Integration through Civic Participation - Exploring the Relationship between Membership in Organisations and Political Trust

Sammanfattning: In the Nordic countries, an increasing part of the population consists of migrants from various backgrounds. Naturally, it is important to investigate what can be done in order for these migrants to integrate successfully. Previous research shows that some of the fundamentals of integration are trust and the sense of collective identity. Therefore, it is important to further investigate the components that can lead to an increase of trust in political institutions, and thus contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that can subsequently increase a groups’ sense of collective identity and integration. In response to the literature gaps, the present study investigates the relationship between political trust and civic participation, in light of Robert Putnam’s (1993; 2000) argument in which he suggests that organisations that are structured in a horizontal way are expected to influence individuals’ political trust positively while organisations that are structured in a hierarchical way are expected to influence individuals’ political trust negatively. Accordingly, influenced by Putnam’s (1993; 2000) argument, the hypothesis and the research questions of this study were formulated as: Organisations that are perceived as horizontal will show a positive relationship to political trust through all migration groups, while organisations that are perceived as hierarchical will show a negative relationship to political trust through all migration groups. RQ 1: Is there a positive relationship between political trust and horizontal organisations? RQ 2: Is there a negative relationship between political trust and hierarchical organisations? RQ 3: Does the relationship look the same through first-generation migrants, second-generation migrants and natives? To answer the generated questions, a quantitative research design was used with a data-set acquired from the joint EVS-WVS project and were consisted of 8634 (only members of the Nordic countries were included) participants, who were divided into groups based on their migration-background. The relationship between political trust and civic participation was analysed through a multiple regression analysis including dependent variable measuring trust in governmental institutions and independent variables measuring participation in voluntary organisations. Results indicated that all in all, the hypothesis cannot be confirmed in this study. This because the results were mixed as it was found that participation in organisations within various fields affects the migration groups differently. However, the most consistent results were found to be that civic participation in sport organisations has a positive effect on individuals' political trust, through all migration groups. Consequently, the results suggest that the structure of the organisations is not enough when trying to predict the effect of civic participation on political trust which is in contrast with Putnam’s argument.