Who Welcomes Whom? Understanding Socio-Economic Disparities in Students’ Support for Equal Rights for Immigrants Using ICCS 2022

• In Event: Secondary Analysis of ICCS data: Inequalities, Civic Attitudes, and Civic Engagement

Proposal

Introduction
Human mobility is a growing global phenomenon, with over 117 million people forcibly displaced worldwide as of 2023 (UNHCR). Migration experiences intersect with gender, socioeconomic status, and religion, shaping immigrants’ opportunities for social inclusion. Education systems therefore face the challenge of preparing students to engage with diversity on the basis of civic principles such as tolerance and equality. ICCS provides valuable comparative data on students’ support for equal rights for immigrants as well as on individual- and school-level explanatory factors.
Previous research using ICCS data has shown that egalitarian attitudes are associated with background characteristics such as parental education, the number of books at home, gender, civic knowledge, and students’ expectations for the future and interest in social and political issues (Miranda et al., 2018; Schulz et al., 2023; Isac & Miranda, 2025). At the school level, an open classroom climate for discussion has also been linked to stronger support for immigrants’ rights (Blaskó et al., 2019; Isac et al., 2018). However, fewer studies have examined whether the influence of these factors differs across socioeconomic groups.
Research aims
This study examines the extent to which differences in students’ support for equal rights for immigrants between socioeconomic groups can be explained by individual- and school-level factors. It also investigates whether these predictors operate differently among students in the top and bottom quartiles of socioeconomic status, drawing on school effectiveness research on differentiated effectiveness (Reynolds et al., 2014).
Data and Methods
The analysis uses data from ICCS 2022 across all participating countries. The outcome of interest is students’ support for equal rights for immigrants (S_IMMPOS). Individual-level predictors include immigration background, gender, civic knowledge, and perceptions of open classroom discussion. School-level predictors include the proportion of immigrant students and classroom mean civic knowledge.
To decompose disparities, the study applies Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition (OBD) (Blinder, 1973; Oaxaca, 1973). The OBD separates the total SES gap in attitudes into parts explained by group differences in characteristics (endowment effect) and by differences in how these characteristics relate to outcomes (coefficient effect).
Results and Conclusions
At the individual level, results show that students from higher-SES backgrounds consistently report more support for equal rights for immigrants than their low-SES peers, with gaps of about 0.2–0.3 standard deviations across most countries. Civic knowledge is a key predictor, but its effect differs by group: while higher civic knowledge is generally associated with stronger egalitarian attitudes, it is less effective among low-SES students. This suggests that raising civic knowledge alone may not close attitudinal gaps without addressing broader contextual barriers. By contrast, perceptions of openness in classroom discussions show mixed effects across contexts, positive in some countries and negative in others, underscoring the importance of national and cultural conditions.
At the classroom level, average peer civic knowledge is especially beneficial for low-SES students in several countries, highlighting the role of classroom composition in amplifying egalitarian attitudes. Exposure to more immigrant peers also supports endorsement of equal rights among disadvantaged students.

Author

• Francisco Gatica, University of Bath