The relationship between social identification and local voting, and its interplay with personal and group discrimination among the descendants of Turkish immigrants in Western Europe

This study explores how Turkish and Islamic identifications relate to local voting likelihood among the descendants of Turkish immigrants in 10 Western European cities using The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) survey data (Herzog-Punzenberger, 40 Jahre und eine Generation später – die Kinder der angeworbenen Arbeitskräfte in Österreich sind erwachsen, 2010; Crul et al., The European Second Generation. Does the Integration Context Matter?, 2012; and Fibbi et al., The new second generation: Youth of Turkish and former Yugoslav descent in Zurich and Basel, 2015). Unlike previous studies of the politicization of social identification, it researches local voting and considers how this relationship is moderated by the interplay between perceptions of personal discrimination and group discrimination. Islamic identification relates negatively to local voting likelihood among Muslims who perceive both high levels of personal and group discrimination. This study concludes that it is crucial to take the interplay between perceived personal discrimination, perceived group discrimination, and the countries’ policy context into account in studying the politicization of social identification.