This project investigates cultural and economic group conflicts between natives and immigrants and explores the consequences of such conflicts for redistributive preferences and social cohesion. As part of the RISS Research Unit, this project takes a fresh look at these prominent research topics by integrating them into the overarching theoretical framework of RISS. This framework emphasizes the interplay between the changing social structure at the macro- level and the social identity of actors at the micro-level. The data collection within the RISS project will provide innovative empirical measures of these two important concepts and thereby allow a two- fold contribution to the existing research. First, the role of the social- psychological process of social identification will be investigated and enable a better understanding of the process of in-group-out-group classifications. Second, the social structure at the macro- level will be measured as a multi- dimensional concept; thereby allowing us to test how the integration of immigrants into various dimensions of the social structure mitigates the potentially conflict- laden relationship between immigrants and natives. With increasing integration into the host societies, immigrants occupy more cross-cutting positions in the multi-dimensional social structure. This increasing heterogeneity within the immigrant population may reduce the saliency of group boundaries between immigrants and natives. Consequently, group conflicts, as well as their prominent consequences—such as decreasing social trust or reduced support for redistributive policies— may be generally reduced in a reconfigured social structure.
