%0 Journal Article
%T What Drives Ethnic Homophily? A Relational Approach on How Ethnic Identification Moderates Preferences for Same
%A Lars Leszczensky
%A Sebastian Pink
%J American Sociological Review
%@ 1939-8271
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0003122419846849
%X Individual preferences for same-ethnic friends contribute to persistent segregation of adolescents¡¯ friendship networks. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the mechanisms behind ethnic homophily. Prior research suggests that ethnic homophily is ubiquitous, but a social identity perspective indicates that strong ingroup identification drives ingroup favoritism. Combining a social identity perspective with a relational approach, we ask whether the presumed increased homophily of high identifiers extends to all ingroup members, or whether it is conditional on the strength of same-ethnics¡¯ identification. We propose that the strength of ethnic identification affects not only how much individuals desire same-ethnic friends, but also how attractive they are as potential friends to others. Fitting stochastic actor-oriented models to German adolescent school-based network panel data, we find that ethnic homophily is driven by an interplay of peers¡¯ ethnic identification: high identifiers befriend same-ethnic peers who share their strong ethnic identification, while excluding same-ethnic low identifiers. Low identifiers, in turn, tend to avoid befriending inter-ethnic high identifiers. Our relational approach reveals that ethnic homophily is hardly ubiquitous but requires strong identification of both parties of a (potential) friendship
%K friendship
%K segregation
%K social networks
%K homophily
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122419846849