Beyond Numbers: The Formation of Ethno-Religious Minority Infrastructures

• In Event: 30617 - Immigrant Communities and Families

Abstract

Why do some immigrant communities establish dense ethno-religious infrastructures, while others do not come together as organized groups? This study investigates the development of organizational infrastructures in immigrant communities, addressing two major strands of immigration literature: ethnic-group formation and urban ethnic enclaves. Challenging the "groupist" assumption that demographic presence necessarily leads to organized ethnic communities, we employ a novel framework that examines the full spectrum of ethnic groupness, from nominal co-nationals to highly institutionalized communities. We analyze an original dataset of 25,117 ethnic businesses and ethno-religious organizations catering to 54 immigrant minorities across more than 5,000 local minority communities in Germany. Our research reveals that minority communities with similar population sizes can exhibit vastly differently developed organizational ecologies, questioning the adequacy of proxying community organization by community size in quantitative studies. In contrast to a burgeoning literature on friendship networks among students, we find no evidence that intersectional consolidation or within-group heterogeneity at the local level affects the establishment of ethnicity-focused organizations. Instead, various dimensions of cultural distances between immigrants' origins and the host society consistently predict the presence of organizations. Finally, while permanent residence status correlates with reduced organizational density, areas marked by far-right mobilization show lower levels of immigrant organizing, contradicting theories that predict enclave-building in response to discrimination. These insights challenge prevailing essentialist and constructivist perspectives on immigrant group formation.

Authors

• Jonas Wiedner, Berlin Social Science Center

• Merlin Schaeffer, University of Copenhagen

• Sarah Carol, University College Dublin

• Susanne Boeller, University of Bonn, Germany