Surveying Citizens with a “Migration Background” - A Quantitative Study of Identification versus Categorization

Survey research on minoritized citizens in Germany and the Netherlands tends to categorize respondents from the top down using the category “migration background,” instead of allowing for identification from the bottom up. Through surveying 1864 respondents in Germany and the Netherlands, including 401 respondents with a background in Türkiye, this paper shows that those who identify as Turkish hold different attitudes than those who have a background in Türkiye but who identify as German or Dutch. In fact, those who do not identify as Turkish, hold very similar attitudes to those without a migration background, and different attitudes than when a researcher would categorize them with those “having a migration background in Türkiye.” I provide proof of this with attitudes towards topics often associated with citizens with a migration background. Beyond these empirical advantages to identification over categorization, this paper outlines additional theoretical, methodological and conceptual advantages to following an identification approach in designing surveys.