Becoming A Minority

Project Information

BAM

Grant agreement ID: 741532

DOI

10.3030/741532

Project closed

EC signature date 7 July 2017

Start date 1 November 2017

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 499 714,00

EU contribution

€ 2 499 714,00

Coordinated by

STICHTING VU
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - BAM (Becoming A Minority)

Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Becoming a Minority (BaM) project addressed a new societal phenomenon for Europe: BaM focussed on those without migration background who have become a numerical minority in the Western European cities they live in. Cities in Europe have reached a unique level of ethnic diversity. Never before in the history of the larger European cities this many people were of migrant descent and had roots in so many different countries from all around the world. For forty years, we have studied how people of migrant descent adapted to their new surroundings. In all this time there has been hardly any research into how the group of people without migration background has experienced and adapted to the increased ethnic diversity.
The BaM project looked at the lives of people without a migration background living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods where everybody belongs to a minority now. The project aimed to research the conditions that make a superdiverse city or neighborhood a pleasant or an unpleasant context to live in. How is the new minority that is living in majority minority (MM) contexts experiencing their situation?
We especially knew very little about the people who are positive about ethnic diversity. Why do they embrace it and what are the possible gains for them? Why is it that while the public debate is highly polarised, in most cities and neighborhoods people actually live peacefully together? What are the mechanisms enabling people of very different backgrounds to live together in harmony? But, also, how do people who hold more negative opinions about ethnic diversity relate to their neighbors and colleagues of migrant origin? How do they interact in their daily life with people of migrant descent in the streets or in the park? Do they translate their negative opinions into practice? To find out, we listened to what the people without a migration background living in MM neighborhoods had to say. We accomplished this in the BaM project, consisting of a large-scale international survey, ethnographies and experiments, focusing on those without a migration background living in MM neighborhoods in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Malmö, Rotterdam and Vienna.
The BaM survey was conducted among more than 3000 respondents and the outcomes expose a number of mechanisms and characteristics that facilitate a pleasant social climate in a superdiverse city or neighborhood. These are not only the characteristics of the people living there and the political climate, but also the ethnic composition of schools, the efforts made by various organizations and the activities that are available. We saw that the spatial organization of a neighborhood or housing block is also an important factor (JEMS Special Issue: Becoming a Minority, Crul, Lelie & Keskiner 2023 and The New Minority. People Without a Migration Background in the Superdiverse City, (Crul & Lelie 2023).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The international BaM survey is the core of the project and provides a unique dataset. Apart from this, four BaM PhDs and three junior researchers collected qualitative data in all BaM cities. The PI presented findings of the BaM project in numerous on-line and in-person conferences and events. He was interviewed about BaM by national and international media, like the BBC-online, Die Zeit, Die Welt, NRC, Trouw, De Standaard, De Morgen, Die Kleine Zeitung and more. Throughout the project we have presented in person and on-line to both academic and non-academic audiences in all BaM cities.
We have published an open access special issue for the high-ranking Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Crul, Keskiner & Lelie 2023) with articles of all four BaM PhDs, two Postdocs and the senior researcher of the BaM team. A SI of Social Inclusion has been accepted. Main guest editor is Postdoc Ismintha Waldring. The SI will include articles of all BaM PhDs and other BaM team members, and of several distinguished American colleagues.
Maurice Crul and Frans Lelie have written the book The New Minority. People Without a Migration Background in the Superdiverse City (2023) which is published as an open access digital book and as a paper book by VU University Press in both English and Dutch. The BaM project resulted in a new theoretical model: the Integration into Diversity (ID) Theory and a toolkit with an Integration into Diversity Matrix (ID Matrix) that allows to measure the diversity climate in neighborhoods, cities and workplaces. This new toolkit can be used to measure, over time, the development of the diversity climate in a certain context. Such an important instrument was still missing in the field of migration and ethnic studies. Importantly, it can also be used to measure the impact of the diversity climate on people with a migration background. Until now, the level of integration and social mobility of people with a migration background has mainly been explained related to ethnic group characteristics and/or individual and family characteristics. Like in our previous ERC research focusing on the integration context, also with the BaM project we have tried to fill a gap in the research on integration. Our ID Theory and ID Matrix provide the opportunity to relate integration and social mobility outcomes to the specific diversity climate in which people live and work.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Already from the very beginning of the BaM project it became clear that its impact was big and that we changed the agenda of migration and integration studies by the choice of the BaM target group. Our shift in focus implies that people without a migration background also become an active partner in making the practice of living together in today’s superdiverse cities successful.
This, first of all, seemed to ask for a psychological mind shift. In integration research the people without a migration background have hardly been studied as an active partner. We have indeed been able to put this idea not only on the research agenda, but also on the policy agenda and in the public debate and will continue to do so. We convey this message in positive terms: when discussing diversity and how we can live together while being very different from each other, people without a migration background should not be excluded.
Furthermore, we found that people who express to be more negative about diversity, often actually are positive about encounters with migrant neighbors or colleagues. This practice, therefore, offers many opportunities to enhance social cohesion, even in places where a lot of people vote for anti-immigrant parties. This ambivalence, which seems often absent in the public debate, offers opportunities for policies aimed at practices.
We draw contours for new forms of diversity policies aimed at all people (including the old majority group) living in diverse contexts. In those places were people, with and without migration background, in practice master the art of living together, neighborhoods function better, people report to experience them as nicer neighborhoods to live in, and more often report the enormous diversity as mainly an enriching experience. The BaM project results show that the practices of people without migration background are an important part of what it takes for these very diverse places to function. The open access BaM book The New Minority (Crul & Lelie 2023) is one of our major achievements. It is a book aimed not only at academics, but at a larger audience in the different project countries.

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