Conference Agenda

Scope: This study utilizes cross-national large-scale survey data from the most recent rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS 10) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2022) to investigate and explain variations in the association between bullying victimization at school and students' immigration background across Europe.

Rationale & Significance: A growing trend of bullying victimization has been reported in schools throughout Europe in recent years, and this has become highly worrisome given the negative individual and societal consequences associated with this phenomenon (OECD, 2019). Existing theories and empirical evidence suggest that bullying victimization is more prevalent among students with an immigration background compared to native students (Stevens et al., 2020). The link between immigration and victimization has been claimed to be associated, among other risk factors, with the country in which immigrant children and their families reside (e.g., citizens' attitudes towards immigrants), school-related factors, as well as individual-level factors such as the immigrant’s generation, gender and language spoken at home. Our research, building on this literature, explores associations between bullying victimization at school and immigrant background across different national contexts. Our findings have important implications, since a country’s educational response to migration may enormously influence the economic and social well-being of all members of the communities they serve, whether they have an immigrant background or not (Schleicher, 2015).

Data & Participants: We use nationally representative samples of fifteen-year-old students from thirty-six European countries. The data are selected from PISA 2022 assessment frameworks, which originally target a larger number of countries around the world; we only include in our sample European countries that also participated in ESS 10. The data are hierarchical in nature, with students being nested within schools, that were in turn nested within countries; the three-level structure of the data was taken into consideration in subsequent statistical analysis.

Measures: The outcome variable in our study is bullying victimization, a composite measure provided in the PISA study based on the frequency to which a student experiences certain behavior at school (e.g., being left out on purpose, made fun of, threatened, etc.). The students’ immigration generation (native, first-generation immigrant, second-generation immigrant) is defined according to OECD (Basarkod et al., 2022). The national context is operationalized using country-level aggregates of ESS variables measuring attitudes towards immigrants.

Main Findings: Our study reveals that scores in bullying victimization are, on average, higher for both first-generation and second-generation immigrant students compared to native students. The effect of immigrant status on bullying victimization displays a statistically significant variation across countries. Differences in bullying victimization between students with an immigration background and native students are statistically significant even after adjustments for student gender and socio-economic status. However, once the frequency in which the language of instruction is spoken at home is controlled for, the effect of being a second-generation immigrant on bullying victimization fails to appear statistically significant. Importantly, attitudes towards immigrants at the national level can explain the difference in bullying victimization between native students and first-generation immigrants in a statistically significant way.

Migrant integration is one of the main concerns of Europeans, as well as of the European Union. There are diverse ways of measuring integration, such as at an economic, cultural, or social level, and the feeling of attachment can be considered as one of these measures (Heckman, 2006). Despite this, few is known about the way in which migrants develop attachment to their host country. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyse the way in which migrants attach to their host country and compare it to the natives’. For this purpose, we used rounds 9 and 10 of the European Social Survey, which comprised data from 31 European countries. Our sample was composed by 107.094 people aged +18, of which 9.2% were international migrants. We used the items atchctr to measure national attachment, brncntr to differentiate between natives and international migrants, and livecnta as a measure for length of stay.

The ANOVA showed that there are differences in the level of attachment to the country between migrants and natives [F(1, 13351) = 391.248, p < .001], and that these differences vary depending on the destination country [F(30, 13351) = 14.188, p < .001]. Even if migrants have a lower mean for country attachment than natives in general (XMigrants = 7.44; XNatives = 7.90), in both cases are high, and there are some countries where migrants have significantly higher levels, as Belgium. A significant effect of length of stay on attachment to the country was also found [F(4, 9197) = 100.133, p < .001]. Individuals who spent less than a year in the country exhibit the lowest levels of attachment. As time progresses in the host country, a more profound attachment develops, with the highest levels experienced by migrants who have resided there for over 20 years, even if there are differences between countries.

These results show that even if national attachment levels are high between migrants, length of stay is a key variable to understand its development. This is relevant to understand the process of attachment to the country, as well as to promote measures that address integration, focusing on the development of a feeling of attachment to the country by the new residents on it. In future studies, it would also be interesting to analyse how other factors, such as administrative status, impact migrants’ attachment to their host country, although this variable is not considered in the European Social Survey database.

Since 2016, the ESS core questionnaire has included an item on European identity, motivated by the growing desire to understand whether there is widespread affective attachment to Europe, and what exactly this attachment entails. The inclusion of the variable provides a unique opportunity to measure people's identifications at the European level on a cross-national scale. Importantly, the item is fielded in countries that are not members of the EU but share in the values, geographical ties, history and politico-moral principles that have shaped a collective identity before the idea of Europe was institutionalised.

This presentation will first provide a theoretically motivated discussion on the importance of distinguishing between the EU and Europe when measuring emotional attachment to the latter. Then, using the results of a multilevel liner regression model including data from recent rounds of the ESS, the presentation will explore how European identity is far from solely an EU phenomenon. Instead, some non-EU countries, most notably those who are members of the Schengen Area, have a strong sense of European identity that can even surpass that of members.

The resulting aims of the presentation are thus two-fold. Firstly, to problematise theoretical discussions that conflate EU and European identity, and the extensive body of empirical research on European identity that focuses on the degree to which individuals express support for the EU and integration. Secondly, to suggest that the EU, concerned with increasing support for the integration project through the promotion of a supranational identity, would do well to look outwards by promoting research into what builds European identity in non-member states, which could in turn be incorporated into EU identity policies.

This study examines how different contextual conditions impact the relevance and effect of various demand-side attributes crucial for the success of populist parties in nine Western European countries. While prior research has provided insights into who votes for populist parties, empirical findings on individual explanatory factors have often shown mixed results. This ambiguity may stem from the thin and adaptable nature of populist parties, which often modify their positions and strategies according to the varying contexts and moments in which they operate. Utilizing ten waves of ESS survey data, this study explores the interplay between supply (such as the experience of the office position of populist parties or changing macroeconomic conditions) and demand factors (such as anti-elitist beliefs and Euroscepticism). The findings show that the influence of anti-elitist beliefs on populist voting behaviour is not uniform and can depend on the political landscape. Moreover, under adverse economic conditions, the likelihood of both satisfied and dissatisfied citizens voting for populist parties converges. This research reaffirms that understanding populism requires a holistic lens that encapsulates both the demand-side attributes of voters and the supply-side adaptability of populist parties within their respective contexts.