair treatment. Popoviciu and Tileaga (this volume) explore some of the systemic barriers that Roma people face in the context of widespread Roma prejudices and responses to structural disadvantage in Europe. Peel, Ellis and Riggs (this volume) explore the causes and effects of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination directed towards LGBT people and mount a challenge to common assumptions that are shaped by normative ideologies in relation to sexuality and gender.Verkuyten (this volume) investigates hostile perceptions of Muslims in Western societies in the context of widespread public support for restrictions or outright bans on Muslim immigration. A differential social psychology of prejudice also engages with some potential limitations of reducing prejudice to negative evaluation (Dixon & Langdridge, this volume; Dixon et al., 2012) as well as with the complexity of intergroup relations that can produce various dynamics and patterns of group allegiance, bias or complicity (Kerr, Durrheim, & Dixon, 2017). Kerr (this volume) writes about the shifting nature of group boundaries as a matter of political contestation and some of the limitations of binary understandings of group relationships. She also emphasizes the importance of understanding how different groups with different histories may assign different meanings to historical and political significance of group formations.The key aim of a differential social psychology of prejudice is to render visible individual and group practices, experiences, attitudes, in their cultural and historical home. We can gain differential insights on human behavior in a variety of ways, but especially from “field situations” and what social action researchers call “field experiments in social change” (Lewin, 1946, p. 36). Differential approaches are not antagonistic to contemplating research findings that are the outcome of “distractions, social interactions, and emotional reactions of a real-world setting” (Paluck, 2009, p. 583), as well as being “mobile” and “multisited” (cf. Marcus, 1998). 305

C. Tileagă, K. Durrheim and M. Augoustinos

A fourth kind of social psychology of prejudice is driven by concerns with larger systems of norms. The focus here is on the interdependence of several theoretical and empirical strands from within social psychology and beyond, and the integration of sociological and political science concepts in social psychology (status, power, ideology, class). Rucker and Richeson (this volume) explore the significance of holding structural rather than interpersonal beliefs about the source of racism in American society, including how people come to hold interpersonal and/ or structural lay beliefs about racism. Other scholars are exploring how notions of ‘status’ allow people to make inferences about the worth of others based on socially developed ‘status beliefs’ that include perceptions of competence and agentic capabilities, meritocracy, influence, biased expectations, and social perceptions of difference (see Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008; Glick & Fiske, 2001; Ridgeway, 2014). There is robust evidence that shows that salient beliefs about status may bias people’s judgments of difference and inequality. Inequality itself acquires a new meaning in this context – “inequality based on differences in honor, esteem, and respect” (Ridgeway, 2014, p. 2; see also Tileagă, 2015 on perceptions of the worth of people and moral exclusion). This kind of social psychology of prejudice also explores everyday beliefs about those who lack status, are deemed less than human, transgressive, or are “morally excluded” (McCauley, 2017; Opotow, 2007;). It also studies the interplay between normative and counter-normative ideas about the status of one’s group in shaping responses to disadvantage (Ridgeway, 2019). A social psychology of prejudice driven by concerns with larger systems of norms touches on the contribution of political and institutional systems or analyses of the contestation of people’s rights and responsibilities, statuses and acquired privileges defined by ethnic, racial or national criteria. Chapters in this volume that address discrimination in education (Cornell & Kessi, this volume), mental health prejudice and discrimination (Harper & Vakili, this volume), the uncertainties and discrimination against unaccompanied children in the asylum application system (Aldridge Deacon & Aldridge, this volume) or the subtlety of gender stereotypes in the workplace (Ryan & Gartzia, this volume), are all examples of how political and institutional systems, including psychology’s own psy-complex, shape individual and groups perceptions of people’s worth and perceived status. This fourth kind of social psychology takes us back to the first. The emerging lesson is not to ignore structural, institutional and historical factors that shape the people who become the bearers of bias.Walker and Wang (this volume) offer a novel and critical approach to the current psychology of implicit bias. They warn about some of the perils of ignoring or discounting how implicit biases operate within social structures and processes, within organizations and institutions. They show how the operation of implicit biases ought to be studied not only at an intra-individual but also at supra-individual level. Studying implicit biases at supraindividual level has the potential to connect work in social psychology with approaches to tacit and implicit biases in sociological approaches that look at how racism is “coded” into the most ordinary conversations (Rawls & Duck, 2020) or how machine learning makes implicit stereotypes evident in literature and media archives (Garg et al., 2018). Durrheim (this volume) describes stereotypes as “powerful instruments of human sociality” especially when they manifest themselves in the wild (see also Condor & Figgou, 2012). If, as Allport rightly recognized, prejudices are a “prime source of suffering and disvalue” (1960, p. 225), then we should explore them by taking into account the historical, symbolic and socio-structural “life-space” of prejudice (cf. Moscovici, 2011). A fifth kind of social psychology of prejudice draws upon the principles of analyzing communicative social action in talk and text and sees language as a world-building resource. We include in this category studies that look at the various forms of political communication in naturalistic encounters in public spaces, debates on social media, everyday popular television programmes, 306

Prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination

blogs or parliamentary debates. Examples come from the analysis of elite political discourse (Pettersson & Augoustinos, this volume), fine-grain interactional approaches to discrimination and racism in everyday life (Robles & Shrikant, this volume; Whitehead, 2012), the dialogical management of racist talk (Gibson, this volume; Gibson, 2021), political identities and prejudice (Goodman & Johnson, 2013), dealing with accusations and denials of racism in public discourse (Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Jowett, 2017), public racist encounters (Burke & Demasi, 2020), the unsaid as social action in addressing difficult and painful pasts (Murray, 2020; Murray & Durrheim, 2019), as well as work on dehumanization and moral exclusion (Tileagă, 2007, 2015). This social psychology of prejudice also explores how people engage with complex public political events and mediated communications in socio-communicative practices (Demasi, Burke & Tileaga, 2021). The reception and interpretation of political communications are taking on new meanings and forms (McNair, 2011). What Bennett and Segerberg (2012) call “connective action” enables new forms and consequences of incivility (see Tileagă, 2019 on misogyny), online mobilization (see Sneijder, Stinesen, Harmelink, & Klarenbeek, 2021), and protest networks (see Bennett & Segerberg, 2013). In media democracies (Franklin, 2004) mediated communication is taking on a more important role in relation to mass communication. At a time when the expression and responses to prejudice are becoming largely a mediated experience, the analysis of mediated communication opens fertile avenues of collaboration between social psychologists and media and communications scholars. Deliberative and participatory innovations in digital communications are enabling forms of social hostility that are making some of the most enduring and practiced norms against the expression of public prejudice obsolete. Digital innovations and digital platforms, and debates about the boundaries that should be drawn around the public influence of digital innovations and platforms, are, increasingly, redrawing the boundaries of what is perceived as acceptable or not acceptable in the public sphere, mostly by producing new moral evaluative schemes for judging the dignity of people, communities and nations (cf. Tileagă, 2015). Not least among these moral evaluative schemes is the very concept of prejudice, which is, itself, “a resource for explanation, identification, and mobilization and, ultimately, for the production of norms, situations, and social reality itself ” (Durrheim, Quayle, & Dixon, 2016, p. 31). * Developments in all five of these social psychologies constitute a step closer to ensuring that we are able to mitigate what Moscovici called social psychology’s “situation of ignorant expertise” (p. 62) in relation to other social sciences and ensure our theories are kept “appropriately complex and attuned to real-world conditions” (Paluck & Green, 2009, p. 360). There are numerous limitations of evidence-based practice in addressing ethnic issues and community projects, and so many occasions where “scientific privileging of internal validity is bumping dangerously into programmatic needs for external validity and local accountability”. (Fine, 2012, p. 426). As Walker and Wang suggest in this volume implicit prejudice reduction workshops may have become de rigueur partly because they allow organizations to show that they are taking action against prejudice while “deflect[ing] attention from structural, institutional, and historical factors”. We hope that the cohabitation rather than the unification of social psychologies of prejudice would lead to a future situation when “our problems would reach a new and more fertile level of difficulties” (Tajfel, 1972, p. 117). The ideas that we have discussed in this handbook have always had a home in social psychology – although, in its history, a psychological social psychology has sought to distance itself from a sociological social psychology. Reclaiming the ethos of 307

C. Tileagă, K. Durrheim and M. Augoustinos

a sociological social psychology will hopefully inspire new psychological social psychologies. “Instead of proceeding in depth”, as Moscovici once argued, social psychologists proceed “by extension; instead of establishing links between sociopsychological phenomena, one makes them disappear through their absorption in processes which are not socio-psychological”. (Moscovici, 1972, p. 47). The problems addressed by prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination handbooks are usually issues “fundamental to the human experience” (Dovidio, Hewstone, Glick, & Esses, 2013, p. xxiv). We agree. It may well be, however, that our current social psychology of prejudice is offensive to people whose experiences do not square with the latest findings of psychological science. It is germane, then, to remind (and congratulate!) ourselves that we do not practice our social science in a social vacuum (cf.Tajfel, 1972). As Tileagă & Augoustinos (2021) have argued, let our problems, the struggles of our societies, rather than our paradigms, guide our social-psychological explorations. The social psychologies of prejudice we have discussed in this chapter do not have to follow the same path to reaching the maturity that is currently experienced by other subfields in social psychology. They should not try to become “prematurely advanced sciences” (Rozin, 2001) – instead they should aim to consecrate themselves as practical social sciences of the kind Lewin, Moscovici or Tajfel imagined. We hope that you’ll find some good examples of practical social science in this handbook.

References Allport, G.W. (1960). Personality and social encounter. Boston: Beacon Press. Augoustinos, M. & Every, D. (2007). Contemporary racist discourse:Taboos against racism and making racist accusations. In A. Weatherall, B. Watson & C. Gallois (eds.), Language, discourse and social psychology (pp. 233–254). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, W.L. & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. Bennett, W.L. & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Blumer, H. (1958). Race prejudice as a sense of group position. Pacific Sociological Review, 1(1), 3–7. Burke, S. & Demasi, M. (2020) Extreme prejudice as reasoned discourse in face-to-face interactions. In M. Demasi, S. Burke, & C.Tileaga (eds.), Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Byford, J. (2011). Conspiracy theories: A critical introduction. London: Palgrave. Condor, S. & Figgou, L. (2012). Rethinking the prejudice problematic: A collaborative cognition approach. In J. Dixon & M. Levine (eds.), Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change (pp. 200–222). Cambridge University Press. Cuddy, A., Fiske, S., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and The BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40: 61–149. Demasi, M., Burke, S., & Tileaga, C. (eds.) (2021). Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dixon, J. & Levine, M. (2012). Beyond prejudice: Extending the social psychology of conflict, inequality and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, J., Levine, M., Reicher, S., & Durrheim, K. (2012). Beyond prejudice: Are negative evaluations the problem and is getting us to like one another more the solution? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35: 1–56. Dovidio, J.F., Hewstone, M., Glick, P., & Esses,V. (eds.) (2013). The Sage handbook of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. New York: Sage. Drury, J. (2012). Prejudice is about politics: A collective action perspective. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(6), 430–431. Durrheim, K. (2020).The beginning and the end of racism – and something in between. In J. Solomos (ed.), Routledge international handbook of contemporary racisms (pp. 430–441). Oxon: Routledge.

308

Prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination Durrheim, K., Quayle, M., & Dixon, J. (2016). The struggle for the nature of “prejudice”: “Prejudice” expression as identity performance. Political Psychology, 37: 17–35. Fine, M. (2012). Resuscitating critical psychology for “revolting” times. Journal of Social Issues, 68(2), 416–438. Franklin, B. (2004). Packaging politics: Political communications in Britain’s media democracy. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Garg, N., Schiebinger, L., Jurafsky, D., & Zou, J. (2018). Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115: E3635–E3644. Gibson, S. (2021) Censure and management of racist talk. In M. Demasi, S. Burke, & C.Tileaga (eds.), Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gilroy, P. (1995). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and double-consciousness. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Glick, P. & Fiske, S. (2001). Ambivalent sexism. In M.P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 33). Thousand Oaks, CA: Academic Press. Goodman, S. & Johnson, A. (2013). Strategies used by the far-right to counter accusations of racism. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 6(2), 97–113. Kerr, P., Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2017). Beyond the two-group paradigm in studies of intergroup conflict and inequality: Third parties and intergroup alliances in xenophobic violence in South Africa. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(1), 47–63. Jowett, A. (2017). ‘One can hardly call them homophobic’: Denials of antigay prejudice within the same-sex marriage debate. Discourse & Society, 28(3), 281–295. Leach, C.W.  (2016).  The meta-theory of examining emotion in social relationships,  Psychological Inquiry, 27(2), 113–116. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2: 34–46. McCauley, C. (2017). Toward a psychology of humiliation in asymmetric conflict. American Psychologist, 72(3), 255–265. McNair, B. (2011). An introduction to political communication (5th ed.). London: Routledge. Murray, M.J. (2020) The unsaid as expressive and repressive political communication: Examining slippery talk about paid domestic labour in post-apartheid South Africa. In M. Demasi, S. Burke, & C. Tileaga (eds.), Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Murray, M.J. & Durrheim, K. (2019). Qualitative studies of silence: The unsaid as social action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Opotow, S. (2007). Moral exclusion and torture: The ticking bomb scenario and the slippery ethical slope. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 13: 457–461. Paluck, E. (2009). Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: A field experiment in Rwanda. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96: 574–587. Paluck, E.L. & Green, D.P. (2009). Prejudice reduction: What do we know? A critical look at evidence from the field and the laboratory. Annual Review of Psychology, 60: 339–367. Rawls, A. & Duck, W. (2020). Tacit racism. University of Chicago Press. Ridgeway, C. (2014). Why status matters for inequality. American Sociological Review, 79: 1–16. Ridgeway, C. (2019). Status:Why is it everywhere? Why does it matter? Russell Sage Foundation. Rozin, P. (2001). Social psychology and science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(1), 2–14. Marcus, G.E. (ed.) (1998). Critical anthropology now: Unexpected contexts, shifting constituencies, changing agendas. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Moscovici, S. (1972).Theory and society in social psychology. In J. Israel & H.Tajfel (eds.), The context of social psychology: A critical assessment (pp. 17–68). London: Academic Press. Moscovici, S. (2011). An essay on social representations and ethnic minorities. Social Science Information, 50: 442–461. Salter, P.S., Adams, G., & Perez, M.J. (2018). Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A culturalpsychological perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 150–155. Sneijder, P., Stinesen, B., Harmelink, M., & Klarenbeek, A. (2021). The discursive psychology of mobilization in the digital age. In M. Demasi, S. Burke & C. Tileaga (eds.), Political communication: Discursive perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tajfel, H. (1972). Experiments in a vacuum. In J. Israel, & H. Tajfel (eds.), The context of social psychology: A critical assessment (pp. 69–122). London: Academic Press. Tileagă, C. (2007). Ideologies of moral exclusion: A critical discursive reframing of depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46: 717–737.

309

C. Tileagă, K. Durrheim and M. Augoustinos Tileagă, C. (2014). Prejudice as collective definition: Ideology, discourse and moral exclusion. In C. Antaki & S. Condor (eds.), Rhetoric, ideology and social psychology: Essays in honour of Michael Billig. London: Routledge. Tileagă, C. (2015). The nature of prejudice: Society, discrimination and moral exclusion. London: Routledge. Tileagă, C. (2019). Communicating misogyny: An interdisciplinary research agenda for social psychology. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 13(7), e12491. Tileagă, C. & Augoustinos, M. (2021). Critical perspectives in political psychology. In D. Osborne & C. Sibley (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of political psychology. Cambridge University Press. Turner, J.C. (2006). Tyranny, freedom and social structure: Escaping our theoretical prisons. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45(1), 41–46. Whitehead, K.A. (2012). Racial categories as resources and constraints in everyday interactions: Implications for racialism and non-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35: 1248–1265.

310

INDEX

Adams, G. 16, 19 Adorno, T. 137, 139, 214 African Americans see Black Americans alcohol dependence 28–29 Aldridge, J. 6, 7, 42–55, 304, 306 Aldridge-Deacon, J. 6, 7, 42–55, 304, 306 Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism 96 All Lives Matter 281 Allport, G.W. 4–5, 91, 138, 198, 213 Allsopp, J. 53 ambivalent sexism 218 Amodio, D.M. 251 Andrews, K 267–268 anger 244–245, 249, 250 Angermeyer, M.C. 27, 28, 29 anti-immigrant discourse: African ‘immigrants’ 233; three-way intergroup relationships implicated in 234–236 anti-Islamism 119 anti-Jewish sentiments see antisemitism anti-LGBTIQ victimisation 112 anti-Muslim sentiments: anti-Muslim prejudices 119–120; cultural threat 124–125; and group dynamics 128; ideological beliefs 122; Islamization and national loyalty 125–126; Islamophobia 120–122; liberalism 123–124; overview 119; secularism 122–123; security fear 126–127; and societal context 128–129; in Western societies 118–130 antisemitic prejudice 136 antisemitism: and authoritarianism 139–140; as conspiracy theory 142–143; as displacement of responsibility 140–141; as epistemic reaction to deprivation 143; as form of control restoration 144–145; and other forms of prejudice 138–139; political psychology of 145–146; secondary 140, 141; as victimhood competition 141–142

Anti-Semitism and Social Crisis (Durkheim) 137 Arab Spring 249 asylum seekers 42; elite political discourse on 261–271; populist radical right discourse on 263–265 asymmetries between minority and majority contact experiences 157–158 Atkinson, J.M. 28 Augoustinos, M. 3–8, 14, 17, 43, 66, 123, 157, 159, 202, 261–271, 273, 274, 277, 278, 279, 287, 288, 303–308 Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) Employee Survey 108 authoritarianism: and antisemitism 139–140; right-wing 139; and social dominance orientation 139 authoritarian personality 139 Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al.) 214 aversive racism theory 77, 215 avoidance in contact 155–156 Banaji, M.R. 199, 201, 203 ‘banal nationalism’ 266 Bannon, W.M. Jr. 251 Banton, O. 79 Barnett, E.O. 198 Bar-Tal, D. 5, 6 Bass, B.M. 67 Bass, R. 67 Bayton, J. 185 Becker, J.C. 143, 225, 251 behaviour, implicit bias 203–204 Bello,V. 82 benevolent heterosexism 218–219 benevolent sexism 218, 224 Berzins, K.M. 28 bias 7; among “well-intentioned” 8; defined 200; and disadvantaged group 92; implicit 197–207; linguistic 186; see also prejudice

311

Index bigotry 138 Bilewicz, M. 7, 8, 109, 126, 136–146, 219, 225, 263, 304 Billig, M. 262–264, 266, 278 biomedical approach, to mental health 36, 37 bisexual see lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people bi-/trans-phobic bullying 111 Black Americans: and criminal justice system 19–20; and racial disparities 13 “Black is beautiful” 248 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement 5, 249, 281 ‘bogus asylum seekers’ 47 Bonam, C. 19 Boonzaier, F. 172 Bou Zeineddine, F. 7, 107, 244–254, 304–305 Braly, K. 185 Branscombe, N.R. 66, 78 Breton, C. 124 Brown, R. 6 Brown v. Board of Education 169 Bruckmüller, S. 66 Bukowski, M. 80, 219 Bulska, D. 139 Burke, S. 266 Butler, C.W. 278 Butterfield, D.A. 60 Byers, E.S. 110 Byford, J. 142 Caplan, N. 92 Cavaleri, M. Jr. 251 Celebrity Big Brother 291 censure, of racist talk 287–298 Chase, E. 53 Chichocka, A. 219 children: UASC see unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC); unaccompanied, as marginalised ‘others’ 43 Children Act (1989) 45 Choi, D.D. 77 cisgenderism 106–107 Clarke, Philip 267–268 class, and UCT 175–179 classic research 153–154 coercive queering 106 Cohen, J.N. 110 Coleman, J.S. 83 collective action 304–305 collective narcissism 142 collective victimhood 142 “colorblind racism” 18 complementary stereotyping 219–220 Condor, Susan 292–293, 295 conflict research, and politics 231–240 conspiracy theory, antisemitism as 142–143

contact: approach and avoidance in 155–156; intergroup 153–160, 221–222; negative 156–157; positive 156–157; sedative effects of 224–225 contact research: approach and avoidance in contact 155–156; emerging fields in 154–158; impacts of positive and negative contact 156–157; minority and majority contact experiences 157–158; structural and social contexts 155 content stereotypes 64–65 contested categorizations 238–239 contrastive work 281 Convention against Discrimination within Education 168 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 168 Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) 168 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 168 Cooer, J. 198 co-radicalization 128 Corker, E. 28 Cornell, J. 7, 167–179, 303–304, 306 Cortland, C.I. 246 Coverdale, J. 30 Craig, M.A. 246 Crawley, H. 51 crisis: defined 61–63; female leaders in 61; in financial or technological terms 63; and leadership styles 61–62; women preference in 63–64, 69 Crisp, A.H. 28 Crown, S. 185 cultural threat 124–125 culture of disbelief: and politics 51; UASC 50–52; United Kingdom 50–52 Deb, T. 36, 37 De Beukelaer, S. 83 defeasibility 282 ‘defeat depression’ campaign 29 demographics, and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children 44–45 depression 28–29 deracialization 266–267 Devine, P.G. 199, 202 Dhont, K. 81 Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) 29 Dietrich, S. 27, 28 differential social psychology, of prejudice 305 disadvantaged groups: perspectives on discrimination 91–92; perspectives on prejudice 91–92; see also minorities discrimination: causes and reasons, against European immigrants 78–83; consequences on Roma people 97; in education 167–179;

312

Index in everyday life 273–282; future directions of research on 303–308; against immigrants in Europe 76–78; individual 77; interactional approaches to 273–282; and intergroup contact 153–160; interventions to address 36–38; against LGBT 111–112; mental health see mental health discrimination; morality of 280–282; people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia respond to 32–36; perspectives of disadvantaged groups on 91–92; positive evaluations of others helping to maintain 217–220; resisting, at UCT 173–175; Roma people coping with 98–99; Roma people perception of 98; social psychology approaches to study of 170–173; statutory, and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children 52–54; structural 77; at UCT 175–179; unaccompanied asylum-seeking children 47–50 dispositional influences 78–79 dispossessed: empathy 245–246; intra-group empathy 246–247; pleasant emotions 250–253; sentiments of 244–254; unpleasant emotions 247–249 Dixon, J. 4, 7, 8, 129, 155, 157, 158, 159, 190, 191, 192, 213–226, 231, 232, 237, 238–239, 246, 264, 296, 303, 304, 305, 307 Dogmatic Personality Theory 214 Dovidio, J.F. 214, 215, 225 Dreyfus affair 137, 145 Dunbar, E. 139 durability, and implicit bias 204–205 Durkheim, Emil 137, 142 Durrheim, K. 3–8, 155, 158, 159, 160, 184–192, 213, 215, 216, 223, 224, 231, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 240, 246, 264, 295, 296–297, 298, 303–308 Eagly, A.H. 59, 63, 64 economic deprivation 144 education: challenging class at UCT 175–179; challenging gender discrimination at UCT 175–179; challenging race at UCT 175–179; discrimination in 167–179; inequality among Roma and non-Roma people 93; Photovoice as decolonial feminist praxis 173–175; resisting discrimination at UCT 173–175; and structural racism 18–19; study of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping in 170–173 Edwards, D. 292 egalitarian norms, and race 13 “eliminationist antisemitism” 138 elite political discourse: far-right political discourse 262–263; political discourse of the center 265–269; populist radical right discourse on asylum seekers 263–265; populist radical right discourse on refugees 263–265; racism at the top 262 Ellis, S.J. 7, 104–114, 305 emotions: pleasant 250–253; unpleasant 247–249

empathy: dispossessed 245–246; intra-group 246–247 employment inequality, among Roma and nonRoma people 95 epistemic injustice 7, 27; and mental health 31–32 ethnicism 91 ‘Eurabia’ 126 Europe: anti-Muslim feelings 119–120; “defending its borders” 75–76; history of recent immigration to 75–76; migration within 75; negative perspective for the future of an immigrantrejecting 84–85; prejudice, discrimination and violence against immigrants 76–78 European Commission 92, 95 European Enlightenment 85 European Social Survey (ESS) 76 European Union 75; inequality among Roma and non-Roma people in 92–95; responses to structural inequality by non-Roma people 95–96; responses to structural inequality by Roma people 96–99; Roma prejudices in 90–99 evaluation, prejudice as negative 214–215 Every, D. 288 Eysenck, H.J. 185 Farage, Nigel 289–290, 297 far-right political discourse 262–263 fascism 237, 262, 264–265 Fascists: A social psychological view of the National Front (Billig) 262 FeesMustFall protest movement 169 “female advantage” perspective 60 female leaders 58; in crisis situation 61 Fiedler, K. 186 financial crisis 63 Finns Party 263–265 Fiske, S.T. 218 Fitzgerald, R. 278 foreigners, historical origins of 237–238 Forscher, P. 204 French Revolution 249 Fricker, M. 7, 31–32 Friehs, M.T. 7, 75–85, 305 Gaertner, S.L. 215, 225 Galinsky, A.D. 247 Garfinkel, H. 281 Gartzia, L. 7, 58–70, 306 gay see lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people ‘gay affirmative’ 104 gender discrimination 175–179; see also discrimination gender inequality, in workplace 58 gender stereotypes 58; in definitions of effective leadership 59–61; and women preference in crisis situation 64; see also stereotypes

313

Index ‘genetic optimism’ 30 Gergen, K.J. 34 German Jews 138; see also Jews German Third Reich 137 Gibson, S. 7, 160, 167, 287–298, 307 glass cliff 58–59, 60, 61–63, 65–67, 69 Glick, P. 143, 218 Goffman, E. 28, 32 Goldhagen, D. 138 Goodman, S. 266 Graf, S. 82 Greener, R. 189 Greenland, K. 7, 153–160, 224, 304 Greenwald, A.G. 199, 200, 201, 203 group-based control restoration theory 144 group dynamics: and anti-Muslims sentiments 128; and LGBT people 128 The Gypsies (Fraser) 90 Hagendoorn, L. 121–122, 124 Haitian revolution 249 Halim, M.L. 251 Harper, D.J. 6, 26–39, 304, 306 Haslam, S.A. 62 hate crimes 77, 82, 111 health inequality, among Roma and non-Roma people 94–95 Helsingin Sanomat 264 Henderson, C. 36, 37 Henderson, L. 31 Herek, G.M. 106, 111 hermeneutical injustice 31 heteronormativity 106 heterosexism 106, 108; benevolent 218–219 heterosexuality 106 Hewstone, M. 82, 221 Hill, C.A. 252 Hill, J.H. 273 Hinshaw, S.P. 28, 30, 33 historical origins: of citizens 237–238; of foreigners 237–238 Holocaust 141 Home Office (UK) 48–49 homophobia 105–106 hope: defined 252; and optimism 252–253 housing inequality, among Roma and non-Roma people 93–94 Housley, W. 278 Iacoviello,V. 65–66 Ichheiser, G. 142 ideological functions of discourse 276–277 immigrants: causes and reasons for discrimination, violence and prejudice against 78–83; discrimination against 76–78; and media 81–83; micro-macro interaction perspective on the

rejection of 83–84; and politics 81–83; prejudice against 76–78; violence against 76–78 immigration: recent, to Europe 75–76; see also immigrants Immigration Act (2016) 48 implication, stereotyping by 187–188 Implicit Association Test (IAT) 197 implicit bias 197–207; broader context and note of caution 205–206; described 199–202; durability 204–205; helping people 202–205; interventions and training 204; limitations in sampling 205; malleability of 203; overview 197–199; relationship to behaviour 203–204; see also bias ‘implicit bias training’ 204 individual discrimination 77 interactional approaches: to discourse 274–275; to discrimination and racism in everyday life 273–282; morality of discrimination 280–282; studying language and social interaction matters 282 intergroup anxiety 80, 154 intergroup contact 81, 153–160, 221–222; classic research 153–154; discrimination and 153–160; emerging fields in contact research 154–158; future research 159–160; theoretical and methodological limitations 158–159 intergroup helping 220 intergroup relations: contested categorizations 238–239; historical origins of citizens and foreigners 237–238; politics and history of numbers in 231–240; possibility of alternatives 238–239; three-way intergroup relationships 234–236; victimisation and victimization 236–237; xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa 233–234 intergroup threat 80 International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 168 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 168 interpersonal racism 14–15 interventions, implicit bias 204 intra-group empathy 246–247 Islam 120–122 Islamic terrorism 126–127 Islamization 125–126 Islamophobia 119, 120–122 Jäckle, S. 82 Jacobs, N. 224 Jalonen, Toni 264–265 Jews 137–138; see also antisemitism Joint Committee on Human Rights 49 Jones, I. 83 Jost, J.T. 219, 220 Karau, S.J. 59, 63, 64 Karpiñski, Z. 82

314

Index Katz, D. 185 Kay, A.C. 220 Kelley, J. 77 Kende, A. 80 Kerr, P. 7, 13, 231–240, 305 Kessi, S. 7, 167–179, 303, 306 Kinney, E. 79 Knights, D. 63 Knowles, E.D. 17 Kofta, M. 142, 145 König, P.D. 82 Kotzur, P.F. 7, 75–85, 305 Kulich, C. 65–66 lack of intergroup contact 81 Langdridge, D. 7, 157, 158, 213–226, 305 language of reason and rationality 267–268 larger systems of norms 306 Latino Americans, and racial disparities 13 Leach, C.W. 7, 107, 172, 244–254, 304–305 leaders: female see female leaders; management style in crisis 61–62 leadership: definitions of effective, and gender stereotypes 59–61; glass cliff 58–59; masculine notions of 60; stereotypes in 58 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people 218; athletes 251; definitions 105; discrimination 251; discrimination against 111–112; and group dynamics 128; groups under 104–105; key concepts 105–107; overview 104; and prejudice 107–109; social movements 219; and social psychology 112–113; and societal context 128–129; stereotyping 109–111 Levine, M. 303 LGBTIQ psychology 105 liberalism 123–124 liberal-practical arguments justifying illiberal ends 268–269 linguistic bias 186 Link, B.G. 28 Lippmann, W. 185 Lorenzi-Cioldi, F. 65–66 Louderback, L.A. 218 Lowery, B.S. 17 Lubensky, M.E. 225

Maxwele, C. 169 McLaughlin, C. 48 media: and discrimination against European immigrants 81–83; and mental health discrimination 30–31 Meltzer, H.I. 28 membership categorization analysis (MCA) 274–275 mental health: attitudes about 27; biomedical vs. psychosocial approach 37; concepts of 26; and epistemic injustice 31–32; minorities, and structural racism beliefs 21–22 mental health discrimination: biomedical explanations 29–30; described 28; and media 30–31; and prejudice 28–31 mental illness 26 men who have sex with men (MSM) 109; see also lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people meritocratic threat 17–18 Me Too movement 248–249 Meyer, I.H. 107 microaggressions 170 micro-macro processes 83–84, 84 Migrant Integration Policy Index 82 migration: within Europe 75; labor 75 Miller, J. 33 minorities: contact experiences 157–158; mental health and structural racism beliefs 21–22; negatively evaluating 279–280; political attitudes, sedative effects of contact on 222–223; Roma 90–99 minority stress 107 misgendering 106 Mitchell, M. 53 morality of discrimination 280–282 mortality salience induction 145 Moscovici, Serge 137 motivation, and racism 16–18 ‘movement disorders’ 34 Movement for Global Mental Health 29 Mullard, C. 91 ‘mundane heterosexism’ 106, 113 ‘mundane transphobia’ 113 Muslimphobia 119 Myrdal, G. 4–5

Maass, Anne 186 Mäenpää, Juha 263–264 Magee, J.C. 247 Major, B. 252 majority contact experiences 157–158 malleability of implicit bias 203 management, of racist talk 287–298 Mapping the Language of Racism (Wetherell and Potter) 287 masculinity–femininity paradigm 60

Nairn, R. 30 narcissism, collective 142 nationalistic identification 80 national loyalty, and ant-Muslims sentiments 125–126 The Nature of Prejudice (Allport) 213 Nazi Germany 140 Nazism 265 negative contact 156–157 negative evaluation: minority groups 279–280; prejudice as 214–215

315

Index Nelson, J.C. 18 Nelson, S.D. 92 Nosek, B.A. 203 Obama, Barak 141 Occupy 249 omission, stereotyping by 187–188 Parker, R. 35 pathologising 106 peace: and love 217–220; and understanding 217–220 Peel, E. 7, 104–114, 305 Pettersson, K. 261–271, 307 Pettigrew, T.F. 4, 81, 154, 198, 200 Photovoice as decolonial feminist praxis 173–175 Photovoice project 179 pleasant emotions 250–253; hope and optimism 252–253; pride 250–252 political discourse 265–269; deracialization 266–267; language of reason and rationality 267–268; liberal-practical arguments justifying illiberal ends 268–269 politics: and discrimination against European immigrants 81–83; and loss of control 144 Popoviciu, S. 7, 8, 90–99, 305 Poppe, E. 124 populist radical right discourse: on asylum seekers 263–265; on refugees 263–265 positive contact 156–157 positive stereotyping 219–220 Potter, J. 268 Powell, G. 60 Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) 38 prejudice 200; anti-Muslim 119–120; antisemitic 136; causes and reasons, against European immigrants 78–83; and “collective language” 4–5; consequences on Roma people 97; contemporary complexity of 4; defined 76, 213; differential social psychology of 305; future directions of research on 303–308; against immigrants in Europe 76–78; interventions to address 36–38; and LGBT 107–109; and mental health discrimination 28–31; as negative evaluation 214–215; people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia respond to 32–36; perspectives of disadvantaged groups on 91–92; and prejudice reduction 221; Roma people coping with 98–99; Roma people perception of 98; and social logic 4; social psychology approaches to study of 170–173; some definitions of 214 prejudice as antipathy 213–226; others helping to maintain discrimination and social inequality 217–220; peace, love and understanding 217–220; prejudice as negative evaluation 214–215; prejudice reduction model of social change 215–217, 220–225

prejudice reduction model of social change 215–217; explaining the sedative effects of contact 224–225; inherent limitations of 220–225; intergroup contact 221–222; sedative effects of contact on minority political attitudes 222–223 pride 250–252 pro-diversity beliefs 79 project identities 35 “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” 136 psychosocial approach, to mental health 37, 37 queer see lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people race: and discrimination at UCT 175–179; and egalitarian norms 13 racial disparities: and Black Americans 13; in the United States 13 racial inequality, and structural racism beliefs 20–21 racism 5; accusations of 288–292; colourblind 18; denying and erasing 277–278; elite political discourse 262; in everyday life 273–282; identifying in everyday interaction 273; interactional approaches to 273–282; interpersonal 14–15; and motivation 16–18; structural see structural racism; and U.S. criminal justice system 19–20 racism and discrimination in discourse 275–280; denying and erasing racism 277–278; ideological functions of discourse 276–277; negatively evaluating minority groups 279–280 racist talk: accusations of racism 288–292; censure and management of 287–298; dialogical perspective 292–297 Read, J. 38 Reeves, F. 266 “refugee crisis” 75 refugees: elite political discourse on 261–271; populist radical right discourse on 263–265 relative deprivation 80 Rhodes, Cecil John 169 RhodesMustFall movement 169 Richeson, J.A. 6, 13–23, 91, 156, 157, 158, 159, 246, 253, 306 Riggs, D.W. 7, 104–114, 288, 291, 305 Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) 79 Rink, F. 64 Robles, J.S. 7, 187, 273–282, 307 Rodriguez, J.A. 251 Rodriguez-Bailon, R. 80 Rogers, A. 31–32 Roma people: consequences of prejudice and discrimination on 97; coping with discrimination 98–99; coping with prejudice 98–99; inequality in European Union 92–95; overview 90; perception of discrimination 98;

316

Index perception of prejudice 98; prejudices in European Union 90–99; responses to structural inequality by 96–99 Rowlands, O.J. 28 Rucker, D.D. 247 Rucker, J.M. 6, 13–23, 91, 157, 159, 160, 171, 253, 306 Ruscher, J.B. 187 Ryan, M. 7, 58–70, 306 sampling: implicit bias 205; limitations in 205 schizophrenia 28–29; diagnosis, and response to prejudice and discrimination 32–36 Schmidt, P. 81 Schnaudt, C. 76 Sczesny, S. 82 secondary antisemitism 140, 141 Second World War 185, 262 secularism 122–123 sedative effects of contact 224–225; on minority political attitudes 222–223 Self-Affirmation Theory 16 self-categorisation theory (SCT) 239n3 self-image threat 17–18 Semin, G.R. 186 sentiments of the dispossessed 244–254 sexism, ambivalent 218 shame 248–249 shared cognitions, stereotypes as 185–186 shariah law 126 Shinar, E.H. 60 Shrikant, N. 7, 273–282, 307 Simonova, L. 139 Singh, A.A. 251–252 “single pet theory of prejudice” 4 situational influences 79–81 “Slut walks” 248 Sniderman, P.M. 121–122 social change 303–304; and LGBT people 112–113; positive, challenges of 113; positive attitudes towards LGBT people 113 social connection and stereotypes 187 social dominance orientation (SDO) 18, 21, 79, 139 social dominance theory 18 social exclusion 261–271 social identity theory 16, 79 social inequality 217–220 social logic, and prejudice 4 social psychology 199; described 4; and LGBT people 112–113; positive attitudes towards LGBT people 113; sociological 4–6; stereotyping in education 170–173; study of discrimination 170–173; study of prejudice 170–173 social structure 4–6 societal context: and anti-Muslim sentiments 128–129; and LGBT people 128–129 societal devaluation 245

sociological social psychology 4–6 South Africa: xenophobia in post-apartheid 233–234 South African Constitution 168 South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) 168 Stephan, W.G. 80 stereotypes: content see content stereotypes; gender see gender stereotypes; in leadership 58; linguistic bias 186; overview 184–185; as shared cognitions 185–186; signaling change 65–66; slippery 189–180; and social connection 187; as social constructions 66–68; stereotyping by implication and omission 187–188; in the wild 188–192; in the world 190–192 stereotyping 7; complementary 219–220; in education 170–173; future directions of research on 303–308; by implication and omission 187–188; LGBT people 109–111; positive 219–220 stigma: concept of 31; interventions to address 36–38; and mental health 31–32 stigma theory 27 Stokoe, E. 292 structural discrimination 77 structural inequality: responses by non-Roma people 95–96; responses by Roma people 96–99 structural racism 14–15; and education 18–19; endorsement by White Americans 16; implications of 19–20; and minority mental health 21–22; and responses to racial inequality 20–21; and self-image 17 “swindler” stereotype 142 Syrian refugee crisis 266 Systems Justifications Theory 219 Tajfel, H. 193 testimonial injustice 31, 38 think crisis – think female association 64–65, 66 Thornicroft, G. 36, 37 Tileaga, C. 3–8, 14, 90–99, 279–280, 281, 303–308 Tobin, H.J. 110 training, implicit bias 204 transgender see lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or queer (LGBT/LGBTQ) people transgender parenthood 109 Trump, Donald 261 Turner, J.C. 5 UASC Leave 45 UK Immigration Nationality Directorate Training and Development Unit 51 Ullrich, J. 81 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) 7; asylum application process 45–46; characteristics of 44–45; culture of disbelief 50–52; defining 44–45; demographics 44–45; discrimination against 47–50; implications

317

Index of statutory discrimination for 52–54; as marginalised ‘others’ 43; in United Kingdom 42–43, 46–47 UNESCO Institute for Statistics 167 UNICEF 167 United Kingdom (UK): asylum application process 45–46; children as marginalised ‘others’ 43; culture of disbelief 50–52; numbers of UASC in 46–47; UASC as marginalised ‘others’ 43; UASC in 42–43 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 43, 54 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 168 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 44, 50 United States: criminal justice system, and racism 19–20; discrimination against Muslims 118; interpersonal racism in 15; racial disparities in 13; structural racism in 15 University of Cape Town (UCT) 173; challenging race, class, and gender discrimination at 175–179; photovoice as decolonial feminist praxis 173–175; resisting discrimination at 173–175 unpleasant emotions 247–249; anger 249; shame 248–249 Vakili, K. 6, 26–39, 306 Van der Noll, J. 121 van Dijk, T.A. 262, 276, 277, 288 Verkuyten, M. 7, 79, 118–130, 153, 262, 263, 290, 305 Vezzali, L. 81 victimhood, collective 142 victimhood-driven antisemitism 141–142 victimization 236–237 violence: causes and reasons, against European immigrants 78–83; against immigrants in Europe 76–78

Voci, A. 82 Voting Rights Act 20 Wagner, U. 7, 75–85, 122, 143, 155, 305 Walker, I. 7, 8, 197–207, 306, 307 Wang, S. 7, 8, 197–207, 306, 307 Waniganayake, M. 108–109 War on Terror 126 Weinberg, G. 106 Weinhardt, M. 76 Weinstein, R.S. 170 WEIRD societies 225 Welzel, C. 8 West, K. 79 Wetherell, M. 268, 277, 287 White Americans: denial of racism 17; endorsement of structural racism 16; perceptions of racism 16 Whitehead, Kevin 189, 277, 295–296 White privilege 17–18 Whitley, B.D. 218 wild, stereotypes in 188–192 Willis, G.B. 80 Wilson, C. 30 Winiewski, M. 139, 219 Wodak, R. 262 Wojcieszak, M. 77 Wolf, L.J. 79 workplace, gender inequality in 58 World War II 269 Wright, F. 50 Wright, S.C. 225 xenophobia, in post-apartheid South Africa 233–234 Zanna, M.P. 198 Zhou, S. 225

318