Introduction

Ethnicity has become a major feature of social structure, everyday interactions, self-understanding, transnational networks, and political debates and conflicts around the world. Processes of globalization are drawing people from different places and with different backgrounds into close relationships. The continuing and increasing flow of migration, the growth of diasporas, and the emergence of Internet communities have raised all kinds of new and pressing questions. Most societies around the world are, or are rapidly becoming, ethnically and culturally plural. Ethnic diversity challenges the existing social hierarchies and exclusionary conceptions of citizenship, but also leads to a new tribalism that threatens democracy and social cohesion. Hence, questions of ethnicity, migration, identity, and multiculturalism are hotly debated in many countries. These concepts are frequently employed in and by the media. Given the increased importance of ethnicity and migration in contemporary public and political debates, it is not surprising that these have become major topics in academic debates in a number of different disciplines, including philosophy, political science, sociology, and anthropology. For example, in the past decade, political scientists, (moral) philosophers, and sociologists have paid increasing attention to the questions and dilemmas surrounding migration, citizenship, and multiculturalism (e.g. Barry, 2001; Favell, 1998; Goldberg, 1994; Kymlicka, 1995; Parekh, 2000; Taylor, 1992). Philosophical, ideological, and pragmatic arguments are being put forward in order to defend or challenge notions of the ‘politics of identity’ or ‘modes of belonging’. In comparison to all this work in different disciplines, social psychologists, particularly in Europe, have to a large degree ignored ethnicity.