Feelings of Recognition and Long-Term Engagement in Favour of Refugees

Abstract

Solidarity-based actions are an important source of refugee support in receiving societies across the globe. Given the impact these actions can have on improving refugees’ living circumstances, it is of paramount importance to understand what contributes to advantaged group members’ decisions to engage in solidarity initiatives and stay committed over time. In this paper, we focus on recognition—acts of appreciation and acknowledgement for the value of someone’s doing—which is a common strategy applied by volunteering organisations to reinforce engagement, but which is neglected in research on engagement in favour of disadvantaged groups. Specifically, we examine two different sources of feelings of recognition (recognition by institutions and recognition by beneficiaries) and how they relate to future engagement (intentions) among those already engaged. We conducted two studies among individuals volunteering for refugee causes in Switzerland and in Germany. The first cross-sectional study examined the importance of feelings of recognition for willingness to stay engaged among people providing private accommodation to refugees in Switzerland (N = 250). The second longitudinal study investigated the importance of feelings of recognition for actual long-term engagement measured at two different time points among individuals engaged for supporting refugees, as well as for other causes (e.g., environment) in Germany (total N = 841). We found that feeling recognised by beneficiaries positively predicted willingness to stay engaged (Study 1), as well as actual long-term engagement (Study 2). However, feeling recognised by institutions only predicted willingness to stay engaged, but not actual engagement with refugee causes. For other forms of engagement, feelings of recognition by institutions played a more important role. The implications of our findings are discussed in relation to the literature on engagement in favour of disadvantaged groups.