One foot in, one foot out: Dual identification and Immigrants’ Sense of Belonging in the Netherlands A quantitative study on how labor market participation, religious participation, and social contacts influence the sense of belonging of European and n

The aim of this thesis is to understand the relationship between dual identification and sense of belonging to the host country. Hereby, a distinction is made between migrants with an EU background (Polish, Bulgarian, Spanish) and migrants with a non-EU background (Turkish). Additionally, multiple factors have been identified that could moderate this relationship, namely labor market participation, religious participation, social bonding, and social bridging. This study is embedded in previous research on the social identity theory (Turner, 1979) and self-categorization (Hogg, 2006). This thesis employs a quantitative data analysis of the large-scale survey New Immigrant Survey The Netherlands 2018. The third wave is used to explore the two groups, and the data were analyzed using a hierarchical multivariate regression analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics 29. The findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between the level of dual identification and the sense of belonging in the host country, which is slightly higher for EU migrants. Labor market participation has been shown to have a negative moderating effect on this relationship, whereas social bonding has a positive moderating effect. Religious participation and social bridging were found not to have any significant impact on the main relationship. Other factors such as Dutch language use and perceived discrimination, were found to impact sense of belonging in the host country in all regression models. This thesis is scientifically relevant as it fills a research gap by focusing on the impact of migrants’ dual identification on their sense of belonging in a new country, shedding new light on the integration of new immigrants in the Netherlands. Lastly, multiple policy recommendations are given, among which are the conservation of migrant cultural heritage and facilitation of ethnic group gatherings.