Perceived status and national belonging: The case of Russian speakers in Finland and Estonia

Abstract

Despite the abundance of research on disadvantaged minority group members, the research field on the ramifications of low group status is largely split between more material and psychological lines of explanation. There is also a lack of research on how subjectively perceived socio-economic status and discrimination cumulatively affect the sense of national belonging of ethnic minority group members. This survey study was conducted among Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland (N = 316) and Estonia (N = 501). The results in Estonia showed that for national identification to be high, both indicators of subjective group status had to be perceived as relatively high. In Finland, there was no interaction between the two indicators of subjectively perceived low group status. The study shows how perceptions of cumulative disadvantage may provoke a backlash in the form of immigrants' psychological distancing from the national ingroup. The findings are discussed in relation to the pervasiveness of low status in different intergroup contexts and minority group members' perceived investments to society.