Ethnic Prejudice and Discrimination in Europe
Corresponding Author
Andreas Zick
University of Bielefeld
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Andreas Zick, University of Bielefeld, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research of Conflict and Violence, Universitaetsstr. 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany [e-mail: [email protected]].Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Andreas Zick
University of Bielefeld
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Andreas Zick, University of Bielefeld, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research of Conflict and Violence, Universitaetsstr. 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany [e-mail: [email protected]].Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
This article provides an introduction to research on European prejudice and discrimination. First, we list the distinctive characteristics of a European perspective and provide a short sketch of European immigration and ethnic groups. Europe has become a multicultural community. Nevertheless, public opinion and the continent's politics often do not reflect this empirical fact. Prejudice and discrimination directed at immigrants are a widespread phenomena across Europe. Several cross-European surveys support this conclusion, although theoretically driven surveys on prejudice and discrimination in Europe remain rare. Cross-European research studies classical and modern theories of prejudice and discrimination and attempts to uncover the psychological mechanisms that explain individual readiness to exclude ethnic groups. A brief sketch of recent European research is presented. This issue offers both important cross-national perspectives as well as needed comparisons with the more studied case of racial prejudice and discrimination in the United States.
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ANDREAS ZICK received a call to become Professor of Socialization and Conflict Research at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Additionally, he manages the “Group-Focused Enmity in Europe” project. He received his PhD at the University of Marburg in 1996, worked from 1998 to 2003 as Assistant Professor at the University of Wuppertal, from 2004 to 2006 at the University of Bielefeld, and headed the Chair of Social Psychology at the University of Dresden from 2006–2007 and Jena (2007–2008). His current research interests include migration as well as studies on prejudice, racism, and discrimination in Europe; right-wing extremism; social dominance and the self-concept in social identity. He has published numerous articles and a monograph on prejudice and racism in Western Europe. His recent research investigates the link between immigration ideologies, dominance orientations, and racism (see Zick, 1999).
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THOMAS F. PETTIGREW is Research Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his PhD at Harvard University (1956) and taught there until 1980. From 1986 until 1991, he taught at the University of Amsterdam and conducted research on prejudice in the Netherlands. Pettigrew has published 10 books and more than 200 articles and reviews on prejudice and racism. His publications include How to think like a social scientist (1996) and chapters on intergroup relations in the Annual Review of Psychology (Pettigrew, 1998a) and the Annual Review of Sociology (Pettigrew, 1998b). He served as President of S.P.S.S.I. (1967–1968) and has twice been awarded the Society's Allport Prize for Intergroup Relations Research (with Joanne Martin in 1988 and Linda Tropp in 2003). He also received the Society for Experimental Social Psychology's Distinguished Scientist Award (2001), a Senior Fellowship at the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University (2001), and a Fulbright New Century Scholar Fellowship for continued research on prejudice and discrimination against the immigrants of Western Europe (2003).
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ULRICH WAGNER is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Center for Conflict Studies at Philipps-University Marburg in Germany. Dr. Wagner's research interests include intergroup relations, ethnic prejudice, and intergroup aggression. His publications include contributions to the analyses of survey data on ethnic prejudice and racism, as published in a special issue of the Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie [Journal of Political Psychology] (eds. Wagner & van Dick, 2001), an overview paper in the Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie [Journal of Social Psychology] (Wagner, van Dick, & Zick, 2001) and original data analyses (e.g., Wagner, van Dick, Pettigrew, & Christ, 2003; Wagner, Christ, Pettigrew, Stellmacher, & Wolf, 2006). Wagner heads the special graduate school addressing Group Focused Enmity, sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [German Science Foundation].]. For the academic year 2003–2004, Wagner was a Senior Fellow at the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.
