Section: Research Student Profiles

Wahideh Achbari

Name
Wahideh Achbari
Organisation
Politics and International Relations, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
Rm 3.14 Chrsytal Macmillan Building 15A George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
E-Mail
Research Interests
Social network analysis,Bridging and bonding,Research methodology,Theories of democracy,Social capital
URL
http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/gradschool/research_student_profiles/politics_and_ir/wahideh_achbari
Wahideh Achbari

PhD Title

Convergence of civic attitudes amongst members of NGOs in Amsterdam

Research Interview

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Qualifications

  • BA and MSc Politics, University of Amsterdam
  • MSc by Research, University of Edinburgh

PhD Title


‘BRIDGING AND BONDING PARADOXES’: EXPLAINING ATTITUDES OF GENERALIZED TRUST FOR PARTICIPANTS OF ETHNICALLY MIXED AND TURKISH VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS IN AMSTERDAM

PhD Project

My research project focuses on the contact hypothesis in assessing differences in generalized trust attitudes among participants of mixed ethnicity and Turkish voluntary associations in Amsterdam. Contact in an ethnically diverse organization as opposed to concentration of ethnic minorities in non-profit organizations is argued to be one of the crucial factors in the development of civic norms. This coincides with a general fear among policy makers and the public that the concentration of ethnic minorities would lead to extremism and parallel societies. Despite the vast body of work on this topic, ethnically homogenous organizations (for example Turkish), in which ethnic minorities are concentrated, are often not included in the analysis. Existing datasets sometimes lack enough cases, since ethnic minorities are hard to find populations. Many existing surveys also lack a multilevel structure in order to reach methodologically sound conclusions. This project overcomes some of these shortcomings by carrying out a survey that oversamples participants of Turkish and mixed ethnicity organizations.
I analyse the convergence of generalized trust at two levels; 1) at the organizational level and 2) at the individual level. I will be controlling for organizational characteristics and socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. The latter refers to a diverse ethnic composition of the organization, whilst the former are factors such as age, marital status, income and educational attainment. The rationale behind such an analysis is as follows. If trust attitudes are enhanced by contact in diverse organizations, we should find a higher variance at the organizational level. On the contrary, if generalized attitudes are shaped by individual characteristics, there might be other mechanisms at work and the variance in generalized trust between individuals will be greater. Findings suggest that the ethnic composition of an organization (diverse vs. homogenous) do not contribute to enhanced civic attitudes among the participants as the variance at that level is remarkably lower than the variance at the participants’ level.
However, in order to better disentangle a self-selection and a socialization effect due to contact, I employ a cross-level interaction effect between a participant’s length of membership and whether that participant is involved in a mixed organization. I also control for additional contact criteria such as the development of close ties within a mixed organization. Overall, the findings run against a contact mechanism. Instead, participants of Turkish organizations seem to have self-selected into those organizations on the basis of their previously held generalized trust attitudes.

Supervisors

Dr. A Thompson (Politics)
Dr. P. Odmalm (Politics)

Awards

  • PhD: College of Humanities and Social Science Scholarship; Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds; Fundatie Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude.

Publications/Conference Papers

'Back to the future': Revisiting the contact hypothesis for participants of Turkish non-profit and mixed ethnicity organizations in Amsterdam, manuscript submitted at Ethnic and Racial Studies, August 2011.

Hupa, Albert and Wahideh Achbari, Linked-In: How to get recommended. Presentation at Summer School Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences 2, Social interactions and social networks theme: Social network analysis using Pajek, Ljubljana, 9 July 2009.

Assessing attitudinal convergence amongst mixed and ethno-national associations in Amsterdam: A proposal. Paper presented at Staff Seminar Series, Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam, 16 December 2008.

van den Bos, M. and W. Achbari. 2007. Cultural Migration: Networks of Iranian Organizations in The Netherlands. Migration Letters 4(2): 171-181.

Moving Beyond the Heuristic: The operationalisation of immigrant communities social capital. Paper presented at The 8th European Sociological Association conference, Research Stream: European Researchers in Migration and Ethnic Studies: Contemporary Methods in Migration Research, Glasgow, 3-4 September 2007
Teaching Experience

I have been tutoring on the following courses: Core Quantitative Data Analysis (Master), Democracy in Comparative Perspective and Social & Political Enquiry (Bachelor). I have also been lecturing and convening an Honours course: Europe and International Migration.

Research Group Membership

Migration and Citizenship

 

This page was published on 2 April 2012


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