Extreme Negative Attitudes towards Immigrants: An Analysis of Factors in Five Countries

The process of educational expansion and the demographic process of generational replacement would have ongoing liberalization effects and therefore lead to a growth of ethnic tolerance. This was the prediction of Hyman and Sheatsley stated in 1956. Nearly half a century later there is little empirical evidence for a rising support of the implementation of racial or ethnic equality principles (Schuman et al., 1997). Ethnic group identifications and ethnic exclusionism still seems to be one of the major reasons for political conflicts around the world and have reached even more actuality through the September 11 attacks and their political consequences. In this paper, the author uses the data from the IEA Civic Education Study that makes it possible to compare a large number of representatively sampled countries on a variety of individual and school context variables to identify or to explain differences regarding the attitudes towards immigrants between countries. In addition to variables that express individuals' marginality, contact and attitudes towards the political system she also looks at variables that measure school climate. An influence of the number of books at home, which serves as a proxy for the educational family background of students, could not be confirmed in any country. There are only few variables, which could be used to assess economic threat in the data from the IEA Civic Education Study, so she relies on the other explanations named above. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 1 note.)