To Be Both (and More): Immigration and Identity Multiplicity

Immigrants and their descendants make up a growing share of the population in countries across Europe, North America, and Oceania. This large-scale immigration challenges once relatively stable notions of ethnic, national (or regional), and religious identities. Immigrants and their children confront the task of defining themselves in a new and unfamiliar context. Questions regarding immigrants’ identifications with their ethnic and national groups—but also with local, religious, and supranational groups—have animated national policy debates. This special issue brings together research on migrants’ sense of a “being both,” and the research and policy implications of this particular form of multiple identification. This introductory article discusses the conceptualisation of multiple identification, the importance of group dynamics for the adoption of dual identities, as well as the implications of identification with multiple social groups for immigrants and their receiving societies.

"I am a German if we win, but an immigrant if we lose." This statement was made by MesutÖzil, a third-generation Turkish German and one of the stars of the German national soccer (football) team that won the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Four years later, Germany was again one of the favorites to win the Cup. In the days leading up to the 2018 tournament,Özil drew heavy criticism for appearing in a photograph with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Many accused Ozil of a lack of loyalty to Germany and some cited the ensuing national debate as one reason that Germany failed to advance out of the first round. Following this backlash,Özil withdrew from the team.
In explaining his decision and the position that he felt he occupied in Germany, Ozil stressed that he has both a Turkish and a German heart and he denounced the discrimination and racism in Germany that would not accept this duality. Many Turkish Germans agreed and started to share their negative experiences on Twitter via "#MeTwo," whereby "Two" referred to the dual identity of people with an immigrant background. To make a choice between the one or the other identity would be impossible, it was argued, explained metaphorically as "never ask a zebra whether it is white or black" and "never ask someone to choose between a mother and a father." Ozil's experience demonstrates that multiple identities are an important and sometimes contested matter. Like all identities, they are not only a matter of who people are to themselves, but also who they are to others: in the words of Jenkins (1997, p. 3), identity is the "best device I know for bringing together 'public issues' and 'private troubles'." Immigrants' multiple identities involve how immigrants themselves think and feel about their ethnic and national group memberships, as well as the religious, local, racial, and supranational groups to which they belong; how other members of these groups (e.g., coethnics, the majority population in the host country) view immigrants and act toward them; and the balance or tension between these views (Verkuyten, 2018).
According to data collected by the United Nations (2017), approximately 258 million people are migrants, living in countries other than the ones they were born in. 1 The growing size of this population is dramatic: in 2000 the number was 173 million and in 2010 it was 220 million. The leading sending countries for contemporary immigration are India, Mexico, the Russian Federation, and China; the leading receiving country, in terms of absolute numbers, is by a large margin the 1 Within the field of migration studies, distinctions can be made between various forms of migration and categories of immigrants (e.g., short-and long-term migration, back-and-forth migration, return migration, chain migration, cross-border workers, first-and later-generation immigrants, and unauthorized migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees). Like the public, psychologists have not always understood and appreciated these distinctions. Despite their importance, we do not have the space to review them in the present article. Rather, we use the terms "immigrants" and "immigrant-heritage" (recent history of immigration and children or immigrants) in a generic sense. United States, followed by Saudi Arabia, Germany, and the Russian Federation. If the children of immigrants are considered as well, then as much as a quarter of some countries' populations can be considered to have immigrant heritage. These numbers alone point to the importance of understanding how social identities and immigration are a part of contemporary life.
In this introductory article, we review the literature on multiple identities among immigrants. We first briefly consider the conceptualization of identity and the importance of studying immigrants' multiple identities. Next, we review some of the key questions that scholars have asked about multiple identities in the psychological literature on immigrant adaptation, pointing to some of the unanswered questions in the field. We then discuss the importance of group dynamics in influencing how strongly immigrants identify with multiple groups and the (in)compatibility between them. Finally, we consider the psychological and sociocultural outcomes of immigrants' multiple identities and identify directions for future research.

Conceptualizing Identity in the Context of Immigration
The academic literature on identity is so vast and includes so many different conceptualizations that almost anything that has to do with what people think, feel, and do has been claimed to be a question of identity (see Wetherell & Mohanty, 2010). Psychological concepts such as attitudes, beliefs, worldviews, self-concept, and personality are increasingly replaced by the buzzword "identity." This combination of conceptual expansion, on the one hand, and theoretical underspecification, on the other, is endemic to the social sciences (Haslam, 2016). It can lead to so much confusion that terms lose all meaning (Verkuyten, 2018). Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that identity as a concept should be abandoned altogether (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Although we disagree with this recommendation, we do believe greater specification is needed.
In the context of immigration it is useful to at least make a distinction between processes of group identification that are specified by the social identity perspective, and the gradual, over time, processes of internalizing a cultural system of meaning that are conceptualized in (the development of) cultural identity (e.g., Verkuyten, 2016;Wiley & Deaux, 2010). Identifying with two groups or communities does not necessarily mean that one has a bicultural self, and having a (situational) sense of belonging and commitment to a particular ethnic and national community is not the same as developing an inner sense of self that results from a gradual process of acculturation and enculturation.
Drawing on the social identity perspective that includes Social Identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and Self-Categorization Theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), multiple identities can be conceptualized as social (or collective or group) identities. Social identities tell us something about how people as group members position themselves in their social environment (and are positioned by others), as well as how they derive meaning and value from these positions (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). The social identity perspective does not answer the question "who am I, and where do I belong" in terms of internalized, individual meanings but rather in terms of characteristics and social experiences that we share with other cultural group members. The focus is on identification of the self with a group (Thoits & Virshup, 1997), whereby the self extends beyond the individual person to the group. From a social identity perspective, the question of multiple identities is less about an integrated internal structure or establishing a sense of coherence. The focus is more on how in particular contexts, specific social identities become relevant, overlap and relate to each other. Different identities can involve contrasting meanings, competing demands and different loyalties and allegiances to others.
The literature on cultural identity and its development tends to conceptualize identity in terms of an inner structure and focuses on the ways in which one's cultural group membership come to be represented as an integral part of a (developing) sense of self. The "who am I" question is answered in terms of internalized, individual meanings that develop progressively during a process of enculturation (Thoits & Virshup, 1997). For example, the research on Bicultural Identity Integration (BII; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005) examines the extent to which different internalized systems of cultural meaning are psychologically compatible or oppositional. And research on identity development examines how people who have internalized more than one culture incorporate them into their individual self-concepts in order to achieve a more or less coherent self (e.g., Syed & McLean, 2016).

Immigrants and Multiple Social Identities
Everyone is a member of a variety of categories and groups and therefore everyone has multiple social identities. Often, these identities are rather independent of each other because they refer to quite different kinds of categories, domains of life, or levels of abstraction. However, they can also intersect, combine, or conflict, psychologically and socially.
For the immigrant, questions about ethnic and national identity (as well as religious, local, and supranational group belonging) are almost inevitable and, in many cases, similar questions are raised for their descendants as well. Given the large and growing percentage of immigrants in the world today, the study of multiple identities is clearly important, both for understanding specifically how immigrants adapt to their new circumstances as well as to learn more about the general processes of identity development and change. How do immigrants position themselves with regard to their ethnic, national and religious groups and what is the relationship between these group memberships? These questions of multiple identity are at the heart of both societal and scholarly debates about how the sizable and growing immigrant-origin population can become integrated with their new society.
Living outside their countries of birth-or those of their parents or grandparents-makes the possibility of multiple identity salient to immigrants and their descendants. Given that a plurality of immigrants prefer to maintain some attachment to their country of origin at the same time that they acquire a connection to their country of residence (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006), understanding immigrants' identities requires understanding multiple identities.
The identity patterns of immigrants are also important for understanding the political attitudes and behaviors of members of the host country, for whom demographic changes related to immigration have challenged apparently stable notions of ethnic, national (or regional), and religious identities (Richeson & Craig, 2011). Majority group fears about how immigrants might change society and national culture have increased support for immigration restrictions, from narrowing access to building walls (Craig & Richeson, 2018), and they have arguably empowered right-wing political movements (e.g., Lubbers, Gijsberts, & Scheepers, 2002). Further, the implication that immigrants with multiple identities can have divided loyalties has introduced new challenges to long-standing understandings of citizenship and naturalization. The suspicion about divided loyalties has animated national policy debates and underlies bias toward immigrants who have dual citizenship (Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2019) or hold dual identifications (Kunst, Thomson, & Dovidio, 2018). Understanding the forms, causes, and consequences of immigrants' multiple identities, therefore, has the potential to inform these debates with evidence.

Studying Multiple Identities
Multiple social identities have been studied from a number of perspectives. Scholars have asked, for example, whether people's representation of their multiple group memberships is simple and exclusive or whether it is more complex and inclusive. They have also examined how strongly people identify with their multiple groups and how compatible the group memberships are with one another. Each of these approaches has different theoretical and empirical implications and raises its own set of questions about the nature of multiple identities. We consider some of these key questions below.

How Are Multiple Identities Cognitively Represented?
One approach focuses on the ways in which multiple identities are cognitively organized and integrated, that is, how people think about the boundaries and relationships between the various groups to which they belong. People can think of the relationship and overlap between their group memberships, for example, their ethnic and national identities, in different ways that can be placed on a continuum from less to more cognitively complex (Roccas & Brewer, 2002).
At the simplest level, some people perceive a strong overlap and interrelation among their social identities. An immigrant to the United States from Mexico, for example, may think of their ingroup as consisting exclusively of other Mexican American immigrants. At a slightly more complex level, people may compartmentalize their identities so that they recognize that they share each with a different group of people. The same immigrant may think of himself or herself as having both Mexican and American ingroups, each consisting of different people. At the highest level of complexity, people may recognize that members of each of their respective groups are both ingroup members along some identity dimensions and outgroup members along other dimensions. Again using the example of the immigrant to the United States from Mexico, she or he may feel a shared belonging with other Americans, but also see them as different because of the nonshared Mexican identity. At the same time, a sense of shared belonging with Mexican citizens may be experienced, while seeing differences because of the different geographical locations. Intersecting identities are considered the least cognitively complex because there is no differentiation between group memberships; compartmentalization is more complex, because it involves differentiation, and merged identities are considered the most complex because they involve both differentiation and integration of multiple identities.
Lower identity complexity signifies that multiple identities are embedded in a single ingroup representation (Roccas & Brewer, 2002), which increases the ingroup versus outgroup distinction that is the cognitive basis of ingroup bias (Crisp & Hewstone, 2006). As a result, immigrants with lower social identity complexity may be less open to outgroups, including the host society. Research among Turkish Muslims in the Netherlands supports this prediction. Turkish Muslims who reported lower social identity complexity (i.e., those who perceived that their ingroup members shared both their ethnic and religious group memberships) showed lower national identification, higher ingroup bias, and lower endorsement of national liberal practices (Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2012). Others have reported similar findings among Turkish-Belgium Muslims (Van Dommelen, Schmid, Hewstone, Gonsalkorale, & Brewer, 2015) and Turkish-Australian Muslims (Brewer, Gonsalkorale, & van Dommelen, 2013).
Thus, dual identities can mean quite different things to members of the same groups, with important implications for intergroup relations. For some, it means that the boundaries of the ingroup are narrowly proscribed, whereas for others they are more expansive and differentiated. Further, the research findings highlight the importance of moving beyond a focus on ethnic and national identity by including other category memberships, such as religion (or race).

How Strong Are Multiple Identities?
A second approach focuses on the strength of people's multiple identities (Fleischmann & Verkuyten, 2016;Van Dommelen et al., 2015). There are two main strategies for studying immigrants' dual identity in terms of the strength of ethnic identification and host national identification. The first focuses on the mean scores and association between immigrants' levels of ethnic group identification and their sense of belonging to the nation of settlement. This approach is similar to the acculturation literature, in which group identifications are considered to be independent from each other (Berry, 2001;Hutnik, 1991) and thus multiple combinations of high and low attachment to both the ethnic and the national communities are possible. Cross-national research indicates that in most countries immigrants tend to have a weaker identification with the new nation than with their ethnic heritage, and a weaker national identification compared to the majority group (Elkins & Sides, 2007;Fleischmann & Phalet, 2018;Staerklé, Sidanius, Green, & Molina, 2010).
Focusing on the combination of two separate group identifications (German and Turkish; Mexican and American) may not always adequately capture the subjective meaning of dual identity (Turkish German, Mexican-American). It is difficult to know whether people with both a strong ethnic and national identification actually experience this pattern as a dual identity. The latter might have different psychological meanings and different social consequences from the former (Hopkins, 2011). Therefore, and as a second approach, one can also focus directly on the strength of duality identification (feeling "Turkish German," or "Mexican American"). However, in the absence of additional information about migrants' cognitive representations of both group memberships and the extent to which the combined identity is recognized as a social group in the context under study, the use of such a direct dual identification measure raises the question what exactly a high and also a low score on such a measure means. For example, a low dual identification score might indicate a lack of identification with both groups or rather a low level of host national identification against the backdrop of a strong ethnic identification. And a high score might indicate a strong identification with both groups or rather a qualified from of a strong ethnic identification to which a sense of host national belonging is added (Fleischmann & Verkuyten, 2016).
Whether the strength of identification with a combined category (e.g., African American, British Muslim) captures something else than the strength of identification with its component identities (African and American, British, and Muslim) will depend, among other things, on the question whether the combined category is perceived by its members and society as a separate category. In some contexts, the combination of two distinct social identities is recognized as coming together in a specific category for which unique group labels are created, such as Chicano (Mexican Americans). However, in many immigration contexts, the political and historical context and the prevailing social representations of national and ethnic identities do not leave much room for "being both" and combinations such as "Turkish French" or "Vietnamese German" are not common, and terms that express these combined identities are rare or perceived as awkward. In such contexts, it is not clear what is captured by a measure such as "I feel strongly Vietnamese German." In conclusion, the meaning of the strength of identification with a dual identity is likely to depend on immigrants' cognitive representations of their ethnic and national group memberships, and on the extent to which the societal context recognizes dual identities.

Are Dual Identities Compatible with One Another?
Immigrants not only face the question of how strongly to maintain a sense of ethnic group belonging, but also the challenge of developing a sense of belonging to a new society. These dual objectives can involve the difficult task of reconciling group belongings and commitments, as well as combining contrasting moral world views and normative expectations (e.g., Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Neurological research has demonstrated that stress and psychological conflict often result (Hirsh & Kang, 2016) when immigrants experience their ethnic and host national identities as being incompatible or in opposition to each other.
Across different countries with different immigration histories, the levels of identification and the association between national and ethnic identification can vary. In a cross-national study of immigrant youth (Berry et al., 2006), for example, a positive association between ethnic and national identification was found in settler societies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, whereas there was a negative association in traditionally nonsettler countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, and Portugal. The evidence that a pattern of negative rather than positive associations is more common in Western Europe than, for example, in North America, suggests immigrants' ethnic group identification is not easily reconciled with a strong sense of belonging to European nations. Furthermore, research on national dis-identification indicates that a substantial number of Turkish people in the Netherlands explicitly distance themselves from, and do not want to be identified with, their host nation (Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). The level of dis-identification with the Netherlands was found to be higher when Turkish immigrants identified more strongly with their ethnic and religious (Islam) minority community (Maliepaard & Verkuyten, 2018).

How Do the Meanings of Multiple Identities Vary?
The majority of research on multiple social identities has focused on easilyassessed measures of the level of identification with ethnic and national groups, with relatively little work devoted to exploring other possible dimensions of evaluation and representation, nor to the meanings that might be associated with the various groups. Yet it is precisely these latter questions, dealing with functions, values, and meanings, that need to be understood if the research on immigrant identity is able to contribute to policy and practice.
Consider the different functions that an identity might fulfill for the immigrant. Immigrants may feel, as one example, emotionally involved in their ethnic community while having a more instrumental view toward their new nation and their belonging to the new society. Some aspects of a strong ethnic identity are more easily reconciled with belonging to the new nation than are others (Snauwaert, Soenens, Vanbeselaere, & Boen, 2003;Verkuyten & Martinovic, 2012). To the extent that these two identities are enacted at different times and in different spaces, it may be relatively easy to endorse each. Alternatively, one might join or construct social networks that include members of both the coethnic and conational group, thus perhaps allowing the two functions to be fulfilled within the same social space. (See papers by Love and Levy, and by Repke and Benet-Martínez, 2019).
When it comes to loyalties, values and worldviews, a sense of compatibility between multiple group identifications is often much more difficult to achieve. For example, to the extent that immigrants adhere to morally traditional and patriarchal beliefs, these beliefs will be less compatible with a sense of belonging to countries in Western societies that emphasize liberal values including gender equality and sexual minority rights (Eskelinen & Verkuyten, 2018;Maliepaard & Verkuyten, 2018). Similarly, identity incompatibility is more likely if the behavioral implications of the two group identities are contradictory (Hirsh & Kang, 2016), which could be the case, for example, for immigrant Muslim youth at an age when alcohol use becomes common among their peers, and youngsters have to make a choice between following the behavioral norms of their religious or conational ingroup. At the same time, qualitative exploration of how Muslims in England define their identities shows that in some cases immigrants can create their own concept of what it means to be a Muslim in Britain that will allow their religious values and behaviors to be incorporated into the meaning of being British (Hopkins, 2011). And youth can creatively interpret and reinvent cultural meanings in developing novel combined identities which allow them to negotiate their sense of societal belonging (Ketner, Buitelaar, & Bosma, 2004;Wiltgren, 2017). These example suggest that national identification can encompass and emphasize different aspects (political, historical, geographical) and different dimensions, and people within the country can have quite different understandings of what it means to be a national (e.g., ethnic, civic, cultural, cf. Reijerse, Van Acker, Vanbeselaere, Phalet, & Duriez, 2013). Immigrants, for example, can identify with the host country and its institutions (Germany, the Netherlands) or its core narrative ("American dream"), but not with the majority population (Germans, Dutch, White Americans; Van der Welle, 2011). Unfortunately, very little research has examined what the host nation means to immigrants and how they reason about national belonging. In one study among young Moroccans in the Netherlands (Olmo, 2011) five main reasons for feeling Dutch emerged: being born in the country (soil principle), being raised in the Netherlands (cultural principle), having one's future in the Netherlands (future principle), contributing to the country (participation principle), and feeling emotionally attached to the Netherlands (emotion principle). Thus, second-generation immigrants can self-identify as a host national because they were born and raised in the country in which they imagine their future without identifying with the majority group or having a sense of belonging, commitment and loyalty to that group.
Similarly, little research among immigrants has considered different dimensions of identification with the novel nation and the immigrant-heritage group. Most approaches to social identities distinguish between different identity components or dimensions, such as private and public regard, cognitive centrality, commitment, importance, and values and beliefs (see Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2004;Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, Halevy, & Eidelson, 2008;Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). A distinction between different dimensions allows for a more detailed understanding of immigrants' multiple identity and its different meanings, and for examining how variation along these dimensions is related to functioning and behavior. For example, the distinction between dimensions makes it possible to conceptualize group identification in terms of profiles (Deaux, 2006;Roccas et al., 2008;Wiley & Deaux, 2010) and to differentiate between immigrants who have a more homogeneous or heterogeneous pattern of ethnic group identification.
Immigrants with a homogeneous identification profile express similarly high levels of ethnic identification across different dimensions, making one identification score sufficient for capturing the extent of their ethnic identification. In that case, the different aspects are experienced as closely going together, such that high ethnic group importance also means adherence to ethnocultural beliefs, a sense of attachment to the ethnic community, engagement in ethnic practices and the behavioral enactment of one's ethnic identity. It is also possible, however, for immigrants to have more heterogeneous identification profiles whereby their endorsement of some dimensions would be strong while scoring relatively low on others. For instance, ethnic self-identification can be strong despite an acknowledged lack of cultural knowledge and practice. In the United Kingdom, Hutnik (1991) found that ethnic ingroup identification does not necessarily coincide with ethnic cultural preferences and behavior. An individual can identify herself predominantly in ethnic terms, even though she has made important cultural adaptations in order to live effectively in the host society. Ethnic self-identification may be relatively independent of styles of cultural adaptation and behavioral enactment. And whereas a high level of religious group identification is ubiquitous in adult and adolescent Muslim samples in Europe, there is great variation when it comes to specific religious practices (e.g., Phalet, Fleischmann, & Stojcic, 2012).
Heterogeneous profiles indicate that immigrants differ not only in the extent of their ethnic group identification but also in the meaning of their group belonging. Immigrants with similar overall levels of identification can have a different profile, which makes it difficult to compare meaningfully their levels of group identification. Heterogeneous profiles may also lead to intragroup disagreements and debates. Two immigrant women might have a similar sense of belonging to their ethnic community but whereas for the one this would imply particular values and ways of behaving (e.g., speaking the language of origin), that might not be true for the other. Such differences can lead to strong debates about what it means to be a "true" ethnic or religious group member and about the acceptability of different ways to achieve that status (Hoekstra & Verkuyten, 2015).

Group Dynamics Associated with Multiple Identities
Multiple identities are prevalent among immigrants, but the specific intergroup and intragroup processes in which they participate can make the various social identities more or less relevant and compatible. In looking more closely at these group dynamics, we are able to consider not only the "private troubles" but also the "public issues" involved in multiple identity issues (Jenkins, 1997).

The Receiving Society
Research on dual identity explicitly or implicitly concerns the impact of the broader society on the individual. The context of reception (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006) within the community at large may be more or less supportive of an immigrant's attempt to incorporate a new national identity. To the extent that majority members see ethnicity as an essentialist element of national identity, for example, the immigrant who deviates from that standard may be considered to be outside the acceptable limits (Pehrson, Brown, & Zagefka, 2009;Wright, Citrin, & Wand, 2012). The definition of what it means to be a "true national" will thus have repercussions for immigrants' ability to reconcile national belonging with an ethnic identity. The classic distinction between national identity content in terms of ethnic versus civic definitions (cf. Brubaker, 1992) has been complemented with a cultural definition, such that sharing core cultural traits like the national language and also a Christian heritage, is regarded by some majority members as necessary conditions to claim national belonging (Reijerse et al., 2013). The refusal by some European countries, in the height of the European "refugee crisis," to admit refugees due to their Islamic religion is a recent example of how exclusionary definitions of national identity content engenders identity incompatibility by making national group boundaries impermeable for immigrants in general, and Muslim immigrants in particular. Efforts by the Trump administration to ban immigration to the United States from primarily Muslim countries reflects a similar stance.
Numerous studies have documented the negative impact of discrimination experiences on dual identity. Among Chinese Americans in the United States, for example, perceived discrimination was associated with greater conflict between identity groups (Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005, see also Miller, Kim, & Benet-Martínez, 2011). In a study in Canada, higher perceived discrimination predicted lower dual identity integration through greater stress, whereas lower discrimination was related to lower stress and thereby to greater identity integration (Yampolski & Amiot, 2016). Further, results of a four-wave longitudinal study among newly arrived international students showed that greater discrimination led to the predominance of one identity over others (Amiot, Doucerain, Zhou, & Ryder, 2018). Discrimination and rejection from members of the host country can make it harder for immigrants to acquire a new national identity (e.g., Bobowic, Martinovic, Basabe, Barsties, & Wachter, 2017;Wiley, Lawrence, Figueroa, & Percontino, 2013). In some cases, discrimination and rejection can also strengthen immigrants' ethnic identities or present them in a new light (Bobowic et al., 2017;Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). Across several European societies, Muslims who perceived more instances of discrimination or saw more anti-Islamic attitudes in their receiving country identified more strongly with their religious community and displayed lower levels of identification with, or even dis-identification from, the nation of residence (Fleischmann & Phalet, 2016;Kunst, Tajamal, Sam, & Ulleberg, 2012;Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). In contrast, national identification of (Muslim) immigrants tends to be stronger in European societies with more multicultural policies (Igarashi, 2019).

The Ethnic Immigrant Community
A focus on factors related to the broader society often ignores important processes within immigrant communities that influence dual identity. However, for minority group members, as pointed out by Tajfel (1978, p. 327), "identity is simultaneously determined by the socially prevailing views of the majority and by the psychological effects of their own culture and social organization" and "a person's idea about himself or herself is at least as much (and probably much more) dependent upon continuous and daily interaction with individuals from the same social group" (p. 328). Research among immigrant-heritage groups has clearly shown that they often prefer to compare themselves to coethnics rather than with the majority group (e.g., Abbey, 2002;Leach & Smith, 2006;Zagefka & Brown, 2005). Differences and similarities within one's own cultural or religious minority community get much more attention in daily life and are much discussed. People make comparisons between subgroups within their own ethnic minority community: for example, they may compare themselves with recently arrived coethnic immigrants, looking down on them or feeling ashamed of them because the behavior of these newcomers might reflect badly upon them, and as a result try to distance themselves from them (Kumar, Seay, & Karabenick, 2015). Similarly, immigrants may make within-group distinctions between those with darker versus lighter skin color, between those from urban versus rural regions in the country of origin, or between orthodox and more liberal Muslim immigrants. These examples indicate that ethnic group membership involves crucial issues of ingroup acceptance and support as well as ingroup obligations and pressures (see Cárdenas, 2019). The immigrant community itself can provide support for maintaining one's ethnic identity and/or discourage the too rapid adoption of new national identities (Badea, Jetten, Iyer, & Er-rafiy, 2011;Wiley, 2013).
In addition, many identity issues for immigrants pertain to inter-minority and transnational comparisons. When Latinx immigrants (e.g., Colombians) to Spain experience discrimination, for example, they can favorably compare their ingroup to a relatively lower-status group, such as African immigrants (Madi, Bobowik, & Verkuyten, 2019;Sevillano, Basabe, Bobowik, & Aierdi, 2014). Furthermore, political events in the country of origin and the emergence of transnational and diaspora communities may influence how immigrants define and locate themselves in the host society (Kurien, 2018). In implicitly using the nation-state as the unit of analysis, we may fail to consider the wider transnational field of concerns and actions of many immigrants. For example, immigrants' acculturation orientations are not only determined by the perceived rejection in the country of settlement, but also by the perceived rejection from family and friends in the country of origin (Badea et al., 2011;Perkins, Wiley, & Deaux, 2014;Wiley, 2013).

Implications of Multiple Identities
The importance of considering immigrants' multiple identities can be considered in relation to their psychological adaptation and sociocultural adaptation (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001). The former refers to one's well-being and the processes of coping with the stress of migration and intercultural transition. The latter relates to the cultural learning process and the effective functioning in the new society. Furthermore, dual identity can be instrumental in trying to act collectively for addressing societal disadvantages and inequalities.

Psychological Adaptation
There are good reasons to believe that dual identities have psychological advantages, based on acculturation theory and the social identity perspective. In general, dual identity has psychological advantages for immigrants and ethnic minorities over identification with just one component identity (see Berry et al., 2006;Dimitrova et al., 2017;Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013). Maintaining a sense of ethnic belonging has a positive effect for the immigrant's wellbeing; in addition, the acquisition of meaningful new group memberships and the consequent increase in the number of group identifications can improve psychological well-being (Greenaway et al., 2015). In a study among six recent immigrant groups in the Netherlands, dual identifiers felt more at home and were happier than immigrants who identified primarily with a single identity (Fleischmann & Verkuyten, 2016). In another Dutch study of adults with either a Turkish or Moroccan background, dual identifiers showed higher levels of psychological well-being (life satisfaction), and lower levels of negative states (depression, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness) across a 3-year period than did immigrants with a single group identification (Zhang, Verkuyten, & Weesie, 2018).
Yet apart from the difficult question of causality and the likelihood of mutual influences between group identifications and well-being, we should be careful not to present too rosy a picture: trying to develop and maintain a dual identity can be challenging and stressful. It can involve the difficult task of reconciling group belongings and loyalties, combining contrasting cultural world-views and normative expectations, and maintaining multiple social networks, all of which can induce stress and create psychological conflict (Hirsh & Kang, 2016;Rudmin, 2003). A person can experience their different identities as being incompatible or in opposition to each other (Benet-Martinez & Haritatos, 2005). Unfavorable consequences can include a lowered sense of belonging, divided loyalties, the perception of contrasting values, contradictory behavioral expectations that prevent people to enact their two identities, as well as conflicts between and within diverse social networks. The experience of incompatibility between previously formed and new social identities is probably common and unavoidable for many immigrants, and the result can be of "feeling neither" rather than a feeling of "being both." To be both can be psychologically challenging and can be socially challenging as well. Minority members can struggle with the question of what they are, who they belong to, and how they should feel and act. The questioning or denial of one's dual identity by others can make people feel further restricted in their identity choices, resulting in negative affect and lower well-being (Albuja, Sanchez, & Gaither, 2019;Sanchez, 2010;Wang, Minervino, & Cheryan, 2013). Both coethnics and majority members might refuse to validate a dual identity claim. Coethnics might think the immigrant is disloyal in wanting to be part of the majority, while majority members might regard the same immigrant as too ethnic to be incorporated in the national group. The resulting conflicts almost inevitably have some negative implications for well-being (see Settles & Buchanan, 2014).

Sociocultural Adaptation
Sociocultural adaptation requires cultural learning to function and achieve one's goals in the new society. It covers such facets as general adjustment, social interaction adjustment, and work adjustment and is acquired via social learning (from host society members) and learning generalization (Wilson, Ward, & Fisher, 2013). The beneficial aspects of a dual identity for sociocultural adaptation have been documented with increasing frequency (Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013), including evidence for greater cognitive flexibility and the ability to adjust to and function well within two different cultural contexts (Kang & Bodenhausen, 2015). For example, the acculturation complexity model (Tadmor & Tetlock, 2006) proposes that the repeated attempts of dual identifiers to resolve cultural discrepancies gradually improves their cognitive ability to acknowledge, accept and integrate competing perspectives on the same issue (see also Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002). These cognitive advantages are not limited to culturally specific tasks, but can also extend to thinking about noncultural issues (Tadmor, Tetlock, & Peng, 2009) and to greater creativity (Goclowska & Crisp, 2014). Furthermore, identifying with two groups and living with and within (rather than between) two cultures is thought to lead to a reflexive attitude that enables a critical and innovative view of groups and cultures. A dual position can result in a broader horizon, a sharper view of social relationships, and the ability to act as an intermediary (broker) in attempts to bridge the gap between different ethnic and cultural groups (for example, Kang & Bodenhausen, 2015;Levy, Saguy, van Zomeren, & Halperin, 2017;Love & Levy, 2019).

Collective Action
According to the social identity perspective, social identities do not only reflect the social context in which people find themselves but are also instrumental in trying to change the context. Social identities provide a shared sense of "us" which gives unity and direction and therefore is an important collaborative social force that can try to achieve identity-related goals such as shown in the civil rights struggle, and other struggles for ethnic-racial equality and justice around the world. For example, among Muslim minority youth in Europe, identification with Islam and religious youth organizations form the basis for collective action and protest against inequality and exclusion (Cesari, 2003).
Researchers have also examined the association between dual identity and political outcomes among immigrants and their descendants. In a series of studies, Simon and colleagues (e.g., Simon & Grabow, 2010;Simon & Ruhs, 2008) found the dual identification-measured directly as a blending of ethnic and national identities-increased normative forms of politicization among Turkish and Russian immigrants to German, above and beyond the effects of each constituent social identity. However, this relationship seems to depend on the particular societal conditions and the psychological nature of the dual identity Simon and colleagues (e.g., Simon & Grabow, 2010;Simon & Ruhs, 2008) ground the association in their model of Politicized Collective Identity (PCI; Simon & Klandermans, 2001). They argue that ethnic identification gives immigrants reason to challenge grievances against their ethnic group and that national identification entitles immigrants, as part of a national community, to have those grievances addressed. However, those same ideologies and policies (i.e., assimilationist beliefs, anti-Latino policies) that would count as grievances against immigrants' ethnic groups have also been found to diminish dual identifiers inclination to support collective action for addressing those grievances (Verkuyten, 2017;Wiley, Figueroa, & Lauricella, 2014). Immigrants with dual identities may perceive the boundaries between their ethnic and national groups as relatively permeable. According to Social Identity Theory (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979), they may therefore be willing to express their twoness publicly-through collective action, for example-when it is relatively safe to do so. Under conditions that are more threatening to their ethnic group, however, those who perceive intergroup boundaries as relatively permeable may be more likely to withdraw from the public arena than to redouble their efforts at protest.
Related to the nature of the dual identity, research in Germany (Simon, Reichert, & Grabow, 2013) found that Russian and Turkish migrants with dual identities who considered their dual group memberships to be in conflict expressed more sympathy for "radical" (i.e., violent, illicit, or destructive) forms of political action. Furthermore, immigrants' dual identities might influence how they participate politically on other grounds. Research in Germany and the Netherlands found that those with strong ethnonational dual identities were less likely to mobilize on religious grounds, because they identify less strongly with their Muslim group (Martinovic & Verkuyten, 2014). Research in the United States demonstrates that Mexican Americans who identify with both cultural groups adopt a more liberal ideology, which is currently predominant in the Democratic political party support of multiculturalism and the reduction of social inequality (Naumann, Benet-Martìnez, & Espinoza, 2017).

This Special Issue
The important implications of dual identities along with the conceptual diversity and confusion that is apparent in theorizing and empirical research on identity multiplicity in the context of immigration, inspired us to organize a small group meeting devoted to these questions. The 2017 Joint Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) was held in September and brought together researchers from Europe and the United States. The meeting was cosponsored by the International Society for Political Psychology (ISPP) and Utrecht University.
The current issue of the Journal of Social Issues showcases some of the empirical and conceptual contributions that were presented during the meeting. Across ten contributions, we aim to advance the understanding of identity multiplicity in the context of immigration by offering new conceptual approaches, reviews of existing research lines, as well as new empirical findings regarding the ways in which immigrants or persons of immigrant origin relate to their multiple social identities, in relation to their social ties and experiences in the receiving society, and with regard to important outcomes such as well-being, academic performance and politicisation. Some of the contributions are the result of new collaborations that were set up during the meeting, and contributors include more junior and more senior researchers from both sides of the Atlantic.
The contributions are organized around two key themes. The first addresses the relation between social networks or, more generally, contact with ingroup and outgroup members, and identity multiplicity. This section contains two contributions offering new conceptual approaches (Love & Levy, 2019;Repke & Benet-Martínez, 2019), one review of research using social network analysis in relation to migrants' identification (Leszczensky, Jugert, & Pink, 2019), and one empirical article about the mediating role of identity-related cognitions in the association between contact and acculturation (Sixtus, Wesche, & Kerschreiter, 2019). The second section focuses on the implications of identity multiplicity for a broad range of outcomes. The first two contributions are concerned with adjustment or well-being and address the role of multiple identification in terms of making individuals vulnerable to identity threats, particularly in the form of identity questioning (Albuja, Gaither, & Sanchez, 2019), but also for coping with perceived discrimination at the individual and group level (Balkaya, Cheah, & Tahseen, 2019). The third contribution focuses on academic achievement among immigrant-origin pupils in secondary education and sheds light on the conditions under which embracing an integrated identity is beneficial for performance, and when this is costly (Baysu & Phalet, 2019). The fourth contribution examines threat to dual identity that originates from the coreligious ingroup rather than from the receiving society, and tests how this threat differently affects the support for group rights among two branches of Muslims with a Turkish migration background (Cárdenas, 2019). The issue is concluded with a contribution that discusses the implications of the contributions for research and policy (Wiley, Fleischmann, Deaux, & Verkuyten, 2019).
The empirical contributions cover a broad range of immigrant-receiving contexts and immigrant groups. Two of the empirical contributions draw on U.S.-based samples of immigrants or their descendants (Albuja et al., 2019;Balkaya et al., 2019). Both are diverse in terms of their ethnic or racial composition, but the second focuses more narrowly on Muslim Americans as an important religious minority group in public debates about the compatibility of religious minority with Western national identities. The social network research that is reviewed by Leszczensky and colleagues (2019) has been conducted in a range of countries and is based on complete networks of school classes or entire schools, and thus reflects the high diversity in terms of ethnicity, religion and immigrant generation that is present in today's classrooms. In contrast, the samples in three other studies target specific groups and contrast Hungarian Christians with Palestinian Muslims in Germany (Sixtus et al., 2019), thus comparing groups with different levels of cultural distance toward the German receiving society as well as different legal positions. For their analysis of academic performance, Baysu and Phalet (2019) sampled students of Turkish and Moroccan origin as most deprived ethnic minorities in the Belgian context. Finally, Cárdenas (2019) compares Sunni and Alevi Muslims of Turkish descent who are living in Germany and the Netherlands. Together, these studies provide insights into identity multiplicity among a broad range of immigrant groups, and also reflect the focus on Muslim minorities in Western receiving societies that is characteristic of the research literature and societal debates on both sides of the Atlantic.