Tag Archives | Ethnic Boundaries

The Ethnic Lens: Social Networks and the Salience of Ethnicity in the School Context

Clemens Kroneberg, Mark Wittek

Sociological Science October 3, 2023
10.15195/v10.a22


Research on ethnic segregation in schools regularly assumed that ethnic homophily—the tendency to befriend same-ethnic peers, above and beyond other mechanisms of tie formation—is associated with salient ethnic boundaries. We devise a more direct test of this assumption based on a novel measure of ethno-racial group perceptions. In a network study of more than 3000 students in 39 schools of a metropolitan region in Germany, we asked students to indicate which cliques they perceived in their school grade and to describe these groups in their own words. We find that ethno-racial labels are more likely directed at larger cliques that include a higher share of Muslim students or more students with stronger ethnic identification. Still, ethno-racial labels are rarely employed, both absolutely and relative to other modes of classification. Moreover, net ethnic segregation in friendships (“ethnic homophily”) and the reverse pattern in dislike relations (“ethnic heterophobia”) are not associated with a more frequent use of ethno-racial labels. Our results have substantive and methodological implications for the study of social networks and diversity in educational settings.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Clemens Kroneberg: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne
E-mail: c.kroneberg@uni-koeln.de

Mark Wittek: Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne
E-mail: wittek@wiso.uni-koeln.de

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to this work. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the “Frontiers in Quantitative Migration Research” colloquium series at the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research and the Hertie School of Governance, at the 3rd Cultural Diversity, Migration, and Education Conference, Potsdam Center for Empirical Research on Inclusive Education, and at the 3rd Conference of the Academy of Sociology “Cohesive Societies?” at the University of Leipzig. We thank the various participants for their helpful feedback and especially Philipp Jugert who provided stimulating comments on a first version of this work. We would also like to thank Rosa Flore, Anna Bahß, Madita Zöll, Senami Viktoria Hotse, Katharina Burkart, Hannah Rose Tendal, Jan Nguyen, Alexandra Bothe, Zara Mansius, Juliane Reichelt, Mira Böing, Chiara Barfuß, and Agnes Tarnowski who helped in the coding of qualitative clique descriptions.

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 716461). Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2126/1–390838866.

  • Citation: Kroneberg, Clemens, and Mark Wittek. 2023. “The Ethnic Lens: Social Networks and the Salience of Ethnicity in the School Context.” Sociological Science 10: 613-639.
  • Received: February 7, 2023
  • Accepted: March 14, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Wener Raub
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a22


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