Ethnic diversity fosters the social integration of refugee students
Abstract Refugee migration has become a global megatrend, and many asylum seekers are school-aged. As social integration is a key to their well-being and success, it is pivotal to determine factors that promote the social integration of refugee youth within schools. Using a large, nationally representative social network dataset of 39,154 students in 1,807 classrooms across Germany, we examine the social relationships of refugee adolescents with their peers. We find that, overall, refugee adolescents are less accepted by their classmates than their peers from other minority groups and the German majority. Crucially, however, ethnic diversity is a success factor in refugee students’ social integration: they have more friends and are less often rejected as desk mates in more diverse classrooms. Descriptive and multivariate methods for social network analysis reveal that this effect results from two basic processes: 1) more opportunities to meet other ethnic minority peers, who are more accepting of refugees in general, and 2) a significantly higher acceptance of refugee adolescents by ethnic majority peers in more diverse settings. This work provides a scientific basis for organizing future allocations of young refugees to classrooms in ways that promote their social adjustment and mitigate the negative consequences of prejudice and intergroup bias.