Cultural difference and social belonging: The formation of social ties and identities in intercultural interactions and networks

Belonging denotes the social grounding of people’s sense of self in their relationships with others. This process connects critical individual outcomes - such as (poor) health, (under)achievement, civic (dis)engagement - to the social environment. As our social world is becoming increasingly culturally diverse, a lack of belonging of (some) cultural minorities causes public concern, and there is an urgent need to better understand the micro-foundations of belonging in high-diversity environments. Our theoretical aim is to rethink a well-established social identity approach of human sociality with a view to articulating belonging with cultural difference. Building on recent experimental and naturalistic evidence of social identity formation in interactive groups, we shift attention away from category-based identities (‘being Belgian defines who I am’) towards less researched tie-based identities (‘having a Belgian friend defines who I am’). Extending this line of inquiry, we will examine the formation of social ties and identities in intercultural interactions and networks. Planned studies supplement social network analysis of large-scale multi-level longitudinal ‘CILS’ data in low-/high-diversity interactive groups in 5 countries with new lab and field experiments creating identities and promoting belonging in intercultural interactions.