Self-esteem and ethnic and national identification among adolescents in the Netherlands

Abstract

The great majority of studies on the self-esteem of ethnic minority youth has been conducted in the United States, has focused on global personal self-esteem only, and has not considered the issue of dual group identity. Using a two-dimensional perspective we examined ethnic and national identification and its relationship to global self-esteem and self-evaluation in six separate domains. Analyses of data collected in the Netherlands showed that for ethnic minority group adolescents, ethnic identification and national identification were independent of one another. In addition, ethnic identification was positively related to self-esteem whereas national identification was not. Furthermore, compared to the Dutch, ethnic minorities had similar levels of self-esteem and domain specific self-evaluations. Among all groups, physical appearance was clearly the most important predictor of global self-esteem. The results support a two-dimensional conceptualisation of identification for ethnic minority adolescents. The paper also argues that studies on self-esteem should examine different domains of self-evaluation in addition to global self-esteem. Furthermore, the results suggest that not only ethnocultural factors, but also more general factors are important for shaping self-evaluation among adolescents. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.