involvement in the economy, Sweden the egalitarian, social-democratic model with high
state involvement and Germany the conservative-catholic welfare regime aimed at the
retention of traditional family relations and status differences in the labor market (Esping
Andersen 1990; Green, Janmaat and Han 2009).
Theoretically, it is difficult to think of an immediate link between these traditions
and the effect of classroom diversity on civic attitudes. Yet, it could be argued that
assessing this effect in such different national contexts represents the ultimate test of the
contact (or the conflict) perspective: if classroom diversity is found to be positively
related to tolerance and participation in all three countries, then clearly the effect
postulated by contact theory is very strong and has the potential to override country-
specific factors. If, on the other hand, the effect of diversity differs across both civic
attitudes and national contexts, then we can conclude that the generalizability of this
effect is severely constrained and is likely to depend on other influences including
nationally unique configurations of conditions.
Apart from representing distinct traditions, the three countries show conspicuous
similarities and differences in their education systems, their demographics and their
policies on integration, i.e. in social domains of obvious relevance to the theme of this
paper. These similarities and differences can all potentially affect the relation between
classroom diversity and civic attitudes. The similarities concern the size of ethnic
minority groups and their socio-economic position. Definitional differences concerning
the identification of ethnic minorities aside, it can be said that all three countries have
fairly sizable ethnic minority populations: the British census of 2001 classifies 8.9% of
the population in England as non-white (including mixed) (Office for National Statistics,
2009); according to Statistics Sweden (2009) first and second generation immigrants
made up 14.5% of the Swedish population in 2000; the July 2000 estimate of the German
population classifies 8.5% of the population as ethnic minorities (Abacci Atlas, 2009). In
all three countries most ethnic minorities are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder,
having the poorest educational credentials, working in low-status jobs and showing the
highest unemployment rates (Heath and Cheung, 2007).
The differences concern the origin of immigrant groups, the reception by the
receiving society and the nature of the education system. England differs from Germany