Intergroup contact versus conflict in Catalan high schools: A multilevel analysis of adolescent attitudes toward immigration and diversity

Western educational systems are often insufficiently prepared for the ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity resulting from immigration. In Catalonia, one of the wealthiest regions of Spain, a diverse, recent, and large-scale immigration coincides with a popular nationalist movement and increasingly salient national identifications. Focusing on a context where ethnic, national, religious, and linguistic divisions intersect daily, our aim was to determine if both beneficial and detrimental effects of intergroup contact exist by measuring three separate dependent variables, xenophobia, appreciation of diversity, and attitudes toward immigrant rights, among native (n = 1219) and nonnative (n = 379) students during their last year of compulsory education (10th grade). Multilevel modeling, with students nested within 82 classrooms in 30 high schools throughout Catalonia, revealed effects of national identifications, frequency of contact, socioeconomic status, and classroom ethnic composition. Results provide strong support for intergroup contact theory in that classrooms with higher proportions of immigrant students demonstrated less xenophobia and more positive attitudes towards immigrant rights overall. Implications of classroom characteristics were qualified by national identification and intergroup interactions. Simultaneously, modest detrimental implications of intergroup contact were unveiled in that higher proportions of immigrants in a classroom predicted lower appreciation of diversity; immigrants were more likely to embrace diversity when they were a minority in the classroom, though native and immigrant students were both low on appreciation of diversity in majority-immigrant classrooms. Findings also highlight the critical importance of national identification in a context where national identities are often contested.