Social Exclusion and Ethnic Segregation in Schools: The Role of Teacher's Ethnic Prejudice

Sule Alan, Enes Duysak, Elif Kubilay and Ipek Mumcu
Additional contact information
Enes Duysak: University of Essex
Elif Kubilay: University of Essex
Ipek Mumcu: University of Exeter

No 2020-044, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Using uniquely detailed data on primary school children, we show that teachers who hold prejudicial attitudes towards an ethnic group create socially segregated classrooms. We identify this relationship by exploiting a natural experiment where newly arrived refugee children are randomly assigned to teachers. We elicit children's social networks to construct multiple measures of social exclusion and ethnic segregation in classrooms. We find that teachers' ethnic prejudice, measured by an Implicit Association Test, significantly lowers the prevalence of social ties between host and refugee children, increases homophily amongst host children, and puts refugee children at a higher risk of bullying victimization. Our results suggest that teachers' ethnic prejudice may be a significant barrier against building cohesive schools in ethnically diverse communities.

Keywords: ethnic prejudice; integration; social exclusion; ethnic segregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc and nep-ure
Note: IP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Alan_D ... thnic-preference.pdf First version, June 6, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Exclusion and Ethnic Segregation in Schools: The Role of Teacher's Ethnic Prejudice (2021)
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