From Classroom to Partnership: How Contact with Immigrants in Primary Schools Influences Interethnic Unions in Adulthood

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 23. Family, intimacy, and belonging

Abstract

Inter-ethnic union or partnership between migrants and natives is an important indicator of integration. The paper investigates, whether natives’ exposure to migrants in primary school increases their likelihood of forming an interethnic partnership in adulthood. We leverage more than 5.6 million person-year observations from the administrative register data for cohorts of native Danes who turned 18 in 1990 onwards, i.e. the sample is born between 1972 and 2002. We apply a discrete time competing risk event history analysis to account for censoring and duration. We find that that the more natives are exposed to immigrants from Non-Western countries at the 8/9 grades of School, the more natives are likely to enter partnership with an immigrant or descendant from Non-Western countries. This holds after controlling for background variables and (current) exposure to immigrants in neighbourhoods and at workplaces. We interpret these patterns as supporting the contact theory, which expects reduced prejudices from interethnic classrooms, and a moderation of previous literature demonstrating strong ethnic segregation of classrooms networks.

Authors

• Lanciné Eric Diop-Christensen

• Jeppe Fjeldgaard Qvist, Aalborg University

• Jeevitha Yogachandiran Qvist, Aalborg University

• Christian Albrekt Larsen, Aalborg Universitet

• Hans-Peter Yogachandiran Qvist, Aalborg University