Many countries in Europe have seen considerable increases in immigration and ethnic diversity during the last few decades. Europe has seen increased immigration during the years 2015 and 2016. Germany was one of the countries that led in many more Syrian refugees than other European countries. This let to sometimes strong resistance from the political opposition and parts of the population. Germans are concerned about the integration of immigrants into their society, and this has spurred new interest in the consequences of ethnic diversity.

Theories predict very different outcomes from ethnic diversity. Contact, conflict, and constrict theory are most commonly used and their predictions on the effect of diversity on social capital differ a lot. Numerous studies have been examining the association between ethnic diversity and social capital. Findings from these studies are as diverse at the topic itself, which leaves researchers with many unanswered questions about the association between the two concepts and possible mechanisms.

Therefore, in this study I will look at the association of ethnic diversity and social capital in Germany, with the goal to disentangle the relationship between the two concepts. The research will be guided by the following two questions: first, which dimensions of social capital are affected by ethnic diversity in Germany? And second, can these relationships be explained by individual or contextual characteristics?

To address my research questions, I use restricted data from the Allbus study of 2008 in Germany, which allows me to join the individual level data with contextual data from the German federal bureau of statistics to include ethnic diversity measures on the municipality level for each respondent.

Multi-level models are used for each one of the social capital dimensions. Preliminary results show no significant relationship between diversity and social capital when individual and contextual controls are included.