Binational Identities and Experiences of Discrimination in the Context of Migration: The Role of Transnational Family Ties and Practices

ABSTRACT

Previous research suggests that migrants develop binational identities – a sense of belonging to both their country of origin and of settlement. These identities, in turn, are determined by the way they are treated by the majority population of the receiving society. This article aims to contribute nuance to these understandings of binational identities and experiences of origin-based discrimination in migrants by bringing in a further perspective: transnationalism. In particular, we suggest that transnational family ties and practices increase migrants’ sense of belonging to their country of origin and additionally moderate the impact of origin-based discrimination on the sense of belonging to the country of origin and settlement. We test these hypotheses based on a representative survey among the migrant population in Germany. While findings confirm the hypothesis regarding a direct relationship between transnational family ties and practices and sense of belonging, the moderation hypothesis was not confirmed. Instead, by tendency the relationship is more pronounced among participants without transnational family ties and practices. Findings highlight the importance of the transnational perspective to further contextualize the relationship of origin-based discrimination to binational identities among migrants, thus to investigate the role of social context in binational identity formation.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational families
• migrants
• discrimination
• binational identities

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. In this paper, we subsume first-generation migrants and second-generation migrants under the term migrants.

2. This paper is the result of a research project financed by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available for scientific use to registered users at the research data centers of the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (https://doi.org/10.34882/dezim.panel.aw0.c.100). The survey program adheres to strict internationally acknowledged standards of good academic practice, legal requirements of the study country, and guidelines of ethically appropriate research with human subjects (DeZIM, 2021). The archived data are fully anonymized. The authors report there are no competing interests that have arisen from the direct applications of this research.

3. We acknowledge that sense of belonging is only one aspect of group identity, besides, for example, cognitive or behavioral aspects. Previous studies, however, found that different components of group identity strongly correlate (Cameron, 2004; Roccas et al., 2008), hence, we assume that by asking for sense of belonging we capture substantial parts of the construct of group identity. The issue is further addressed in the discussion.

4. A scale value above 1 means that participants had responded to at least one of the six discrimination items with at least the response option “several times a year”.

5. As a robustness check, models consisting of the same set of independent variables were conducted using a Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA) approach instead of a regression approach. Results (reported as supplemental online material) do not deviate from the results of the regression models presented here.

6. The variables assessing sense of belonging to the country of origin and origin-based discrimination experiences show a comparably large share of missing responses (8.1% and 12.9%). Regarding the former, a further inspection of the PAPI and CAWI questionnaires revealed that the missing responses are most likely due to wrong filter setting and instructions, respectively (no clear assignment to a particular country of origin). The missing values found in the discrimination attribution question mainly refer to the PAPI version (around 85%) and were also most likely due to a misleading filter instruction presented in the paper questionnaire (see below for missing value treatment).

7. To test the robustness of the model with respect to the preceding data imputation, the imputation procedure was repeated several times, and the results of the subsequent regression models were compared. In some cases the effect of origin-based discrimination on sense of belonging to the country of origin met the significance criterion of 0.025. Yet, to avoid Type 1 error, it was decided you use the more conservative model.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.