AUTHOR=Vine Megan , Greenwood Ronni Michelle 

TITLE=Cross-group friendship and collective action in community solidarity initiatives with displaced people and resident/nationals

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1042577

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1042577

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=In Ireland, people seeking asylum (displaced people) receive accommodation in a system called ‘Direct Provision’ (DP) while they wait for their applications for protection to be processed. The living conditions of DP have been described as illegal and inhumane by national and international human rights groups, and the system exacerbates the social exclusion of displaced people. Community responses to DP by displaced people and resident/nationals of Ireland include the creation of informal groups called community solidarity initiatives (CSI), through which cross-group friendships are forged by participation in shared cultural activities. We hypothesised that, compared to non-CSI participants, participants of CSI would report more cross-group friendships, and that more cross-group friendships would predict stronger collective action intentions to support the campaign to end DP, especially among resident/nationals. To test this hypothesis, we recruited residents/nationals and displaced persons with and without CSI experience to complete a self-report questionnaire (n = 199). As predicted, CSI participants reported more contact with cross-group friends and stronger collective action intentions than non-participators. Conditional process analysis indicated that CSI participation facilitated resident/nationals’ political solidarity with displaced people through cross-group friendship, demonstrating the role of group membership in the relationship between contact and collective action for migrant justice. Importantly, our findings illustrate the potential of CSI to bolster intergroup solidarity and social cohesion through shared activities and cross-group friendship. As such our findings are relevant for practitioners, civil society, NGOs, and policy makers.