Social Participation of Immigrants: Does Culture Matter?

Migration to western European countries increased in recent decades from three per cent in ’60 to ten per cent nowadays what brings important political and societal challenges for recipient countries, especially in the field of social cohesion. An important aspect of social cohesion is social participation which can be a substitute for lacking political inclusion of immigrants deprived of voting rights. Whereas there is a wide agreement among researchers concerning low rates of participation of immigrants in voluntary organisations when compared to non-migrants, the reasons for these discrepancies are far less clear. The main problem is the lack of systematic comparative cross-national studies in this field. As many of the case studies at the meso levels, there is one striking similarity in their findings – quite often ethnic groups display group-specific determinants of participation, even in the same local and national contexts. Given this evidence, an important question needs to be asked: is there an underlying factor explaining participation of immigrants, which is related to their country of origin? In other words, can culture of country of origin partly explain different determinants of participation across different ethnic groups of immigrants? The quantitative examination of social participation of immigrants across eleven western European societies with the highest migration rates (ESS 6. Round, 2012) shows that indeed – for certain groups of immigrants – the culture of origin can partly explain differences in participation, even when controlled for country-specific contexts. In specific, embeddedness in Northern Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet societies are consistently unfavourable precondition for joining voluntary associations when compared to immigrants from other regions. This evidence indicates that not only specific cultural context of origin country, but also specific political context (e.g. political socialization under communist regimes) of this country is relevant for participative behaviour of immigrants.