Citizenship Norms and Tolerance in European Adolescents

Within Europe, numerous political, economic, social, and cultural changes brought about by globalization and Europeanization have challenged and transformed young people’s sense of citizenship and identity. An important aspect of good citizenship is attitudes of tolerance and support for the equal rights of others. Yet, in recent times, there has been a rise in the levels of intolerant and xenophobic attitudes, due, in part, to negative perceptions over increasing flows of migration, immigration, refugees, and asylum seekers. In this chapter, multiple group multinomial logistic regression models are estimated to determine how different profiles of citizenship norms (i.e., comprehensive, socially engaged, duty-based, monitorial, and anomic) relate to European adolescents’ political tolerance, i.e., their attitudes towards equal rights of others (immigrants and women). Data from IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016, including 51,040 grade 8 students (aged 14) across 14 European countries was used. The study reveals two clear patterns. First, students classified within the comprehensive citizenship profile deal well with the ambivalence present in the definition of tolerance, especially regarding equal rights for immigrants. Second, students within the other citizenship profiles (socially engaged, duty-based, monitorial, and anomic) show significantly lower support for equal rights for immigrants than the students classified as comprehensive. The findings contribute toward understanding the mechanisms underpinning citizenship norms profiles and their relationship to attitudes toward others. The results may be used to inform targeted intervention policies for the promotion of tolerance in Europe.