Abstract
This study examines the relationships between political engagement in school or university such as serving as speaker of class or organizing political events and xenophobia and political trust. Following interactionist socialization theory, political engagement during adolescence should shape ideas of citizenship, democracy, and equality and, thus, foster democratic resilience. Schools and universities are arguably key institutions to build trust in political systems and counter-authoritarian dynamics if they provide space for learning democracy by doing. The paper shows that, indeed, political engagement in the context of school or university limits xenophobic views and increases political trust. It further affirms that experiencing efficacy prevents perceiving immigrants as a threat. The original finding that political trust mediates the association between democratic experience and xenophobia further supports this reading. The paper provides evidence from nine European countries (including quotas for young people) for the importance of experiencing democracy through direct engagement at a young age.
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Introduction
Xenophobia—hostility against people identified as foreigners—continues to be prevalent across the world (e.g., Zamora-Kapoor & Verea 2014; Creighton et al. 2015; Gorodzeisky & Semyonov 2016; Akinola 2018; Decker et al. 2022, 2023). Moreover, right-wing extremism is challenging the legitimacy of established democracies by questioning the principles of pluralism and reducing the rule of the people to the antagonism of the (ethnically) homogenous people (represented by a ‘wise’ leader) versus the elites (Müller 2016). This goes hand in hand not only with distrust in the institutions of liberal democracy, but also with xenophobia as the most common theme in far-right mobilization (Mudde 2002; Rydgren 2004; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; van Kessel, 2015). In particular, research on xenophobia is usually deficit oriented (but see e.g., Davidov et al. 2008 for one of few exceptions), i.e., it points at different forms of (relative) deprivation, deficient personality traits, or group competition (for an overview see Pettigrew 2016).
Conversely, civic education (e.g., Callan 1997; National Council for the Social Studies 2017; Ostrom 1998) aims at establishing a civic culture and an idea of democracy that rests on the principles of equality and citizenship, including the critique of specific institutions but also trust in politics and citizenship. Still, scholarship on comparative politics (Bara & Pennington 2009; Lijphart 1999; e.g., Lijphart & Schmidt 1997) and democracy promotion (Carothers 2004; Dahinden 2013; Lawson & Epstein 2019; Schimmelfennig & Scholtz 2008) usually conceptualizes, measures, and advocates democracy in terms of the development of political systems. This includes attention towards majority rule, division of power, protection of minorities, and institutionalized party competition, among others. Likewise, school curricula and curricula in civic education have in the past often confined themselves to teach these institutional aspects of democracy. Against these shortcomings, political attitudes research has for long emphasized the importance of “civic culture” for the performance and stability of democratic societies (Adorno et al. 1964; Almond & Verba 1972). Since democracy, like any ethics, is not just “natural” behavior (Aristotle 1818, p. 50), learning democracy (Dewey 1916) ensures democratic citizenship referring to “the present and future capacity for influencing politics” (Thompson 2010, p. 2). In recent decades school curricula and related research have—often explicitly in the tradition of Dewey—changed in this direction (Kerr 1999). Research hence shows positive effects of school on citizenship endorsement (Treviño et al. 2021; but see Weinberg & Flinders 2018). Moreover, in this tradition, limiting xenophobia—which at its core questions the fundamental democratic principle of equality—and building political trust are essential for democratic stability (Manzel 2022).
Based on interactionist theory of socialization, the literatures on xenophobia, political trust, and civic education, I argue in this paper that learning democracy through political engagement at a young age—particularly during school and university education—is one key for combatting xenophobia and strengthening democracy. Theoretically, doing, experiencing, and being exposed to political practice at a young age, i.e., communication between individuals, establish norms and identities via “role-taking” and “role-making” (cf. Mead 1934; R. H. Turner 2001). Hence, I ask if opportunities at school or university to engage democratically, when taken up by students, reduce xenophobia and foster trust in political institutions respectively. Using a unique comparative dataset including quotas for young people on retrospective political participation in school and university covering nine European countries, the objective of this paper is to show that such political engagement and, therefore, the direct experience of and socialization in democratic practices indeed correlates with lower xenophobia, understood as putting in question the democratic ideal of equality, and higher political trust. Moreover, trust seems to in part mediate the relationship between democratic learning and xenophobia.
Xenophobia, political trust, and interactionist socialization theory
In theoretical terms, xenophobia is oftenFootnote 1 explained based on group identity theory following which comparisons can lead to the deprivation and devaluation of out-groups (Tajfel 1974; Tajfel & Turner 1979; Pettigrew & Meertens 1995; Guimond & Dambrun 2002; Pettigrew et al. 2008; Wagner et al. 2010; Pettigrew 2016). The construction of in- and out-groups is crucial for targeting specific groups which helps to channel authoritarian aggressions, lack of recognition, and experienced degradation (Adorno et al. 1964; Decker et al. 2022, 2023). While membership to groups associated with culture, language, race, or religion is socially constructed, this does not make it less ‘real’ for people. In this sense, xenophobia is a group-specific prejudice directed against immigrants. In other words, xenophobia results mainly from “cognitive limitations and biased background information” and is facilitated by “invalid inductive inferences and by stereotyped categorization processes” (Rydgren 2004).
Different literatures have long been emphasizing that education plays an important role for democracy and affects, in particular, political attitudes and behavior in numerous ways. For example, civic education literature argues that democratic citizenship has to be learned (Callan 1997; National Council for the Social Studies 2017; Ostrom 1998). Also, human capital theory assumes that higher levels of education, including skills and labor market chances, increases economic security and decreases fears of competition on the labor market with immigrants which then leads to more tolerance (e.g., Mayda 2006). Other approaches building on socioeconomic status concepts argue that political participation depends on resources like education (e.g., Brady et al. 1995; Grasso 2013). But education is not just a question of formal acquisition. On the contrary, it provides knowledge but it also distributes social positions creating an “uneven political playing field” (Nie et al. 1996). Thus, in a nutshell, education has socializing effects (Abendschön, 2013, 2017). Beyond the structure of education systems, curricular and extra-curricular opportunities for the democratic socialization of (young) citizens are of concern, too.
Perhaps the most rigorous philosophical foundation of the claim that democracy must be learned was developed by John Dewey (1916). Civic education, scholars in this tradition argue, is more than learning about technicalities of the political system (Galston 2001; Johann 2012; although political knowledge is a prerequisite for active citizenship as well, see e.g., Popkin & Dimock 1999). Already Aristotle argued that any ethical action must be learned by doing, i.e., unlike natural actions (e.g., seeing and hearing) but like a craft: “Thus, by building we become builders, and by playing on the harp, we become harpers. Thus too, by acting justly we become just, prudent by acting prudently, and brave by acting bravely.” (Aristotle 1818, p. 50) Consequently, only by acting democratic and experiencing efficacy as well as the recognition of others, we develop democratic norms. In school and university, therefore, the difference I want to address here lays exactly between learning facts about the political system (usually measured indirectly through educational attainment and/or political knowledge) and using opportunities of decision making and deliberative discussion that support processes of becoming democratic.
In the tradition of Dewey’s pragmatist insights on learning democracy, interactionist socialization theory is especially instructive. It assumes that individuals establish identities by interacting with others and through societal experience (Mead 1934, p. 182) of “role-taking” and “role-making” (Turner 2001). Berger and Luckmann (1967, p. 129) have differentiated primary socialization, i.e., the dialectic process of individual identity formation and externalization of the world from this identity, from the process of secondary socialization. The latter, conceptualized as encompassing “the internalization of institutional or institution-based ‘subworlds’” and principally open-ended (ibid: 138), is of further interest here: The “acquisition of role-specific vocabularies” includes “internalization of semantic fields structuring routine interpretations and conduct within an institutional area” as well as “’tacit understandings,’ evaluations and affective colorations of these semantic fields” including normative, affective, as well as cognitive components (ibid.). Engagement in school like being speaker of class, attending students’ meetings, or organizing political events in this sense opens the opportunity to practice participation and deliberation, learn about democratic principles, and form identities of democratically engaged citizens. At the same time, the institutional opportunity structure, referring to what Habermas (cf. Habermas 1983, 1991, p. 25) called accommodating settings (“entgegenkommende Lebenswelten”), for such democratic socialization is essential. In sum, the literature agrees that political socialization is the societal “molding of the child” (Sears 1975, p. 95) and education and educational institutions, among others, have “‘norm-inducing’ functions” (Mayne and Hakhverdian 2017, 176; also Abendschön, 2013; 2017).
The civic education literature indeed provides evidence to support such claims. Studies regularly emphasize that especially regarding democracy learning experiential education is most effective because “students respond to experiences that touch their emotions and senses of self in a firsthand way” (Damon 2001, p. 141). Other studies have shown that joining youth voluntary associations, in particular those with regard to “community service, representation, speaking in public forums, and generating a communal identity,” affects future political participation beyond traditionally investigated factors like social class (McFarland & Thomas 2006). Spannring, Ogris and Gaiser (2008) and Kiess (2021) have shown that, although with variations across countries, young adults who had been engaging in school, e.g., as speaker of class are more likely later in life to engage politically. Depending on the form of extra-curricular engagement, joining associations plays an important part in the socialization into political milieus and, generally, for whether young adults vote (Thomas & McFarland 2010). Particularly school is an important institution in the development of citizenship (Torney-Purta 2002), although all too often students’ “grasp of what it means to act as citizens is rudimentary and dominated by a focus on rights, thus, creating a privately oriented, passive understanding” (Conover & Searing 2000, p. 108). However, if schools provide an open learning environment this leads to positive effects on political trust and behavior (Claes et al. 2012; Dassonneville et al. 2012; Torney-Purta et al. 2004) because not only are participatory skills trained but—following interactionist socialization theory—democratic identities are adopted. In sum, I expect that extra-curricular engagement at a young age has socializing effects and in particular fosters democratic attitudes.
My argument, thus, complements deficit-oriented approaches focusing on deprivation, group competition, and authoritarianism (Pettigrew 2016). As already mentioned, xenophobia is based on “stereotyped categorization processes” (Rydgren 2004). Here lies its anti-democratic potential that is based on—following the just mentioned theories—the (perceived) need to devalue, compete with, and attack “others.” Moreover, xenophobia negates the principle of equality, a principle that lies at the core of democratic citizenship. Hence, xenophobia should be less prominent among people who experienced democratic engagement in school or at university which, arguably, has socializing effects on how people view the world. Building on and going beyond the literature on xenophobia, I argue that at least two mechanisms connected to democratic identity formation are at play here: engagement during school/university comes with experiences of self-efficacy and mutual respect which reduces the need to target “others.” Second, through democratic experiences norms of mutual respect, solidarity, pluralism etc. are internalized that contradict xenophobia. Thus,
the experience of political practices at a young age is negatively associated with xenophobia (hypothesis 1).
Democracy requires the (explicit or implicit) consent of the governed. While political trust (in specific institutions) as well as generalized support of the political system (legitimacy, approval of democracy) are seen as fundamental (e.g., Easton 1965), distrust is not necessarily problematic because “skepticism stimulates political engagement and signals a willingness to judge political institutions by their own merits “ (van der Meer 2017). While distrusting politicians and authorities can be functional for democracy (Warren 2017),Footnote 2 and trusting a single strongman or other authority goes itself against the principles of pluralism and democratic governance (Hardin 2002), some trust in institutions is necessary as a basis for democratic involvement (cf. for a critical review van der Meer 2017) and as a facet of political support (Norris 2011). Indeed, political trust defined as a positive evaluation of the government as working well and according to general expectations (Easton 1965; Hetherington 1998, 2007; Miller 1974; Stokes & Iversen 1962; Listhaug & Ringdal 2008) is necessary for democratic opinion formation. Put bluntly, in most cases, citizens voice their interests against institutions. Bianco (1994) argues that trust links citizens to those institutions representing them. If then, following Easton (1965), citizens stop believing the government—or other institutions like parliament, police, the European Union, trade unions, the media, or even banks for that matter—to deliver any relevant output or to not listen to any input, they will likely withdraw their support and, thus, the legitimacy that can only be granted by the citizens. At least democratic political systems depend on trustworthiness (Torney-Purta et al. 2004). Moreover, trust may reduce transaction costs, ensure predictability of actions, ethical reciprocity, and legitimacy (see contributions in Braithwaite & Levi 1998; Hetherington 2007). Last but not least, previous research assures us that while xenophobia is related negatively to democracy, trust is related positively to democratic attitudes, political interest, and external efficacy (Catterberg & Moreno 2006). In sum, political trust reflects people’s belief that political institutions function properly.
While there is agreement in the literature that education is related to political trust, there is no conclusive evidence for a causal effect, rather a tendency to assume a proxy effect of education (Kam & Palmer 2008; Mayne & Hakhverdian 2017; Persson 2014). And even exposure to civic education is not necessarily related to higher levels of political trust (but see Claes & Hooghes 2017 for a very convincing empirical study). Building on these insights, I propose to focus not on exposure to civic education (measured in years of school attendance or curricular exposure) but on actual political experience in school. While most of the literature claims that engagement at school leads to higher political participation later, the effects of these socializing experiences should also be visible in terms of political attitudes, e.g., higher political trust (Claes et al. 2012; Claes & Hooghes 2017; Dassonneville et al. 2012; Torney-Purta et al. 2004). As in the tradition of John Dewey, schools are believed to function as small versions of moral communities that “can be regarded as small societies on their own. In these small communities students learn to respect institutions through experience and interaction with peers and with adults and teachers” (Claes et al. 2012). Hence, I assume a spillover effect from school to broader society. While the data at hand is not suitable for thoroughly testing a causal relationship, the following hypothesis may still help redirect attention to an important insight derived from interactionist socialization theory (see above): democratic experiences at school/university help forming democratic values and identities. In other words, I argue that practicing politics enhances political trust since young people are not only learning about politics (i.e., attainment of political knowledge) but also experience efficacy and pluralism which forms democratic values and identities. Thus,
the experience of political practices at a young age is positively associated with trust in political institutions (hypothesis 2).
Why is it important to consider political trust when setting out to identify ways of combatting xenophobia? I argue that if people are not involved in the political process and do not trust democratic institutions, they become more open to anti-democratic and populist campaigns, challenging the stability and functioning of democracy (Decker et al. 2022). Conversely, trust in political institutions limits xenophobia (Chang & Kang 2018; Halapuu et al. 2013). In the literature, trust has been conceptualized as a contextual factor (Chang & Kang 2018), another being the state of the (national) economy, shaping attitudes towards immigration (Dancygier & Donnelly 2014; Wilkes et al. 2008). To explain this, we may go back to a widely used definition of trust by Delhey and Newton (2005) who state that trust is “the belief that others will not, at worst, knowingly or willingly do you harm, and will, at best, act in your interests.” This can be held for other people or social groups, but also for political institutions. There are two theoretical connections to xenophobia I consider relevant here: first, following group identity theory, trust may limit feelings of threat and hostility: if one trusts institutions (e.g., to uphold the rule of law, deliver proper public services, etc.), one is less inclined to feel threatened by immigration. Second, following deprivation theory, alienation and feeling left out may result in aggression and the search for scapegoats. Indeed, Espenshade and Hempstead (1996) found that people who are in different ways dissatisfied and think that politicians ignore their needs are also more negative towards immigration. Husfeldt (2004) found a similar relation in a study focusing on students: trust in political institutions was associated with lower xenophobia.
Hence, trust not only increases through democratic experiences, but should itself also limit xenophobia. Building on this, I am interested in the following mediating effect that political trust could have: If students build trust in democratic institutions through political engagement, this mediates the reducing effect that political engagement in school or university itself has on xenophobia to some extent because trust counters feelings of threat (see the justification for hypothesis (1) and rather comprises the—internalized—idea of (mutual) goodwill (Delhey & Newton). In other words, democratic experiences lead to lower xenophobia via trust building and not only directly (as hypothesis 1 states). Thus,
the association between learning democracy through political practices at young age and xenophobia is mediated by political trust (hypothesis 3)
In sum, following interactionist assumptions of how democratic values and identities are learned and adopted, I argue that experiencing democracy through political engagement during adolescence, particularly within the institutional settings of schools and universities, helps to establish and consolidate through internalizing ideas and practices of citizenship and democracy. This should result in a decreasing effect on xenophobia and an increasing effect on trust in political institutions. I further include the possibility that trust mediates the decreasing effect on xenophobia as this may be relevant for practical implications drawn from this study.
Data and methods
To test the above hypotheses, I use survey data from nine European countries, namely France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The selection covers one Eastern European country, Southern and Northern European countries, different welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990) and, more importantly, different “youth welfare citizenship regimes” (Chevalier 2016). This contextual variance should increase the external validity of my findings. The data was collected by Qualtrics on behalf of the EURYKA project consortiumFootnote 3 between April and December 2018 using online panels in the respective countries. The uniqueness of this survey lies in its focus on political participation, including engagement in school and university, and its quotas for young people: In addition to general population samples of about 1,000 respondents (age 18–91), the dataset contains per country about 1,000 additional respondents for the age group 18 to 24, and about 1,000 additional respondents for the age group 25 to 34, providing a sample of 27,446 respondents in total. The combined data set is adjusted using weights (age, sex, education, region) to adjust the composition of the data (not applying these weights, however, does not change the findings).
The main independent variable, political engagement in school or at university, is measured with the question “Have you ever done any of the following at school/university?” (yes or no, see Table 1) Unfortunately, the data does not allow to separate school and university as the distinct periods they are. We may consider both periods, however, to matter for the formation of citizenship and democratic ideals, not least since especially university usually offers the time flexibility and institutional opportunities for political engagement (Loader et al. 2015). Regarding the practical relevance of this analysis, schools and higher education institutions are in most European countries to a large extent state funded, providing the possibility to enhance the opportunity structure for participation. The six answer categories load on one main factor, while the last two that indicate also political engagement beyond school load weak on a second factor (principal factor analysis, see also Table A3 in the appendix). The scale shows satisfying reliability (Cronbach’s alpha 0.64, McDonald’s Omega 0.66). Since all six forms of engagement can be considered a learning experience, a simple additive index was formed.
Table 1 shows frequencies per country: Greek respondents engage more than other Europeans, while Swiss followed by the French seem least active. Looking at the frequencies per activity offers a glance at differing national contexts and (arguably) opportunity structures: Respondents from Greece and Sweden are most likely to have been members in student councils, in Spain and Germany every third respondent has been a speaker of class, and in Italy, Greece, and Spain we find the highest rates of protest participation. Such protest in school/university is particularly low in Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, while in France, Sweden, and Switzerland attending meetings is reported less often. Without going into the details of national political and discursive opportunity structures explored in the literature (Chevalier 2019; Kitanova 2019), these country differences inform my analysis and below I will include country fixed effects. Because preliminary analysis revealed measurement variance, I also calculate the models for each country separately.
For the first dependent variable, xenophobia, the survey provides two questions on immigration’s effect on the economy and culture. The two items load on one factor (principal factor analysis, Table A2 in appendix) and correlate highly with each other (Cronbach’s alpha is 0.84); thus, again I chose to use an additive index for operationalizing the construct xenophobia. Second, political trust was measured with the standard question “On a score of 0–10 how much do you personally trust each of the following institutions?” Respondents were given twelve institutions to evaluate, including police, trade unions, national parliament, national government, the EU, etc. Instead of asking for generalized trust in the political system, I include a larger number of institutions because it is important that people think these work properly (Listhaug & Ringdal 2008). The list also includes the media, trade unions, and youth organizations to account for a broader understanding of democratic politics. Again, I summarized all twelve items since they are highly correlated (Cronbach’s alpha is 0.93, McDonald’s Omega is 0.91). However, principal factor analysis reveals five factors, four of which are important to distinguish: trust in national parliament, politicians, political parties and national government form one factor; trust in the EU, the media and banks form a second factor; trust in trade unions and youth organizations from a third factor; and trust in police and army load on a fourth factor. I shall consider this in the analysis below, but I maintain an overall index “political trust” for the main analysis. Table 2 contains the means for both dependent variables across countries: Greek respondents show the lowest trust and the highest xenophobia, while among British and Swiss respondents trust is highest and xenophobia lowest. However, Poland and Spain are cases with low trust but average xenophobia. Germany is a case of high trust and low xenophobia. All in all, there is no clear pattern, neither in terms of geography nor regarding the relation of trust and xenophobia. This underlines the necessity of a thorough analysis keeping country national differences in mind.
As control variables, I include the respondents’ sex (“What sex were you assigned at birth?”) as a proxy for gender to check for gender inequality, age to account for changes of value systems over time, and income, absence of deprivation, education, as well as father’s education to account for the resource dependency of political participation (Brady et al. 1995; Grasso 2013, 2018; Verba et al. 1995). Father’s education also serves as a control for the fact that students from middle class families may take part in democratic activities at school or university more frequently than those with working class background (Kahne and Middaugh 2008; Hoskins and Janmaat 2019) and internalize specific norms earlier on. Moreover, I included three measures for political knowledge to control for political literacy and a left–right self-placement scale (0–10) to control for ideological differences (I squared this variable for the regression model with political trust because a nonlinear effect is to be expected). Last but not least, I use dummies to control for national contexts that seem to be important based on the descriptive statistics above.
Only for the income variable did the data set include missing values. I opted for listwise deletion since the number of observations remains high (N = 24,118) and I expect no severe bias. For the analysis, I calculated OLS regression models including all control variables for both dependent variables. I mainly concentrate on the full comparative dataset and report standardized coefficients (and t values in the appendix); for the country models, I present a reduced table. Last but not least, I used a path model to test whether political trust indeed is mediating the relationship between democratic engagement in school and university and xenophobia. STATA 14.2 for Mac was used for all calculations.
Findings: effects of political engagement in school and university
First of all, the standardized coefficients shown in Graph 1Footnote 4 confirm that, regardless of the importance of national contexts (country fixed effects, Model 1), political engagement during education reduces xenophobia (for this and the following see also Table A3 in the appendix). Model 2 with coefficients depicted in gray includes several control variables, and reduces the coefficients of national contexts and political engagement as was expected: higher age, male, lower education (particularly compared with tertiary education), and lower father’s education—a control for class background—increase xenophobia slightly. Less deprivation decreases xenophobia while income has no significant effect. Political knowledge manifests in rather inconsistent effects: If respondents know which the second-largest party in the national parliament and what the national unemployment rate is (maybe connected to less threat), they are less likely to support xenophobic statements. However, they are more xenophobic if they can name the parties in government correctly. This underlines that knowing facts is not necessarily sufficient for developing democratic citizenship. Finally, if respondents place themselves on the political right, they are more likely to be xenophobic. This is little surprising given the centrality of xenophobia in right-wing populist mobilization (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012). If we consider right-wing (left-wing) ideology also to be a result of socialization into a specific political milieu, this implies that not only political engagement but also the political milieu one grows up with matters.
Coefficient plot of regression models testing the impact of political engagement in school/university on xenophobia (R.2 = 0.21)
All in all, these controls increase the explanatory power of the model while political engagement in school or university remains the most important factor, corroborating my first hypothesis. The results are robust for models using as independent variables the six individual items measuring political engagement at school or university and using as dependent variables the individual xenophobia items. I also ran the models for the subsamples (general population, age 18–24 and 25–34) corroborating the findings reported here (the effect of political engagement is strongest in the subsample of 25–34 year old respondents, see Table A4).
Results shown in Graph 2 indicate that political engagement in school and at university has a positive effect on whether respondents trust political institutions even if different national contexts are taken into account (country fixed effects). As demonstrated by the second model, higher income, gender, age, and education, on the contrary, seem irrelevant. Father’s education and, thus, class background, however, matters, although comparatively less so than democratic experiences in school/university. Earlier findings reported correlations between educational attainment and trust (e.g., Schoon et al. 2010). Against this backdrop, I corroborate my second hypothesis stating that it is rather (extra-curricular) experiences that matter. Findings for political knowledge follow the same ambiguous pattern described for xenophobia. The relation of political knowledge and political attitudes (in an additional model, I also observe a nonlinear, but small effect of left–right self-placement which, however, does not change the overall picture) seems to be complicated and, as the literature acknowledges, trust may be good for democracy, but some distrust in face of non-working institutions may be just as important (Hardin 2002; van der Meer 2017; Warren 2017). Taking into account that items 5 and 6 of the political engagement in school and at university scale load weaker on the main factor, I calculated the model separately for each individual item and found that for these two items the relation does not hold. These two items formulate protest participation and organizing events that go beyond the institutional opportunity structure. Therefore, I corroborate that experiences in school and university matter. The findings are robust for the subsamples and when models are calculated for trust in individual institutions and subdimensions except for trust in the police and the subscale summarizing trust in the police and the army.
Coefficient plot of regression models testing the impact of political engagement in school/university on political trust (R.2 = 0.09)
To validate that political engagement in school/university has an important impact on political trust and xenophobia regardless of national context, Table 3 provides results for the full models (controls omitted) calculated by country. For xenophobia, the results are consistent. For political trust, I find deviations from the expected outcome, that, however, seem intuitive: In Greece and Italy, effects are not significant, which may be explained with the world financial crisis that developed into a European state debt crisis and consequently into political crises. In all other countries, no matter whether trust is high or low (see Table 2 above), the effect of political engagement in school or university is significant.
Last but not least, I built a path model to test the assumed mediating effect of political trust between democratic engagement in school/university and xenophobia. I am not interested here in fitting a SEM including confirmatory factor analyses for the different variables.Footnote 5 Instead, I opt for a simple solution: The path model makes it possible to treat a variable (here: political trust) as independent and dependent at the same time, the mediator variable. Xenophobia is the variable I want to explain assuming a direct effect of political engagement and a direct effect of political trust on xenophobia as well as a path from political engagement to political trust resulting in an indirect effect. Graph 3 and Table A5 report the findings of this path model for the full sample (N = 24,118): Indeed, there is a significant indirect effect of democratic engagement on xenophobia which is mediated through political trust which corroborates hypothesis 3. However, there remains a direct effect of political engagement reaffirming hypothesis 1. If we relate the indirect, direct, and total effects to each other, 15.4% of the effect of political engagement on xenophobia is mediated by political trust (indirect effect). 84.6% remain a direct effect. Other factors are relatively less important, except for left–right self-placement which I already discussed in regard to Graph 1.
Path-model for the mediating effect of political trust between democratic engagement in school/university and xenophobia
Modeled for each country separately, the following differences regarding the mediation occurred (Table 4). In France, where Table 3 already showed a stronger relation between political engagement and xenophobia and political trust respectively, 28.8% of the effect of political engagement on xenophobia is mediated by political trust. In Germany, the indirect effect amounts to 48% although all coefficients are smaller than in France. In Sweden, the indirect effect also explains 40% of the relation between political engagement and xenophobia. In Greece and Italy, however, where political engagement did not correlate with political trust to begin with, the indirect effect amounts only to 3.5% and 13.7%, respectively, and is not significant. In Poland and Spain, the indirect effect is small, but significant. In Switzerland and the UK, the indirect effect is again 20.2% and 26%, respectively, and therefore, supports hypothesis 3. In sum, the indirect effect is significant except for two countries where this is probably due to the irrelevance of political trust for xenophobia.
Discussion
Summing up, direct engagement in school or at university has, as hypothesized based on the theoretical claim of learning democracy, significant effects on limiting xenophobia. Moreover, it fosters the establishment of political trust, which itself seems to mediate the reduction of xenophobia. A promising way to strengthen democracy is, then, to not only promote civic education but to strengthen the opportunity structure within institutions. Indeed, democracy learning does not stop with educational attainment (a proxy variable often employed to explain political trust and xenophobia alike), class background (higher father’s education) and even political knowledge, as these factors, employed here as controls, showed only small or even inconsistent relationships with the dependent variables. On the contrary, it is political engagement at young age—and through that democratic experience, I argue—that shows a strong, consistent association with xenophobia. This holds even if left–right self-placement is included as a control variable strongly associated with xenophobia.
Regarding trust in political institutions, a possible effect of democratic learning through political engagement could be seen critical, as the literature points out the ambiguous role trust may play (e.g., van der Meer 2017). Indeed, distrusting authoritarian institutions is an important virtue of democratic citizens. And the separation of power in modern democracies institutionalizes such distrust. However, the institutions inquired in the survey data not only cover political parties, police, and the government, but also institutions balancing authority and organizing civil society in liberal democracies, e.g., trade unions, youth organizations, and the media – and my findings are robust for these subdimensions of political trust. Overall, distrust in political institutions is problematic since a certain level of trust is necessary to voice one’s criticism and politically engage for change, if deemed necessary. Therefore, I argue that the learning effect through political engagement in school and university on political trust should be seen as encouraging. This goes also beyond structuralist and deficit-oriented approaches towards political attitudes that are important, e.g., for explaining political inequalities, but offer little advice on how to increase trust in a way that not simply convinces citizens of the merits of political institutions, but does so in an empowering way.
The association of democratic experiences with xenophobia, both mediated through trust and as a possible direct effect, is particularly interesting. It helps to better understand xenophobia by connecting it to democracy theory, while at the same time pointing at possible interventions. Since this investigation is limited to having identified this relation, the following points merit attention in future research: First, the strong association found in this study may be explained by the decrease in political deprivation resulting from the experience of being involved: if citizens feel integrated in decision making and indeed experienced efficacy already in young age, they are less likely to feel threatened by or unload anger on immigrants (cf. Yoxon et al. 2019 for the same argument regarding economic deprivation). Second, democratic experiences in school and university may also lower the barrier to accept otherness. As Rydgren (2004) argues, xenophobia results mainly from being unable to overcome stereotypes and biased information. Learning democracy, on the contrary, implies learning about the fundamental principles of equality and pluralism, which can be assumed to limit xenophobia. Therefore, my findings contribute to theory formation in showing that democratic experience reduces the cognitive limitations characteristic for xenophobia (Rydgren 2004) while providing citizens with ideas of equality and cooperation. This helps to overcome intergroup conflicts which deprivation theory sees as driving forces for xenophobia. Intervention against surging xenophobia then becomes possible through opening up spaces of democratic experimentation. Third, my analysis based on cross-sectional data is not able to prove causality in a strict sense, although we can assume that for most respondents, experiences in school/university go some time back. From a theoretical point, however, the causal direction implied seems plausible: democratic experiences lead to efficacy and, hence, trust in political institutions and lower xenophobia. Empirically, I can at least exclude class background and a number of other confounding factors, although not all possible ones, which strengthens my case on the issue of causality. Moreover, for a sample of Belgian adolescents and based on a three-wave-panel design, Quintelier and van Deth (2014) show that it is indeed more likely that political participation by young people fosters attitudes and not the other way around. Fourth, the relationship between democratic experiences in school and xenophobia could also indicate a higher rate of socially desirable answers among those with democratic experiences. It is true that my measurement of xenophobia is vulnerable in this respect (as are most measurements in this field of study). However, we could still confirm that democratic experiences lead to stronger norm acceptance on the expressional level.
My findings also suggest that national context matters and that it is important to not only look at aggregate, bivariate relations (e.g., Greece shows high aggregate levels of both, school political engagement and xenophobia, but my analysis shows that in Greece, too, political engagement actually reduces xenophobia on the individual level). Cross-checking the general findings by calculating country-specific models, peculiarities arose: For Greece and Italy, I did not find a significant effect of political engagement on political trust. If my reasoning is correct, this means that even those who previously have benefitted from opportunities in schools and universities to engage in democratic ways are today not convinced that the performance of existing institutions benefits them or the public good more generally. This raises questions on the future political stability since, as I have argued in the theoretical section, trust in institutions is a necessary condition of stable democracies. In the other countries under investigation, although trust in Spain and Poland is comparatively low, I was able to show that democratic experience fosters this kind of basic legitimacy. Moreover, in all countries, direct engagement in school and university correlates with lower xenophobic beliefs. This underlines the relevance of my findings because it shows that there is a generalizable mechanism at work. Further research could concentrate on comparing the opportunity structures for participation in schools and universities across countries also since in this study data on the respondents’ school (e.g., private, public, etc.) was not available.
Regarding education policy, my study of nine European countries underlines the importance of civic education for democratic society but more specifically makes the case for establishing opportunity structures for learning democracy by doing. This includes the opportunities of political participation already in place in most countries, i.e., speaker of class, student councils, and meetings, as well as time and space for (extra-curricular) political activity. Thereby, all students should participate in and experience democratic decision making and recognition of their role within the group and, later, as citizens. This raises additional questions of inequality in school access and success and there are certainly limits under current education policy (most importantly time restrictions) to implement more opportunities for actual participation. As the data at hand shows, not everyone participates. Education policy should, thus, aim for opening opportunities to everyone. Political socialization as conceptualized in this paper, moreover, is a long-term process building on continuous experience throughout life. Innovative teaching methods may support this process and research has shown that positive teacher–student relationships matter for political trust (Ziemes et al. 2020). Still, positive effects of experiences during school and university may also be countered by negative experiences, e.g., in the world of work afterward, i.e., if later in life people do not experience political efficacy anymore.
Data availability
The data base will be made available after an embargo period at: https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/euryka/home
Notes
Pettigrew (2016) differentiates three major schools focusing on authoritarianism, intergroup contact, and relative deprivation.
The separation of power as a fundamental characteristic of developed democracies is, in effect, a result of such distrust.
The data will be made available after an embargo period at the project’s website https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/euryka/outputs/data
The dots depict the coefficients, the lines through them their confidence intervals. The further from the 0-line, the larger the effect in relation to other effects.
Methodological note: a) Goodness of fit indices normally reported for SEM are not useful here because I did not include latent variables models. b) The indirect effect I am interested in is the product of two regression coefficients(βPoleng→Poltrust *βPoltrust→Xenophobia) and I cannot assume normal distribution of all variables. Thus, I had to include a bootstrap with 500 replications into the model (MacKinnon et al. 2004). c) By including the bootstrap option, it is not possible to include frequency weights like in the regression models above.
References
Abendschön, S. 2013. Growing into politics: Contexts and timing of political socialisation. Austin: ECPR Press.
Abendschön, S. 2017. Children’s political learning in primary school—evidence from Germany. Education 3-13 45 (4): 450–461.
Adorno, T.W., E. Frenkel-Brunswik, D.J. Levinson, and R.N. Sanford. 1964. The authoritarian personality. Sciences Editions. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Akinola, A.O. 2018. Political economy of xenophobia in africa. Cham: Springer.
Almond, G.A., and S. Verba. 1972. The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Aristotle. (1818). The Rhetoric, Poetic, and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Vol. II. London: Black 1818. S. 50. (T. Taylor, Trans.; Vol. 2). Black.
Bara, J., and M. Pennington. 2009. Comparative politics: Explaining democratic systems. Newcastle upon Tyne: SAGE.
Bianco, W.T. 1994. Trust: Representatives and constituents. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Brady, H.E., S. Verba, and K.L. Schlozman. 1995. Beyond SES: a resource model of political participation. American Political Science Review 89 (2): 271–294.
Braithwaite, V.A., and M. Levi. 1998. Trust and governance. Manhattan: Russell Sage Foundation.
Callan, E. 1997. Creating citizens: Political education and liberal democracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Carothers, T. 2004. Critical mission: Essays on democracy promotion. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Catterberg, G., and A. Moreno. 2006. The individual bases of political trust: Trends in new and established democracies. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 18 (1): 31–48.
Chang, H.I., and W.C. Kang. 2018. Trust, economic development and attitudes toward immigration. Canadian Journal of Political Science 51 (2): 357–378.
Chevalier, T. 2016. Varieties of youth welfare citizenship: Towards a two-dimension typology. Journal of European Social Policy 26 (1): 3–19.
Chevalier, T. 2019. Political trust, young people and institutions in Europe. A multilevel analysis. International Journal of Social Welfare 28 (4): 418–430.
Claes, E., and M. Hooghe. 2017. The effect of political science education on political trust and interest: results from a 5-year panel study. Journal of Political Science Education 13 (1): 33–45.
Claes, E., M. Hooghe, and S. Marien. 2012. A two-year panel study among belgian late adolescents on the impact of school environment characteristics on political trust. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 24 (2): 208–224.
Conover, P.J., and D.D. Searing. 2000. A political socialization perspective. In Rediscovering the democratic purposes of education, ed. L. McDonnell, P.M. Timpane, and R.W. Benjamin, 91–124. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Creighton, M.J., A. Jamal, and N.C. Malancu. 2015. Has opposition to immigration increased in the United States after the economic crisis? An experimental approach. International Migration Review 49 (3): 727–756.
Dahinden, M. 2013. Democracy promotion at a local level: experiences perspectives and policy of Swiss International Cooperation. Revue Internationale de Politique de Développement. https://doi.org/10.4000/poldev.1517.
Damon, W. 2001. To not fade away: Restoring civil identity among the young. In Making good citizens: education and civil society, ed. J.P. Viteritti and D. Ravitch, 122–141. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Dancygier, R., and M. Donnelly. 2014. Attitudes towards immigration in good times and bad. In Mass politics in tough times: Opinions, Votes and protest in the great recession, ed. N.G. Bermeo and L.M. Bartels, 148–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dassonneville, R., E. Quintelier, M. Hooghe, and E. Claes. 2012. The relation between civic education and political attitudes and behavior: A two-year panel study among belgian late adolescents. Applied Developmental Science 16 (3): 140–150.
Davidov, E., B. Meuleman, J. Billiet, and P. Schmidt. 2008. Values and support for immigration: A cross-country comparison. European Sociological Review 24 (5): 583–599.
Decker, O., J. Kiess, and E. Brähler. 2022. Escape into Authorianism: Dynamics of right-wing extremism within German society. Abingdon: Routledge.
Decker, O., J. Kiess, and E. Brähler. 2023. Autoritäre Dynamiken und die Unzufriedenheit mit der Demokratie. Die rechtsextreme Einstellung in den ostdeutschen Bundesländern. Leipzig: Else-Frenkel-Brunswik-Institute.
Delhey, J., and K. Newton. 2005. Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: Global pattern or nordic exceptionalism? European Sociological Review 21 (4): 311–327.
Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. NY: Macmillan.
Easton, D. 1965. A systems analysis of political life. Wiley.
Espenshade, T.J., and K. Hempstead. 1996. Contemporary American attitudes toward U.S. immigration. The International Migration Review 30 (2): 535–570.
Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Galston, W.A. 2001. Political knowledge, political engagement, and civic education. Annual Review of Political Science 4 (1): 217–234.
Gorodzeisky, A., and M. Semyonov. 2016. Not only competitive threat but also racial prejudice: Sources of anti-immigrant attitudes in European societies. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 28 (3): 331–354.
Grasso, M.T. 2013. The differential impact of education on young people’s political activism: Comparing Italy and the United Kingdom. Comparative Sociology 12 (1): 1–30.
Grasso, M.T. 2018. Young people’s political participation in times of crisis. In Young people regenerating politics in times of crisis, ed. S. Pickard and J. Bessant, 179–196. London: Palgrave.
Guimond, S., and M. Dambrun. 2002. When prosperity breeds intergroup hostility: The effects of relative deprivation and relative gratification on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (7): 900–912.
Habermas, J. 1983. Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives handeln. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Habermas, J. 1991. Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Halapuu, V., T. Paas, and T. Tammaru. 2013. Is institutional trust related to the attitudes towards immigrants in Europe? A study of majority and minority population. London: Norface Migration.
Hardin, R. 2002. Trust and trustworthiness. New York: Sage.
Hetherington, M.J. 1998. The political relevance of political trust. American Political Science Review 92 (4): 791–808.
Hetherington, M.J. 2007. Why trust matters: Declining political trust and the demise of American liberalism. Princeton: Princeton Univ Press.
Hoskins, B., and J.G. Janmaat. 2019. Education democracy and inequality—political engagement and citizenship education in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Husfeldt, V. (2004). Negative attitudes towards Immigrants: Explaining factors in Germany, Switzerland, England, and Denmark [Conference Proceedings of the 1st IEA International Research Conference].
Johann, D. 2012. Specific political knowledge and citizens’ participation: evidence from Germany. Acta Politica 47 (1): 42–66.
Kahne, J., and E. Middaugh. 2008. Democracy for some: The civic opportunity gap in highschool. NY: CIRCLE.
Kam, C.D., and C.L. Palmer. 2008. Reconsidering the effects of education on political participation. The Journal of Politics 70 (3): 612–631.
Kerr, D. 1999. Citizenship education in the curriculum: An international review. The School Field 10 (3/4): 5–32.
Kiess, J. 2021. Learning by doing: The impact of experiencing democracy in education on political trust and participation. Politics 42: 75–94.
Kitanova, M. 2019. Youth political participation in the EU: Evidence from a cross-national analysis. Journal of Youth Studies 23: 819–36.
Lawson, M. L., & Epstein, S. B. (2019). Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance (CRS Report R44856). Congressional Research Service.
Lijphart, A. 1999. Patterns of democracy: Government forms and performance in thirty-six countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lijphart, A., and M.G. Schmidt. 1997. Dimensions of democracies. European Journal of Political Research 31 (1–2): 193–204.
Listhaug, O., and K. Ringdal. 2008. Trust in political institutions in Europe. In Nordic social attitudes in a european perspective, ed. H. Ervasti, T. Fridberg, M. Hjerm, and K. Ringdal, 131–151. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Loader, B.D., A. Vromen, M.A. Xenos, H. Steel, and S. Burgum. 2015. Campus politics, student societies and social media. The Sociological Review 63 (4): 820–839.
Manzel, S. 2022. The potential of civic and citizenship education to preventing right-wing extremism. In The challenge of radicalization and extremism: integrating research on education and citizenship in the context of migration, ed. E. Gutzwiller-Helfenfinger, H.J. Abs, and K. Göbel, 129–153. Leiden: Brill.
Mayda, A.M. 2006. Who is against immigration? A cross-country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants. The Review of Economics and Statistics 88 (3): 510–530.
Mayne, Q., and A. Hakhverdian. 2017. Education, socialization, and political trust. In Handbook on political trust, ed. S. Zmerli and T. van der Meer, 176–196. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
McFarland, D.A., and R.J. Thomas. 2006. Bowling young: How youth voluntary associations influence adult political participation. American Sociological Review 71 (3): 401–425.
Mead, G.H. 1934. Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Miller, D. 1974. The ideological backgrounds to conceptions of social justice. Political Studies 22 (4): 387–399.
Mudde, C. 2002. The Ideology of the extreme right. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Mudde, C., and C. Rovira Kaltwasser. 2012. Populism in Europe and the Americas: threat or corrective for democracy? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Müller, J.W. 2016. What is populism? Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia.
National Council for the Social Studies. 2017. College, career, and civic life C3 framework for social studies state standards. Washington: National Council for the Social Studies.
Nie, N.H., J. Junn, and K. Stehlik-Barry. 1996. Education and democratic citizenship in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Norris, P. 2011. Democratic deficit: Critical Citizens revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1998). The Need for Civic Education: A Collective Action Perspective [Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association]. https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/7733/ostrom%2c%20need%20for%20civic%20education...pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Persson, M. 2014. Testing the relationship between education and political participation using the 1970 british cohort study. Political Behavior 36 (4): 877–897.
Pettigrew, T.F. 2016. In pursuit of three theories: authoritarianism, relative deprivation, and intergroup contact. Annual Review of Psychology 67 (1): 1–21.
Pettigrew, T.F., O. Christ, U. Wagner, R.W. Meertens, R. van Dick, and A. Zick. 2008. Relative deprivation and intergroup prejudice. Journal of Social Issues 64 (2): 385–401.
Pettigrew, T.F., and R.W. Meertens. 1995. Subtle and blatant prejudice in western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology 25 (1): 57–75.
Popkin, A.L., and M.A. Dimock. 1999. Political knowledge and citizen competence. In Citizen competence and democratic institutions, ed. S.L. Elkin and K. Soltan, 117–146. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Quintelier, E., and J.W. Van Deth. 2014. Supporting democracy: Political participation and political attitudes. Exploring causality using panel data. Political Studies 62: 153–171.
Rydgren, J. 2004. The logic of xenophobia. Rationality and Society 16 (2): 123–148.
Schimmelfennig, F., and H. Scholtz. 2008. EU democracy promotion in the european neighbourhood: Political conditionality, economic development and transnational exchange. European Union Politics 9 (2): 187–215.
Schoon, I., H. Cheng, C.R. Gale, G.D. Batty, and I.J. Deary. 2010. Social status, cognitive ability, and educational attainment as predictors of liberal social attitudes and political trust. Intelligence 38 (1): 144–150.
Spannring, R., Ogris, G., & Gaiser, W. (2008). Youth and Political Participation in Europe: Results of the Comparative Study EUYOUPART. Barbara Budrich-Esser.
Stokes, D.E., and G.R. Iversen. 1962. On the existence of forces restoring party competition. Public Opinion Quarterly 26 (2): 159.
Tajfel, H. 1974. Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Social Science Information 13 (2): 65–93.
Tajfel, H., and J.C. Turner. 1979. An integrative theory of intergroup conflicts. In The social psychology of intergroup relations, ed. S. Worchel and W.G. Austin, 7–24. Books/Cole.
Thomas, R. J., & McFarland, D. A. (2010). Joining Young, Voting Young: The Effects of Youth Voluntary Associations on Early Adult Voting (CIRCLE Working Paper 73). The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Thompson, D.F. 2010. The democratic citizen: Social science and democratic theory in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press.
Torney-Purta, J. 2002. The school’s role in developing civic engagement: A study of adolescents in twenty-eight countries. Applied Developmental Science 6 (4): 203–212.
Torney-Purta, J., C. Henry Barber, and W.K. Richardson. 2004. Trust in government-related institutions and political engagement among adolescents in six countries. Acta Politica 39 (4): 380–406.
Treviño, E., D. Carrasco, N. López Hornickel, and C.G. Zúñiga. 2021. A school effectiveness approach to good citizenship. In Good citizenship for the next generation, ed. E. Treviño, D. Carrasco, E. Claes, and K.J. Kennedy. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Turner, R.H. 2001. Role theory. In Handbook of sociological theory, ed. J.H. Turner, 233–254. Cham: Springer.
van der Meer, T.W.G. 2017. Political trust and the “crisis of democracy.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, ed. T.W.G. van der Meer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Verba, S., K.L. Schlozman, and H.E. Brady. 1995. Voice and equality: civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Warren, M. 2017. What kinds of trust does democracy need? Trust from the perspective of democratic theory. In Handbook on political trust, ed. S. Zmerli, and T.W. Van der Meer, 33–52. Cheltenham: Edgar Elgar.
Wagner, U., J.C. Becker, O. Christ, T.F. Pettigrew, and P. Schmidt. 2010. A longitudinal test of the relation between German nationalism, patriotism, and outgroup derogation. European Sociological Review 28 (3): 319–332.
Weinberg, J., and M. Flinders. 2018. Learning for democracy: The politics and practice of citizenship education. British Educational Research Journal 44 (4): 573–592.
Wilkes, R., N. Guppy, and L. Farris. 2008. “No thanks, we’re full”: Individual characteristics, national context, and changing attitudes toward immigration. The International Migration Review 42 (2): 302–329.
Yoxon, B., S.M.V. Hauwaert, and J. Kiess. 2019. Picking on immigrants: A cross-national analysis of individual-level relative deprivation and authoritarianism as predictors of anti-foreign prejudice. Acta Politica 54 (3): 479–520.
Zamora-Kapoor, A., and M. Verea. 2014. Public attitudes toward immigration in turbulent times. Migration Studies 2: 131–4.
Ziemes, J., K. Hahn-Laudenberg, and H. Abs. 2020. The impact of schooling on trust in political institutions—Differences arising from students’ immigration backgrounds. Learning Culture and Social Interaction 26: 1–10.
Funding
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This research received funding from the European Commission under grant agreement number 727025.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Kiess, J. Building democratic resilience: the impact of political engagement during education on xenophobia and political trust. Acta Polit (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-024-00370-6
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-024-00370-6