Dinesen, Peter Thisted. ‘Upbringing, Early Experiences of Discrimination and Social Identity: Explaining Generalised Trust among Immigrants in Denmark’. (2010)

Dinesen, Peter Thisted. ‘Upbringing, Early Experiences of Discrimination and Social Identity: Explaining Generalised Trust among Immigrants in Denmark’. Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, 2010, pp. 93–111.

The aim of this article is to analyse the causes of generalised trust among immigrants. Three different explanations of generalised trust are examined, focusing on the role of a restrictive upbringing, early experiences of discrimination and social identity. The data consist of a panel of immigrants from Turkey, Pakistan and former Yugoslavia living in Denmark and surveyed in 1988 and 1999. The results from a multivariate analysis, including a host of background variables, show that only a restrictive upbringing affects generalised trust significantly as having experienced this type of upbringing leads to lower trust. Early experiences of discrimination and social identity in terms of national identification do not affect generalised trust. The article concludes by discussing the finding that parental socialisation in terms of a restrictive upbringing affects generalised trust.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2009.00240.x.

PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2009.00240.x.