134 Ethnic sorting in football feelings of uncertainty. Consequently, it would be highly recommended to also collect data on this type of indicators. Future research may also expand on this study by focusing more on intergroup relations. People can very well experience different degrees of social distance between themselves and people from different ethnic backgrounds. It would be good to account for these differences because it is possible that ingroup share’s and outgroup fractionalization’s effect on membership is in part dependent on the specific ethnic background(s) of outgroup members. A low ingroup share, for example, might be more problematic if members experience high social distance between their own background and the background(s) of other members. Similarly, outgroup fractionalization might be more difficult to overcome when outgroup members experience higher social distance amongst themselves. While perceptions and experiences of social distance can be regarded and measured as personal attributes, they may also be in part an expression of similarities – or differences - on other social attributes. Drawing from Blau’s work (Blau, 1977; Blau & Swartz, 1987), McPherson and colleagues call this overlap in social attributes social consolidation (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987; McPherson et al., 2001). They suggest that homophily for a social attribute is strengthened when differences in this attribute consolidate with differences in other attributes and vice versa. This could mean that ethnic sorting is stronger or weaker depending on the extent in which differences in ethnic background overlap with differences in other social characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, educational level or gender. Future research can explore this relationship further by measuring the magnitude of consolidation of ethnic background and other socially significant attributes on the club level, and test whether it moderates the effects of ingroup size and ethnic outgroup fractionalization on membership ties. As previously formulated by McPherson and Smith-Lovin (1987), we can expect that social consolidation strengthens the effect of ingroup size by marking in- and outgroup differences. For outgroup fractionalization however, the effect may be the other way around. Namely, while high social consolidation constrains and simplifies ethnically heterogeneous social space, low levels of social consolidation expand social space and make it more complex to navigate for members. Another important avenue for research is the relationship between positively and negatively motivated sorting. While I believe it’s plausible that ethnic sorting
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