Eva Jaspers

Primary and Secondary Socialization Impacts on Support for Same-Sex Marriage After Legalization in the Netherlands

Two years after the legalization of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands, 65% of the Dutch population largely or completely disagrees with the statement “gay marriage should be abolished.” This article shows, by way of multinomial logistic regression analysis of survey data, which socializing agents influence one’s attitude toward same-sex marriage after its legalization (FNB2003; N = 2,124). Parents’ attitudes toward homosexuality during one’s youth strongly affect one’s attitude toward same-sex marriage. The strongest determinant is socialization within religious institutions. Religious practice provides an explanation of the differences between members of denominations opposing same-sex marriage. A lower educational level enhances one’s probability of being neutral on abolishing gay marriage. Finally, men and people from non-Western origin are especially likely to oppose same-sex marriage.

A longitudinal study of euroscepticism in the Netherlands: 2008 versus 1990

With a unique longitudinal data set covering a time-span of 18 years, we test to what extent euroscepticism evolved among the Dutch between 1990 and 2008. We compare Eurosceptic attitudes on the eve of the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht with attitudes after the Dutch ‘no’ in the referendum on the European Constitution. We find a strong increase in euroscepticism among the Dutch. This change did not develop evenly across the educational strata. We propose to explain these differences through the utilitarian, political cueing, political cynicism and identity approaches. Over the years, the less educated have become more cynical about politics and have come to perceive a greater ethnic threat than before, which explains their stronger increase in euroscepticism. In contrast to 1990, perceived ethnic threat was the main predictor of euroscepticism in 2008.

Support for radical left ideologies in Europe

This article examines support for radical left ideologies in 32 European countries. It thus extends the relatively scant empirical research available in this field. The hypotheses tested are derived mainly from group-interest theory. Data are deployed from the 2002�2010 European Social Surveys (N = 174,868), supplemented by characteristics at the country level. The results show that, also in the new millennium, unemployed people and those with a lower income are more likely to support a radical left ideology. This is only partly explained by their stronger opinion that governments should take measures to reduce income differences. In contrast to expectations, the findings show that greater income inequality within a country is associated with reduced likelihood of an individual supporting a radical left ideology. Furthermore, cross-national differences in the likelihood of supporting the radical left are strongly associated with whether a country has a legacy of an authoritarian regime.

Religion as Catalyst or Restraint of Radical Right Voting

It is often found that religious people are underrepresented among the radical right electorate, despite radical right parties’ claim of being defenders of the Judeo-Christian society. This study investigates this paradoxical finding and examines to what extent two dimensions of religion – practice and belief – play a role in voting for a radical right party across seven West European countries. Using the European Values Study from 2008, it was found that religiously active people are indeed less likely to vote for a radical right party, because they tend to vote for a Christian party. However, the study challenges the common wisdom that religion alone is a restraint on radical right voting and shows that orthodox believers in three countries – Belgium, Norway and Switzerland – feel more threatened by the presence of immigrants and therefore are more likely than their mainstream counterparts to vote for a radical right party.

Horrors of Holland

Purpose – This paper seeks to study the influence of industrialisation, urbanisation and means of communication on the association between fathers and sons occupational status in all 117 municipalities in the province of Zeeland, The Netherlands from 1811 to 1890.Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses from both the logic of industrialism thesis and reproduction theory are tested with multi‐level analyses on data on the individual as well as the contextual level. First, the paper studies the influence of contextual factors on intergenerational occupational status attainment. Second, it uses relatively large‐scale individual and contextual historical data over a long period of time.Findings – The paper adds to the current literature by showing that the association of fathers and sons occupational status differs between municipalities and over time and that these differences are partly explained by industrialisation, urbanisation and means of communication. All findings point in one direction, that the...

Studying Positive and Negative Direct and Extended Contact: Complementing Self-Reports With Social Network Analysis

Traditionally, studies of intergroup contact have primarily relied on self-reports, which constitute a valid method for studying intergroup contact, but has limitations, especially if researchers are interested in negative or extended contact. In three studies, we apply social network analyses to generate alternative contact parameters. Studies 1 and 2 examine self-reported and network-based parameters of positive and negative contact using cross-sectional datasets (N = 291, N = 258), indicating that both methods help explain intergroup relations. Study 3 examines positive and negative direct and extended contact using the previously validated network-based contact parameters in a large-scale, international, and longitudinal dataset (N = 12,988), demonstrating that positive and negative direct and extended contact all uniquely predict intergroup relations (i.e., intergroup attitudes and future outgroup contact). Findings highlight the value of social network analysis for examining the full complexity of contact including positive and negative forms of direct and extended contact.

Boys’ and girls’ educational choices in secondary education. The role of gender ideology

Abstract This study aims to explain why boys and girls in secondary education choose different educational tracks. We argue that adolescents internalise gender expectations as to what is “appropriate” male and female behaviour in their gender ideology. Gender ideology can affect educational choices by influencing (1) how adolescents evaluate their competence in certain subjects (competence beliefs), (2) what they find important in a future occupation (occupational values) and (3) what school subject they prefer right now (subject preferences). Longitudinal data collected among adolescents at age 15 and 16 (N = 1062) are used. Multinomial path models show that gender ideology shapes boys’ occupational values and subject preferences, whereas for girls it shapes their competence beliefs. Only for boys this leads to gender-stereotypical educational choices, however. Our results support the idea that gender expectations are stricter for boys than for girls and may prevent men from entering more feminine career tracks.

National day participation among immigrants in the Netherlands: the role of familiarity with commemorating and celebrating

ABSTRACT This study explores to what extent varying levels of host national day participation among immigrants can be explained by previous participatory experiences related to their country of origin, in addition to socio-cultural factors related to the current country of residence. Utilising data from a large online immigrant panel, we concentrate on two prominent national days in the Netherlands: Remembrance Day and Liberation Day. On these days, Dutch society commemorates victims of the Second World War and celebrates freedom, respectively. Our results indicate that Dutch national day participation among immigrants is determined largely by previous familiarity with commemorating and celebrating through participation in holidays specific to immigrants’ country of origin. These findings highlight the need to place more emphasis on the role of previous participatory experiences when examining immigrants’ current patterns of participation in the host society.

On the relation between age and the importance attached to historical events

The critical years hypothesis is an influential hypothesis in the social sciences. According to this hypothesis, events occurring during adolescence or young adulthood are most important. This hypothesis is significant because if generations do indeed differ from each other because they were socialized in different contexts, the succession of generations has the potential to change societies. In this study, we test the validity of the critical years hypothesis using data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences Immigrant Panel. We first compare the power of the critical years hypothesis to that of alternative patterns, after which we conduct a structural examination of the conditionality of the critical years hypothesis. We test our hypotheses according to both open-ended and closed-ended questions. The results provide only limited evidence for the critical years hypothesis.

Extreme politieke oriëntaties in Europa: Verklaringen op micro- en macroniveau

In this study, we set out to explain extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing ideologies within and between 30 European countries in a multi-level framework. To test our hypotheses, we use data from the European Social Surveys of 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010 (N = 176.803), enriched with country characteristics. Our results show that lower educated people and manual workers are more likely to support left-wing extremism, because they are of the opinion that the government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels. Interestingly, the lower educated and manual workers are also more likely to have an extreme right-wing ideology. This effect, however, is explained by a higher level of perceived ethnic threat. At the country-level, our analyses indicate that a heritage of a totalitarian regime increases the likelihood for an individual to hold an extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing ideology. Moreover, we found a positive effect of the percentage of unemployed people in a country on the probability to support left-wing extremism.