Immigrant participation and the role of resilience: Resource of hindrance to collective action?

Despite their best efforts, migrants often face several obstacles when they attempt to integrate themselves into the societies in which they reside. Indeed, researchers suggest that identifying those factors that facilitate social participation in ethnic minorities is of utmost importance. Since resilience includes a range of internal and shared resources, it could be considered crucial to sustain collective action among immigrants who are effective and feel aggrieved (Klandermans et al., 2008). From the perspective of the Social Identity Model of Collective Action, (van Zomeren et al., 2008), this study sought to examine separately individual and collective factors associated with participation, while also testing the role of resilience – at the individual, collective and communal level – in promoting migrants’ participation. 226 first-generation immigrants of different nationalities (58,6% female) completed a self-report questionnaire. Using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling, we tested two different models to evaluate the relation between national and ethnic identification and participation when mediated by individual factors (individual efficacy, psychological resilience, grievances) and collective factors (collective efficacy, collective resilience, community resilience, grievances). At the individual level, we observed a negative association between ethnic identity and participation, while individual efficacy and resilience fully mediated the relation between national identity and participation. At the collective level, we observed a negative association between community resilience and participation while collective efficacy and community resilience fully mediated the relation between national identity, ethnic identity, and participation. Indeed, the identification with the receiving country promotes an active participation when migrants are effective and resilient. Conversely, perceiving the receiving community as endowed with resources (e.g., community resilience) prevents them from participating when they strongly identify with both their ethnic group and the receiving country. Implications for community-based research and practice are discussed.