ABSTRACT
Questions of ethnicity, international migration, integration and cultural diversity are hotly debated in many countries. Ethnicity is not an immutable property of communities or groups, but rather a dynamic aspect of social relationships and a variable aspect of how people understand themselves and others. Social psychology can improve our understanding of the questions and issues surrounding ethnic identity. Social psychology has much to offer, with its central interest in categorization processes, social identities and intergroup relations. Social psychologists can make an important contribution to understanding the role, nature and types of motive and emotion involved in relation to category constructions and social identity processes. In the social and behavioural sciences, a dualist way of thinking often tends to predominate, as in the antitheses between the expressive and pragmatic aspects of language, between perception and action, between stability and variability, between structure and agency, and between methods and epistemological positions.
