Different Effects of Ethnic Diversity on Social Capital: Density of Foundations and Leisure Associations in Amsterdam Neighbourhoods

This article examines the effect of ethnic diversity on social capital in Amsterdam neighbourhoods by looking at the effects of the ethnic diversity of a neighbourhood on the social networks that underpin civil society. A distinction is made between homogeneous, more individually oriented social networks, on the one hand, and horizontal heterogeneous networks on the other. The density of foundations—i.e. the number of foundations in a neighbourhood—is used as the indicator for the first type of networks and the density of leisure associations for the latter type. In addition, the study looks at the effect of a changing context in Amsterdam in which ethnic diversity has increasingly come to be perceived as problematic by inhabitants and local politicians. The results indeed show that ethnic diversity has a different effect on both forms of civil society: the horizontal heterogeneous networks suffer more from ethnic diversity than the homogeneous networks.