Terrorist Participation Despite Social Influences Opposing Violent Extremism: A Qualitative Study among Young Jihadists in Spain

Abstract

This article uses a sample of 11 juveniles involved in jihadism in Spain to analyze how they experienced and resisted disagreement with members of their personal networks. Drawing on data from interviews, criminal proceedings, and oral trials, the study provides support for a theoretical framework that holds that: (1) opposing ties attempt to leverage informational and normative forms of influence (confrontation of perspectives, exposure to warnings, and application of pressures and constraints) to induce attitudinal change, and that (2) these mechanisms are countered through cognitive and social resistance strategies (contestation, selective social exposure, and circumvention). The research suggests how social disagreement can counterintuitively contribute to mobilizing young people for political violence.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues Fernando Reinares and Carola García-Calvo for their support in conducting this research, and for their comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve my research. This study has also benefited from the comments from reviewers, as well as from participants at the Annual Event that the International Society for Political Psychology organized in Athens in July 2022, where a draft of this article was presented. I would also like to thank the jury of the Council for European Studies (CES) Radicalism and Violence Early Career Researcher Best Paper Prize for selecting an earlier version of this paper as the winner of its 2022 edition.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 Mark Granovetter, “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 6 (1978): 1420–43; David A. Snow, Louis Zurcher, and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment,” American Sociological Review 45, no. 5 (1980): 787–801; Pamela Oliver, Gerald Marwell and Ruy Teixeira, “A Theory of the Critical Mass. I. Interdependence, Group Heterogeneity, and the Production of Collective Action,” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 522–56; Gerald Marwell, Pamela E. Oliver, and Ralph Prahl, “Social Networks and Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass. III,” American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 3 (1988): 502–34; Roger V. Gould, “Collective Action and Network Structure,” American Sociological Review 58, no. 2 (1993): 182–96.

3 David Knoke, “Networks of Political Action: Toward Theory Construction,” Social Forces 68, no. 4 (1990): 1041–63; Stacy Ulbig and Carolyn L. Funk, “Conflict Avoidance and Political Participation,” Political Behavior 21, (1999): 265–82; Robert Huckfeldt, Paul E. Johnson and John D. Sprague, Political Disagreement: The Survival of Diverse Opinions within Communication Networks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); John Barry Ryan, “The Effects of Network Expertise and Biases on Vote Choice,” Political Communication 27, no. 1 (2010): 44–58; Allison Harell, Dietlind Stolle and Ellen Quintelier, “Experiencing Political Diversity: The Mobilizing Effect among Youth,” Acta Politica 54, no. 4 (2016): 1–29; Jan E. Leighley, “Social Interaction and Contextual Influences on Political Participation,” American Politics Quarterly 18, no. 4 (1990): 459–75; Lilach Nir, “Ambivalent Social Networks and Their Consequences for Participation,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 17, no. 4 (2005): 422–42; Charles J. Pattie and Ron J. Johnston, “Conversation, Disagreement and Political Participation,” Political Behavior 31, no. 2 (2008): 261–85.

4 Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (1986): 64–90; Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3 (1993): 640–67; Omar McDoom, “It’s Who You Know: Social Networks, Interpersonal Connections, and Participation in Collective Violence,” HiCN Working Papers, No. 140 (2013).

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6 By way of example, see Micah King, Haula Noor and Donald M. Taylor, “Normative Support for Terrorism: The Attitudes and Beliefs of Immediate Relatives of Jema’ah Islamiyah Members,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 34, no. 5 (2011): 402–17; Mohammed M. Hafez, and Creighton A. Mullins, “The Radicalization Puzzle: A Theoretical Synthesis of Empirical Approaches to Homegrown Extremism,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 11 (2015): 958–75; Shandon Harris–Hogan and Kate Barrelle, “Young Blood: Understanding the Emergence of a New Cohort of Australian Jihadists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 32, no. 7 (2018): 1391–412; Sean C. Reynolds and Mohammed M. Hafez, “Social Network Analysis of German Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq,” Terrorism and Political Violence 31, no. 4 (2017): 661–86.

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Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos under Grant C1PREDOC2020.