The Civic Attitudes of Ethnic Minority Youth and the Impact of Citizenship Education

This paper compares the civic attitudes of migrant and native youth in five West European countries, and explores the effect of citizenship education on the civic orientations of migrant children. Use is made of data from the IEA Civic Education survey. This survey involved a large study among 14-year-olds in 28 countries. The paper finds that migrant youth generally are at least as supportive of civic values as the ethnic majority. They do not embrace the civic notions of patriotism, institutional trust and gender equality to the same extent as the dominant group, though. Differences between the two groups on gender equality and to some degree also on institutional trust disappear, however, when social background variables are controlled for. It is concluded that differences between the allochtonous and autochthonous groups in the espousal of civic values are mostly a reflection of social differences and that migrant cultures are not obstructing the adoption of these values. This contradicts the conservative notion that civic values are specific to Western cultures and therefore incompatible with migrant cultures of other origins. It is further concluded that ethnic minority youth are likely to benefit more from citizenship education than the majority group.