Do Ethnically Mixed Classrooms Promote Inclusive Attitudes Towards Immigrants Everywhere? A Study Among Native Adolescents in 14 Countries

This article examines attitudes among 14-year-old native students in 14 Western countries to assess how out-group size, as measured by the proportion of first- and second-generation migrant children in a class, is related to inclusive views on immigrants. It develops three competing hypotheses: (i) higher proportions of immigrants contribute to inclusive views everywhere; (ii) higher proportions have a negative effect on inclusive views everywhere; (iii) the effect of out-group size depends on the ratio of first- to second-generation migrant children: the higher this ratio, the weaker the effect. It discovers that out-group size is positively related to inclusive views on immigrants in countries where second-generation outnumber first-generation migrant children (i.e., the old immigration states), and that there is no significant link with such views in countries where the reverse is the case (i.e., the new immigration states). The same regularity applies at the classroom level: in classes with more second than first generation students, out-group size enhances inclusive views while it shows no relationship to such views in classes with more first than second generation students. The results thus support the third hypothesis. The non-relation in contexts with many first generation students may well be a temporary phenomenon, however. Once immigrant communities have become more settled and integrated in the destination countries, positive effects of ethnic mixing could well emerge everywhere.