“Still not belonging?” Safety perceptions and nuisances in neighbourhoods with different migration histories in the Netherlands

• In Event: WG-PLACE 5: Neighbourhoods and Crime

Abstract

In his well-known paper entitled ‘E pluribus unum’, Putnam (1997) made three broad claims. First, the influx of migrants will continue to increase in modern societies. Therefore, ethno-racial diversity in neighborhoods will increase. Second, this development of increased diversity challenges social capital and social solidarity and causes significant problems in residential neighborhoods, such as lack of cohesion and social disorder. Third, in the longer run, however, new forms of solidarity and community will emerge, and the negative consequences of increased diversity are outweighed by these new forms of togetherness. The first and second claims have been studied abundantly albeit with mixed results. My contribution reviews these different findings and discusses the diverging evidence in the light of theories of social capital, communitarianism and social cohesion as well as taking the contextual conditions in the respective studies into account, i.e., the immediate conditions in a neighborhood as well as migration policies in a region. Next, I focus on neighborhoods in the Netherlands and contrast neighborhoods with different migration histories concerning outcomes such as safety and nuisances. Using different waves from the Netherlands' Safety Monitor, a nationally representative longitudinal survey, it is inquired into Putnams' third claim, made in 1997. Is the so-called ‘hunkering down effect’, if it exists at all, persisting or changing through time?

Author

• Beate Volker, NSCR