The effect of classroom diversity on tolerance and participation in England, Sweden and Germany



Introduction

The belief in educational circles that ethno-racially mixed schools contribute to ethnic
tolerance is widespread, and many studies have indeed found evidence for this
assumption. However, as we will discuss below, most of these studies concern
desegregated schools in the United States and focus exclusively on the effect of inter-
racial contact on ethnic tolerance or racial prejudice as the outcomes of interest. Studies
examining the effect of diversity on civic attitudes other than, or in addition to, ethnic
tolerance in contexts outside the United States are rare.

The lack of such studies would not be a problem if the findings for the American
studies on tolerance could be generalized to other national contexts and other civic
attitudes, but we cannot assume from the onset that this is possible. On the one hand,
most of the immigrant minorities in Western Europe are in much the same socially
disadvantaged position as African Americans. The same patterns on inter-ethnic/racial
relationships could thus apply in this region. On the other hand, the century-old history of
subordination and exclusion of African Americans in the United States is unique and has
no parallel in the majority-minority relations in West European states, most of which
have become immigration societies only from the 1950s. What helps to combat ethno-
racial prejudice in America may therefore not be effective in Western Europe. Indeed,
reviewing studies on the effect of inter-racial contact, Ray (1983) found remarkable
differences across English-speaking countries. While studies conducted in America and
Canada produced evidence supporting the notion that inter-racial contact helps to break
down stereotypes, the evidence from Britain and Australia pointed in the reverse
direction (contact with blacks leading to more prejudice among whites). Similarly, it
cannot be assumed that the effect of diversity extends to other civic attitudes because
these attitudes have been shown to constitute a highly diverse set of dispositions, some of
which are entirely unrelated, or worse negatively related, to one another (Green, Preston
and Janmaat, 2006; Janmaat, 2008).

In view of these considerations this paper will examine the effect of ethno-racial
diversity on two civic attitudes (ethnic tolerance and intended political participation) in
three West European immigration societies (England, Germany and Sweden). There is



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