Gender and Ethnicity in Claims-Making About Immigration

Protest and contention are important aspects of political life; they allow a look at how group interests can be represented in multiple sites beyond formal politics. This paper draws on claims-making to capture political contention in a wider sense, clearly going beyond approaches that examine exclusively the electoral sphere. The data come from a large-scale claims-analysis in 7 Western European countries, 1995 to 2009. Included are claims in newspapers – public claims – with a focus on immigration and integration in a wider sense. The focus on minority interests allows a careful analysis of intersectionality, and in particular examining whether women are crowded out in minority issues. The paper pays attention to opportunities like having more women in parliament, a left-wing party in government, or strong civil society organizations. Preliminary analysis suggests that men dominate claims-making in all countries under study, and ethnic minorities are even less present in claims that – by virtue of the topic studied – potentially affect their lives. Men are very dominant among claims by ethnic minorities, suggesting that these claims are dominated by a privileged subgroup even more than in the majority population. Put differently, groups of lower status have less of a voice in public debates, and since men and women differ in the kinds of claims they make (as is demonstrated), this leads to a different debate than what would be expected if all groups had an equal voice