Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vol. 30, No. 3, May 2004, pp. 419–427

Introduction: Social Capital and

Political Integration of Migrants
Dirk Jacobs and Jean Tillie

In recent years the social capital approach has been gaining importance in the study of
political participation of (ethnic) minorities. Here we follow the research efforts of the
Dutch political scientists Fennema and Tillie who claim that differences in political
participation of ethnic minorities are linked to differences in ‘civic community’, primar-
ily seen as the amount of ‘ethnic’ social capital (participation in ethnic associational life)
of the relevant group. It is a challenge to try and test these claims in different national
settings. This is the aim of the empirical contributions to this special issue of JEMS,
which aims to pave the way for further comparative cross-national research on the link
between migrant associational life and political participation.

Keywords: Political Participation; Integration; Networks; Social Capital; Ethnic

Minorities; Migrants

Since the work of Putnam (1993, 2000) the concept of social capital has been
increasingly in vogue as a crucial explanatory variable for political trust and political
participation. Social capital—which we will operationalise here in a strict sense as
being embedded in a social network through associational life—is thus seen as an
important factor influencing the level of political trust and the intensity of political
participation (both formal and informal) of citizens. Not only could one question
this hypothesis on general grounds but one should also pose the question as to
whether this link is cross-cultural, cross-national (see contributions in Pharr and
Putnam 2000) and univocal. Certainly it is interesting to note that the social capital

Dirk Jacobs is a Research Fellow of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium—Flanders) at ISPO
(Institute for Social and Political Opinion Research), Catholic University of Leuven (KULeuven), and Assistant
Professor at the Catholic University of Brussels (KUBrussel) and KULeuven. Correspondence to: ISPO—
KULeuven, E. Van Evenstraat 2B, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: dirk.jacobs@soc.kuleuven.ac.be. Jean Tillie is
Senior Researcher at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is also
Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the same university. Correspondence to: Department
of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Oudezijds Achterburgwal 237, 1012 DL Amsterdam, The
Netherlands. E-mail: J.N.Tillie@uva.nl

ISSN 1369–183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/04/030419-09  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13691830410001682016
Carfax Publishing
420 D. Jacobs and J. Tillie
approach has also been gaining importance in the study of political participation of
(ethnic) minorities.
The Dutch political scientists Fennema and Tillie (1999, 2001) claim that differ-
ences in political participation of ethnic minorities are linked to differences in ‘civic
community’, primarily seen as the amount of ‘ethnic’ social capital (participation in
ethnic associational life) of the relevant group. The denser the network of associa-
tions of a particular ethnic group, the more political trust they will have and the
more they will participate politically, Fennema and Tillie argue. In their research on
Amsterdam they found a correlation between the density of networks of ethnic
associations, on the one hand, and political participation and trust of ethnic
minorities on the other.
It is a challenge to try and test the hypotheses of Fennema and Tillie in other
settings. Furthermore, it seems to be important to look further into the relation
between participation in ethnic associational life and political participation, not only
at the aggregate level, but also at the individual level. Indeed, one might fairly well
expect that, if there is a link between the degree of civic community within ethnic
groups and their degree of political participation at the aggregate level, there would
also be a (partly) underlying link between membership of ethnic associations and
political participation at the individual level. This is exactly what several contribu-
tions to this special issue of JEMS have set out to look into. Lise Togeby will
investigate the situation in Denmark. Maria Berger, Christian Galonska and Ruud
Koopmans report their findings on Berlin. Dirk Jacobs, Karen Phalet and Marc
Swyngedouw discuss the link between associational membership and political
involvement in Brussels. Jean Tillie will focus on Amsterdam. All four of these
articles analyse the link between ethnic social capital and political participation using
the same approach. As such, a tentative cross-national test is being undertaken.
In addition to these papers, this special issue contains three contributions which
tackle the same issue—migrant associational life and political participation—but
which are not directly part of this comparative research endeavour. Ruud Koop-
mans sheds light on the link between migrant mobilisation and political opportuni-
ties in Germany compared to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Meindert
Fennema has a more theoretical contribution, focusing on the concept and measure-
ment of ethnic civic community. Pontus Odmalm discusses the links between civil
society, migrant organisations and political parties in the Swedish context.
Two theoretical concepts play an important role in all articles included in this
collection: ethnic civic community and (local) political opportunities. Meindert Fen-
nema elaborates on the ethnic community concept. At least four elements should be
considered if we study ethnic communities: ethnic organisations; the density and
cohesion of the network of ethnic organisations; the availability of ethnic mass
media; and, finally, the trust among the members of ethnic communities. Ruud
Koopmans underlines the importance of national opportunity structures in studying
the claims-making of immigrants. He states that national integration and citizenship
regimes are still powerful in explaining patterns of migrant incorporation, although
local variation within nation states can be observed. Pontus Odmalm analyses this
 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 421

interplay between ethnic associations and political parties for the Swedish city of
Malmö. He concludes that local prevailing structures favour certain types of actors
and certain types of cleavages over others (in his case class cleavages are more
dominant than ethnic cleavages).
The idea to set up a special journal issue discussing comparable data analysed by
a similar approach originated in the margins of the joint sessions of the European
Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) at Turin, Italy (March 2002). The Belgian,
German and Dutch researchers who were using and testing the civic community
argument of Fennema and Tillie in their ECPR papers (Berger et al. 2002; Jacobs et
al. 2002) acknowledged that they could more directly align the approaches to their
data and thus facilitate international comparison. The respective data collection and
data construction had been done in different ways but there were, nevertheless,
sufficient resemblances to allow for a joint comparative research effort. The results
of this endeavour are found in this special issue.
In the long term, however, the aim is to engage in cross-national research which
is genuinely comparative from the start. Indeed, most of the above-mentioned
contributors are part of the research network ‘Multicultural Democracy in European
Cities’, which wants to coordinate similar research, and allow for international
comparison, on the link between social capital and political participation among
ethnic minority groups. The initiative was taken by researchers from the University
of Amsterdam and now includes members of several European countries (Nether-
lands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Portugal,
Spain and UK). The ambition is to develop a common core for survey research (on
the individual level), for organisational studies (network research) and for the
inventory of political opportunity structures. To this purpose, the group has met on
several occasions—with workshops organised in Wassenaar (2001), Uppsala (2002),
Berlin (2002) and Villamoura (2003)—and will continue to do so.

The Civic Community Argument of Fennema and Tillie

Let us first briefly reconsider the findings and theory of Fennema and Tillie in which
the approach of looking into the importance of social capital in the study of political
participation of (ethnic) minorities has gained momentum. In their research on
Amsterdam (Fennema and Tillie 1999, 2001) and other Dutch cities (Berger et al.
2000), Fennema and Tillie have found an interesting correlation at the aggregate
level between political participation and political trust of ethnic minorities, on the
one hand, and the network of ethnic associations on the other. For instance, Turks
in Amsterdam have a denser network of associations than Moroccans. Turks at the
same time have more political trust and a larger participation in the political field
than Moroccans. Similar results, linking associational networks and political partici-
pation, have been found for Surinamese and Antilleans. Fennema and Tillie (1999,
2001) claim there is a causal link underlying this correlation. Inspired by Putnam,
they argue that voluntary associations create social trust, which spills over into
political trust and higher political participation. In addition they claim that a
422 D. Jacobs and J. Tillie
network of organisations further increases political trust through interlocking direc-
torates. In this context, they speak about the degree of civic community within
ethnic groups—or ‘ethnic civic community’—as a basis for political trust and
political participation. As one of the elements of this ‘ethnic civic community’,
Fennema and Tillie also note the importance of the use of mass communication. The
more ethnic citizens watch ‘ethnic television’ and read ‘ethnic newspapers’ the higher
the civic community score is and the more likely they are to be politically active.
A number of general remarks have been raised with regard to limitations of the
argument and research of Fennema and Tillie (Jacobs et al. 2002). First of all,
attention has remained limited to ‘ethnic’ social capital (embedding in ethnic
associations) without taking into account forms of cross-cultural social capital
(embedding in mixed and more mainstream organisations) and the relationship
between these two types of social capital (Phalet and Swyngedouw 1999, 2002). In
addition, potential differential effects according to the type of organisation are
disregarded (cf. Hooghe 2001). Furthermore, there is no acknowledgement of the
importance of forms of social and cultural capital which one could designate as
stimulating the formation of ‘bridging’ social capital. One should think of forms of
social and cultural capital which are differentially distributed amongst (ethnic)
groups and are influential for integration into the ‘host society’ (i.e. language
proficiency, entrepreneurship, educational participation, etc.). Furthermore, the
issue should be addressed as to why—if this is the case—there is a link between
social capital (participation in associational life), political trust and political partici-
pation and whether this link is always univocal. It has to be discovered what exactly
in associations is responsible for this effect. In doing this, not only do the types of
organisation and their activities have to be taken into account, but there should
equally be attention paid to different kinds of networks in which associations are
potentially embedded. Last but not least, one should look at the national/city-related
processes—political opportunity structures (Koopmans and Statham 2000)—which
can lead to differential effects of associations for different groups. For instance
one cannot rule out at the moment that a typical national political opportunity
structure is responsible for the phenomena which have been observed in the
Netherlands.
To be able to provide an answer to all these questions, it is essential to have a
research design which is internationally comparative and cross-cultural (including
different ethnic groups and the autochthonous group). In addition, in the design a
distinction should be made between different kinds of association on the one hand,
and between different types of social capital (ethnic, cross-ethnic, bridging) on the
other hand. It is precisely the aim of the research network ‘Multicultural Democracy
in European Cities’ to address these issues in a coordinated manner. However, at the
moment, there are already a number of data-sets available which allow modest
comparisons; to our knowledge, data from Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the
Netherlands. Researchers from these countries were encouraged to look at their data
in a similar manner in order to address the same hypotheses and perform a first
‘critical test’ for their cities (or country) of a number of assertions made by Fennema
 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 423

and Tillie. These are the papers, mentioned earlier, on Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels
and Denmark.

A Common Research Approach

Is the thesis correct that differences in political participation between groups are to
be explained by the differential presence of social capital? This question can be
addressed at both the individual and aggregate levels. Fennema and Tillie contend
that the level of social capital of an ethnic group at an aggregate level leads to a
particular amount of political trust and political participation. If this is correct, there
should also be observable consequences at the individual level (King et al. 1994).
Indeed, one would expect to see that the more one is a member of voluntary
associations, the more one participates politically. Within different (ethnic) groups
a link has to be found at the individual level between social capital (membership of
organisations) and political participation. One should be able to show that differ-
ences in political participation between ethnic groups at an aggregate level are, at an
individual level, linked to membership participation within the groups concerned. It
should be stressed that, according to Fennema and Tillie (and in line with Putnam),
there would in addition—due to interlocking directorates of associations and the
density of an ethnic civic network—also be an aggregate effect as such, partly
independent of individual effects. But for the time being, it seems to be more
pressing to show—in other contexts than the Netherlands alone—that there is a link
at all between participation in associational life and political involvement of ethnic
minority groups. Moreover, this should be the case not only for ethnic minority
groups, but also for the autochthonous group. Following Phalet and Swyngedouw
(1999), one might also think that, in looking at the effects of membership of
organisations among ethnic minorities, one should equally take into account poten-
tial differential effects of ‘ethnic’ social capital (membership in immigrant organisa-
tions) on the one hand and cross-cultural social capital on the other hand. Jacobs et
al. (2002) further stress that it might be artificial and insufficient to only look at
so-called social capital—be it ethnic or cross-ethnic—in itself. Investigating the role
of being socially embedded through associational life should be complemented by
measuring other elements facilitating so-called ‘bridging social capital’—education,
language proficiency, etc.
In the contributions by Togeby on Denmark, by Berger, Galonska and Koop-
mans on Berlin, by Jacobs, Phalet and Swyngedouw on Brussels and by Tillie on
Amsterdam, a number of ethnic minority groups (and the autochthonous group) are
compared at the aggregate level with regard to—at least—(informal) political
participation and political interest. All these researchers were asked to perform tests
of significance of observed differences between their samples of ethnic minority
groups. At the same time, all these contributors provide a comparison of ethnic
minority groups (and the autochthonous group) on the aggregate level with regard
to participation in cross-ethnic associations, participation in ethnic associations and
total participation in associations. Each time, tests of significance are provided for
424 D. Jacobs and J. Tillie
observed differences between samples of ethnic minority groups. Using this infor-
mation, a test of the Fennema and Tillie argument on the link between social capital
(operationalised as participation in ethnic associations) and political involvement on
the aggregate level can be undertaken for several countries.
In addition, in all contributions the relationship between membership of associa-
tions and political involvement is directly monitored at the individual level. Making
use of a common procedure, all the contributions try to test whether it is correct that
(ethnic) associational membership is an incentive to political involvement in their
respective case-studies. In doing so, they equally want to take into account important
potential explanatory factors such as gender, education, language proficiency and
employment status—if only to be able to rule out spurious effects. In order to try
to do this, all contributions perform an analysis, according to the logic of the
path-model presented in Figure 1.
We first try a linear regression with gender and education (low or higher) as
independent dummy-variables, and language proficiency as a quasi-metric indepen-
dent variable. Subsequently, we add the dummy of employment status (unemployed,
employed) to the model in a second step, and add dummies for ethnic membership
(none, some), cross-ethnic membership and union membership (none, some) to the
model in a third step. Political involvement is our dependent variable.
We use this order in introducing the independent variables to our model, since we
postulate that the variables already present in the model are (or could be) logical
antecedents to the subsequent variables. We thus want to control for all variables of
the preceding step in our analysis (King et al. 1994). Such a path-model also allows
us to take into account direct and indirect effects of the variables in our model. We
have decided to make a distinction between union membership and (other forms of)
cross-ethnic membership, given the specific nature and importance of union mem-
bership for interest representation.

Associational Membership and Political Participation of Ethnic Minority Groups

In the papers by Berger et al., Jacobs et al., Togeby, Tillie, the model presented
above was empirically tested for four countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany and
the Netherlands. Within each country, differences between ethnic groups as to the
degree of political integration and the impact of comparable independent variables
can be observed. In Belgium ethnic social capital has different effects on the political
involvement of Moroccans and Turks; furthermore there seems to be an important
gender dimension. For Denmark, Lise Togeby concludes that ‘both the scope of
mobilisation and mobilisation mechanisms seem to vary from group to group’. In
Berlin substantial differences in the political participation patterns of Italians, Turks
and Russians are observed, but for all groups ethnic civil society contributes to
political activities with regard to Germany.
Despite the (local) differences with respect to patterns of political integration and
the significance of ethnic civic community, important similarities between the four
countries can be observed. This becomes clear if we compare the results for Turks.
 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 425

Figure 1 Explaining (ethnic) political participation: the path model.

Table 1 lists the degree of associational membership for Turks in Belgium, Denmark,
Germany and the Netherlands. Ethnic membership figures are highly comparable for
three countries: Belgium, Denmark and Germany. In the Netherlands ethnic mem-
bership figures are lowest, which is surprising since this country has a long tradition
of promoting ethnic organisations. With respect to cross-ethnic membership and
trade-union membership, there are strong differences between the countries. Cross-
ethnic membership is highest in Belgium. In Denmark relatively more Turks are
members of a trade union than in Germany. However, if we look at relative
membership numbers, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands Turks do engage
more in cross-ethnic organisations than in ethnic organisations, while in Denmark
the second generation of Turks engages more in trade unions than in ethnic
organisations.
Also with respect to the determinants of political integration, similarities in the
four countries can be observed. This is illustrated in Table 2, where the significance
of the main explanatory variables of political participation for Turks is depicted.

Table 1 Comparing Turks: degree of associational membership (per cent)

Non-ethnic/
Ethnic cross-ethnic Trade-union
membership membership membership

Belgium 35 60 –
Denmark (2nd generation) 32 16 43
Germany 31 37 22
The Netherlands 11 38 –
426 D. Jacobs and J. Tillie
Table 2 Comparing Turks: significance of main explanatory variables of political
participation (full model, significance at least at 0.05 level)

Non-
ethnic/
cross- Trade-
Employ- Ethnic ethnic union
Language ment member- member- member-
Gender Education proficiency status ship ship ship

Belgium * * * * *
Denmark * * * *
Germany * * * *
Netherlands * no data * * *

Language proficiency is significant for all countries where data are available. In all
four studies ethnic membership has a significant effect on political integration. In
three of the four countries cross-ethnic membership (Denmark, Germany, the
Netherlands) and trade-union membership (Belgium, Germany and the Nether-
lands) have a significant effect on political participation. Gender is significant in
Belgium and the Netherlands, while education and employment status are only
significant in one country (Denmark and Belgium respectively). Ethnic membership
seems to play a role in facilitating political participation, underlining the Fennema
and Tillie argument. Yet it is also clear that the ethnic civic community argument
needs more elaboration in an international comparative perspective and the relation-
ship with other variables needs to be addressed in more depth.
The observations above should be read with caution. Indicators used in studying
the various theoretical variables differed in each study and therefore comparative
observations are difficult to make. However, there are strong indications that various
ethnic groups behave differently in the same countries while other ethnic groups
behave the same in different countries. All this underlines the need for a truly
comparable study of the political integration of immigrants in European societies,
one which allows for the distinction between local and international determinants of
political integration. In the explanatory model variables such as the local political
opportunity structure, the specific migration history of ethnic groups or trans-
national contacts between ethnic organisations and institutions in the home coun-
tries all need to be included.
We are confident that the different articles making up this special issue will further
help the debate on the link between associational membership and political involve-
ment of ethnic minority groups in Western Europe. There are still quite a number
of loose ends with regard to the link between immigrant self-organisation and
political participation. We sincerely hope further research—within and outside the
research network on Multicultural Democracy in European Cities—can tie them
together, fruitfully making use of the insights which have been collected and
presented in this special issue.
 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 427

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