Ethnic and cultural diversity in Europe: validating measures of ethnic and cultural background

Socio-cultural and ethnic origin can be a powerful predictor of social attitudes and behaviours but, unlike the situation in the classical countries of immigration such as Australia, Canada and the USA, there is no standard measure in Europe for measuring ethnic background. The paper reports a new measure and classification, developed for the ESS and trialled in the ESS wave 7 (2014/2015). It describes the underlying theoretical concepts, structure and classification criteria and reports a range of substantive findings. The paper shows that the new measure of ethnic origins has both criterion and predictive validity: it predicts whether respondents identify themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority and whether they feel that theirs is a group which is discriminated against. It also predicts strength of national identity and attitudes towards immigration. A particular strength of the new measure is that it identifies both indigenous and (sub)national minorities as well those with a migration background. The paper shows that in some countries subnational minorities are quite distinctive, for example in their feelings of being discriminated against and in their low levels of national attachment