Social Contact and Inter-Ethnic Attitudes: The Importance of Contact Experiences in Schools

Abstract

Despite six decades of research in the field of intergroup contact, the special role of the school setting as a key context for mixing has, after an initial focus on studies of school desegregation in the U.S., received relatively little attention, especially in Europe. In this chapter, we will explain why the school setting can provide particularly effective intergroup contact experiences for improving intergroup attitudes, before we report empirical evidence using the CILS4EU dataset. Our findings demonstrate that the school provides more intergroup contact opportunities than other contexts, and these opportunities are consistently associated with more favorable intergroup attitudes for the majority as well as different minority groups. The present findings highlight the usefulness of early intergroup contact interventions within the school setting due to the specific structure of the school as a setting, as well as the efficacy of outgroup experiences in childhood and adolescence.