Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Poslon, Xenia Daniela
• Lášticová, Barbara
• Sainz, Mario
• Borinca, Islam
• Taylor, Laura K
• Gkinopoulos, Theofilos

Titel

Navigating Normative Sources: How Adolescents Talk About Refugees From Ukraine and the Roma

Ist Teil von

• Peace and conflict, 2024-08, Vol.30 (3), p.387-399

Ort / Verlag

Educational Publishing Foundation

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

PsycArticles

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this article, we explore how Slovak adolescents discursively construct normative contexts of support for refugees from Ukraine as victims of direct violence, and for the Roma, the victims of structural violence. We examine whether and how social norms are reflected in their talk and how they justify their views in the microcontext of focus groups. We draw on studies on the denial of prejudice that point to the presence of ideological climates where openly expressing racist sentiments is unacceptable. However, such norms are not immune to change and discursive strategies can also be used for constructing admissions of racism. Our analysis of five focus groups with 22 Slovak adolescents conducted immediately after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine allowed us to examine how participants collectively negotiated situational norms related to prejudice expression. Our findings show how adolescents navigate conflicting normative sources when constructions of intergroup relations differ in various social contexts. Even though participants considered racism as prevalent in Slovakia, they have pointed to the presence of norms condemning racist sentiments. Participants' use of various strategies of prejudice mitigation further suggests that they avoided being labeled as prejudiced. However, the perception that many people share the negative attitude seemed to encourage expressions of prejudice. Structural violence of the Roma was only recognized when used as justification for the exclusion of other groups, while it is not normatively acceptable to question the help toward refugees as victims of direct violence, given that they meet the "criteria for deservingness." Public Significance Statement The study's contribution is in providing an understanding of normative contexts that contribute to adolescents' construction of intergroup relations, in the context of both direct and structural violence. Our results provide additional evidence that an egalitarian normative climate should not be taken for granted, which is an important finding for stakeholders who play a key role in forming a normative climate in a particular societal context.