European Psychologist 1/2018

Volume 23 / Number 1 / 2018

Volume 23 / Number 1 / 2018

European Psychologist

European Psychologist

Editor-in-Chief Peter Frensch Managing Editor Kristen Lavallee Associate Editors Rainer Banse Ulrike Ehlert Katariina Salmela-Aro

Official Organ of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA)

Special Issue Youth and Migration: What promotes and what challenges their integration?

Guest Editors Frosso Motti-Stefanidi and Katariina Salmela-Aro

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Conditions for successful integration into a new society Topics covered include • Various models used to address the interactional nature of acculturation • Dual identification with ethno-religious groups and mainstream civic organizations among second-generation immigrants • The contact hypothesis in the context of inter-minority relations • Intergroup relations involving different minority groups interacting with a majority group • How ethnic composition, value climate, and societal ideologies may shape intergroup attitudes among majority and minority group members

David L. Sam / Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti / Gabriel Horenczyk / Paul Vedder (Editors)

Migration and Integration (Series: Zeitschrift für Psychologie – Vol. 221) 2013, iv + 58 pp., large format US $49.00 / € 34.95 ISBN 978-0-88937-457-7 International migration has recently reached unprecedented levels, resulting in approximately 214 million people presently residing in countries different from where they were born, and this trend is likely to continue.

What happens to individuals when there is a change in their cultural context, or when they come to live next to a group of different ethnic and cultural background? What are the conditions for successful integration into a new society? These questions have become very urgent in the face of increasing immigration, recent economic crises, and social and political stratifications that have the potential of creating tensions among different ethnic and cultural groups.

The processes involved in migration and intercultural contact are of concern not

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only to the migrating individual and group but also to the communities and societies that immigrants settle in.

There is, therefore, a need to expand the psychological perspective on migration by understanding how intercultural encounters take shape and influence outcomes at the individual, intergroup, and societal levels.

Whereas the process of acculturation is mutual, much of the psychological research has thus far mainly focused on how minority ethnic group members deal with the culture change. Recently, however, the focus on how the two parties involved in intergroup contact impact each other and the dynamics of these influences are taking center stage, and this volume aims to contribute to the understanding of these processes.

European Psychologist

Volume 23/ Number 1/2018 OfďŹ cial Organ of the European Federation of Psychologists Associations (EFPA)

Editor-in-Chief

Peter A. Frensch, Institute of Psychology, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 18, 12489 Berlin, Germany, Tel. +49 30 2093 4922, Fax +49 30 2093 4910, peter.frensch@psychologie.hu-berlin.de

Managing Editor

Kristen Lavallee, editorep-psych@hu-berlin.de

Founding Editor / Past Editor-in-Chief

Kurt Pawlik, Hamburg, Germany (Founding Editor) / Alexander Grob, Basel, Switzerland (Past Editor-in-Chief)

Associate Editors

Rainer Banse, Institute for Psychology, Social and Legal Psychology, University of Bonn, Karl-Kaiser-Ring 9, 53111 Bonn, Germany, Tel. +49 228 73 4439, Fax +49 228 73 4229, banse@uni-bonn.de Ulrike Ehlert, Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14 / Box 26, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland, Tel. +41 44 635 7350, u.ehlert@psychologie.uzh.ch Katariina Salmela-Aro, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 4, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, Tel. +358 50 415-5283, katariina.salmela-aro@helsinki.fi

EFPA News and Views Editor

Eleni Karayianni, Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia, Cyprus, Tel. +357 2289 2022, Fax +357 2289 5075, eleni.karayianni@efpa.eu

Editorial Board

Louise Arseneault, UK Dermot Barnes-Holmes, Belgium Claudi Bockting, The Netherlands Gisela Böhm, Norway Mark G. Borg, Malta Serge Brédart, Belgium Catherine Bungener, France Torkil Clemmensen, Denmark Cesare Cornoldi, Italy István Czigler, Hungary Géry d’Ydewalle, Belgium Michael Eysenck, UK Rocio Fernandez-Ballesteros, Spain Dieter Ferring, Luxembourg Magne Arve Flaten, Norway Alexandra M. Freund, Switzerland Marta Fulop, Hungary

Danute Gailiene, Lithuania Alexander Grob, Switzerland John Gruzelier, UK Sami Gülgöz, Turkey Vera Hoorens, Belgium Paul Jimenez, Austria Remo Job, Italy Katja Kokko, Finland Günter Krampen, Germany Anton Kühberger, Austria Todd Lubart, France Ingrid Lunt, UK Petr Macek, Czech Republic Mike Martin, Switzerland Teresa McIntyre, USA Judi Mesman, The Netherlands Susana Padeliadu, Greece

Ståle Pallesen, Norway Georgia Panayiotou, Cyprus Sabina Pauen, Germany Marco Perugini, Italy Martin Pinquart, Germany José M. Prieto, Spain Jörg Rieskamp, Switzerland Sandro Rubichi, Italy Ingrid Schoon, UK Rainer Silbereisen, Germany Katya Stoycheva, Bulgaria Jan Strelau, Poland Tiia Tulviste, Estonia Jacques Vauclair, France Dieter Wolke, UK Rita Zukauskiene, Lithuania

The Editorial Board of the European Psychologist comprises scientists chosen by the Editor-in-Chief from recommendations sent by the member association of EFPA and other related professional associations, as well as individual experts from particular fields. The associations contributing to the current editorial board are: Berufsverband Österreichischer Psychologen/innen; Belgian Psychological Society; Cyprus Psychologists’ Association; Unie Psychologickych Asociaci, Czech Republic; Dansk Psykologforening; Union of Estonian Psychologists; Finnish Psychological Association; Fédération Française des Psychologues et de Psychologie; Sociéte Française de Psychologie; Berufsverband Deutscher Psychologinnen und Psychologen; Magyar Pszichológiai Társaság; Psychological Society of Ireland; Associazione Italiana di Pscicologia; Lithuanian Psychological Association; Société Luxembourgeoise de Psychologie; Malta Union of Professional Psychologists; Norsk Psykologforening; Österreichische Gesellschaft für Psychologie; Colegio Oficial de Psicologos; Swiss Psychological Society; Turkish Psychological Association; European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction; European Association of Experimental Social Psychology; European Association of Personality Psychology; European Association of Psychological Assessment; European Health Psychology Society.

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European Psychologist (2018), 23(1)

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Contents Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

(Coordinators: Frosso Motti-Stefanidi and Katariina Salmela-Aro) Editorial

Challenges and Resources for Immigrant Youth Positive Adaptation: What Does Scientific Evidence Show Us? Frosso Motti-Stefanidi and Katariina Salmela-Aro

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Original Articles and Reviews

National Immigration Receiving Contexts: A Critical Aspect of Native-Born, Immigrant, and Refugee Youth Well-Being Amy K. Marks, John L. McKenna, and Cynthia Garcia Coll

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EFPA News and Views

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Religious Fundamentalism and Radicalization Among Muslim Minority Youth in Europe Maykel Verkuyten

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Religious Identity and Acculturation of Immigrant Minority Youth: Toward a Contextual and Developmental Approach Karen Phalet, Fenella Fleischmann, and Jessie Hillekens

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Schools as Acculturative and Developmental Contexts for Youth of Immigrant and Refugee Background Maja K. Schachner, Linda Juang, Ursula Moffitt, and Fons J. R. van de Vijver

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Parenting in a New Land: Immigrant Parents and the Positive Development of Their Children and Youth Birgit Leyendecker, Natasha Cabrera, Hanna Lembcke, Jessica Willard, Katharina Kohl, and Olivia Spiegler

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Adaptation of Young Immigrants: A Developmental Perspective on Acculturation Research Peter F. Titzmann and Richard M. Lee

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Attitudes Toward Immigrants Among the Youth: Contact Interventions to Reduce Prejudice in the School Context Siân Jones and Adam Rutland

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How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People Martyn Barrett

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Meeting Calendar

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European Psychologist (2018), 23(1)

Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Editorial Challenges and Resources for Immigrant Youth Positive Adaptation What Does Scientific Evidence Show Us? Frosso Motti-Stefanidi1 and Katariina Salmela-Aro2 1

Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

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Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland

Europe has experienced historic changes in migration during these past decades. Immigrants have lived in different European countries over a period of many years, and, in many cases, over generations. In some countries, their migration is linked to the receiving country’s former colonial ties with their country of origin, and in other cases, the receiving country purposefully recruited immigrants for manual labor. Moreover, some immigrants initially entered receiving countries illegally and later often became legalized.

However, in addition to these immigrants, large numbers of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have entered Europe since 2015, mostly through Greece and Italy, with the goal to move to and settle in a more affluent Northern European country. These migrants flee from their war-stricken countries and most of them have the right to refugee status.

In 2015 alone more than 1 million people crossed the Mediterranean risking their lives to reach Greek and Italian shores. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 31% of these refugees were children. Furthermore, about 25,000 of these children were traveling unaccompanied or were separated from their families during their migratory journey (United Nations, 2016).

These unprecedented and dramatic demographic changes have altered over the last decades the face of receiving societies. Ethnic diversity has become the rule rather than the exception in most European countries.

Public opinion has not always been positive in light of these changes. Furthermore, the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place in many European cities have fueled heated public debates over immigration and diversity in Europe.

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Populist extremist right-wing parties have capitalized on rising anti-immigrant sentiments. Migration has become a key item in their political agendas and their anti-immigrant rhetoric has contributed to their increasing strength in both national elections and in elections for the European Parliament.

Often these immigrants have a strong commitment to putting down roots in their new countries. Their integration and positive adaptation in their new home is crucial not only for immigrants’ well-being but also for the prosperity and social cohesion of receiving societies. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the defining test for how well immigrants are integrated in receiving societies is how well their children are doing (OECD, 2012). Youth’s current positive adaptation is a forerunner of their future adaptation, whereas failure to adapt early in development may have negative, and possibly cascading, future consequences (Masten, 2014). Thus, promoting immigrant youth’s positive adaptation is paramount for the future success and well-being of both immigrants and society.

Negative attitudes toward immigrants, which often filter through their proximal environment (e.g., school and neighborhood), may be experienced as discrimination and prejudice against them. Discrimination, racism, and exclusion have deleterious effects for positive youth development (Marks, Ejesi, McCullough, & Garcia Coll, 2015) and social cohesion, and are risk factors for radicalization (see Verkuyten, 2018, this special issue). In contrast, scientific evidence suggests that feelings of belonging and being

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Editorial

accepted by the receiving society, strengthen youths’ ties to the host society (Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2006)1.

However, there is great diversity in how well immigrant youth are doing. Many young immigrants are well adapted, some falter, and few others exhibit extreme, negative behaviors. How can we explain this diversity? To account for group and individual differences in immigrant youth adaptation we need to examine it in multilevel context (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Sam, & Phinney, 2012; Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017; Suárez-Orozco, Abo-Zena, & Marks, 2015; Suárez-Orozco, Motti-Stefanidi, Marks, & Katsiaficas, in press).

For example, Motti-Stefanidi and colleagues (MottiStefanidi et al., 2012; Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017) proposed a model with three context levels: the societal-level, the level of interaction, and the individual-level. This conceptual model was influenced by theory from multiple fields, but especially the following perspectives: the resilience developmental framework (Masten, 2014); Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006); Berry’s cultural transmission model (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006); and the three-level model of immigrant adaptation proposed by Verkuyten (2005), a social psychologist studying issues of ethnicity and migration.

The societal level includes ideologies, attitudes toward immigrants, non-immigrants’ immigrant integration policies and laws, as well as variables that reflect power positions within society (e.g., social class, ethnicity) that have been shown to have an impact on immigrants’ adaptation.

The level of interaction is focused on interactions that shape the individual life course of immigrants, and that take place in their proximal contexts. These contexts serve the purpose both of development and acculturation, and are divided into those representing the home culture (family, ethnic peers, ethnic group) and into those representing the host culture (school, native peers). The individual level concerns individual differences in personality, cognition, and motivation. Immigrant youth’s own individual attributes contribute to the quality of their adaptation.

Influences from each of these levels of context may promote, or may instead present obstacles to immigrant youth adaptation. The purpose of the majority of the papers in this special issue is to present scientific evidence on what promotes, and what challenges, immigrant youth positive adaptation and integration in the host society.

The first paper (Marks, Lynndon McKenna, & Garcia Coll, 2018) examines societal-level influences on immigrant

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youth adaptation and well-being. The authors use international data to test the link between different nations’ policies designed to support the integration of immigrants and children’s well-being. They find a link between nations’ quality of governance, their immigration integration policies, and the national well-being profiles of children. However, authors found a stronger link between national attitudes about immigration, such as discrimination and xenophobia, than between different nations’ integration policies, and children’s health and behavioral well-being.

The next two papers deal with different aspects of Muslim immigrant youth religiosity. The topic is very timely since the current public debates over migration center on the presence of Muslim immigrants and refugees in Western countries. In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, concerns about the compatibility of Islam to liberal family values, democracy, and secularism are widely expressed.

The second paper of the special issue, authored by Maykel Verkuyten (2018), focuses on religious fundamentalism and radicalization among Muslim minority youth in Europe. The author argues that we do not have sufficient empirical evidence to be able to predict why (a) only some Muslim youth in Europe have sympathy for radical beliefs, (b) fewer youth show passive, and even fewer active, support for radical behavior, and (c) very few are actually actively involved in terrorism and violence. However, based on existing conceptual and empirical evidence, he argues that radicalization is a multi-determined phenomenon.

Verkuyten proposes three psychological processes to account for youth’s radicalization, namely personal uncertainty, perceived hostility and injustice, as well as intergroup processes, such as discrimination.

The third paper, authored by Phalet, Hillekens, and Fleischmann (2018), focuses on religious identity development and acculturation among immigrant adolescents.

The contributors present comparative scientific evidence on the religious identity of Muslim minority youth, and other minority and majority youth living in different European countries. Their review of the evidence suggests that (a) religious identification tends to be higher among Muslim youth compared to other minority and majority youth, (b) higher religious identification of Muslim youth is linked to better psychological well-being, possibly through their higher involvement with their ethnic culture’s values, and (c) Muslim youth, compared to other minority and majority youth, have stronger and more stable religious identities, which, they argue, can be at least partly explained to be a response to public hostility in receiving societies. It has

This is an excerpt from a 2015 mission statement titled “Positive Development of Immigrant Youth: Why Bother?” which was drafted during an Experts’ meeting that took place on the Island of Hydra in Greece and supported by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), in collaboration with the European Association for Developmental Psychology (EADP) and the European Association for Research in Adolescence (EARA).

European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 1–5

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been concluded that whereas perceived discrimination and islamophobia trigger identity conflict in Muslim youth, more harmonious intercultural relations promote adaptive trajectories of religious identity.

The next two papers present scientific evidence regarding the contribution of two interaction-level proximal contexts, the school and the family, on group and individual differences in immigrant youth adaptation and well-being: Schachner, Juang, Moffitt, and van de Vijver (2018) examine the influence of schools for immigrant youth’s acculturation and development. The scientific evidence presented suggests that immigrant youth’s positive relations with teachers and classmates contribute to their positive adaptation and may even buffer the negative effects of discrimination experiences and protect their adaptation. Teachers’ adoption of culturally responsive teaching and the implementation of multicultural education also promote positive outcomes. In addition to interindividual interactions in the classroom, different aspects of the school, such as classroom composition and diversity climate, as well as societal-level policies, such as diversity policies and policies related to school tracking, are also linked to immigrant youth adaptation. The authors conclude that more diverse, inclusive schools, which better reflect the reality in European countries, may contribute to more positive interethnic relations.

Leyendecker et al. (2018) focus on the role of immigrant parents in their children’s development and acculturation.

The authors argue that immigrant parents face the normative challenges of rearing a child that all parents face. However, they face the additional challenge of finding a balance between the values, norms, and expectations of their ethnic culture and the culture of the receiving society. They examine three key issues related to the functioning of immigrant families, namely the role of (a) paternal involvement in the parenting process, (b) the potential acculturation gap between parents particularly in cases of family reunion, and (c) the ethnic and national languages for acculturation.

They argue that the scientific evidence reviewed points to where intervention and prevention is needed. Familyfocused support programs and interventions a) should include immigrant fathers in addition to mothers, b) should address the acculturation gap between parents, which can be a source of stress but potentially also a source of support, and c) should address the mental health needs of both immigrant children and their parents.

These authors present findings that stress the importance of learning and speaking the language of the receiving country as well as the ethnic language for immigrant youth

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positive adaptation. This argument is in line with scientific findings showing that immigrant youth adopting the host cultures and languages while also maintaining the heritage culture and language, do better and contribute more to society than youth who learn only one language or cultural orientation (Berry et al., 2006; Nguyen & Benet-Martinez, 2013; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2015)2.

The sixth paper by Titzmann and Lee (2018) proposes a more nuanced approach to the study of immigrant youth adaptation, development, and acculturation. Scholars who study immigrant youth adaptation need to take into account that immigrant youth are developing and acculturating individuals. Both development and acculturation involve change and need to be disentangled when accounting for group and individual differences in immigrant youth adaptation. The authors propose and discuss different parameters that need to be taken into account both by developmental scientists and acculturation scholars in order to differentiate between acculturation and development in their studies. In this line, they stress the need to conduct comparative longitudinal research, to include in the research design potential predictors of adaptation that pertain to both developmental and acculturative processes, and to give due consideration to the age, length of residence, and age at migration of immigrant youth. They also argue that a developmental perspective can potentially inform our perspective on the acculturation process in youth. In this line, the authors draw on pubertal concepts like timing and tempo and add concepts like pace and synchrony which allow for a better understanding of how acculturation processes unfold over time for immigrants.

The next two papers focus on two key processes which promote positive immigrant youth adaptation and their integration in the receiving society. Jones and Rutland (2018) present interventions conducted in the school context whose purpose is to reduce prejudice against immigrant students and to promote their social inclusion.

They review evidence on the color-blind approach to tackling ethnic prejudice in the schools. They argue against this approach because while supporting equal treatment of all youth it disregards ethnicity, and renders it “a problematic taboo.” Instead, the authors propose interventions based on intergroup contact theory and present scientific evidence showing that such interventions are efficient in reducing prejudice against immigrants. They present evidence showing that intergroup contact, which may take different forms (e.g., through cross-ethnic friendships, or through reading a book in which someone from one’s own ethnic group has positive relations with someone from another

Excerpt from the 2015 mission statement titled “Positive Development of Immigrant Youth: Why Bother?” drafted during the Hydra Experts’ meeting and supported by the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), the European Association for Developmental Psychology (EADP) and the European Association for Research in Adolescence (EARA).

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European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 1–5

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ethnic group), can challenge anti-immigrant attitudes in young people.

Finally, Martyn Barrett focuses in his paper on the concept of intercultural competence and presents evidence on how it can be promoted by schools (Barrett, 2018). He argues that intercultural competence can help tackle the intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination that immigrant students may experience in their proximal contexts. Like the previous paper, this paper stresses the importance of intergroup contact, which can be promoted through the encouragement of intercultural friendships, programs for spending time studying abroad, and arranging for students to have Internetbased intercultural contact. Such activities can support the development of intercultural competence. Some other methods to promote it are: the use of pedagogical activities, such as role plays and simulations, the analysis of texts, films, and plays, and ethnographic tasks. The author concludes with a call for evaluation of the efficiency of the methods used to promote intercultural competence in actually reducing prejudice against immigrant youth.

What do these papers tell us regarding what promotes and what challenges positive immigrant youth adaptation?

A common denominator in most of these papers is that receiving societies with their policies, laws, and attitudes related to immigration, play a central role in how well immigrant youth are doing. However, as Marks et al.

(2018) noted, policies regarding the integration of immigrants in receiving societies can only go that far to promote immigrant youth adaptation, when national attitudes, such as discrimination and xenophobia, make them feel that they do not belong. To end the way the editorial began, scientific evidence converges on the observation that whereas discrimination, racism, and exclusion have deleterious effects for positive youth development (Jones & Rutland, 2018; Marks et al., 2015, 2018; Phalet et al., 2018; Schachner et al., 2018) and for social cohesion, and are risk factors for radicalization (Verkuyten, 2018), feelings of belonging and being accepted by the receiving society, strengthen immigrant youths’ ties to the host society (Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2006; Barrett, 2018; Jones & Rutland, 2018; Schachner et al., 2018).

References Arends-Tóth, J. V., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2006). Issues in conceptualization and assessment of acculturation. In M. H. Bornstein & L. R. Cote (Eds.), Acculturation and parent-child relationships: Measurement and development (pp. 33–62).

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Barrett, M. (2018). Promoting the intercultural competence of young people in the school context. European Psychologist, 23, 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000308

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Berry, J. W., Phinney, J. S., Sam, D. L., & Vedder, P. (Eds.). (2006).

Immigrant youth in cultural transition: Acculturation, identity and adaptation across national contexts. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (2006). The bioecological model of human development. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology. Vol. 1: Theoretical models of human development (6th ed., pp. 793–828). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Jones, S. E., & Rutland, A. (2018). Attitudes toward immigrant among the youth: Contact interventions and the reduction of prejudice in the school context. European Psychologist, 23, 83–92. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000310 Leyendecker, B., Cabrera, N. J., Lembcke, H., Willard, J., Kohl, K., & Spiegler, O. (2018). Parenting in a new land: Immigrant parents and the positive development of their children and youth. European Psychologist, 23, 57–71. https://doi.org/ 10.1027/1016-9040/a000316 Marks, A. K., Ejesi, K., McCullough, M. B., & García Coll, C. G. (2015). Developmental implications of discrimination. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science (Vol. 3, pp. 1–42). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Marks, A. K., Lynndon McKenna, J., & Garcia Coll, C. (2018).

National immigration receiving contexts: A critical aspect of native- born, immigrant, and refugee youth well-being. European Psychologist, 23, 6–20. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/ a000311 Masten, A. S. (2014). Ordinary magic: Resilience in development.

New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Motti-Stefanidi, F., Berry, J. W., Chryssochoou, X., Sam, D. L., & Phinney, J. S. (2012). Positive immigrant youth adaptation in context: Developmental, acculturation, and social-psychological perspectives. In A. S. Masten, K. Liebkind, & D. J. Hernandez (Eds.), Realizing the potential of immigrant youth (pp. 117–158).

New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Motti-Stefanidi, F., & Masten, A. S. (2017). A resilience perspective on immigrant youth adaptation and development. In N. J. Cabrera & B. Leyendecker (Eds.), Handbook of positive development of minority children (pp. 19–34). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Springer.

Nguyen, A.-M. T., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2013). Biculturalism and adjustment: A meta-analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44, 122–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022111435097 OECD. (2012). Untapped skills: Realising the potential of immigrant students. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/Untapped% 20Skills.pdf Phalet, K., Hillekens, J., & Fleischmann, F. (2018). Religious identity and acculturation of immigrant minority youth: Towards a contextual and developmental approach. European Psychologist, 23, 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000309 Schachner, M., Juang, L., Moffitt, U., & van de Vijver, F. (2018).

Schools as acculturative and developmental contexts for youth of immigrant and refugee background. European Psychologist, 23, 44–56. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/ a000312 Suárez-Orozco, C., Abo-Zena, M., & Marks, A. K. (2015). Transitions: The Development of Immigrant Children. New York, NY: NYU Press.

Suárez-Orozco, C., Motti-Stefanidi, F., Marks, A., & Katsiaficas, D. (in press). An integrative risk and resilience model for understanding the adaptation of immigrant origin children and youth.

The American Psychologist.

Titzmann, P. F., & Lee, R. M. (2018). Adaptation of young immigrants: A developmental perspective on acculturation.

European Psychologist, 23, 72–82. https://doi.org/10.1027/ 1016-9040/a000313

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United Nations. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.un.org/sustain abledevelopment/blog/2016/01/244-million-internationalmigrants-living-abroad-worldwide-new-un-statistics-reveal/ Verkuyten, M. (2005). The social psychology of ethnic identity. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Verkuyten, M. (2018). Religious fundamentalism and radicalization among Muslim minority youth in Europe. European Psychologist, 23, 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000314

Published online March 16, 2018

Frosso Motti-Stefanidi Department of Psychology National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Panepistimiopoli 15784 Athens Greece frmotti@psych.uoa.gr

Katariina Salmela-Aro Educational Sciences University of Helsinki PO Box 9 00014 Helsinki Finland katariina.salmela-aro@helsinki.fi

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Frosso Motti-Stefanidi (PhD) is Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is currently an elected member of the Governing Council of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). In addition, she is Past President of the European Association of Developmental Psychology and of the European Association of Personality Psychology. Her studies focus on immigrant youth adaptation which she examines from a risk and resilience perspective.

Katariina Salmela-Aro is Professor of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland, and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education University College London, the Australian Catholic University and School of Education, the Michigan State University, and the University of California-Irvine. She is the Past-President of the European Association for Developmental Psychology, previous Secretary General (first female) of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD), member of OECD Education2030 team, Academy of Finland Strategic Funding Council and Society of Scientists and Parliament Members, Cabinet. She is a member Horizon2020 EuroCohort aiming to development of a Europe wide longitudinal survey of child and youth well-being.

European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 1–5

Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

National Immigration Receiving Contexts A Critical Aspect of Native-Born, Immigrant, and Refugee Youth Well-Being Amy K. Marks,1 John L. McKenna,1 and Cynthia Garcia Coll2 1

Psychology Department, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USA

2

Clinical Psychology Program, Carlos Albizu University, Puerto Rico

Abstract: Extraordinary increases in refugee and voluntary migration have recently been observed in many European and North American countries. At the same time, negative attitudes toward immigrants and unfavorable immigration-related policy changes are promoting national climates of increased discrimination, fear of deportation, and experiences of income and education inequality among many immigrant origin youth and families. This paper considers how national receiving contexts, in particular the efficacy of national immigration integration policies and markers of national attitudes toward immigrants, can shape both native-born youth and immigrant and refugee youth well-being. Using an ecological framework, we draw from the recent empirical literature and three sources of international policy and child well-being data, to assess how national receiving contexts matter for native-born children and immigrant youth adaptation. Results indicate strong linkages among the macro-level contexts of multicultural policies and positive integration approaches with overall child well-being. More favorable immigrant national attitudes, and the more micro-level perceptions of discrimination and xenophobia, also matter tremendously for immigrant and refugee youth adaptation and health outcomes.

Keywords: national, policy, discrimination, immigrant, children, youth, well-being

Since its inception, the United States has been a nation of immigrants. Built into its constitution are the tenets of pluralism; protections to worship freely and have one’s voice heard – even when it differs from the norm. Yet centuries later these virtues are being renegotiated and threatened, and the health and well-being of many US immigrant youth is at jeopardy. Shifting and punitive US policies and philosophies about immigrants are creating a developmental landscape of discrimination, fear of family members’ deportations, economic insecurity, and barriers to education and health care for many immigrant children (Androff et al., 2011). At the same time, many European countries are similarly struggling with tensions between maintaining traditional ways of life and economics, while integrating newcomers into the fabrics of their societies. How might these shifting national debates and negative political dialogs shape children’s development? How might receiving nations’ successes or shortcomings at integrating its newest members into society promote or inhibit youth outcomes?

The need to examine the immigration-related qualities of national receiving contexts is timely, with many countries European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 6–20 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000311

around the globe experiencing historic changes in migration. In 2016, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported the highest number of asylum seekers since World War II at approximately 1.65 million people in 1 year (OECD, 2016a). Syrian refugees by far make up the majority of asylum seekers, with an estimated 370,000 applications recorded in 2015 alone.

Receiving nations including Germany (accepting the highest number of refugees) and Sweden are accepting refugees at rates of approximately 7 and 15% of their nation’s populations, respectively. Although the US receives a large number of refugees (second in number to Germany), in 2015 new refugees amounted to just 0.4% of the US total population. Canada, a country high in voluntary migration like the US, also admitted a relatively smaller proportion of refugees in 2015 at about 0.5% of its national population.

These recent waves of refugee youth and adults are experiencing many mental health challenges and trauma, stressing and stretching existing care systems to respond adequately (e.g., in Germany, see Ullmann et al., 2015).

Notably, the OECD is calling for increased attention not Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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only to the humanitarian crisis of forced migration but also to the increasingly hostile, anti-immigrant sentiments present in many of the largest receiving nations (e.g., OECD, 2016b, September 9).

The success of integrating families into host societies has extraordinary implications for child and adolescent development broadly – both for native-born and immigrant origin youth. At a national level, a solid body of research evidence now exists demonstrating that as immigrant origin children and adolescents acculturate to the US (or as new generations are born in the US), average well-being among youth declines over time and generations (Marks, Ejesi, & Garcia Coll, 2014). This “immigrant paradox” phenomenon has been a reliable pattern among some youth ethnic immigrant groups in the US (e.g., Latino/as) and Canada, particularly in developmental domains including health and risk behaviors in adolescence (see Beiser, Hou, Hyman, & Tousignant, 2002; Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012; Martinez, McClure, Eddy, & Wilson, 2011; Salas-Wright, Vaughn, Schwartz, & Cordova, 2016).

Studies demonstrating these types of patterns sometimes seem counterintuitive – of positive developmental wellbeing upon initial resettlement to a nation, even with all the psychological and economic stress of migration, that is then lost over time or generations. Yet examples of these patterns, particularly of the strong resilience of immigrant youth upon initial resettlement, appear to be increasing in the literature. A recent longitudinal, national sample of adolescents in Canada showed evidence of what the author called a “healthy immigrant effect” (Kwak, 2016). After accounting for age, household income and size, as well as visible minority status, recent adolescent immigrant youth showed, on average, better general health than native-born nonimmigrants, with some evidence of losing this advantage slightly over the course of a year. Some refugee populations may also demonstrate these immigrant paradox patterns, with a recent national study showing that refugee adolescents in the US were 3–6 times less likely than US-born youth to have substance use problems, and between approximately 40 and 60% less likely than immigrant youth to have substance or alcohol disorders (SalasWright & Vaughn, 2014). This is remarkable given the increased premigration stressors, trauma, and depression present among many refugees when compared to nonrefugee immigrants (Rasmussen, Crager, Baser, Chu, & Gany, 2012). Importantly, many studies are also documenting the protective benefits of immigrant family cultural and structural characteristics that appear to be promoting positive development for their children in terms of better health, lower internalizing and externalizing problems, and lower risk behaviors (e.g., Guarini, Marks, Patton, & Garcia Coll, 2015; Mood, Jonsson, & Laftman, 2016; Taylor, 2016). Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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On the other hand, it is very important to note that the immigrant paradox and healthy immigrant advantages are not observed in all receiving nations. For example, a meta-analysis revealed that immigrant youth in European countries tend to display more adjustment issues compared to natives in terms of internalizing, externalizing, and academic outcomes (Dimitrova, Chasiotis, & van de Vijver, 2016). Another study comparing immigrant adolescent outcomes across 10 countries found that first- and secondgeneration immigrant adolescents demonstrate a higher risk of emotional and behavioral problems than native peers (Stevens et al., 2015). It also appears that immigrant and refugee youth in Greece show similar levels of mental health problems as Greek natives (Anagnostopoulos, Triantafyloou, Xylouris, Bakatsellos, & Giannakopoulos, 2016). In Germany, immigrant origin youth report relatively higher rates of emotional and behavioral problems than native youth, with poorer adjustment to and success in the German school system (Frankenberg, Kupper, Wagner, & Bongard, 2013). In an effort to combine data across multiple European countries using the same measures of developmental outcomes, a study of youth from Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden found evidence of the paradox for school adjustment and behavioral problems, but not for psychological adjustment measures (Sam, Vedder, Liebkind, Neto, & Virta, 2008).

Such population-level patterns of initial adaptation and sometimes later maladaptation, evident in some receiving countries but not in others, elicit questions about the characteristics of receiving nations’ contexts that may promote immigrant origin children’s initial and long-term development.

Our work in this area is informed by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model emphasizing person-environment reciprocity in development (see Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The majority of immigration-related research in child development has tended to focus on the microsystem contexts of family, peers, and schools (see SuarezOrozco, Abo-Zena, & Marks, 2015), with less emphasis on Bronfenbrenner’s outermost layer of influence – the macrosystem. Recent research is starting to point to aspects of the macrosystem, including the importance of policy (e.g., Filindria, Blanding, & Garcia Coll, 2011; White, Yeager, Menachemi, & Scarinci, 2014), and documentation statuses (see Yoshikawa & Kalil, 2011; Yoshikawa, SuarezOrozco, & Gonzales, 2016), as directly linked with immigrant origin child and youth health and education outcomes. In one study, local integration and public assistance policies supporting immigrant families were linked to higher rates of high school graduation for immigrant origin youth (Filindria et al., 2011). Moreover, conservative political climates in this study were linked with lower graduation rates, demonstrating the importance of considering European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 6–20

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both integration policy and communities’ political attitudes for supporting positive immigrant youth outcomes.

In research, these macro-level influences are often measured as they are experienced by youth – as filtered messages promoted or inhibited by the more proximal systems of community organizations, neighborhoods, families, schools, religious institutions, and friends/peers (Stein, Gonzales, Garcia Coll, & Prandoni, 2016). For example, the various manifestations of unauthorized immigration status challenges are linked to children’s development throughout many different contexts in a child’s life including their community, law enforcement, neighborhood, and family contexts (see Suarez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi, & Suarez-Orozco, 2011; Yoshikawa & Kalil, 2011). In this way, national receiving contexts extend from the macrosystem’s sweeping laws and culture, and trickle down to effect immigrant children’s well-being as access or barriers to education and health care (through policy) and as perceptions of positive or negative attitudes toward immigrants (e.g., tolerance, xenophobia, discrimination).

These macro-level forces are largely underrepresented in developmental research, yet are poignantly capable of directly shaping, changing, and promoting or inhibiting children’s development via children’s self-perceptions.

The integrative model of minority development by Garcia Coll and colleagues (1996) is just one framework demonstrating how systemic factors at the macro level directly impact minority youth development through perceptions.

In this model, macro-level forces such as discrimination are conceived of as directly inhibiting minority youth development – both through inhibiting contexts and directly to the individual as perceived discrimination. Such discriminatory messages from adults and peers shape children’s mindsets about what is possible – or not possible – for their futures, education, and job opportunities. With mounting research evidence to support the detrimental impact of discrimination as both directly and indirectly tied to child developmental outcomes and processes (Marks, Ejesi, McCullough, & Garcia Coll, 2015), it is clear that in order to fully understand immigrant youth development one must take into account the reciprocating direct and indirect effects of national attitudes toward immigrants and the impacts of perceived discrimination on immigrant youth well-being and adaptation.

In sum, more research is needed to fully examine the effects of integration policies, public support (i.e., how supportive the larger culture appears to be in favor of receiving immigrants and refugees), and orienting national adaptation philosophies (i.e., how immigrant adaptation is viewed – assimilationist, multicultural, etc.) on immigrant youth development. Moreover, studies examining how integration policies and immigration attitudes effect

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native-born, nonimmigrant youth also are needed. In one study, Veerman (2015) found that countries with more inclusive immigration policies likely support positive interethnic group contact in schools, thus decreasing instances of classroom disruptions – a benefit for all children. Understanding whether inclusive policies are linked with the general well-being of a nation’s child population (regardless of immigration or refugee status) could be an important step in understanding why immigrant origin youth tend to thrive more in some countries, and less in others. Do all children tend to benefit from inclusive immigration policies?

If so, those countries whose immigration policies favor multicultural integration approaches may be less likely to see evidence of the immigrant paradox among their youth population. The current paper therefore focuses on two aspects of national receiving contexts: the associations between policies designed to help immigrant families adjust to their receiving contexts and overall children’s well-being, and the national philosophies and attitudes that appear to be shaping the qualities of receiving contexts for immigrant youth.

Methods To examine our chosen national receiving characteristics and their influences on child well-being, we take a crossnational, multi-method approach. We integrate literature search results with data taken from international indicators of immigration policy and child well-being in several receiving nations. By examining patterns of reported negative attitudes toward immigrants and policy data linked with child well-being data, we aim to draw linkages between these macro-level characteristics and immigrant and refugee children’s development.

Three sources of international data on policies that support integration of immigrants globally and outcome information on child well-being were used. The MIPEX, or the Migrant Integration Policy Index (Huddleston, Bilgili, Joki, & Vankova, 2015), was used to capture relative countries’ standings as being more or less receptive to and effective at integrating immigrants and refugees.

Policies captured by MIPEX include those aimed at Labor Market Mobility, Family Reunification, Education, Health, Political Participation, Permanent Residence, Access to Nationality, and Anti-Discrimination. Countries’ MIPEX scores are based on 148 indicators of policy assessment and expert interviews with higher scores indicating more inclusive integration policies. A recent study of adult immigrant health in Europe utilized the MIPEX data, with meaningful results for understanding adult mental

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health (Malmusi, Palencia, Ikram, Kunst, & Borrell, 2017).

MIPEX data include the above policy indicators as well as public opinion data to capture the qualities of receiving communities as tending toward multicultural, exclusionist, or assimilationist approaches. For our purposes, we used both qualitative and quantitative reports and data, as well as the latest ranking composite index from 2015 to organize our results (Huddleston et al., 2015). In our quantitative explorations, we used data for the top 20 OECD immigrant and refugee receiving countries. In our mixed quantitativequalitative analysis, we then focused on characterizing the four largest OECD refugee receiving countries (Canada, the US, Germany, and UK), as well as two additional countries selected based on their MIPEX integration profiles (Sweden and Greece, both also are strong receivers of refugee and immigrant youth). Only OECD countries were used in this paper because of their large role in receiving immigrants and refugees, and because of the availability of international child well-being data.

Next, we integrated MIPEX data with OECD data on markers of national child well-being (OECD). OECD reports, Doing Better for Children (2009) and Measuring Well-Being (2015), conceptualize indicators of child health to be multifaceted, incorporating psychological, physical, social, and material dimensions. The healthier the host nation’s overall youth population is, the better the chances immigrant youth will have positive outcomes – but only if integration policies support access to the assets and resources of the receiving nation that are promoting the well-being of native-born youth. We therefore used data from MIPEX, Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rankings, and OECD child well-being data to specifically test whether integration policy indices are indeed linked to the general well-being of children and youth in a country.

Six OECD dimensions comprised of 21 indicators of child health and well-being were included in these reports: material well-being, housing and environment, educational well-being, health, risk behaviors, and quality of school life.

Material well-being includes average household income, child poverty, and educational deprivation as indicators.

Housing and environment includes overcrowding and poor environment conditions as indicators. Educational well-being includes average literacy scores, literary inequality, and rates of youth not in employment, education, or training as indicators. Health and safety includes rates of infant mortality, low-weight births, breastfeeding, vaccination, physical activity, mortality, and suicide as indicators.

Risk behaviors include rates of smoking, drunkenness, and teenage pregnancy as indicators. Finally, quality of school life includes instances of bullying and self-reports of enjoying school as indicators.

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These dimensional scores are useful in providing a quantified and standardized comparison of social policy measures across OECD countries, illuminating areas of success as well as improvement. It is important to note that no single, overarching score is offered because (a) there is limited theoretical guidance in aggregation methodology and (b) such a simple score would not be helpful in enhancing child well-being through social policy. Each of these dimensions is highlighted in the present study because they represent the international standards set by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; United Nations, 1989). Although there are many more indicators of child well-being (Nolan, 2012), the present dimensions are considered to best capture aspects of child well-being that are most influenced by social policy (OECD, 2009).

Lastly, we integrated information from the SGI Network, which provides data from a cross-national comparative survey designed to assess three components of sustainable government: Policy Performance, Democracy, and Governance. The domain of Policy Performance examines ways in which economic, social, and environment policies may or may not contribute to the well-being of citizens. Quality of Democracy is assessed through opportunities for citizens to participate in the democratic process, overall respect for the civil rights of citizens, and citizens’ confidence in the legitimacy of political leaders’ actions. The third component, Governance, explores the degree to which a country’s government is able to enhance the public sector’s capacity to act (e.g., strategic capacities, policy communication and implementation, and adaptability) and the degree to which citizens are able to hold governing bodies accountable for their actions.

Finally, to deepen our understanding of how broad political characteristics might be felt by and impact youth, we conducted a literature search to examine recent changes in attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, focusing specifically on the countries identified in the MIPEX and OECD data. We restricted our literature search to peerreviewed articles in English, emphasizing national attitudes and philosophies within the past 5 years. We noted that since 2011 (coinciding with the Arab Spring and geopolitical changes that lead to the Syrian crisis) international receptivity for and attitudes toward immigrants and refugees have shifted. We wished to capture how the qualities of these shifts, as they are occurring, may be experienced by youth.

Key terms in our search included Boolean statements such as discrimination AND (immigrant OR immigration OR refugee) AND (child OR adolescent OR youth). The terms “discrimination, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, receptivity, tolerance, acceptance, rejection, and stigma” were all used separately at the start of the statement.

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Results International Indicators of Integration Policy and Child Well-Being: What Are Immigrant and Refugee Youth Integrating Into?

To start, we began by asking whether national child wellbeing as measured by OECD rankings, is associated with immigrant integration policies from MIPEX and SGI rankings (using Spearman’s rho, p < .05) for the top 20 OECD immigrant and refugee receiving nations.1 Several areas of immigrant integration policy were significantly linked with national child well-being: greater MIPEX Labor Market access was associated with higher ranked OECD child Health and Quality of School Life (r’s = .56 and .52, respectively). Higher ranked MIEX Political Participation and Education indexes were also associated with greater OECD child Housing and Safety rankings (r’s = .53 and .54, respectively). Using the SGI, higher rankings on Policy Performance, Democracy, and Governance all were significantly linked to greater child well-being. SGI Policy Performance was correlated with higher OECD ranked Material (r = .75) and Quality of School Life (r = .69) indicators. Democracy was associated with better Material (r = .47) and Housing and Safety (r = .54) rankings, while Governance was linked to OECD Housing and Safety (r = .57) and Quality of School Life (r = .58). It is interesting to note that no rankings related to MIPEX immigration integration or SGI governance indices were associated with child well-being in OECD measured Educational Wellbeing or Risky Behavior domains. Further, GDP was associated only with the ranking of MIPEX Political Participation (r = .47, p < .05), and was not associated with any OECD indicators of national child well-being.

With these overarching associations in mind, many differences in integration policies and national attitudes were noted in our mixed quantitative-qualitative cross-country comparisons. These unique national characteristics are summarized qualitatively in Table 1 by integrating MIPEX, OECD, and SGI data, using qualitative phrases and characteristics taken directly from these agencies’ reports. These qualitative syntheses emphasize a number of important aspects of national receiving context approaches to supporting adaptation for immigrant youth. Policy indicators of receptivity fall hand in hand with larger national attitudes toward immigrants. At the top of Table 1, Sweden anchors our list of countries as both the most politically aligned with facilitating immigrant and refugee integration policies and 1

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historically the highest levels of multicultural immigrant receptivity national attitudes. Moving down the table (countries are ordered by their quantitative MIPEX indicator scores discussed below), policies in countries such as Canada, the US, and Germany, though adequate in some areas of related to immigration, also are lacking in other areas. Complex patterns of public sentiment and national attitudes toward immigrants can also be observed in these nations. For the UK and Greece, greater challenges with integration policies also appear to be linked with (likely both shaped by and informing) national receiving attitude challenges as well.

Quantitatively, Sweden, Canada, the US, and Germany were ranked in the second tier by MIPEX as having “slightly favorable” (with scores from 60 to 79 on a 100-point scale) integration policies for immigrant resettlement and receptivity. The UK and Greece were deemed a tier lower by MIPEX as “halfway favorable” (scores at 57 and 44, respectively), among the top 38 ranked receiving countries (Huddleston et al., 2015). Notably, no nations were ranked in the top tier of “favorable” with scores 80–100.

Next, we considered how these MIPEX index rankings and the qualitative summaries related to OECD data on child well-being (see Table 2). Sweden, with its most favorable policy and public sentiment profile, also appeared to have the healthiest child population. Sweden’s youth population appeared to be above average for material well-being, housing and environment, health and safety, risk behaviors, and quality of school life. Canada, with strong multicultural policies excelled in children’s educational well-being, but fell short in health and safety. Moving down the MIPEX rankings from there, a great mix of child outcomes can be seen. The US appears average-to-low in its markers of child well-being (with no particular strengths) and, like Canada, scored below average for health and safety. Germany was stronger in child health and safety and material well-being (above average), but struggled in housing and environment. The UK appeared mostly average in its markers, with particular challenges in risk behaviors, but strengths in quality of school life. Finally, although Greece had a better-than-average child risk profile, it struggled with below-average indicators in all other categories. Qualitative descriptions of these quantitative child well-being data appear in Table 3. Together, these data show some correspondence between governance, immigration-related policy and integration, and the national well-being profiles of children, helping to give a qualitative glimpse of what immigrant and refugee children are adjusting to and integrating into in various national contexts.

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and the US.

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Table 1. 2015 OECD countries with high influxes of immigrants and corresponding immigration policies and indicators of immigrant receptivity Country

Characteristics of immigration policies

Indicators of receptivity

Sweden

According to MIPEX, Sweden ranks 1st out of 38 countries in terms of overall integration policy.

Sweden tends to have favorable attitudes towards immigrants (similar to other Nordic countries), with over 80% of Swedes believing immigrants should have equal rights as citizens. This high receptivity rate indicates that natives find immigrants to enrich both the culture and the economy of Sweden.

Approximately 15% of the population is comprised of immigrants with the number of skilled workers steadily increasing. Employment rate of immigrant populations is the highest percentage in the world, making Sweden a particularly desirable migrant destination.

Numerous integration policies have been implemented to address the needs of immigrants, including: having high standards for labor market integration, allowing undocumented children access to education up to the secondary level, allowing undocumented immigrants to have similar healthcare rights as asylum-seekers, and the 2009 Discrimination Act. In 2016, increased finances and resources were allocated to the Swedish Migration Agency to better manage the large amounts of asylum seekers. Significant funds were also dedicated towards integration efforts, including language classes and skill assessments. Such high commitment to immigrant well-being increases the likelihood that immigrants and their children become citizens, remain citizens, and contribute to the Swedish economy.

Canada

United States

Canada ranks 6th in overall integration policy, the highest score among countries with the greatest influx of immigrants in 2014.

Alongside Nordic countries, Canada also has immigration and integration policies that indicate high receptivity of immigrants.

Canada has one of the highest immigration-to-population ratios in the world. Immigrants can become citizens after only 3 years of residency. Approximately half of incoming immigrants possess a university-level education, facilitating integration of adult immigrants into the workforce.

For example, Canada has implemented many recent policy initiatives aimed at facilitating family migration.

In 2016, the maximum number of applications for sponsorship of parents and grandparents was doubled and efforts have been made to decrease processing times for family migration applications. These strides in family reunification indicate growing receptivity to immigrant populations and dedication to promoting long-term and permanent residency.

Despite high levels of integration, immigrants tend to perform poorly in the labor market in popular cities (i.e., Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal), making, on average, 79% of what natives earn. Poor education quality and language barriers are among other obstacles immigrants may face.

2016 changes to the Citizenship Act (1946) allows the Canadian government to more easily retract the rights of immigrants who are a threat to national security or partake in organized crime.

As of February of 2016, Canada has accepted 25,000 refugees from Syria with the expectation of successful immigrant integration. Canada is expected to accept up to 40,000 refugees in 2017.

The United States ranks 9th in overall integration policy due to antidiscrimination laws and protections put in place during 2014.

Approximately 1/3 of immigration to the United States is undocumented (primarily from individuals crossing the Mexican border).

The US has high access to citizenship due to its encouragement of immigrants to apply for citizenship and to become legal and permanent residents. Legal immigrants have access to both employment (although typically lowpaying jobs) and various levels of education. In contrast, family reunification is difficult to accomplish in the United States because most naturalized immigrants are not able to apply for visas on behalf of their family members. However, under the Obama administration, queer couples are now able to sponsor partners and spouses for citizenship.

Receptivity toward undocumented immigrants varies.

Typically, undocumented immigrants are tolerated for their economic contributions, often working in agriculture or other low-paying service jobs. Some undocumented immigrants have access to public schools and the opportunities for employment from businesses because such institutions have historically not been subject to effective sanctions.

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Table 1. (Continued) Country

Germany

United Kingdom

Characteristics of immigration policies

Indicators of receptivity

Integration in the United States is limited by complex and multifaceted laws, prohibitive costs, lengthy wait times, restricted visa availability, and uncertain rights of immigrants.

Due to the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals 2012 (DACA) and previous Executive Action programs, some undocumented minority-status immigrants are able to (1) receive a 2-year deferral from deportation and (2) be eligible for work permits. Note that the Trump administration moved to end the DACA program in the fall of 2017. New policy will need to be designed and implemented on behalf of the large numbers of undocumented youth and family in the US.

Changes in immigration policy remain to be seen under the Trump administration.

International indicators of the United States’ receptivity towards immigrants in general has dramatically changed with the start of the Trump administration. Controversial executive orders for travel bans and halting refugee/ immigration processes have resulted in political polarization, where both xenophobia and xenophilia are on the rise.

Germany ranks 10th in overall integration policy. According to the Federal Statistics Office, approximately 20% of Germany’s population is comprised of immigrants with a net immigration of 550,000 individuals from 2013 to 2014.

However, naturalization rates remain low and immigrants frequently leave for opportunities in other countries. In 2014, Germany began offering dual citizenship rights and abolished the requirement for children born to German and non-German parents to decide between citizenship.

While the integration of immigrants coming to Germany from other European countries is often successful, the integration of Muslim immigrants (especially from Turkey) has been exceptionally challenging and difficult, as evident from poor education achievement and high unemployment rates. To begin addressing this issue, German States have signed treaties with German-Muslim civil rights organizations to establish mutual respect and acknowledgement of Muslim religious holidays. Additionally, Germany also has a Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and hosts the German Islam Conference, which facilitates multicultural dialogue between German government officials and Muslim social activists.

According to the OECD, Germany is among the countries with the fewest restrictions on labor migration for highlyskilled immigrants.

In August of 2016, the Integration Act was introduced. This Act increases the availability of language courses and allows immigrants to remain in the country for the duration of their vocational education and training. After completing this training, immigrants who are able to find employment receive a 2-year residence permit.

The 2015 Syria crisis caused a tremendous influx in immigrant applications seeking asylum in Germany. Unlike other OECD countries, Germany has accepted large numbers of immigrants but without the financial resources.

This has highlighted existing weaknesses within Germany’s integration policy and crisis management capabilities. Plans to remedy these weaknesses include providing financial support for German States with high numbers of Syrian immigrants, language courses, restriction of cash allowances, and increasing the speed with which homes are constructed to support child refugee orphans.

The majority of natives appear to support the government’s open-door approach towards asylum seekers, but with some level skepticism. Since the recent influx of refugees from the Syria crisis, xenophobic groups have formed and have become increasingly vocal in their opposition. There is fear that the unsuccessful integration of these refugees will strengthen xenophobia from some German natives.

The United Kingdom ranks 15th in overall integration policy.

Integration methods vary considerably across cities and towns within the United Kingdom. Such variability has led to tensions regarding where to place public housing and public services to increase accessibility for immigrants living in different regions.

The United Kingdom does not currently have a systematic and formal integration program for immigrants. However, multiculturalism is greatly valued and the protection of racial and ethnic minority rights is enforced by the Race Relations Amendment Act of 2000, as well as the Human Rights Act of 1998.

While citizens largely accept the integration of minority populations, citizens remain reluctant about the integration of immigrants from outside of the European Union.

The Equality Act of 2006 led to the formation of the Equity and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), an organization that focuses on the integration of all minority populations (beyond race and ethnicity).

The formation of the UK Independence Party, which holds strong anti-immigration beliefs, has attracted much negative attention in light of the crisis in Syria.

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Table 1. (Continued) Country

Characteristics of immigration policies

Greece

With the controversial exit from the European Union, the United Kingdom hopes to gain more control over immigration policies.

Greece ranks 27th in terms of overall integration policy.

Indicators of receptivity

Greek natives’ receptivity toward immigrant populations is relatively unwelcoming, with 60% of citizens indicating they view immigrants unfavorably. More than two-thirds of the Greek population also say that immigrants do not contribute to the country’s collective wellbeing.

The Greek Depression in 2009 resulted in severe fiscal crises and high unemployment rates. Depletion in resources and loss of international cost competitiveness led to particularly weak social benefits and high rates of unemployment, making immigrants especially vulnerable. Alongside the economic crisis, Greece experienced an increase in antiimmigration attitudes, resulting in the repealing of immigrants’ (1) rights to vote and (2) birthright citizenship.

The revoking of such rights left large numbers of immigrant children born in Greece without equal rights or proper papers until 2014 when the European Union implemented the Immigration Code (which forces more flexible legal policies regarding migration).

Furthermore, with the rise of 2015 Syriza (The Coalition of the Radical Left) government, more humane and rational immigrant policies are promised in the coming years. For example, in 2016 a Coordinating Body for the Management of the Refugee Crisis was established and an emergency action plan was created to address the housing shortage for refugees.

Notes. Quantitative and qualitative information gathered from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Sustainable Governance Indicators Index (SGI).

Table 2. Rankings of policy-focused indicators of child health among the OECD countries OECD country

Material well-being

Sweden

6*

Housing and environment

Educational well-being

3*

9 3*

Health and safety 3*

Canada

14

/

22**

United States

23

12

25

Germany

16*

18**

15

United Kingdom

12

15

22

20

Greece

26**

19**

27**

23**

Risk behaviors 1*

Quality of school life 5*

10

16

24**

15

14

9*

18

9

28**

4*

7*

24**

Notes. OECD rankings range from 1 to 30, *0.5 SD above OECD average; **0.5 SD below the OECD average; Data collected from Doing Better for Children report (OECD, 2009); / = data not available.

Literature Review: Linking National Attitudes Toward Immigrants and Refugees to Child Well-Being The national MIPEX rankings and qualitative assessment of child well-being gleaned from several international agencies sets a clear stage for considering how national attitudes and receptivity may influence immigrant youth adaptation and well-being. Several themes could be observed in our literature searches of the empirical research linking together these themes. First, a small subset Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

of studies directly examined the development of markers of national attitudes toward immigrants and refugees through constructs including tolerance, stigma, xenophobia, rejection, and acceptance. These were studies that focused more on the attitudes of community members at large (and not immigrant communities per se) to gauge feelings of receptivity toward immigrants. Researchers from Sweden, for example, used a social network analytical approach to demonstrate the power of friends’ tolerance toward immigrants as protective against increases in xenophobia in adolescents’ social networks over time (van Zalk, European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 6–20

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Table 3. Indicators of child well-being and health Country

Indicators of child well-being and health

Nordic countries

Nordic countries (e.g., Sweden, Norway, and Finland) tend to dominate rankings of child well-being and health indicators. Compared to other OECD countries, these countries have significantly lower rates of child poverty, infant mortality, instances of bullying, and overcrowded housing, and significantly higher rates of educational achievement and parental employment. Of particular relevance are the unique and generous family policies aimed at supporting the well-being of children. For example, Sweden offers substantial paid leave for expecting mothers and fathers, as well as family allowance to help cover costs associated with newborns and childcare.

According to OECD’s latest report on child well-being (2015), Nordic countries are the leading performers in the majority of child well-being and health indicators.

Canada

Child poverty rates in Canada have marginally decreased between 2007 and 2011, yet still remain above the OECD average. Concerning academic achievement and quality of education, Canada performs remarkably well. For example, educational outcomes for the average 15-year-old Canadian student are considered to be exceptional, with only a small gap between high and low performing students. In contrast, health outcomes of Canadian youth are relatively poor. Of highest concern are higher rates of suicide and significantly lower immunization rates for younger children compared to other OECD countries. Youth intoxication from alcohol consumption is another issue for Canada, where approximately 20% of underage Canadians report drunkenness.

Despite these areas for improvement, the OECD notes that Canada largely ranks close to the average in many domains of child well-being.

United States

The United States is considered to have relatively poor child health, poor basic education, and high child poverty rates compared to other OECD countries. The United States’ infant and child mortality rate is significantly higher than the OECD average and the rate of teen pregnancy is over three-times the OECD average. In terms of quality of education, the average academic achievement of 15-year olds in the United States is poor, and a large quantity of children lack necessary educational possessions (e.g., desk, quiet place to work, calculator, internet connection, textbooks). While rankings for family income and public spending on children and teenagers are considerably high, the child poverty rate in the United States (21%) is nearly double the OECD average ( 12%), with many children living in workless households. Such a discrepancy indicates an unequal distribution of the country’s wealth.

According to OECD reports, the United States ranks in the bottom third performers in the majority (> 70%) of indicators of child well-being and health.

Germany

Germany's performance in domains of child well-being and health is polarized. For example, while income for German families closely resembles the OECD average, child poverty rates are considered to be high. Although the majority of German students have access to critical basic education items and perform slightly above the OECD average, large gaps between high and low academic performers is of concern. In terms of physical health, Germany’s youth have increased rates of physical inactivity, smoking, and instances of bullying compared to other OECD countries. However, Germany performs well in other areas of child health with high rates of breastfeeding initiation and vaccination and low rates of child mortality and teen pregnancy. A growing area of alarm is poor local environmental conditions, where over one in three German children are living in underprivileged-quality housing.

According to OECD reports, Germany, on average, ranks among the highest OECD countries for approximately 50% of health indicators, and the lowest for approximately 5%.

United Kingdom

Although the United Kingdom spends more on child education and welfare compared to other OECD countries, children still perform below average in a number of key health domains. High proportions of children and teenagers are not in school or have a job, are becoming pregnant, and are drinking underage; the UK has the highest rate of child drunkenness among OECD countries. Furthermore, academic achievement of students is thought to be low relative to the high amounts of public spending on youth and adolescent education. The OECD recommends that more funds be spent on older children to reinforce the high financial investment in positive outcomes of younger children. With regard to child quality of life, the UK performs well. Family income is higher and child poverty is lower than OECD averages and British children are considered to be materially affluent. Additionally, the UK ranks high for child satisfaction with school, which is accompanied by low bullying rates.

According to OECD reports, child health outcomes are disappointing considering high financial investments in education and well-being.

Greece

Greece performs below the OECD average in many domains of child well-being and health. The average income of Greek households is below that of other countries, with rates of child poverty exceeding the OECD average. Children are also approximately twice as likely to be living in overcrowded conditions from birth to later adolescence. Performance in school settings is also poor. The average educational achievement of Greek 15-year olds is significantly below average and educational inequality is high, indicating the existence of large gaps between higher and lower performing students. Although Greece has higher rates of underweight childbirth, lower rates of immunization, and twice the rate of school-based bullying, Greece holds one of the lowest rates of child suicide and infant mortality compared to other OECD countries.

According to OECD reports, Greece ranks among the lowest countries in the majority of child well-being and health indicators.

Note. Quantitative and qualitative information gathered from Doing Better for Children (OECD, 2009) and How’s Life for Children? (OECD, 2015).

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Kerr, van Zalk, & Stattin, 2013). Another study examined longitudinal patterns of prejudice and tolerance toward immigrants and found that Swedish parents and their adolescents influenced one another’s attitudes over time (Miklikowska, 2016). Notably, both studies were conducted in Sweden, whose national policies and attitudes appear to anchor the most favorable end of the international MIPEX and OECD spectrum. Studies such as these were unique and rare in the recent literature, highlighting a need for contemporary research in this area that may capture the development of national receiving context attitudes toward immigrants and refugees.

Overall, the vast majority of studies examining attitudes toward members of immigrant and refugee groups centered on the topic of child and adolescent perceived discrimination, as felt and experienced directly by immigrant children or parents. Just over 250 articles were identified on this topic in peer-reviewed journals in the past 5 years alone. After removing duplicate entries, nonempirical studies, those focused solely on adults, and retaining only studies conducted in the US, Canada, and Europe, 136 articles remained. Sixty-four percent of these were conducted in the US, while 27% were from European countries and 9% from Canada. As indicated above, the US ranks average-to-low in its indicators of national child health, with only “slightly favorable” integration policy and national attitudes. It is interesting that the US also dominates the literature examining the effects of discrimination on immigrant youth.

Of the total 136 papers retained, only 12 articles focused on discrimination experiences specifically among refugees; on average, these were among the most recent papers published, likely a reflection of the need to address the recent refuge crisis. One recent paper in Canada captured the macro-level construct of cultural distance from the native Canadian culture as an important risk factor for poor mental health among both refugee and immigrant early adolescents (ages 11–13; Beiser, Puente-Duran, & Hou, 2015). In this study, cultural distance (or the degree to which the youth’s culture of origin differs from the traditional Canadian culture) increased youth’s perceptions of discrimination. Refugee youth in Canada also appear to be at increased risk for experiencing discrimination and higher levels of emotional problems than immigrant youth in Canada (Beiser & Hou, 2016), and for perceiving discrimination based on sexual orientation (Munro et al., 2013). Several studies examined refugee youth in Europe. A study in Norway demonstrated a positive effect of cultural competence and social support on refugee youth’s abilities to handle discrimination, even with high levels of overall mental distress (Oppedal & Idsoe, 2015). In the US, African Muslim adolescents were interviewed in a qualitative study about their adjustment Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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to public schools; a prominent theme of their narratives focused on Islamophobia, discrimination, and racism (Haffejee, 2015); Somali refugee adolescents also experienced discrimination in the US (Ellis et al., 2016).

Discrimination among immigrant youth more broadly was typically addressed during the adolescent period, and was attributed to ethnic origin or religious group membership (most common; e.g., Bayram Ozdemir, Ozdemir, & Stattin, 2016; Davis et al., 2016; Tummala-Narra & SathasivamRueckert, 2016), native language spoken (or presence of an accent in the receiving country’s language; e.g., Kayaalp, 2016), racial group membership (e.g., Johnsson, Zolkowska, & McNeil 2015; Strohmeier, Karna, & Salmivalli, 2011), and sexual orientation (e.g., Munro et al., 2013). The emphasis on adolescence makes theoretical sense, in that youth are increasingly exposed to macro-level systematic discrimination as they age (see Kira, Lewandowski, Chiodo, & Ibrahim, 2014). Importantly, perceiving various types of discrimination were linked to reductions in adolescents’ well-being across many domains of functioning, from challenges in school to increases in mental health problems (e.g., Lorenzo-Blanco et al., 2017). Perceptions of discrimination have also been linked to attitudes from natives in educational settings. For instance, adolescent immigrant students tend to report higher levels of perceived discrimination in European schools where native students have increased negative attitudes toward immigrant populations (Brenick, Titzmann, Michel, & Silbereisen, 2012). This finding not only highlights the prevalence of discrimination against immigrants in school contexts but also indicates that immigrant students’ perceptions of such negativity are indeed accurate.

A few stand-out studies tackled topics specific to children (as opposed to adolescents) in the area of perceived discrimination. One unique study examined children’s own attitudes toward immigrants among a sample of white American elementary school students (Brown, 2011).

In this study, children seemed aware of anti-immigrant sentiments and attributed them to ethnic-racial discrimination. Further, younger students appeared more apt to endorse ideas of imprisonment (instead of citizenship) for immigrants than older students. This work uniquely captures the nascent awareness of and biases toward immigrant community members as experienced directly by children. Two studies also linked parents’ workplace discrimination experiences directly to immigrant children’s challenges in behavior and family functioning (GassmanPines, 2016; Wheeler, Updegraff, & Crouter, 2015). In one study, parents’ perceptions of discrimination predicted reductions in their children’s health care visits later, a striking example of the long reaches of discrimination across various layers of ecological contexts (Halim, Yoshikawa, & Amodio, 2013). As expected, the effects of discrimination for youth across all countries of interest European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 6–20

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appeared to trickle down to ecological micro-settings including families, schools, and communities to impact immigrant and refugee youth in various, negative ways.

Discussion With the currently tumultuous political climates surrounding immigrant and refugee youth experiences in many nations, this paper integrates published academic research with international data on qualities of some of the most prominent national receiving contexts for immigrant and refugee youth. Our findings indicate, on the one hand, strong correspondence between nations’ quality of governance and immigration integration policies for supporting child well-being (as seen through the quantitative correlations among indexes), and on the other hand the many complexities of capturing these national receiving contexts qualitatively as they relate to immigrant origin youth.

The clearest qualitative correspondence could be seen at the top and bottom of the MIPEX rankings: Sweden, with its generally multicultural approaches and attitudes and most favorable integration policies, also has the child population with above-average markers of well-being in all measured OECD domains. At the bottom of the ranking for countries we selected was Greece. Challenged tremendously by economic strife and less favorable integration policies, Greece also had a lower-than-average health profile for its youth population. These two extremes correspond to the academic literature, where we see immigrant youth in Greece struggle more with adjustment and academics when compared to immigrant youth in Nordic countries such as Sweden (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2016; Behtoui & Neergaard, 2016).

Interestingly, the countries in which there have been, so far, strongest empirical evidence of an immigrant paradox (the US and Canada) were more mixed in their profiles for child well-being and integration policy and national attitudes. Notably, both the US and Canada ranked below average for child health and safety – the domains in which we find most evidence of the paradox (health and risk behaviors; see Marks, Ejesi, & Garcia Coll, 2014). It is worth noting, too that the domains of child health and risk behaviors were not quantitatively correlated with immigrant integration policies on the MIPEX, perhaps indicating that integration policies are not adequate for or adequately accessed by immigrant youth. Such moderation effects are worthy of future study. These health and behavioral domains may instead be more linked to national attitudes about immigration, rather than policies. Put another way – policies can only go so far to improve the health and behavioral well-being of a nation’s children if national European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 6–20

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attitudes such as discrimination and xenophobia are socially preventing immigrant origin youth and families from accessing the services they need and feeling like they belong in school. In the cases of the US and Canada, it makes sense that if these two large immigrant and refugee receivers are sustaining below-average child health and safety profiles for the general population, coupled with heightened anti-immigration attitudes, as immigrant youth spend longer stretches of time some of the healthy “advantage” many of these youth showed upon arrival may be lost.

Notably, a recent nationally-representative study in the US found that immigrant youth are less optimistic about their future well-being, health, and vitality than native-born Caucasian youth (Warner & Swisher, 2015), demonstrating perhaps an awareness of the decreasing prospects for their health as youth acculturate. Although the “immigrant paradox” may have been coined this term by early scholars surprised by strong newcomer immigrant health, it should be no surprise that such advantages will be lost over time if the national average for children’s well-being is lower than ideal and national attitudes are anti-immigration.

Including the qualities of national receiving contexts is critical to capturing the person-environment interactions surrounding immigrant and refugee youth development, and for considering how best to support children facing the real challenges of global migration, family separations and deportations, systemic discrimination, and other macro-to-micro level challenges (Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Sam, & Phinney, 2012). It is important to keep in mind that vast differences in immigrants’ experiences happen based on many intersecting social position factors, including youth gender, socioeconomic status, legal status, and ethnic/racial group membership (see SuarezOrozco, Motti-Stefanidi, Marks, & Katsiaficas, in press), factors we were not able to include in the current analysis.

At the level of children’s perceptions of national attitudes, research on discrimination has dominated the literature.

From this body of work, clear patterns of negative developmental outcomes (usually in the domain of reduced mental well-being) can be attributed to immigrant youth’s increases in perceived discrimination (Berry & Vedder, 2016). These findings were observed in recent research across most of the receiving countries we studied, echoing the findings of a recent review on immigrant youth adjustment in European Union countries in which ethnic minority immigrant youth across many nations were at increased risk of experiencing discrimination and marginalization (Sandhu & Moosa, 2013).

Even with a relatively high, recent prevalence of discrimination research, we note an absence of large-scale, nationally-representative studies linking discrimination to immigrant and refugee child and adolescent well-being. Such studies do appear to be emerging in the adult literature with Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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immigrants and refugees. In a study of 2,000 Latino adults in the US, increased perceptions of discrimination and personal involvement with legal enforcement for deportations was related to increased fear, reduced optimism about the future of Latino children’s lives in the US, and lower quality of life indicators (Becerra, Androff, Cimino, Wagaman, & Blanchard, 2013). In a national study of adult immigrants living in Germany, perceived discrimination showed negative impacts on both mental and physical health (Schunck, Reiss, & Razum, 2015). Similar national-level research directly examining the detrimental influences of discrimination and other markers of negative national attitudes toward immigrant and refugee children is warranted.

Far less common than discrimination research, and vitally missing from the literature, are studies examining other types of national attitudes such as xenophobia and anti-immigration political views, whether as coming from the adults in children’s lives, their peers, or their own selves. These studies were few, with two studies in Sweden providing clear evidence that such attitudes are socialized within families (parent to adolescent, and vice versa), and that peers’ tolerance for immigrants can halt the spread of xenophobia among peer networks (Miklikowska, 2016; van Zalk et al., 2013). One noteworthy study that was not covered in our review because it was conducted in Australia, revealed that the presence of far-right political posters viewed by adolescents prior to an academic test harmed their performance on the examination for ethnic minority – but not majority – adolescents (Appel, 2012).

More studies investigating how political attitudes and media portrayal (including social media) of the antiimmigration, anti-refugee policies, and caustic political rhetoric are affecting immigrant youth are sorely needed to capture the many complex aspects of macro-to-micro level influences of national immigration attitudes on immigrant youth well-being.

Of course, receiving contexts of communities, neighborhoods, and schools vary tremendously within their national contexts (e.g., UK), perhaps particularly in the larger receiving nations where sheer geography, climates, and cultures from one location to the next can vary tremendously (e.g., the US). We do not wish to paint an overly broad picture of any one particular nation and risk obscuring or detracting attention away from the importance of local, micro-level contexts. On the contrary, most of our own work continues to be focused on the more proximal contextual influences on immigrant and refugee youth, and we understand these have vitally important and potent influences on immigrant youth development (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2015). Instead, our hope with this paper is to bring attention to an oftenoverlooked importance of capturing changes in and characteristics of national policies and attitudes that also clearly have implications for immigrant and refugee children’s Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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development. Notably, such macro-level factors are oftentimes the ones most changeable through policy. An uptick in hate crimes and bias incidences in the US and other European countries (e.g., Estonia, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom; see André & Dronkers, 2017), for example, is currently happening at the same time as less favorable immigration policies are being enacted (Cuerden & Rogers, 2017). Such national trends present key opportunities for policy makers and developmental researchers to work together to promote evidence-based policy reform and social interventions to assist immigrant and refugee youth adaptation.

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Journal of Traumatic Stress, 25, 705–712. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/jts.21763 Salas-Wright, C. P., & Vaughn, M. G. (2014). A “refugee paradox” for substance use disorders? Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 142, 345–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.06.008 Salas-Wright, C. P., Vaughn, M. G., Schwartz, S. J., & Cordova, D. (2016). An “immigrant paradox” for adolescent externalizing behavior? Evidence from a national sample. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 51, 27–37. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s00127-015-1115-1 Sam, D. L., Vedder, P., Liebkind, K., Neto, F., & Virta, E. (2008).

Immigration, acculturation and the paradox of adaptation in Europe. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 138–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405620701563348 Sandhu, T., & Moosa, F. (2013). Mental health of children of immigrants and ethnic minorities in Europe. Adolescent Psychiatry, 3, 30–33. https://doi.org/10.2174/2210676611303010007 Schunck, R., Reiss, K., & Razum, O. (2015). Pathways between perceived discrimination and health among immigrants: Evidence from a large national panel survey in Germany. Ethnicity & Health, 20, 493–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2014.

932756 Stein, G. L., Gonzales, R. G., Garcia Coll, C., & Prandoni, J. I. (2016). Latinos in rural, new immigrant destinations: A modification of the integrative model of child development. In L. J. Crockett & C. Gustavo (Eds.), Rural ethnic minority youth and families in the United States (pp. 37–56). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Stevens, G. M., Walsh, S. D., Huijts, T., Maes, M., Madsen, K. R., Cavallo, F., & Molcho, M. (2015). An internationally comparative study of immigration and adolescent emotional and behavioral problems: Effects of generation and gender. Journal of Adolescent Health, 57, 587–594. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jadohealth.2015.07.001

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Strohmeier, D., Karna, A., & Salmivalli, C. (2011). Intrapersonal and interpersonal risk factors for peer victimization in immigrant youth in Finland. Developmental Psychology, 47, 248–258. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020785 Suarez-Orozco, C., Abo-Zena, M., & Marks, A. K. (2015). Contexts of development: An ecological framework. In C. Suarez-Orozco, M. Abo-Zena, & A. K. Marks (Eds.), Transitions: The development of children of immigrants (pp. 27–31). New York, NY: NYU Press.

Suarez-Orozco, C., Motti-Stefanidi, F., Marks, A. K., & Katsiaficas, D. (in press). An integrative risk and resilience model for understanding the development and adaptation of immigrant origin children and youth. American Psychologist.

Suarez-Orozco, C., Yoshikawa, H., Teranishi, R. T., & SuarezOrozco, M. M. (2011). Growing up in the shadows: The developmental implications of unauthorized status. Harvard Educational Review, 81, 438–472. https://doi.org/10.17763/ haer.81.3.g23x203763783m75 Taylor, C. A. L. (2016). Migrant selectivity or cultural buffering?

Investigating the Black immigrant health advantage in low birth weight. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 18, 390–396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-015-0194-0 Tummala-Narra, P., & Sathasivam-Rueckert, N. (2016). The experience of ethnic and racial group membership among immigrant-origin adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Research, 31, 299–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558415592178 Ullmann, E., Barthel, A., Tache, S., Bornstein, A., Licinio, J., & Bornstein, S. R. (2015). Emotional and psychological trauma in refugees arriving in Germany in 2015. Molecular Psychiatry, 20, 1483–1484. https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2015.164 United Nations. (1989). United Nations Convention for the Rights of Children. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=child van Zalk, M. H., Kerr, M., van Zalk, N., & Stattin, H. (2013).

Xenophobia and tolerance toward immigrants in adolescence: Cross-influence processes within friendships. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41, 627–639. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10802-013-9745-9 Veerman, G. M. (2015). The relationship between ethnic diversity and classroom disruption in the context of migration policies.

Educational Studies, 41, 209–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 03055698.2015.955750 Warner, T. D., & Swisher, R. R. (2015). Adolescent survival expectations: Variations by race, ethnicity, and nativity. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 56, 478–494. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0022146515611730 Wheeler, L. A., Updegraff, K. A., & Crouter, A. C. (2015). Mexicanorigin parents’ work conditions and adolescents’ adjustment.

Journal of Family Psychology, 29, 447–457. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/fam0000085 White, K., Yeager, V. A., Menachemi, N., & Scarinci, I. C. (2014).

Impact of Alabama’s immigration law on access to health care among Latina immigrants and children: Implication for national reform. American Journal of Public Health, 104, 397–405. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301560 Yoshikawa, H., & Kalil, A. (2011). The effects of parental undocumented status on the developmental contexts of young children in immigrant families. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2011.

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A. K. Marks et al., National Immigration Receiving Contexts

Received March 30, 2017 Revision received September 3, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018

Amy K. Marks Psychology Department Suffolk University 73 Tremont Street Boston, MA USA akmarks@suffolk.edu

Amy K. Marks (PhD) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Suffolk University in Boston, MA. She is a graduate of Cornell and Brown Universities with degrees in the areas of psychology, sociology, and biology, and has worked with immigrant communities in the US for over 20 years.

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John L. McKenna is a doctoral student in Suffolk University’s APAaccredited Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. He is currently in his third year of training, and is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, MA.

Cynthia García Coll (PhD) is a professor in the Clinical Psychology program and the associate director of ICSR at Albizu University’s San Juan campus in Puerto Rico. She is a graduate of Harvard University and a professor and leading researcher in education, pediatrics, and psychology.

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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Religious Fundamentalism and Radicalization Among Muslim Minority Youth in Europe Maykel Verkuyten ERCOMER, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Abstract: In Europe there are important concerns about fundamentalist religious beliefs among Muslim youth and “homegrown” radicalization that can lead to violent extremism. For these phenomena, different explanations are given, but there is very little systematic empirical research. Based on the existing conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature and using a social psychological perspective, the current paper discusses religious fundamentalism and radicalization among Muslim minority youth in Europe. Specifically, feelings of uncertainty, perceived hostility, and perceived injustice are discussed as three important psychological factors involved in radicalization. Furthermore, the critical importance of intra- and intergroup processes and social networks is discussed. The review of the research is concluded by providing some directions and suggestions for future research and for prevention and intervention.

Keywords: Muslim youth, religious identification, religious fundamentalism, radicalization

There are around 19 million Muslims in the European Union constituting an ethnically and religious diverse population. Whereas most Muslims in Western Europe came as immigrants, some Eastern and South-Eastern European countries are home to significant numbers of nonimmigrant Muslims. And whereas former colonial ties resulted in the settlement of Muslims in France, Britain, and Spain, the Muslim population in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands is the result of these countries’ recruitment policies for manual labor. Further, although the majority is Sunni there also are Shiite and Alevi Muslims in Europe (Buijs & Rath, 2002). The large diversity makes it problematic to speak of a single Muslim “community” in Europe, or in one particular European country. Yet, within and across countries, Muslims with a strong religious group identification and a strict religious orientation can be expected to show important similarities in beliefs, values, and norms for behavior (e.g., Statham, 2016).

Islam has emerged as the main focus of immigration and diversity debates in Europe and is considered to separate Muslim immigrants from host societies (Foner & Alba, 2008). These debates are fueled by concerns about the (in)compatibility of Islam with liberal democratic values, and about fundamentalist religious beliefs and “homegrown” radicalization that can lead to violent extremism. Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

Fundamentalist interpretations of religion imply an “ideological” distancing from modernity that stimulates at least withdrawal from, and in the worst case violence against, the wider society that is perceived as violating one’s holy principles (e.g., Buijs, Demant, & Handy, 2006). Recent years have shown a dramatic increase in the number of academic and popular publications on Muslim fundamentalism, radicalism, and terrorism. For these different phenomena, various explanations are given at different levels of analysis (e.g., societal conditions, group processes, individual psychology) and most often based on theoretical thinking, anecdotal evidence, case studies, or media and court reports (Christmann, 2012; Silke, 2008). Very few studies present systematic empirical evidence and the empirical studies that do exist tend to use data that have serious limitations, such as the lack of comparison groups and a focus on generational differences (first and second/ third generations) rather than developmental outcomes (Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2010; Rink & Sharma, in press).

The great number of publications also has highlighted the lack of conceptual agreement leading to misunderstandings between researchers (“a source of confusion,” Sedgwick, 2010) and difficulties in assessing the literature.

There is, for example, no generally accepted definition of radicalization and different forms of radicalization have European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000314

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been distinguished, such as violent and nonviolent radicalism, and cognitive and behavioral radicalization (Bartlett & Miller, 2012). Yet, most scholars agree that radicalization involves a set of pathways in which perceived grievances and extreme beliefs are translated in a growing readiness to sympathize, support, and participate in nonviolent or violent political actions to change society’s value priorities and the status quo. These beliefs can be political, such as political radicalism among the far-right and the far-left, and can involve single issues such as animal welfare, the environment, or abortion. Radicalization can also be based on religious fundamentalist beliefs with its distancing from modernity, and there are religious radical groups among all major religions.

In the current paper I focus on religious fundamentalism as well as radicalization among Muslim minority youth in Europe. Because of the lack of systematic empirical knowledge my discussion will be more theoretical than empirical. In the following sections, I will first discuss the construct of radicalization. This is followed by a discussion of religious fundamentalism. Subsequently I will go into feelings of uncertainty, perceived hostility, and perceived injustice as three important general psychological factors involved in radicalization. This is followed by a discussion of the critical importance of group processes and social networks. The paper concludes with some directions for future research.

Radicalization The process of radicalization involves an increasing distrust in the established order and its majority representatives, together with a growing commitment to extreme beliefs, values, and norms of behavior that reject or undermine the status quo. For understanding the process of radicalization various models with different stadia or phases of radicalization up to terrorism have been proposed (see Christmann, 2012, King & Taylor, 2011). These stadia involve different degrees of radicalization that range from being receptive to fundamentalist messages, having sympathy for radical beliefs, to passive support for radical organizations, to active support, and to terrorist violence.

This understanding of (Muslim) radicalization in terms of degrees has resulted in models such as the pyramid model (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008), and the staircase model (Moghaddam, 2005) in which many individuals are at the base of the pyramid or staircase and very few at the top.

These models indicate that different processes are involved in the development of different degrees of radicalization (“going steps up”) and de-radicalization (“going steps down”). Sympathy for radical beliefs differs from passive European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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support, and passive support is different from actual engagement. These models raise the important question of specificity (Sageman, 2004); why only part of the Muslim youth in Europe has sympathy for radical beliefs, why a smaller part shows passive support for radical behavior, an even smaller part is an active supporter, and why very few are actively engaged in terrorism and violence. Only a very small number of individuals with radical beliefs turn to terror which indicates that radicalization can remain nonviolent in character.

These single dimension models are informative but also have their limitations because the movement from one stadium toward the next is not always empirically confirmed (Lygre, Eid, Larsson, & Ranstorp, 2011), and fundamentalist beliefs might also form a barrier against violence (Buijs et al., 2006). Terrorist violence is based on radical beliefs but not all radical beliefs (cognitive radicalization) lead to violence (behavioral radicalization). These beliefs can also lead to withdrawal in the own religious community and to normative forms of political action (e.g., protest, political organization; Bartlett & Miller, 2012).

There is no objective demographic profile of individuals who radicalize, apart from the fact that most individuals joining radical groups are late adolescents or young adults, and most often male. And there also is no distinctive (pathological) personality profile: radicals are not “crazy” (Corner, Gill, & Mason, 2016; Silke, 1998). Rather, there are different personal motivations and triggering factors at play resulting in different pathways to radicalization (Nesser, 2004; Slootman & Tillie, 2006). Living in unfavorable circumstances (e.g., low education, unemployment, broken family, being discriminated) or in a religious enclave is sometimes associated with more radical beliefs and actions, and sometimes not, and well-integrated and educated European youth also can become attracted to Islamic fundamentalism. This does not mean, however, that these conditions cannot constitute facilitating or contributing factors which make radicalization more likely.

The broader international and national context and situational circumstances can create an environment conductive to recruitment and radicalization of certain youth. Social, economic, and political circumstances impact the psychological processes which can draw youngsters toward radicalism, and religious fundamentalist belief is an important aspect of this (Delia Deckard & Jacobson, 2015).

Religious Fundamentalism Religiosity is multidimensional and different dimensions have been proposed. For example, conceptualizing and measuring religiosity, Kellstedt, Green, Guth, and Smidt (1996) Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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propose the three-B classification of religious belonging (group identification), behavior (praxis), and belief. These three aspects have been found to have different and sometimes conflicting effects on, for example, political and social tolerance (Ben-Nun Bloom & Arikan, 2012; Nunn, Crockett, & Williams, 1978). Religious fundamentalism can be considered a specific form of religious belief that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for Muslim youth radicalization. This does not mean that every radical extremist starts with fundamentalist beliefs because these beliefs can also develop during the process of radicalization. Yet, religious fundamentalism is a central ideological ingredient in the politicization of Islam (Islamism).

Although the term “fundamentalism” is variously and loosely used (see Emerson & Hartman, 2006), the phenomenon of fundamentalism appears to have several commonalities regardless of the specific religion (Herriot, 2007; Hood, Hill, & Williamson, 2005). One of the most commonly used definitions in the psychological literature (Altemeyer & Hunsberger 1992) stresses, first, that in religious fundamentalism there is an emphasis on a single, unchangeable interpretation that is binding for all believers: one’s religion is considered an unchangeable entity laid down in sacred texts that need to be taken literally. Second, there is an emphasis on orthopraxy in which behavioral rules established in the past should be strictly followed and prevail over secular ones. Third, and most importantly, religious fundamentalism is directed against the modern secular world (Herriot, 2007; Hood et al., 2005). Fundamentalist beliefs imply a rigid in-group and out-group distinction between the superiority of our “true” belief and a modern world that is contradictory or hostile to our religion.

Religious fundamentalists have an adversarial stance toward Western modernity which can result in different forms of Islamism. It can involve a withdrawal from society and leading an ascetic lifestyle. But it can also involve the belief that society should be organized around one’s religious values and normative practices which have to be defended against those who corrupt the pure faith, such as religious moderates, apostates, and seculars. The latter possibility does not have to include the support or willingness to engage in violent means to defend the faith or achieve religious goals: “violence is certainly not a defining characteristic of fundamentalism” (Herriot, 2007, p. 1).

Scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase the support for actual violence (Bushman, Ridge, Das, Key, & Busath, 2007), and fundamentalists might sympathize with the aims of terrorists but the majority disagrees with violent means. Fundamentalist aims can also be pursued in more peaceful, democratic ways (Emerson & Hartman, 2006). However, because compromise is an essential element in democratic politics, the democratic process is Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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often considered alien to one’s fundamentalist beliefs leading to social, political, and intellectual segregation and disengagement. When all eternal truths can be found in the Quran and the religious teachings, political thought should be directly informed by Islamic belief only.

There is very little systematic knowledge about religious fundamentalism among Muslim minority youth in Europe.

Some studies have described a weak but growing fundamentalist orientation among second and third generation Muslims which is expressed in literal interpretations of religious texts, an emphasis on basic religious principles and support for Sharia law (Kibria, 2008). For example, a survey research in Great Britain found that 42% of Muslim youth (16–24 years) agreed that Sharia law is absolute and should not be interpreted to fit in with Western values, and 36% agreed that Muslim converts to another religion should be punished by death (Mirza, Senthilkumaran, & Ja’far, 2007). In a survey research in Belgium it was found that around 45% of Muslim youth of Turkish and Moroccan origin indicated that everything that can be found in the Quran should be taken literally as written (Güngör, Fleischmann, & Phalet, 2011). In a survey study in six European countries (Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Sweden) second generation Sunni Muslims were found to have much more fundamentalist beliefs than Alevi Muslims and Christian natives (Koopmans, 2015). A little over 50% agreed that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam, 70% agreed that there is only one interpretation of the Quran to which every Muslim should stick, and 64% agreed that the rules of the Quran are more important than the laws of the country. Several other studies have identified the interest of Sunni Muslim youngsters in a “pure” Islam but it is unknown what exactly is driving this interest and to what extent these interests have an impact on their everyday life (see Voas & Fleischmann, 2012).

Psychological Dynamics Research in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK indicates that there is no clear relation between Muslim family and child raising practices and radicalization (Sieckelinck & De Winter, 2015). Rather, there often are intergenerational struggles in which young Muslims explicitly contrast their “real” Islamic faith with what they consider the culturally infected beliefs and practices of their parents (Lewis, 2007; Vertovec & Rogers, 1998). In their return to the “real Islam” children reject some parental homeland traditions as non-Islamic and intergenerational conflict is considered a factor in the radicalization of Muslim minority youth (Rink & Sharma, in press). Additionally, many Islamic extremists went to secular primary and European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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secondary education rather than Islamic religious schools, and there are Islamist extremists who were raised as Christians and converted to Islam later in life (Sageman, 2004; Uhlman, 2008). So the religious background of radicalized Muslims is not clear-cut and radicalization seems to have much to do with processes within and between groups and the related feelings of uncertainty, and perceived hostility and injustice (Doosje, Loseman, & Van den Bos, 2013).

Uncertainty An important factor that makes Muslim youth sensitive and receptive to fundamentalist beliefs and also radicalization is personal uncertainty. Individuals react to uncertainty by hardening their beliefs and increasing their convictions (McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). Erik Erikson has noted that the identity development process implies that adolescents are uncertain about themselves and that ideologies assist in developing a secure identity. Muslim minority youth face the challenge of defining an identity for themselves within a Western, modern individualized world. Islamic fundamentalism provides a potential answer to the search for identity and meaning in offering a fixed value system amid the value pluralism of European societies. If young Muslims lack a clear sense of self, joining a fundamentalist group provides an absolute worldview about what to believe and how to act, and to distance themselves in a positive way from modern society.

Social psychological research has demonstrated that group identification reduces self-uncertainty. Feelings of self-uncertainty lead to joining and identification with “pure” or well-defined groups that reduce uncertainty by providing clear beliefs, values, and norms for behavior (Hogg, 2000). Religious groups are especially suited for this because they provide eternal and sacred truths that contribute to a sense of confidence, belonging, self-worth, and meaningfulness (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). For example, survey research in Egypt and Saudi Arabia has found that Muslim youth who feels uncertain and insecure is higher on religious fundamentalism and more likely to rely on religious authorities (Moaddel & Karabenick, 2008).

In the European context, Muslim youth can turn to their religious group and fundamentalist beliefs as part of a search for certainty, meaning, and community. They live as a minority in historically Christian societies that are increasingly secular. So they not only have to deal with “normal” adolescent feelings of self-uncertainty but also with the uncertainties of trying to combine quite different sets of beliefs, values, and behavioral norms. They can experience a double sense of non-belonging because they do not feel part of the community of their parents and at the same time feel rejected by the host society European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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(Khosrokhavar, 2005; Roy, 2004). Survey research among Muslim youth in the Netherlands indicates that stronger feelings of self-uncertainty are associated with feeling superior to and keeping more social distance toward those having different beliefs (Doosje et al., 2013).

The psychological integration of different worldviews can lead to feelings of identity incompatibility that, in turn, lead to a distancing from the host society (Martinovic & Verkuyten, 2012) and higher sympathy for radical political actions (Simon, Reichert, & Grabow, 2013). Neurological research has indicated that identity incompatibility involves activity in the behavioral inhibition system which produces anxiety and stress that can lead to a stronger commitment to a singly, clearly defined normative and moral framework (Hirsh & Kang, 2016). Youth with fundamentalist beliefs tend to be 24/7 believers in which their religious identity dominates all spheres of life and eclipses other identities and group belongings (Gielen, 2008). A fundamentalist religious interpretation implies that there is only room for the one identity of a truly believing Muslim (a Muslim to the core) which makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to consider oneself both Muslim and French, or German or Dutch.

Perceived Hostility In Europe, Muslim minority members experience various forms of misrecognition, exclusion, and victimization.

There is an increasing body of research documenting strong anti-Muslim public sentiments and feelings, and negative behaviors (Helbling, 2012). And not only populist movements (e.g., Pegida) and right-wing politicians but also “mainstream” politicians argue that Islam is incompatible with Western values and beliefs, such as the German interior Minister (Friedrich) who publicly stated that “Islam does not belong in Germany.” Anti-Muslim sentiments appear to be more widespread than antiforeign resentments (Spuyt & Elchardus, 2012).

In Europe, cross-national research has shown that a less welcoming societal context is associated with stronger religious group identification, stronger religious belief, and more strict forms of religious behavior among Muslim immigrants (Connor, 2010) and Muslim youth (Güngör, Fleischmann, Phalet, & Maliepaard, 2013). And extending the well-established rejection-identification model in social psychology (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999) to the religious domain, various studies in Europe have found that higher perceived rejection and exclusion is associated with stronger Muslim group identification and higher involvement in religious practices (e.g., Fleischmann, Phalet, & Klein, 2011; Kunst, Tajamal, Sam, & Ulleberg, 2012). Furthermore, a hostile context might bolster fundamentalist beliefs and support for radicalization as forms Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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of resistance against a non-accommodating, modern host society. An Islamist identity allows Muslim youth to express their resentment in a cohesive and organized way and with the markers emphasized by the host society.

Almost all theoretical models about Muslim radicalization point at the importance of perceived acceptance, respect, belonging, and recognition. A culture of suspicion and surveillance, feelings of insignificance and humiliation (Kruglanski et al., 2014) stimulate societal dis-identification and disengagement which makes Muslim minority youth more receptive to fundamentalist beliefs and also radicalization (Aydin, Fischer, & Frey, 2010; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008). Rejection and humiliation motivates the search for inclusion and dignity. Islamism provides an answer to the quest of belonging and respect and offers an outlet for the frustrations of feeling a second class citizen living in a hostile Western society in which there is no place for Muslims.

Experiences and feelings of misrecognition and humiliation are not only harmful when they relate to oneself as an individual but also to the group of Muslims in the host society and the global ummah. Group identification implies an emotional merging of oneself and one’s group whereby the fate of one’s group becomes the fate of oneself. In Islam there is an emphasis on Muslims forming a single community of believers (“ummah”). Islam is not just about its five pillars and behavioral rules, but also about the unity of Muslims at local, national, and international levels. A common Islamic community bound by its religion and patterned after the community founded by Muhammad is central to the faith. Fundamentalist believers consider it important to establish and maintain a unified global Muslim community that transcend ethnic cultures. Identification with the ummah implies a sense of responsibility and solidarity with the perceived suffering and humiliation of Muslims in other parts of the world (Roy, 2004).

Perceived Injustices Grievances and perceived injustices are considered important ingredients in radicalization processes. Radicalization would be the result of collective discontent caused by a sense of relative deprivation (see King & Taylor, 2011).

When one personally or one’s group is worse off than others (distributive injustice) or treated unfairly (procedural injustice), this leads to anger and resentment. The feeling of being in a disadvantaged position and being treated unfairly – for example, as a second class citizen, or because of perceived double standards used by institutions, politicians, and the media – can lead to disengagement from society and a stronger orientation on one’s religious community (Schmitt & Maes, 2002). Whereas perceived personal relative deprivation tends to lead to anxiety and depression, group-based feelings of injustice are more likely to lead to Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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collective mobilization and action (see Smith, Pettigrew, Pippin, & Bialosiewicz, 2012). In a survey study among Muslim adolescents in the Netherlands it was found that higher feelings of group-based relative deprivation were associated with a more positive attitude and greater willingness to use violence to defend Muslims and Islam (Van Bergen, Feddes, Doosje, & Pels, 2015).

Importantly, individuals who themselves are not disadvantaged or face injustice can experience these groupbased feelings of anger and resentment which motivates them to act in terms of their group membership and on behalf of their disadvantaged group (Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2007). Radicalized Muslims do not tend to be underprivileged, uneducated individuals on the fringe of society, but rather feel a strong sense of commitment and responsibility toward their religious community: “eradication of poverty and universal secondary education are unlikely to change these feelings. Indeed, those who are well-off and well-educated may even perceive such feelings more acutely” (Krueger & Malečková, 2003). Collegeeducated Muslims can be keenly aware of (institutional) injustices and the gap between Muslims’ deserved, equal place in the host society, and the actual disadvantages and inequalities that exist (Verkuyten, 2016). These perceived injustices are important determinants for the support of religious fundamentalist beliefs (Doosje et al., 2013).

Feelings of group-based relative deprivation can extend to fellow Muslims in other places in the world. Some individuals radicalize as a reaction to the perceived neocolonial attitude of the West and the related oppression, injustices, and hostilities committed against Muslims in conflict areas such as the Middle East and Afghanistan (Slootman & Tillie, 2006). These conflicts elicit anger and resentment together with a feeling of powerlessness which makes the political goals of Islamist and radical groups attractive: to become active is attractive for those who feel powerless. These groups contain the promise of being able to support the fight against the perceived oppressors of Muslims in Europe and in other parts of the world.

It offers an opportunity for revenge and retribution against the enemy, including the host society which because of its foreign policy can be seen as an oppressor (Bux, 2007; Silke, 2008).

General Processes and Specific Predictions Feelings of uncertainty, and perceived hostility and injustice are likely to be very important for radicalization but do, of course, not have to lead to this, let alone violence. These feelings can underlie a range of behaviors, including withdrawal and disengagement from society and demoEuropean Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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cratic forms of political activism (e.g., protest, democratic organization). Furthermore, a subjective sense of injustice or feeling of uncertainty is not sufficient for collective action. This also depends for example on whether one thinks that the actions will have an effect, and if your group actually is able to bring about change (Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). Furthermore, it will depend on the political and discursive opportunity structures and constraints (e.g., Cinalli & Giugni, 2016; Statham, 2016).

An analysis of basic psychological processes should not be confused with behavioral regularities in the social world.

Similarly, religious group identification can go together with harmonious group relations, even in times of threat (Anisman, Ysseldyk, Haslam, & Matheson, 2012). Group identification tells us something about how strongly people feel committed to their community but not about the direction in which they will act (Turner & Reynolds, 2001). It is the specific meaningful content of the identity that should be taken into account for understanding when and why people are, for example, involved in peaceful demonstration or rather violent action. As a Muslim you can defend the interests of Muslims, but the sense of commitment to do so is much stronger in radical Islam. It is by defining a particular identity in a particular way that people can be mobilized and moved in a particular direction.

Group Processes Social psychological research on the “worldview-conflict proposition” demonstrates that dissimilar values, beliefs, and moralities between groups contribute to intolerance (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2015). People seek to affirm the validity of their own beliefs and worldview and therefore express intolerance toward groups whose beliefs and worldviews are dissimilar to their own. This has been found among individuals high and low on measures of religious fundamentalism (Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2015), but the intolerance is stronger among those with more fundamentalist beliefs, and when other groups are not only dissimilar but also perceived to threaten the ability to live according to one’s religious practices.

Religious individuals can believe in the true faith and the literal interpretation of the holy scriptures without necessarily demonstrating hostility, but rather withdraw from society to live an ascetic life or promote prosocial behavior (“Islam as a religion of peace”). Yet, religious fundamentalism implies a clear in-group versus out-group distinction, whereby the own superiority can go together with hostility toward the threatening out-group, and toward members of one’s own religious group who are not viewed as true believers or dissenters (Herriot, 2007; Hood et al., 2005).

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In his survey research among Muslims in six European countries, Koopmans (2015) found that 62% of the second generation Sunni Muslims see the West as an enemy out to destroy Islam, whereas this percentage was 37% among the Alevi Muslims. Furthermore, religious fundamentalism was found to be very strongly related to out-group hostility, and more strongly so among Muslims than Christians. Muslim fundamentalists tend to perceive the West as trying to destroy Islam or to subvert the very nature of their religion into an Euro-Islam (Yildiz & Verkuyten, 2012).

Radicalization does not happen in a vacuum but is a social process that results from interactions within and between groups. It first of all involves the Muslim communities themselves in which there is a continuing and strong debate about the interpretation of Islam and what it means for Muslims to live in Europe. There are profound cleavages within the Muslim communities such as the division between moderates and seculars versus fundamentalists and Islamists. The latter groups of people consider their way of being Muslim the only correct one and they spend much time in criticizing what they consider “contaminated” or “compromised” interpretations of Islam (i.e., Euro-Islam; Slootman & Tillie, 2006). They do not hesitate to denounce and reproach the non-pious lifestyle of “moderate” Muslims (Hoekstra & Verkuyten, 2015) branding them as unbelievers and sometimes threatening them with violence. This makes it difficult for “moderate” Muslims to speak up as a Muslim, and many Muslim youngsters find themselves caught in the middle between, on the one hand, religious fundamentalism that they fear, and, on the other hand, a host society that rejects and humiliates Islam (Gest, 2015).

There often also is a specific intergroup dynamic or what is termed co-radicalization (Pratt, 2015). The discrimination that Muslim minority youth face can lead to stronger Muslim group identification with an engagement in the related religious normative practices such as Islamic clothing (e.g., Djellaba) and growing a beard. These practices publicly express and affirm one’s religious identity.

In turn, majority group members can react more negatively toward these identity enactments because they see them as threatening their cultural identity and worldview, leading to the fear that Islam will override one’s own way of life and thereby the prevailing status arrangements in society (“Eurabia,” “Londonistan”). Discrimination is one way to deal with this challenge: making it more difficult for Muslim fundamentalists to publicly perform their identity and to enter the social system. Across six studies, Kaiser and Pratt-Hyatt (2009) found that majority group members do indeed express more negative reactions toward strongly identified cultural minorities who enact their identity, than toward weakly identified minorities.

Co-radicalization is not restricted to discrimination processes but might also ensue from right-wing extremists Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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(e.g., attacks on Mosque’s, other hate crimes) and the counter-radicalization and terrorism measures of European authorities (Khosrokhavar, 2005). Islamic extremist use right-wing extremism to claim that the West is hostile and violent toward Islam, and right-wing extremist use Islamic extremism to argue that Islam is incompatible with the West. Islamist welcome events such as calls for a headscarf ban in France, Belgium, and Germany and the 2009 Swiss minaret ban because they see this as a confirmation of oppression, injustice, and hostility toward Islam and they try to use it for political provocation and escalation purposes (Holtz, Wagner, & Sartawi, 2015). And radical Islamic organizations can seek to incite Western authorities to take ever more restrictive and harsh measures that further disengage Muslim youth from society making them more receptive to extremist messages and recruitment (Heath-Kelly, 2013). Intergroup conflicts in society and restrictive policy responses can serve to make extremist messages more credible and espouse a cultural of enmity in which the host society and the West are considered the enemy (Abbas, 2007). The feeling that Muslims face many injustices and that the West seeks to change or destroy Islam, or even is at war with Islam, makes it possible to legitimize violence as self-defense. A “true” Muslim should take on the fight in the face of the enemy’s aggression. The violence becomes virtuous: it is morally right or even obligatory to defend one’s faith and one’s threatened “brothers” and “sisters” around the world, and to right the perceived wrongs (Fiske & Rai, 2015). People become morally motivated to act violently on behalf of their religious group and against Western injustices, and the violence is religiously sanctioned.

Social Networks Being embedded in a family, peer group or local support network can function as a protective factor to all sorts of risks, including the feeling of being rejected, misrecognized, and victimized. For example, among British Muslims resilience against victimization is reinforced by social networks (Hargreaves, 2016). Furthermore, a supportive social network can function as a shield of resilience that protects against radical influences (Doosje et al., 2016). Yet, social networks can also present a risk because fundamentalist beliefs and also radical ideals are transmitted by (virtual) social networks, and violent radicalization takes place within small groups. Radicalization is very much a question of who you (happen) to know (Neumann & Rogers, 2007; Sageman, 2004). Individuals who develop more fundamentalist beliefs gradually become more isolated from family and friends and are increasingly depended on and loyal Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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to small fundamentalist groups (Bakker, 2006). These groups make their group members resilient against “external” de-radicalization influences, thus turning the shield of resilience around (Doosje et al., 2016).

The Mosque provides a setting not only for non-radical Muslims to socialize but also for small groups to develop stronger fundamentalist beliefs. The social bonding and peer pressure within small groups can facilitate the adaptation of fundamentalist beliefs and set one on a path toward radicalization (Neumann & Rogers, 2007). Physical and virtual social networks can validate or shape one’s own views, and they provide a feeling of peer acceptance, recognition, and being respected. Through interactions with and within radical groups, Muslim youngsters are gradually convinced of the need to defend Islam and to stand up against injustices and humiliation. The Mosque is replaced by small personal (“backyard Mosque”) and virtual networks on the Internet and social media (“virtual Mosque”).

Especially the Internet provides networking opportunities with like-minded individuals, in addition to supplying information and educational materials. For example, at Internet chat rooms Muslim girls discuss what it means to be a “true” Muslim and whether wearing a headscarf is necessary for being an authentic believer (Hoekstra & Verkuyten, 2015), and fundamentalist and moderate young Muslims discuss important events such as the conflict in the Middle East and the Swiss minaret ban (Holtz et al., 2015). The Internet contributes to the radicalization process and some radical jihadist base their knowledge of Islam solely on their online research (Aly, Macdonald, Jarvis, & Chen, 2017). Fundamentalists and also terrorist organizations are using the Internet to win the hearts and minds of young Muslims. They provide information and ideological justification for those who want to learn more and who are receptive to self-indoctrination by repeatedly exposing themselves to the vivid images on these websites. Yet, it is difficult to assess and to examine what role the Internet exactly plays in the radicalization process of Muslim minority youth in Europe.

Discussion Research on fundamentalism and on radicalization of Muslim minority youth in Europe is scarce which means that an empirical-based understanding is weak.

There is a lack of primary data and, to my knowledge, longitudinal research does not exist. And there are problematic assumptions, such as taken people’s stories as accurate explanations for their radicalization rather than (in part) after the fact rationalizations (Pisoiu, 2013). Furthermore, because of the lack of systematic comparisons it remains European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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unclear to what extent radicalization among Muslim minority youth differs from radicalization within other religions (e.g., Christian fundamentalist) or from political forms of radicalization (e.g., extreme-right). For example, some have argued that religion is not a distinctive phenomenon, whereas others claim that religion is unique in its reference to the sacred and in providing ultimate meaningfulness (Pargament, 2002). And whereas some argue that radicalism of Muslims represents a radicalization of Islam (Kepel, 2017), others see it as an Islamization of a new version of anti-Western political radicalism (Roy, 2017).

There are two additional issues that I was not able to discuss and that provide further directions for future work.

First, I have discussed fundamentalist beliefs and radicalization in relation to grievances and feelings of uncertainty, hostility, and injustices, in particular. This gives the impression that Muslim minority youth is only pushed or driven toward radicalization as a sort of “reactive religiosity.”

But it is important to consider the possibility that Muslim youth also is pulled toward or drawn to Islamism and radicalization because of the promises of excitement, heroism, commitment to a meaningful moral cause, and a special status (Cottee & Hayward, 2011).

Second, I have not discussed the various initiatives that exist for radicalization prevention and de-radicalization interventions. Considering the various pathways to radicalization, the important societal question of “what works” in prevention and de-radicalization is not an easy one to answer. Preventing intergroup tensions, stimulating a sense of societal belonging, developing supportive social networks, and providing “attractive alternatives” are some of the ideas that have been put forward. But there is hardly any systematic research on the effectiveness of the various social interventions and policy initiatives (Christmann, 2012; Koehler, 2017), and there also is the possibility that interventions backfire if handled badly, for example when youngsters feel unjustly targeted and under constant suspicion (Heath-Kelly, 2013).

Being a young Muslim in Europe clearly encompasses a complex reality. The process of radicalization with its fundamentalist beliefs does not have one “root cause” but rather involves different combinations of many factors and conditions that lead to different “routes” or pathways.

One person can indoctrinate himself on the Internet and then start to look for a (virtual) social network of likeminded peers, whereas someone else, by chance, can get into contact with an extremist social network that exposes him to pictures and stories about injustices and hostilities toward Muslim. There are personal needs, group grievances, intra- and intergroup processes, social networks, societal conditions, and global developments. And it is unclear how exactly these various processes and factors interact and contribute to radicalization and why only some European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 21–31

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individuals and groups radicalize while the great majority with similar experiences and living in similar conditions, do not. This complexity further could mean that dimensional approaches (staircase, pyramid models of radicalization) are misleading. Implicitly these approaches assume that the one (fundamentalism) leads to the other (radicalization and then terrorism) so that the same processes underlying the one are also (indirectly) involved in the other. But it could also be that we are dealing with sometimes overlapping yet distinct phenomena that are the result of different processes. In this view there is not one dimension with terrorism as its endpoint but rather a separate set of factors and processes that explain, for example, fundamentalist beliefs and another set explaining radicalization. This possibility might be more in agreement with the limited empirical evidence and makes it all the more important to make clear conceptual distinctions when studying and addressing forms of religiosity among Muslim minority youth.

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Received March 9, 2017 Revision received August 23, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018

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Maykel Verkuyten is a professor in Interdisciplinary Social Science at the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University. He also is the academic director of the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) at Utrecht University. He has published extensively on questions of ethnic and religious minority identity and intergroup relations.

Maykel Verkuyten ERCOMER, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science Utrecht University Padualaan 14 3584 CH Utrecht The Netherlands m.verkuyten@uu.nl

Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Religious Identity and Acculturation of Immigrant Minority Youth Toward a Contextual and Developmental Approach Karen Phalet,1 Fenella Fleischmann,2 and Jessie Hillekens1 1

Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, KU Leuven, Belgium

2

ERCOMER, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Abstract: This review proposes an integrative contextual and developmental approach to religious identity development and acculturative adaptation among adolescents with an immigrant background. Relevant research with minority adolescents has addressed three main research questions: (1) What is distinctive about religious identity development in (Muslim) minority youth? (2) How does religious identity relate to their acculturative adaptation? and (3) What is the role of interpersonal and intercultural relations in specific acculturation contexts?

In line with multiple developmental pathways in specific acculturation contexts, Muslim youth in Europe showed either stability or an increase in religious identification throughout adolescence, yet religious identity development varied greatly across religious communities and receiving societies. In support of the adaptive function of identity development in acculturating youth, (2) the religious identity of Muslim adolescents contributed positively to their psychological adaptation through the commitment to heritage culture values and identities; and it was either unrelated or conflicting with mainstream culture adoption and sociocultural adaptation, depending on specific acculturation contexts. Finally, religious identities reflect the bicultural social world of minority adolescents: strong and stable religious identities were premised on religious transmission in interpersonal relations with immigrant parents and minority peers. Moreover, religious identity conflict or compatibility with mainstream cultural values and identities was contingent on intercultural relations: perceived discrimination and Islamophobia fuel identity conflict in Muslim youth, whereas more harmonious intercultural relations enable compatible and adaptive pathways of religious identity.

Keywords: religion, Muslims, acculturation, youth, intergroup relations

Public debates over immigration in Europe – and more recently across the Atlantic – highlight religious differences as one aspect of migration-related diversity. Feeding into European debates are dramatic demographic changes in the scale and forms of demographic diversity over the last decades, in particular the presence of significant and increasingly internally diverse Muslim immigrant and refugee populations originating from North Africa, the Middle East, East- and West-Asia, and Eastern Europe. Despite Europe’s history of religious diversity and Islamic presence, public attitudes toward Muslim immigrants and minorities have long been ambivalent or overtly hostile – opposing Islam to liberal family values, democracy, and secularism (Sniderman & Hagendoorn, 2007). Current geopolitical tensions and national security issues are further straining already tense intercultural relations with Muslim minorities in European societies. Moreover, restrictive European immigration policies complicate the social integration of many Muslim refugee families and children who are crossing the Mediterranean to escape political turmoil and economic hardship.

European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000309

Against this backdrop, the present review focuses on religious identity development and acculturation among adolescents with an immigrant background (shorthand minority adolescents). Until recently, psychological acculturation studies have neglected the religious identity development of minority youngsters and how it meshes with their (bi)cultural identities (Güngör, Fleischmann, Phalet, & Maliepaard, 2013). In parallel, most research on religious identity development is limited to majority Christian children and adolescents; and the few longitudinal studies of immigrant minority youth focus mainly on ethnic – rather than religious – identity development (cf. infra). Reviewing recent research among Muslim minority youth mainly – other religious affiliations than Christian or Muslim are usually too small in numbers to allow any specific conclusions – our focus is on the religious identity development of minority youth, its interplay with acculturation processes, and how religious acculturation is shaped by specific acculturation contexts.

In order to bridge parallel research streams on religious identity development and acculturative adaptation in Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Figure 1. A contextual developmental model of religious identity and acculturative adaptation in minority adolescents.

minority youth, we propose an integrative contextual and developmental model of adolescent religious identity (see Figure 1). Taking a developmental and contextual perspective on religious identity, we will address three main research questions: (1) What is distinctive about religious identity development in Muslim minority youth? (2) How does religious identity relate to their acculturative adaptation? and (3) How do specific acculturation contexts shape the acculturation and religious identity of Muslim youth?

To conclude, we will summarize the state of the art, reiterate the need for more longitudinal and cross-culturally comparative research, and briefly reflect on limitations as well as wider scientific and applied implications.

Our theoretical framework extends Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model of human development and Lerner’s (2002) “developmental contextualism” to the acculturation context – as distinct from more commonly researched (allegedly) monocultural contexts of development (Sam & Oppedal, 2003). The special focus of this review is on the development of religious identity in minority adolescents. Religious identity is distinct from other identities, such as ethnic identity, because of the uniquely self-defining and prescriptive-normative qualities of specifically religious identity contents (Ysseldyk, Matheson, & Anisman, 2010): believers find in their religious faith an eternal source of ultimate meaning and moral direction.

At the same time, religious identity formation is subject to general developmental processes of identity exploration and commitment during adolescence (Saroglou, 2012).

We conceive of multiple pathways of adolescent identity development as socially grounded in relationships with significant others and geared toward adaptation within specific sociocultural environments (Sam & Oppedal, 2003). By implication, acculturation processes are part and parcel of normal developmental processes during adolescence. Acculturation refers specifically to the adaptation of (mainly) minorities to growing up in a bicultural Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

social world. As minority adolescents engage in social interactions across mainly heritage cultural and mainstream cultural fields, they learn to navigate cultural difference and minority status in their relations with (other) minority and majority friends and peers (Sam & Oppedal, 2003).

In parallel, later adolescents’ enhanced capacity for perspective taking and socio-moral development raise the awareness of (strained) intercultural relations in the wider society (Rutland & Killen, 2015). Zooming in on religious identity, and in line with Bornstein’s (2017) “specificity principle” in acculturation science, we expect that minority adolescents’ experiences and understandings of interpersonal and intercultural relations will give rise to different pathways of religious identity development with adaptive value in specific acculturation contexts. For instance, when Muslim minority youth attend a school where headscarves are banned, this contextual constraint on the expression of religious identity may entail the experience of their religious and mainstream identities as less compatible, thus increasing the psychological costs of acculturative adaptation (Fleischmann & Phalet, 2018).

Religious Identity Development in Immigrant Minority Youth Compared to a large research literature on ethnic/racial identity development among youth (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014, for a recent review), there is relatively less research on the role of religious development among children and adolescents. In their recent review of this work, King and Boyatzis (2015) conclude that most research so far is based on adolescent samples in the US and only few of these studies have explicitly paid attention to the role of migration. Similarly, Suárez-Orozco, Singh, Abo-Zena, Du, and Roeser (2011) state that the literature on religion and migration has largely focused on adults and neglected

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children and adolescents. Their empirical work is among the first to study religion among youth with a migration background. Their analyses of the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation (LISA) survey of Asian-, Caribbean-, and Latino-American immigrant youth in the Boston area show that religious affiliation and participation are high in almost all immigrant families, with recent Chinese immigrants as partial exception. They demonstrate the positive effects of religious involvement, through increased religious identity, enhanced social support and more positive peer networks, on well-being, sense of purpose and decreased risk behavior in 1.5 generation immigrant youth. Their additional qualitative findings reveal that adolescents turn to religion as a moral compass for inspiration and to stay away from risk behavior. Moreover, adolescents considered religion as containing the core cultural values that are transmitted across generations within their immigrant family and community. Similarly, in a European migration context the religious identity of Muslim youth was associated with cultural values of interdependence, such as tradition, conformity, and benevolence values, which are of central importance in the heritage cultural context (Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004); and which were reaffirmed by religious youth in the acculturation context (Güngör, Bornstein, & Phalet, 2012).

Other US-based studies examined group differences in religious development between ethno-racial categories of youth, which indirectly speak to the role of migration.

A 3-year longitudinal study of 15–18-year-old Latino, Asian American and European Americans found that religious identification remained stable across the high school years whereas participation in religious practices declined (Lopez, Huynh, & Fuligni, 2011). In line with religious reaffirmation in acculturation contexts, Latino and Asian American youth in this study, who were primarily second generation as well as first generation, reported higher levels of religious identity than European American youth, who were mainly third or higher generation. When different religious affiliations were included in the analyses, however, the ethnic differences in religious identification were much reduced.

In the US context under study, apart from a significant share of (self-defined) nonreligious youth (around 30%), religious affiliations were mainly limited to Christian denominations, except for a significant share of Buddhists among Asian American adolescents. Although the evidence may be limited to Christian affiliations in a predominantly Christian and religious receiving context, these findings suggest that sustained religious identification may have specific adaptive functions for minority adolescents in the acculturation context.

In contrast with the US context, the European migration context is characterized by substantially larger immigration from majority Muslim countries, in combination with more European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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ambivalent or overtly hostile public attitudes toward religion in general and Islam in particular (cf. Voas & Fleischmann, 2012 for a review). In line with religious reaffirmation in a European acculturation context, a 3-year longitudinal study among Muslim Bulgarian middle adolescents found religious identification to increase over time (Dimitrova, 2014). In the Netherlands, another crosssectional study with Muslim minority youth found the level of religious identification to increase from early to mid-adolescence, and to decrease again from mid- to later adolescence (from age 15 onwards; Verkuyten, Thijs, & Stevens, 2012). Possibly, the latter finding of religious decrease in late adolescence reflects temporary adaptations to life transitions in later adolescence. Thus, Phalet, Gijsberts, and Hagendoorn (2008) estimated age-related trends in religious identification and practice while taking into account life transitions in repeated cross-sections of Dutch Muslims. Controlling for life transitions, the religious identification and practice of Dutch Muslims was mostly stable from ages 15 to 20 and above. Specifically, entering higher education and leaving the parental home entailed small decreases in religious practice, whereas transitions into marriage and parenthood marked a rebound. We conclude that there seems to be converging evidence of stable or increasing religious identification among minority youth. Note that the absence of a significant increase in religious identification in some studies may be due to ceiling effects in view of relatively high mean levels of religious identification and restricted variation around the mean among Muslim youth (Verkuyten, 2007).

Further evidence of religious reaffirmation in European acculturation contexts comes from comparisons of Muslim minority youth with their Christian peers. A crosssectional study comparing Muslim minority youth with majority Christian peers in Belgium contrasted stable and significantly higher levels of religious identity from mid- to late adolescence (age range 15–20) among Muslims with lower and declining religious identification among majority adolescents (Güngör et al., 2012). Likewise, recent school-based surveys of self-identified Muslim minority youth in four European countries (England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden) yielded no religious changes during mid-adolescence (14–17 years), in contrast with a significant overall decline in religious identification among their minority as well as majority Christian peers in the same countries (Simsek, Fleischmann, & Van Tubergen, 2017).

Moreover, the same study found religious practices (service attendance and praying) to decline more strongly and uniformly among Christian youth (both minority and majority) as compared with their Muslim age-mates. Also, there is some first longitudinal evidence of religious polarization among Muslim youth, such that religious practices decreased over time for some Muslim minority youth and Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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increased for others (Simsek, Van Tubergen, et al., 2017).

We conclude that apparent religious stability among Muslim minority youth in Europe may result from aggregating multiple pathways of religious identity development, which may be adaptive for specific acculturating individuals or groups in specific acculturation contexts (Bornstein, 2017). Similarly, an overall trend toward religious decline among Christian youth in European studies may be adaptive to specific sociocultural contexts. Thus, there is some longitudinal evidence of a distinct U-shaped curve of religious change, as well as religious polarization between low and high identifiers among majority Christian adolescents in generally more religious US contexts of development (Dillon, 2007; Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009). Looking across different sociocultural contexts in the US and in Europe, Saroglou (2012, p. 397) proposed that religious identity development serves “the more general adaptive functions of distancing oneself from what is known and familiar and exploring new and challenging alternatives” – before committing oneself to a newly redefined religious identity.

Complementing European studies of religious trends among Muslim minority youth, some studies with Muslim adolescents in the US add mainly qualitative insights into Muslim religious identity in another migration context.

Thus, in line with findings of persistently high religious identification among European Muslims, Ajrouch (2004) found religion to be a more salient identity marker than national origin (e.g., Lebanese, Palestinian) in focus groups of 14–15-year-old Arab Americans. Likewise, in their study of 12–18-year-old Muslim Americans in the Greater New York area, Fine and Sirin (2008) found religious identification to be significantly higher than American identification, despite the fact that most adolescents in the sample were born in the US or had spent the largest part of their life there. Addressing the question of religious identity development, Cain et al. (2017) interviewed 13–19-yearold Muslim American youth about their experiences of religious change. About 60% reported a change in their religious identification and religious practices, which often followed a shift in their social and cultural environment around critical life transitions in their family life or school career. Similarly, in her study of Muslim university students in two US states, Peek (2005) found that leaving the parental home and entering college triggered qualitative changes in religious identity development such that religious identity became a “chosen” or even “declared” identity, after being a more unquestioned or foreclosed identity during childhood and early adolescence. These findings echo Phinney’s (1989) approach to ethnic identity development among minority youth, as well as mainstream research on religious identity development in majority youth (cf. Saroglou, 2012 for a review). While empirical work applying a developmental perspective to the religious identities of minority youth is Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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still rare, Lewis (2007) used generic identity statuses (such as identity foreclosure, exploration, or achievement) as interpretive framework for her qualitative data among British Muslim youth. Relatedly, in a four-wave longitudinal study among mostly Canadian-born late adolescents and early adults, Hardy, Pratt, Pancer, Olsen, and Lawford (2011) found declining rates of religious identity diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium, but stability in the levels of religious identity achievement over time. Their study analyzed religious identity development along with the development of political and occupational identities, and found domain-specific developmental pathways and crosslagged effects of community ethnic and religious involvement. Both ethnic and religious involvement were declining over the study period. Yet, those who declined relatively less in religious involvement showed higher levels of religious identity achievement and foreclosure, and lower levels of moratorium and diffusion. These longitudinal findings suggest that acculturation into religious communities indeed stimulates the development of religious identities in youth, but it might foster commitment without an elaborate exploration of alternatives (Saroglou, 2012).

To what extent these developmental pathways apply to the religious identities of Muslim minority youth in European acculturation contexts is yet to be examined.

To address our first research question, we summarize what is distinctive about religious identity development in Muslim minority youth. Overall, minority youth in general and Muslims in particular seem to be more religious than their majority peers, yet developmental trends suggest multiple pathways of religious identity development for minority and majority adolescents in North America and in Europe, with comparatively most stability or increase in the religious identification of Muslim youth in Europe. Reasoning from the adaptive function of identity development, high levels of religious identification among minority adolescents suggest specific adaptive functions of religious identities in the acculturation context, for instance, helping Muslim minority youth to cope with acculturative stress or minority status. As Suárez-Orozco et al. (2011, p. 257) proposed, the adaptive benefits of religious identity “are important for individuals all over the world, but they may be particularly compelling for immigrants who are uprooted and feel disconnected from their familiar roles and social ties.”

In view of the key role of the sociocultural context in shaping the religious identity development of youth (King & Boyatzis, 2015), there is a need to further contextualize different pathways of religious identity development in acculturating youth, which may in turn contribute to different adaptation outcomes. With a view to further contextualize what is distinctive about religious identity development in minority adolescents, there is a need for longitudinal research on the effect of the migratory event, as well as for European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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comparative studies of immigrant children and adolescents across different types of migration, such as refugees versus labor migrants, which may overlap with religious group differences. Ideally, research among accul turating youth should include premigration religious identification measures to assess the influence of migration and culture contact on religious identity development. Such studies among adult movers suggest that migration might be a “theologizing experience” when religious ties are continued or replaced after migration (Connor, 2008; Massey & Higgins, 2011; Van Tubergen, 2013). While there is indirect evidence of the distinct adaptive value of religious identity for minority youth in the acculturation context, we do not know how the migratory event impacts religious identity among minors whose religious development is at an earlier stage. In the absence of premigration measures of religious identity, most research relies on comparisons of broad ethno-racial categories, which differ not only in religious affiliation but also simultaneously in their histories of migration and incorporation into different receiving contexts. As a first step toward considering the premigration context of religious identities, Güngör et al. (2012) compared Muslim youth in Turkey and in Belgium as sending and receiving societies, respectively. Their comparative findings suggest that religious identity is reaffirmed in the acculturation context, as Turkish minority youth were more religious than their peers in Turkey; and this difference in religious identity was maintained from mid- to late adolescence. Future research should further contextualize the distinct adaptive functions of religious identity development in the acculturation context, for instance, by disentangling ethnicity and religious affiliation, migration generations, and receiving contexts.

Religious Identity and Acculturative Adaptation in Immigrant Minority Youth The psychological acculturation of minority adolescents refers to the process of adaptation to the bicultural (or multicultural) social environment in which they grow up (Mesquita, Deleersnyder, & Jasini, in press). This adaptive process is part of general developmental processes, which give rise to multiple pathways of identity development with adaptive value in specific sociocultural contexts. Yet, acculturative adaptation refers more narrowly to the ways in which minority youth adapt to their bicultural social world.

This review focuses specifically on the role of religious identity in the acculturation and adaptation of minority adolescents. While religious acculturation has been more extensively studied for immigrant and minority adults (cf. Güngör et al., 2013 for a review), less is known about the religious identity of minority children and adolescents and its interplay with acculturative adaptation.

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For Muslim youth their distinct religious identity is a salient marker of difference in social interactions with friends or peers across heritage and mainstream cultural fields. In line with a well-established bidimensional approach to acculturation (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006), we distinguish between mainstream and heritage cultural attitudes and cultural identifications in minority youth – and related integrationist (combining both cultures), assimilationist (prioritizing mainstream culture adoption) or separationist (preferring heritage cultural maintenance) acculturation preferences (but see Brown & Zagefka, 2011 for a critical review of different measures, outcomes, and contexts of acculturation). Importantly, the adaptive value of different acculturation attitudes depends critically on the quality of intercultural relations in specific acculturation contexts. Thus, integrationism has been associated with psychological (i.e., well-being, self-esteem) and sociocultural adaptation (i.e., problem behavior, achievement) mainly among young adults and in North American migration contexts (Berry et al., 2006). Yet, the adaptive benefits of integrationism are less clear-cut in adolescents at a younger age (e.g., Rutland et al., 2012) or in European acculturation contexts (e.g., Brown et al., 2013). The latter findings suggest that the integration of heritage and mainstream cultural attachments may be psychologically demanding for individual minority adolescents in less supportive social environments, for instance in societies that are less sympathetic toward multiculturalism.

A growing body of research on Muslim minority youth documents adaptation problems, such as heightened risks of depression (Fassaert et al., 2011 in the Netherlands), internalizing problem behavior (Oppedal & Røysamb, 2007), or lower levels of psychological well-being (Stuart, Ward, & Adam, 2010 in New Zealand; see Khawaja, 2016 for a review). These findings should be qualified, however, for several reasons. As most studies lack a non-Muslim minority comparison group, we do not know what is distinctive about the (acculturative) adaptation of Muslim minority youth.

Moreover, few studies have directly assessed religious selfidentification, hence adaptation problems cannot be unambiguously attributed to the religious identity of Muslim minorities. Finally, a review of mainly qualitative and clinical studies with Muslim American minority youth highlights a possible upside of religious identity as a source of psychological well-being, self-worth, and social support (Goforth, Oka, Leong, & Denis, 2014). The latter findings raise the question whether a possible adaptive advantage of religious identity generalizes to minority youth across the Atlantic.

In a cross-cultural study including Muslim and nonMuslim youth on both sides of the Atlantic, Berry et al.

(2006) compare distinct patterns of acculturation and adaptation among Muslim and other minority youth. Their comparative findings contrast prevailing integrationism Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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among Western and non-Western Christian minority youth with more prevalent separationism among Muslim youth, as evident from high heritage culture maintenance, strong ethnic identification, and sustained ethnic language use across generations. To the extent that mainstream culture adoption contributes to the social adaptation of minority youth, separationist minorities are likely to experience adaptation problems, such as problem behavior or poor school achievement. Note, though, that Muslim youth in this cross-cultural study were mainly sampled from European countries, where Muslim communities face pervasive antiIslamic prejudice and discrimination (cf. supra).

Looking beyond cross-cultural comparisons of acculturative adaptation, some recent studies with Muslim adolescents have included individual-level measures of religious identity along with acculturation and adaptation measures.

These studies allow a more direct empirical test of the role of religion in the acculturation of Muslim youth. Religious parenting in Muslim immigrant families and religious identity in Muslim minority adolescents are associated with heritage culture maintenance and may thus contribute to psychological adaptation. Thus, childhood religious socialization in Turkish-Belgian immigrant families – as indicated by regular paternal mosque visits and Koran lessons outside school – predicted enhanced and sustained culture maintenance into young adulthood (Güngör, Fleischmann, & Phalet, 2011). Likewise, comparing Muslim, Christian, and secular minority youth in Germany from 54 origin countries – including Turkish, Italian, Greek, Bosnian, Kosovar, Croatian, and Russian youth – the importance of religion at home predicted higher heritage culture maintenance (Schachner, Van de Vijver, & Noack, 2014). Comparing Muslim-Belgian late adolescents to majority and other minority peers, Saroglou and Galand (2004) reported that the former were not only more religious but also more strongly attached to their heritage cultures. Also, more religious Turkish-Belgian early to mid-adolescents were more oriented toward maintaining their Turkish cultural heritage (Güngör et al., 2012). Along those lines, religiosity was found to increase self-esteem among Turkish-Dutch adolescents who were high on culture maintenance (Bender & Yeresyan, 2014).

Furthermore, religious and ethnic attachments form distinct yet related self-identities in Muslim adolescents.

Thus, more strongly ethnically identified Muslim-Belgian adolescents were also more strongly committed to their religious identity, and more invested in continuing and passing on their Islamic religious heritage; and religious identification supported core heritage cultural values of interdependence, in particular tradition, conformity, and benevolence (Güngör et al., 2012; Saroglou & Galand, 2004). Moreover, religious self-identification was related to more general processes of identity development during Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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adolescence, so that Muslim-Belgian adolescents with an identity status of achievement or foreclosure (vs. exploration or diffusion) were most committed to their religious identity (Saroglou & Galand, 2004). In a retrospective study of Muslim American youth, about 60% reported meaningful qualitative changes in their religious commitment or understanding, or toward new religious practices (Cain et al., 2017). As compared to their peers who did not report religious change, they showed higher levels of ethnic identity exploration – and also slightly higher levels of identity commitment. Interestingly, religious change was also related to perceived discrimination in intercultural relations with mainstream society (cf. infra).

Despite Berry et al.’s (2006) finding of more prevalent separationism among Muslim minority youth, the evidence of culture conflict – opposing a distinctive religious identity to mainstream cultural identities – is mixed (Fleischmann & Phalet, 2016), and it depends on characteristics of specific acculturation contexts (cf. infra). To illustrate, studies among Turkish-German adolescents consistently found negative associations of religious parenting (Spiegler, Güngör, & Leyendecker, 2016) and religious identification (Dimitrova & Aydinly-Karakulak, 2016) with the adoption of, and identification with, the German mainstream culture.

In their cross-cultural study of minority youth in Germany, Schachner et al. (2014) found that the importance of (Islamic or Christian) religion at home negatively predicted mainstream German cultural orientation, and impacted negatively on adolescents’ sociocultural adaptation in this country. In a similar vein, high intrinsic value of religious faith, as well as religious certainty and practice, negatively predicted mainstream culture adoption and identification among Muslim-Belgian late adolescents (Saroglou & Galand, 2004; Saroglou & Mathijsen, 2007). On the other hand, studies with Turkish-Belgian and Turkish-Bulgarian Muslim youth found that their religious identification was unrelated to mainstream culture adoption (Dimitrova & Aydinly-Karakulak, 2016; Güngör et al., 2011). Whereas German Muslims most consistently experience conflict between their religious and national identities, findings in Belgium are mixed and suggest that identity conflict might be more likely at the transition into young adulthood, or with more intense religious involvement and understanding.

To summarize, the religious identity of Muslim adolescents is entwined with their attachment to heritage cultural values and identities and either unrelated or conflicting with mainstream culture adoption. More research is needed to better understand when and how religion entails identity conflict. From a contextual and developmental approach of religious identity, however, religious change at the transition into adulthood as well as perceived religious prejudice or discrimination in mainstream society seem potentially European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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relevant factors. In view of converging evidence of the psychological benefits of culture maintenance, and parallel evidence of a protective effect of strong and sustained religious identities in acculturating youth, religion can contribute to psychological adaptation. At the same time, religion can come at the cost of sociocultural adaptation in mainstream cultural settings, for instance in school, when minority youth perceive the mainstream culture as rejecting their religious heritage. In line with an adaptive advantage of religious identity, for instance, religious identification was negatively associated with externalizing problem behaviors among Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch early adolescents (Maes, Stevens, & Verkuyten, 2014).

In the presence of perceived discrimination, however, more strongly religiously identified Muslim-Dutch girls in particular were more at risk of experiencing adaptation problems than their less religious peers (ibid.). The latter finding suggests that future research should inquire into the gendered nature of religious identity and acculturative adaptation (cf. Güngör & Bornstein, 2013).

Contextualizing Religious Acculturation Adolescent experiences of acculturation and adaptation are anchored in their relationships with peers and parents as key developmental contexts. While immigrant parents transmit the heritage culture to their children, social relationships outside the family become more important during adolescence. Through daily social interactions with peers outside their home, minority youth learn to negotiate cultural difference and to balance mainstream and heritage cultures. Adolescents’ acculturation and adaptation primarily reflect parental acculturation expectations: for instance, children were more oriented and better adjusted to the mainstream culture when their parents valued adoption of mainstream customs (Schachner et al., 2014). In addition, peer norms of acculturation were also shown to impact adolescent acculturative adaptation. Thus, children whose acculturation preferences misfit with peer acculturation norms, for instance when they prefer integration and peers stress assimilation, experienced more peer rejection (Celeste, Meeussen, Verschueren, & Phalet, 2016; Kunst & Sam, 2013). Looking beyond adolescents’ personal relations with parents and peers, the way in which culturally diverse schools, cities, or societies at large represent and regulate intercultural relations makes for more friendly or hostile acculturation contexts. In line with an intercultural relations approach to acculturation (Brown & Zagefka, 2011; Guimond, De la Sablonnière, & Nugier, 2014), perceived discrimination was revealed as a robust predictor of acculturative adaptation problems across minority youth in 13 countries (Berry et al., 2006). Conversely, perceived fair treatment or integrationist policies were shown to European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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protect minority well-being and achievement (Baysu, Celeste, Brown, Verschueren, & Phalet, 2016; Hoti, Heinzmann, Müller, & Buholzer, 2017). This final part of our review focuses on the role of parental, peer, and intercultural relations in the religious acculturation of minority youth.

Contextualizing Acculturation: Immigrant Parents and Peer Relations Most immigrant parents effectively transmit their religious identities, beliefs, values, and ties to the next generation such that more religious parents have more religious children. At the same time, the success of religious transmission across generations should be qualified in light of the evidence of small but significant religious decline over generations (Maliepaard, Gijsberts, & Lubbers, 2012; Maliepaard & Lubbers, 2013; Phalet et al., 2008). The evidence of overall religious decline among immigrant populations compared older to more recent migration generations while taking into account age-related religious changes throughout the individual life cycle. Importantly and in line with the previously described notion that religion is considered central to the transmission of immigrant families’ heritage culture, there is some evidence that religion is (even) more effectively transmitted to the next generation in immigrant families – and especially in Muslim families – than in majority families (De Hoon & Van Tubergen, 2014; Jacob & Kalter, 2013). In spite of relatively secular visions of religion in Dutch society, for instance, religious preferences and practices were effectively transmitted in Dutch-Muslim families (Maliepaard & Lubbers, 2013), and religious socialization in childhood predicted sustained religious identification, belief, and practice in young adulthood for Turkish- and Moroccan-Belgian Muslims (Güngör et al., 2011). In another study on Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch Muslims, Verkuyten et al.

(2012) found parental religious identification to be significantly positively related to the religious identification of early adolescents, but by mid-adolescence, the association turned nonsignificant, attesting to the waning influence of parents on adolescents’ religious identity in the course of development.

As adolescents venture outside the home and peer relations gain in normative impact, religious acculturation is also shaped by their social contacts with both co-ethnic and cross-ethnic peers. In line with general findings in Muslim minorities aged 15 and older (Maliepaard & Phalet, 2012), more minority contact with co-ethnic peers and more religious peers reinforce – while more cross-ethnic contact with majority peers slightly attenuate – religious identification and practice among Muslim youth (De Hoon & Van Tubergen, 2014). Countervailing normative pressures from co-ethnic and cross-ethnic friends on religious Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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identity development should be situated against the background of significant ethnic and religious segregation in adolescent friendship networks. Network studies show that cross-ethnic friendships are more often unrealized or unreciprocated and also less embedded than co-ethnic friendships – with Muslim minorities being among the most excluded groups (Leszczensky & Pink, 2016; Schachner, Van de Vijver, & Noack, 2018). Along those lines, Simsek, Van Tubergen, and Fleischmann (2017) found evidence of religious segregation in ethnically diverse classrooms in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In addition to similarity in religious affiliation and after taking into account preferences for same-ethnic and same-gender friends, sharing the same level of religious identification predicted a greater likelihood to become friends.

To summarize, the religious identity of acculturating youth – in particular Muslim youth – is successfully transmitted by immigrant parents and further reinforced by religious peer groups. In contrast, more majority contact has been related to attenuated religious identification and practice among Muslim youth. In view of converging evidence of ethnic and religious segregation in friendship networks, however, peer relations tend to reinforce a shared religious identity in minority youth.

Contextualizing Religious Identity: Intercultural Relations With Receiving Societies Beyond the family and peer context, the acculturation of minority youth is affected by the specific acculturation context in which they grow up. For Muslim minorities, in particular, this context has become increasingly hostile in most Western immigrant-receiving societies in the last two decades, which adds additional challenges to the religious identity development and acculturation of this particular minority group (Phalet, Baysu, & Van Acker, 2015).

In their review of psychological research on Muslim minorities in North America, Amer and Bagasra (2013) document that the number of studies increased dramatically after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the largest share of the literature published after this date analyzes the position of Muslim minorities in the West from an intercultural perspective. These studies contribute to our understanding of how acculturating Muslims deal with the increasing and more blatant Islamophobia they encountered after this watershed event, and most focus on measures of perceived discrimination in relation to religious identity (development) and acculturation outcomes.

However, most findings in this literature pertain to (young) adults, and fewer studies have addressed Muslim youth’ responses to the specific acculturation context in which their religious development occurs.

The 2017 study by Cain and colleagues is an exception as it documents an association between religious change Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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during adolescence and heightened experiences of discrimination (Cain et al., 2017). This finding echoes the positive association between perceived discrimination and religious identification that has been found in (young) adult samples (Fleischmann, Phalet, & Klein, 2011; Kunst, Tajamal, Sam, & Ulleberg, 2012; Maliepaard, Gijsberts, & Phalet, 2015; Verkuyten & Yildiz, 2007). Although these findings reveal that tense intercultural relations generally go together with increased orientations toward one’s religious group, longitudinal or experimental evidence that establishes the causal order of the relation between discriminatory experiences and religious identification is lacking to date.

Going beyond religious identification, other studies additionally examined the national identification of Muslim minorities in line with a bidimensional approach to identification patterns among acculturating groups (cf. supra).

This research attests to the importance of the local and national acculturation context in shaping the acculturation of Muslim minority young adults. Specifically, religious (and ethnic) minority identities were more negatively associated with European national identities across cities and countries at higher levels of perceived personal discrimination and Islamophobia, whereas the absence of discriminatory and prejudiced treatment implied greater compatibility between these identities, thus facilitating integrationist identification patterns (Fleischmann & Phalet, 2016; Kunst, Sadeghi, Tahir, Sam, & Thomsen, 2016).

In addition to the local and national acculturation context, gender affects the acculturation process of Muslim minority youth and how they react to discriminatory experiences. In their comparison of middle and late adolescent Turkish-Belgian youth, Güngör and Bornstein (2009) found lower levels of perceived discrimination and better adaptation among girls compared to boys, and this gender gap was widening over time. This suggests that the challenges brought by a tense acculturation climate disproportionately affect Muslim boys. Heightened levels of perceived discrimination do not only result in lower identity compatibility and adaptation among acculturating Muslim boys, they were also related to more conservative gender-role values which distinguished Turkish boys, but not girls, more strongly from the cultural values of the mainstream in a study of same-sex Turkish-German parent-child dyads (Idema & Phalet, 2007).

To summarize, existing research documents that tensions in local and national acculturation contexts are related to religious identity, its compatibility with other identities and adaptation among Muslim youth and young adults. Against this background, the prevalent separationism among Muslim youth compared to the preference for integrationism among non-Muslim immigrant youth (Berry et al., 2006) may be explained from the more hostile European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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acculturation climate that this religious minority group has been facing (Amer & Bagasra, 2013). Longitudinal and cross-cultural comparative evidence is needed, however, to assess the causal mechanisms involved, as most studies to date have been using cross-sectional designs and based developmental conclusions on the comparison of different age groups.

Conclusion Against the background of increasing societal and scholarly interest in a religious dimension of acculturation, this review brought together empirical research on the role of religious identity in the acculturation of immigrant origin youth. Our overview mainly focused on Muslim minority youth (complemented with findings from [young] adults when no research on children and adolescents was available) since this religious minority is at the center of research attention as well as societal debates, and other religious minority groups are often not present in sufficiently large numbers to allow meaningful cross-cultural comparisons.

While our review is thus able to shed light on acculturation among a religious minority group that is under heightened scrutiny and can therefore contribute to debunking some of the recurrent ideas in public discourses about the position of Muslims in Western societies, it also highlights the need for future research that takes a more comprehensive comparative approach and also studies immigrant children with other religious denominations. With the present state of the field, it is hard to say whether the patterns we identified are generic to the role of religion in the acculturation of immigrant youth, or to what extent they document a specific Islamic variant of religious acculturation.

With this limitation in mind, we conclude our review by returning to the proposed developmental and contextual approach (see Figure 1) with a view to answering our three research questions. In reply to our first question which compared religious development of Muslim minority youth with that of non-Muslim peers, we found that levels of religious identification tend to be higher among Muslim youth compared to other minority and majority youth at all ages.

In line with multiple pathways of identity development, the religious identification of Muslim minorities is mostly stable or increasing throughout adolescence, yet the pace and direction of religious changes differ within and between Muslim minority youth and their Christian minority and majority peers and across the Atlantic. Second, we asked how religious identity affects the acculturative adaptation of Muslim youth. In line with the adaptive function of identity development, and looking beyond ethnic or religious group differences in adaptation problems, religious European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

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identification contributed significantly and positively to the psychological adaptation of Muslim minority youth.

The adaptive benefits of religious identity in the acculturation context are related to the fact that religious involvement is closely entwined with a strong orientation toward heritage culture values and identities. At the same time, being a religious Muslim was either dissociated or conflicting with being part of the mainstream culture: depending on the specific acculturation context, a negative or no significant association was found. In Germany, for instance, being a religious Muslim negatively predicted German culture adoption, which suggests an adaptive disadvantage for religious Muslim youth in mainstream cultural settings.

Third, we applied an ecological approach to the religious identity development of minority youth. More specifically, we discussed how interpersonal relations within immigrant families and adolescents’ peer networks – and intercultural relations with the majority society, for instance when minority adolescents perceive religious discrimination, affect the acculturation and religious identity of Muslim youth. Not surprisingly and in line with research among nonimmigrant youth, religious identity development is strongly tied to the religious identities of parents and (particularly co-ethnic) peers. What is distinctive about Muslim youth, however, is the success of intergenerational transmission, with less religious decline across generations compared to other minority and majority youth. We have interpreted relatively strong and stable religious identities among Muslim minority youth in light of religious reaffirmation within immigrant families and in response to public hostility in the receiving societies. Moreover, Muslims either self-select or are more channeled into co-ethnic and co-religious rather than cross-ethnic and cross-religious friendship networks, which in turn bolster their religious identity. Starting from findings of religious identity conflict with the commitment to mainstream cultural values or identities in some acculturation contexts, our review revealed the importance of the quality of intercultural relations for the acculturative adaptation of Muslim youth (and young adults). Contradicting the widespread notion that – due to an allegedly inherent cultural conflict between Muslim and Western values and lifestyles – Muslim religious identity would be at odds with an orientation toward the mainstream culture and identification with the receiving society, several studies showed that this is only one possible outcome, which can be explained from higher levels of perceived discrimination and Islamophobia. In a nutshell, this review on the religious identity development and the acculturative adaptation of immigrant minority youth highlights multiple developmental pathways which come with adaptation benefits as well as costs depending on the quality of interpersonal and intercultural relations in specific acculturation contexts. Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Acknowledgment This research has been funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, https:// doi.org/10.13039/501100003246, 327-25-005, to Fenella Fleischmann.

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Sociology, 38, 525–545. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc071811-145455 Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychological Review, 14, 60–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309349693 Received April 13, 2017 Revision received September 27, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Karen Phalet Center for Social and Cultural Psychology Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences KU Leuven Tiensestraat 102 3000 Leuven Belgium karen.phalet@kuleuven.be

Karen Phalet is Full Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She has published extensively in international psychology, sociology and migration studies journals on the interplay of migration-related diversity with old and new intergroup inequalities and conflicts with a special emphasis on minority perspectives in mainly European research contexts. Religious diversity and polarization vs. tolerance are an important and continuing line of inquiry within this broader research field.

Fenella Fleischmann is an Associate Professor at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research studies the integration of immigrants and their children in European societies from a comparative perspective, with a focus on the role of religion among Muslim minorities.

Jessie Hillekens is a doctoral researcher at the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven. Her dissertation develops a social-developmental approach of acculturation processes and their interplay with peer relations among minority and majority adolescents.

European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 32–43

Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Schools as Acculturative and Developmental Contexts for Youth of Immigrant and Refugee Background Maja K. Schachner,1,2 Linda Juang,1 Ursula Moffitt,1 and Fons J. R. van de Vijver3,4,5 1

Inclusive Education, University of Potsdam, Germany College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER), Germany

2 3

Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

4

Workwell Unit, North-West University, South Africa

5

School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia

Abstract: Schools are important for the academic and socio-emotional development, as well as acculturation of immigrant- and refugeebackground youth. We highlight individual differences which shape their unique experiences, while considering three levels of the school context in terms of how they may affect adaptation outcomes: (1) interindividual interactions in the classroom (such as peer relations, studentteacher relations, teacher beliefs, and teaching practices), (2) characteristics of the classroom or school (such as ethnic composition and diversity climate), and (3) relevant school- and nation-level policies (such as diversity policies and school tracking). Given the complexity of the topic, there is a need for more research taking an integrated and interdisciplinary perspective to address migration related issues in the school context. Teacher beliefs and the normative climate in schools seem particularly promising points for intervention, which may be easier to change than structural aspects of the school context. More inclusive schools are also an important step toward more peaceful interethnic relations in diverse societies.

Keywords: youth of immigrant and refugee background, school, acculturation, adaptation

Currently there are 244 million migrants (i.e., those not living in their country of birth) recorded worldwide, more than ever before (United Nations, 2015). Among refugees specifically, 51% are under the age of 18. Immigrant- and refugee-background youth are very diverse. Despite this diversity, they share the experience of being a cultural minority, which means they may be confronted with stereotypes and exclusion, also in the school context. Immigrantand refugee-background youth are therefore more at risk for lower well-being, mental health, and academic achievement (Dimitrova, Chasiotis, & van de Vijver, 2016). Based on a risk and resilience perspective, however, if there are protective factors in place, they can do well (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2013).

Our aim is to review different levels of the school context, and their associations with adjustment outcomes in youth of immigrant and refugee background. Within youth of immigrant and refugee background, we include both those with direct migration experiences (first generation) as well as those of the second and third generation.

European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 44–56 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000312

As these groups are distinct in many respects (as outlined in the first section of this review), we refer to the specific group studied where this information was provided in the original article as much as possible, and otherwise use the general term of immigrant- and refugee-background youth.

We specifically focus on adolescents, which is also the target age group of the bulk of the studies in this area.

Adjustment reflects the accomplishment of both acculturative and normative developmental tasks and includes a broad range of outcomes, such as positive interethnic relations, as well as socio-emotional and academic adjustment (Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Sam, & Phinney, 2012). Drawing on Eccles and Roeser’s (2011) earlier review of school as a developmental context, we conceptualize the school as decomposable into interindividual interactions in the classroom, characteristics of the classroom or school as a whole, and relevant school- and nation-level policies. Our review therefore applies this conceptual framework to the specific context and situation of immigrant- and refugee-background youth, thereby providing Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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an organizing framework which can guide future research with this group.

As immigrant- and refugee-background youth are extremely diverse, we start by reviewing characteristics of individual adolescents which may contribute to differences in adjustment outcomes between individuals and groups of individuals. Borrowing from Eccles and Roeser’s (2011) model and taking an ecological systems approach (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), we then work our way through aspects of the school context that are further away from the individual: we start with the most proximal layer, interindividual interactions in the classroom (such as peer relations, student-teacher relations, teacher beliefs, and teaching practices), followed by characteristics of the classroom or school as a whole (such as ethnic composition and diversity climate), and relevant school- and nation-level policies (such as diversity policies and school tracking).

Although we review each layer of context and different aspects within them separately, these are often interrelated and may therefore produce interactive effects in a so-called mesosystem (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Our aim is to provide an overview of relevant aspects of the school context and their associations with adjustment outcomes of immigrant- and refugee-background youth. Covering each aspect in an exhaustive manner or addressing all possible interactions is beyond the scope of this review.

Yet, by highlighting the most important aspects in each layer of the school context we want to guide researchers as to which other aspects of the school context may interact with the main psychological variables studied.

Adolescent Characteristics In much of the research (also many of the studies covered in this review) immigrant-background youth are treated as a single group. Yet, individual differences may result in different school experiences and outcomes. These individual-level characteristics may also act as a filter for (mediation) or interact with (moderation) contextual conditions.

We therefore provide an outline of individual differences relevant for immigrant-background youth, such as immigrant generation, refugee background, religion and ethnicity, as well as acculturation orientations and ethnic identity. Our aim is to alert researchers to these differences and to pay more attention to the specific samples when interpreting research findings.

Acculturation Orientations Acculturation refers to the changes in behaviors, values, and attitudes that result from individuals experiencing Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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long-term contact with two or more cultures (Ward, 2001). Acculturation orientations to both majority (mainstream) and heritage (ethnic) cultures have been directly and indirectly linked to positive youth development in school. Acculturation orientations also mediate effects of school experiences on outcomes (Schachner, Noack, van de Vijver, & Eckstein, 2016). Although orientations toward both cultures are associated with positive effects, they differ in their effects on specific outcomes.

A higher mainstream orientation is related to higher mainstream language fluency (Birman, Simon, Chan, & Tran, 2014) and greater support from the school context, such as from classmates (Oppedal, Røysamb, & Sam, 2004). This may explain why a higher mainstream orientation is also associated with greater sociocultural adaptation, as indicated by better grades, lower school absenteeism, and less disruptive behavior in class (Motti-Stefanidi, Pavlopoulos, Obradović, & Masten, 2008). A higher ethnic orientation, on the other hand, may facilitate closer and more positive and supportive family relationships, leading to better psychosocial adjustment as indicated by higher self-esteem, fewer depressive symptoms, and lower anxiety (Oppedal et al., 2004). More positive psychosocial adjustment can, in turn, promote better school adjustment (Hascher, 2003).

Similar associations have been found for ethnic identity, which can be seen as an important facet of heritage culture orientation. Ethnic identity is the sense of pride, belonging, and involvement that adolescents have toward their own cultural background (Phinney, 1990). A stronger ethnic identity is linked to fewer depressive symptoms and internalizing and externalizing behaviors, greater self-esteem, well-being, life satisfaction, school engagement, and academic achievement, and better physical health (RivasDrake et al., 2014). Ethnic identity may also be a protective factor by buffering the negative effect of perceived teacher discrimination on children’s academic attitudes and school belonging (Brown & Chu, 2012) and low school belonging on reading achievement (Santos & Collins, 2016). The role of ethnic identity may depend on contextual factors such as ethnic density of the community. One study found that stronger ethnic identity was related to more positive functioning in terms of less depression and greater connectedness to parents, for those living in an ethnically dense context but not for those living in an ethnically dispersed context (Juang, Nguyen, & Lin, 2006).

Recent conceptualizations of acculturation orientations argue for multiple (not just two) dimensions (Ward, 2013).

A study of Italian-, Portuguese-, and Albanian-heritage adolescents in Switzerland assessed three dimensions of acculturation – heritage culture orientation, majority culture orientation, and multicultural orientation (Haenni Hoti, Heinzmann, Müller, & Buholzer, 2015). The results suggest European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 44–56

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that adopting a multicultural orientation (e.g., being open to and interested in different cultures) or a combination of heritage and multicultural orientations were related to greater school satisfaction, higher educational aspirations, and better German reading skills.

Finally, literature on acculturative fit suggests that the effects of acculturation orientations and mainstream and ethnic identity may depend on the degree of fit with expectations of the majority population (Brown & Zagefka, 2011; Zagefka & Brown, 2002).

Immigrant Generation Immigration is not always a risk factor when comparing adjustment by generational status. In the US, firstgeneration immigrant adolescents, compared to the second generation, tend to show better grades, higher academic orientation, and more positive school engagement, known as the “immigrant paradox” (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012).

In Europe, however, most studies find either no generational difference or a difference in the opposite direction.

A study using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 2012 found that first-generation adolescents across six European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Portugal, and Slovenia) report a lower sense of school belonging, and, subsequently, lower school adjustment than second-generation adolescents (Schachner, He, Heizmann, & van de Vijver, 2017). A study of five European countries (Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, and Finland) from the International Comparative Study of Ethno-Cultural Youth (ICSEY) found that adolescents across generations showed similar rates of sociocultural adaptation, that is, school adjustment and behavior problems (Sam, Vedder, Liebkind, Neto, & Virta, 2008).

Yet, the first generation showed poorer psychological adaptation, that is, lower life satisfaction, self-esteem, and greater psychological problems, compared to the second generation. Overall, youth of immigrant background are better adjusted in countries with better immigrant integration and multicultural policies (Dimitrova et al., 2016).

It therefore seems likely that in these countries, there is also less of a disadvantage of the first generation compared to the second generation. This would have to be investigated in future studies.

Refugee Background Forcibly displaced children and youth face challenges beyond normative acculturative stressors associated with migrating to a new country. They have a higher likelihood of having witnessed violence, experienced trauma, having disrupted education, and having been separated from

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primary caregivers (Fazel, Reed, Panter-Brick, & Stein, 2012). Experiencing such hardships is detrimental to mental health (Seglem, Oppedal, & Raeder, 2011) and learning, leading to poorer academic outcomes (Birman & Tran, 2015). From a risk and resilience perspective, however, children can do well despite adversity in a supportive environment (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2013).

For refugee-background children especially, support from teachers, access to school services, and a positive school climate promote a stronger sense of school belonging, and ultimately, better academic adjustment (SuárezOrozco, Pimentel, & Martin, 2009; Tyrer & Fazel, 2014).

To what extent such a supportive environment is provided may also partly reflect immigrant integration and multicultural policies as well as the overall attitudinal climate toward immigrants and refugees in a particular country.

Ethnicity and Religion Immigrant groups perceived as being more culturally distant are more likely to be the target of discrimination and “othering.” In Europe, there are pervasive negative stereotypes toward people of Turkish, North African, or other Muslim heritage, which increases the risk for experiencing stereotype threat and discrimination (Baysu, Celeste, Brown, Verschueren, & Phalet, 2016), and can negatively affect school adjustment (Schachner, van de Vijver, & Noack, 2018) for adolescents from those groups. Preservice teachers in Germany, for instance, reported more negative stereotypes regarding competence (e.g., in education and work), social behaviors (e.g., behaviors in social interactions), and culture (e.g., traditions, religion), for Turkish-heritage students compared to both Italianheritage or nonimmigrant-background Germans (Froehlich, Martiny, Deaux, & Mok, 2016). Importantly, pre-service teachers who held more negative competence stereotypes about Turkish-heritage students were also more likely to attribute underachievement to internal rather than situational causes. Similar stereotypes about Muslim individuals (e.g., “they do not want to integrate,” “they do not want to have contact with non-migrants”) persist, despite evidence to the contrary (Foroutan, 2012). Possibly as a response to belonging to a stigmatized group, Muslim youth had a stronger ethnic orientation than adolescents from other groups and reported that religion was more important in their families (Schachner, van de Vijver, & Noack, 2014).

Yet, counter to common stereotypes, they did not differ in their orientation toward the mainstream culture. Thus, attention to the specific ethnic or religious group is important as each group is exposed to different attitudinal climates, with consequences for adolescent school adjustment and well-being. Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Teachers, Peers, and Social Interactions in the Classroom Within the classroom context, interactions with both teachers and peers contribute to a child’s developmental trajectory. Youth of immigrant and refugee background encounter many of the positive and negative experiences all children face, yet factors such as teachers’ beliefs and pedagogical practices, as well as the nature and strength of both peer and teacher relationships can affect their developmental and acculturative outcomes in ways that may differ from their nonimmigrant-background peers.

Teacher Beliefs and Expectations In a US meta-analysis it was found that teachers held lower expectations for and offered less positive encouragement to ethnic minority students, excluding Asian Americans (Tenenbaum & Ruck, 2007). A similar result was found among teachers in the Netherlands, revealing achievement expectations heavily biased against Turkish- and Moroccanheritage students (Timmermans, Kuyper, & van der Werf, 2015). Such low expectations can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy effects, which can be particularly harmful for children of already stigmatized groups (Jussim & Harber, 2005). Moreover, unfounded low expectations can have direct consequences on students’ academic paths, particularly within-school systems tracked ostensibly along ability lines. A recent study in the US found that teachers advanced first-generation immigrant students less often to universitybound math classes than their peers, even when performance was equal (Blanchard & Muller, 2015).

Because prejudiced or stereotyped expectations can be difficult to measure, studies have employed indirect methods to assess their impact. For instance, experimental research found that teachers gave less favorable recommendations and/or assessment to immigrant-background students, despite equal performance with their nonimmigrant-background peers (Glock, Krolak-Schwerdt, Klapproth, & Böhmer, 2013; Sprietsma, 2013). Other work examining explicit expectations in conjunction with implicit associations tends to find no link between teachers’ reported expectations and student performance, but significant links between teachers’ implicit bias and lower scores among students who belong to stereotyped groups (Peterson, Rubie-Davies, Osborne, & Sibley, 2016), and greater achievement gaps in classrooms wherein teachers showed high implicit bias (van den Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, & Holland, 2010). This research is particularly important today, as overt discrimination is less common, but the effects of underlying bias may still have a detrimental impact on student outcomes. Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Perceived Discrimination From Teachers and Peers The consequences of teacher bias can be dire, and are related to the negative outcomes associated with discrimination experiences. For instance, perceived ethnic discrimination from teachers has been linked to a lowered sense of academic competence (Oxman-Martinez et al., 2012), academic futility (D’hondt, Eccles, Houtte, & Stevens, 2016), and diminished school belonging (D’hondt, Houtte, & Stevens, 2015) among immigrant-background students.

In recent qualitative work, Turkish-heritage emerging adults in Germany cited the lasting impact of teacher-based foreigner objectification, a form of micro-aggression in which national belonging is called into question, noting that it led to feelings of alienation and exclusion (Moffitt, Juang, & Syed, 2017). Feeling academically competent and a sense of belonging are both closely linked to academic engagement, which in turn is predictive of school success among immigrant-background youth (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2013). If such feelings are jeopardized, such youth face much higher hurdles on the path to adaptive outcomes.

The source of discrimination in the school context is not always the teacher. A recent review found that firstgeneration immigrant students experience peer aggression and bullying at school more often than their native-born peers (Pottie, Dahal, Georgiades, Premji, & Hassan, 2015). Any bullying can be harmful, but ethnicity or racebased bullying has been found to be particularly emotionally detrimental (e.g., Mendez, Bauman, Sulkowski, Davis, & Nixon, 2016), as it implicates something about the self.

Among immigrant-background youth in the Netherlands, the negative effects of ethnic bullying on global self-worth were mediated by ethnic self-worth, while this link was absent in other forms of peer victimization (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2006). Among refugee-background youth, discrimination experiences have been linked to stilted acculturation processes as children feel rejected by the majority group, leading to lowered self-worth and school engagement (Stark, Plosky, Horn, & Canavera, 2015). Yet, as with teachers, peer discrimination can also be indirect. A recent daily diary study found that adolescents already experiencing anxiety who faced ethnic teasing from peers then reported heightened and prolonged anxiety (Douglass, Mirpuri, English, & Yip, 2016).

Student Relationships With Teachers and Peers On the other hand, supportive relationships with both teachers and peers can protect against the negative effects of ethnic harassment (Bayram Özdemir & Stattin, 2014), European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 44–56

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and buffer against general feelings of exclusion (SuárezOrozco et al., 2009). Positive teacher-student relationships have been linked to outcomes including higher self-esteem (Agirdag, van Houtte, & van Avermaet, 2012), more positive attitudes toward the majority group (Thijs & Verkuyten, 2012), higher mastery goal orientations (Thijs & Fleischmann, 2015), and fewer problems with school personnel (Garcia-Reid, Peterson, & Reid, 2015) among immigrant-background students. Moreover, immigrantbackground students who reported that their teacher would stand up against discrimination showed higher global and ethnic self-esteem (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2004). Among refugee-background youth, supportive educators were found to be the crucial component in fostering academic engagement (Mendenhall, Bartlett, & Ghaffar-Kucher, 2017).

Moreover, while majority youth tend to have a greater sense of belonging at school (Chiu, Pong, Mori, & Chow, 2012), the association with supportive teacher relationships on immigrant-background students’ school belonging has been found to be greater than among their majority peers (den Brok, van Tartwijk, Wubbels, & Veldman, 2010).

The presence and possibility of relationships with immigrant-background teachers may also be important for students’ academic and acculturative trajectories. Studies from both the US and Europe have found that ethnic minority students tend to do better academically when the cultural diversity in the student body is also reflected among educators (Donlevy, Meierkord, & Rajania, 2016).

This may relate to ethnic minority teachers incorporating more multicultural content into their lessons (Agirdag, Merry, & van Houtte, 2016), or understanding and speaking the heritage language of their immigrant-background students (Conteh, 2007). Qualitative work from Australia highlighted the greater empathy displayed by indigenous and ethnic minority teachers, emphasizing the importance of being able and willing to recognize the lived experiences of their ethnic minority students (Santoro, 2007).

Supportive friendships, in addition to teacher relationships, were strongly linked to academic success among Latino/a immigrant youth in the US (Lee & Lam, 2016).

Cross-ethnic friendships in particular are linked to positive outcomes such as greater well-being, greater conflict solving ability, higher self-esteem, and better social adjustment (for a review, see Jugert & Feddes, 2015). Among newcomer immigrant youth, however, language barriers and separated classes can create difficulties in making friends and feeling accepted by majority peers (Tsai, 2006). Greater perceived cultural distance can also make such friendships less likely and is an obstacle particularly for nonimmigrant-background youth (Schachner, Brenick, Noack, van de Vijver, & Heizmann, 2015). Such findings create strong evidence in favor of inclusive, open, and supportive classrooms.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching When considering the pedagogical strategies teachers employ to engage students from non-majority families, culturally responsive teaching (or culturally relevant pedagogy) is a framework promoting high expectations and encouraging teachers to draw on students’ diverse funds of knowledge (e.g., Gay, 2013). It is made up of a range of positive pedagogical strategies, including differentiated teaching practices, cultural engagement, and heritage language affirmation (Dickson, Chun, & Fernandez, 2016). Diverse teaching practices in combination with high teacher expectations were related to higher academic selfefficacy and better classroom performance among firstand second-generation students (Garcia & Chun, 2016).

Though culturally responsive teaching has been understudied within the European context, European research on multicultural education, which can be seen as a facet of culturally responsive teaching, shows positive effects on student self-esteem (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2004).

Classroom and School Characteristics In addition to student interactions in the classroom, characteristics of classrooms and schools as a whole contribute to adjustment outcomes for immigrant- and refugee-background youth. These include structural diversity or ethnic composition and the normative climate, specifically around issues of cultural diversity.

Ethnic Composition Immigrant-background students are often concentrated in particular schools, which may reflect ethnic segregation in certain neighborhoods. School segregation is amplified by so-called “white flight” wherein (particularly high-socioeconomic status [SES]) parents of nonimmigrant background avoid putting their children into schools with a high concentration of immigrant-background or ethnic minority students. A high proportion of immigrant-background students is therefore often confounded with a high proportion of low-SES students (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010).

Effects of the ethnic composition have been studied for interethnic relations (including ethnic discrimination), but also for achievement-related outcomes.

Findings concerning interethnic relations diverge (see Thijs & Verkuyten, 2014, for a review). A higher proportion of immigrant-background or ethnic minority students has mostly been associated with better interethnic relations, such as more interethnic friendships (Schachner et al., 2015) Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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and higher popularity of immigrant-background students (Motti-Stefanidi, Asendorpf, & Masten, 2012), lower levels of ethnic victimization (Agirdag, Demanet, van Houtte, & van Avermaet, 2011), and fairer and more equal treatment of diverse students by teachers (Juvonen, Kogachi, & Graham, 2017). Yet, some studies also report associations with more negative interethnic relations, such as higher perceived discrimination among immigrant-background students (Brenick, Titzmann, Michel, & Silbereisen, 2012), and more negative outgroup attitudes (Vervoort, Scholte, & Scheepers, 2011). A nonlinear association between composition and intergroup outcomes may partly explain these conflicting findings (Baysu, Phalet, & Brown, 2014): specifically, when there are only few minority or immigrant-background students in class, higher proportions of these students may be associated both with decreased opportunities for contact with majority students and a higher likelihood of experiencing ethnic discrimination. Yet, in classrooms where there are many minority or immigrant-background students, there may be fewer instances of ethnic discrimination and the joint experience of discrimination may make it less harmful for minority students in these classrooms.

Diversity in terms of number and relative size of ethnic subgroups may also shape interethnic relations. Power is distributed most evenly when there are many groups of equal size (Graham, 2006). Thus, some studies found a positive association between ethnic diversity and interethnic relations (Schachner et al., 2015; van Houtte & Stevens, 2009). Others did not find such a link after controlling for the proportion of ethnic minority students in the classroom (Agirdag et al., 2011; Vervoort et al., 2011).

To conclude, several mechanisms are associated with intergroup outcomes. On the one hand, a higher proportion of immigrant-background students decreases opportunities for interethnic contact with majority students and – up to a certain point – increases discrimination experiences. On the other hand, a more diverse group of immigrant-background students may create more equal relations between different ethnic groups in the classroom and make these groups more accessible. As few studies systematically disentangle these different mechanisms, this makes the overall picture less clear.

For achievement, a higher proportion of immigrantbackground students in school was associated with a larger achievement gap between students of immigrant and nonimmigrant background across 45 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, based on data from PISA 2003, 2006, and 2009 (Teltemann & Schunck, 2016). A small negative effect on achievement for immigrant-background students was also found in a meta-analysis (van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010).

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students was close to zero for majority students. A longitudinal study following newly arrived immigrants also confirmed that students with positive academic trajectories were more likely to attend schools with a lower proportion of immigrant and low-SES students (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010). However, in PISA 2015, students of immigrant background did no longer experienced disadvantages of attending a school with a high proportion of immigrantbackground students once the socioeconomic background of students was also taken into account (OECD, 2016). This may also be an indication that more resources are invested specifically into those schools.

Contrary to some of the negative outcomes associated with a higher proportion of immigrant and immigrantbackground students, some studies report higher achievement (Benner & Crosnoe, 2011; Rjosk, Richter, Lüdtke, & Eccles, 2016) and better psychological school adjustment (Schachner et al., 2016) in highly diverse classrooms (i.e., classes with many different ethnic groups) when the effect of the proportion is controlled for. Higher diversity has also been associated with more classroom disruptions, however, which may counteract some of its positive effects on achievement (Veerman, 2017).

In studies including both the diversity and the proportion of immigrant-background students, the positive effect of diversity (i.e., more different ethnic groups represented) on achievement-related outcomes is usually smaller than the negative effect of a high share of immigrantbackground students. One reason for this may be that a high proportion of immigrant-background students is often confounded with a high proportion of low-SES students and generally less resourced schools. The positive effect of the diversity and the negative effect of the proportion of immigrant-background students on their achievement and school adjustment are partly mediated by a higher (for diversity) and lower (for proportion) mainstream orientation (Schachner et al., 2016) and a higher (for diversity) and lower (for proportion) sense of school belonging (Schachner, Schwarzenthal, van de Vijver, & Noack, 2017). A shortage of qualified teachers and teaching materials, fewer opportunities for contact with majority students, and more discrimination experiences were identified as additional mediators for the negative effect of the proportion of immigrant-background students on their achievement (Baysu et al., 2014; Veerman, 2017).

School or Classroom Culture and Climate The norms and climate around issues of cultural diversity are crucial for school adjustment outcomes of immigrantbackground youth (for a review, see Schachner, 2017).

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equality and positive intergroup contact among students is important. Such a climate has been associated with a higher likelihood of interethnic friendships (Schachner et al., 2015), better intergroup attitudes and less perceived discrimination (Schwarzenthal, Schachner, van de Vijver, & Juang, 2017), as well as better achievement, school engagement, and psychological school adjustment (Schachner et al., 2016; Schachner, Schwarzenthal, et al., 2017).

It can also buffer the negative effects of stereotype threat (Baysu et al., 2016). In addition, schools should acknowledge the diverse backgrounds of students in the classroom and provide space for discussions about cultural diversity and ethnic identity exploration. Such a climate of cultural pluralism has mainly been associated with positive psychological outcomes, such as higher academic self-concept and academic motivation, better well-being, and fewer disruptive or delinquent behaviors and mental health problems (Schachner et al., 2016).

Both of these aspects of cultural diversity climate promote positive outcomes through a strengthened sense of school belonging among immigrant-background students (Heikamp, van Laar, Verschueren, & Phalet, 2016; Schachner, Schwarzenthal, et al., 2017). A positive effect of the cultural diversity climate on school belonging was also found for refugee-background students (Due, Riggs, & Augoustinos, 2016). Additionally, a climate characterized by equality may facilitate a higher mainstream orientation and identity, whereas a climate characterized by cultural pluralism may strengthen students’ ethnic orientation and identity, both of which contribute positively to adjustment (Schachner et al., 2016). The effects of the cultural diversity climate also differ between groups and individuals. A stronger positive effect could be observed among those who had a strong identification with their minority group (Byrd & Chavous, 2011) as well as those experiencing higher levels of discrimination (Closson, Darwich, Hymel, & Waterhouse, 2014). Although boys perceived the climate more negatively than girls, they did not differ from girls in the effects of these experiences (Schachner et al., 2018).

Educational and School Policies At the level of school policies, those most frequently discussed in relation to immigrant-background students are diversity policies and streaming (also known as tracking or ability grouping). Streaming involves a system in which students are grouped by ability within schools (i.e., in different classes or courses) or, more commonly, between different types of schools. Whereas diversity policies are usually subject to individual schools, streaming policies are often at regional or country level.

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Diversity Policies Similar to the diversity climate, approaches to diversity can be distinguished at the level of school policies. For example, Celeste and colleagues analyzed the rules and mission statements of 66 schools in Belgium and linked them to student outcomes (Celeste, Baysu, Meeusen, Kende, & Phalet, 2017). They identified four types of policies: color blindness (e.g., stressing individual talent), assimilationism (e.g., prohibiting headscarves and use of heritage languages at school), multiculturalism (e.g., teaching and learning about diversity), and equality (e.g., promoting equality as a value). Color blindness and assimilationism were by far the most common policy themes. Whereas multiculturalism was associated with better grades 1 year later, the opposite effect was observed for color blindness. Similarly, multiculturalism promoted and assimilationism reduced school belonging among immigrant-background students.

In another study, Celeste and colleagues experimentally tested the effect of a new multicultural school policy explicitly valuing a dual identity among ethnic minority students (Celeste, Baysu, Phalet, & Brown, 2016). Black students in the UK who were asked to write about a multicultural school policy (reinforcing a dual identity) performed significantly better on an achievement test compared to those students who received the traditional self-affirmation intervention (see Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006, for details on the original intervention), where students are asked to write about their individual values and a new school policy that acknowledges them as individuals (Celeste et al., 2016). This effect was mediated by reduced stereotype threat. Policies requiring students to only use the mainstream language at school are a common example of assimilationism. Such policies are supported by many teachers, especially in schools with a roughly even distribution of ethnic minority and nonminority students; at the same time, teachers endorsing such policies hold lower achievement expectations toward immigrant-background students, which are likely to negatively affect those students’ engagement and academic outcomes (Pulinx, van Avermaet, & Agirdag, 2015). It should be noted though, that effects of different approaches to diversity, as manifested in the cultural diversity climate or policies, may also vary between countries as a result of different immigrant integration and multicultural policies. On the basis of the current evidence reviewed above, it seems that greater positive effects of multiculturalist or pluralist approaches are observed in countries where there is also more support for such policies at the country level (the UK and Belgium).

On the other hand, benefits of pluralism are weaker and more positive effects are observed for egalitarian and/or color blind approaches in countries with less support for multicultural policies and more support for assimilation,

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such as Germany. Yet, there is a need for more comparative research across countries of settlement to get more clarity on this.

Streaming Streaming has received systematic attention in the study of minority student performance. Western European countries in particular are known for their early tracking in which students are split across vocationally oriented and academically oriented schools. Other countries, such as the UK, Canada, and the US, are more characterized by comprehensive schooling, which means students are only split into ability groups late in their educational career. Schnell and Crul compared the educational performance of secondgeneration immigrant-background students in Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden, using large-scale educational surveys (Crul, 2013; Schnell & Crul, 2015). In these countries, streaming is introduced at the ages of 10, 12, and 15 years, respectively. These authors found that educational enrolment of immigrant-background students in tertiary education was highest in Sweden and lowest in Austria, and that parental SES was least important in Sweden, where streaming is introduced at the oldest age. Using three waves of PISA data (2003, 2006, and 2009), Teltemann and Schunck (2016) found that streaming at school level was counterproductive, yet, interestingly, that streaming within a single school was associated with higher performance among immigrant-background students. Lancee (2016) found that the adverse effects of streaming at school level persisted after graduation and also had a negative effect on the employment of immigrant-background youth.

All in all, the research evidence suggests that the educational achievement of immigrant-background students can be hampered by early between-school streaming (after having been assigned to a “lower” track, it is difficult to gain access to a “higher track” later), though potentially facilitated by within-school streaming.

Discussion Our review shows that school experiences and outcomes among immigrant- and refugee-background youth are shaped by multiple layers of the school context. Such complex and interacting experiences are further diversified by individual differences, such as acculturation orientations, immigrant generation, or refugee experiences.

It seems though, that several aspects of the school context are beneficial for most youth of immigrant and/or refugee background: first, to have positive interactions and

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relations with teachers and fellow students in the classroom (den Brok et al., 2010; Lee & Lam, 2016; Mendenhall et al., 2017), which are characterized by positive beliefs and nondiscrimination. Such positive relations in the classroom can also buffer some of the negative effects of discrimination experiences immigrant- or refugee-background youth may make in the classroom or elsewhere (e.g., Bayram Özdemir & Stattin, 2014). Second, that teachers attend to the diversity of their students and the different needs they may have, for example, not only by employing culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2013), but also by providing opportunities to all students to engage with the heritage cultures represented in the classroom through multicultural education (see Verkuyten & Thijs, 2013, for a review of effects on interethnic relations).

Teachers who actively attend to the diversity of students may also foster a diversity-friendly climate at school, which has been linked with a range of positive outcomes (for a review, see Schachner, 2017). Third, more diversity in terms of number and relative size of subgroups seems to be mostly beneficial for achievement and interethnic relations (Rjosk et al., 2016; Schachner et al., 2015, 2016; van Houtte & Stevens, 2009). At the same time, a high proportion of students of immigrant background can provide a risk for those students’ achievement, especially when paired with a high proportion of students of low socioeconomic background (for a review, see van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010).

However, the most recent PISA results from 2015 suggest that the net disadvantage resulting from a high proportion of immigrant-background students is shrinking (OECD, 2016). Fourth, diversity policies at school matter. Multicultural policies seem to be particularly effective in countries where there is also support for such policies at the national level (Celeste et al., 2016, 2017). Yet, assimilative and/or color blind policies are still the norm and often not very helpful (Celeste et al., 2017; Pulinx et al., 2015). Finally, between-school tracking appears to be linked with a greater achievement gap between students of immigrant and nonimmigrant background and should therefore be avoided, whereas tracking within schools may be beneficial for youth of immigrant and refugee background (Teltemann & Schunck, 2016).

Conceptually, we drew on contextual models of development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Eccles & Roeser, 2011) and assumed that individual adolescents are nested in different layers of the school context, ranging from proximal (interindividual interactions in the classroom) to distal (school- and nation-level policies). We found that aspects of the school context at different levels were associated with adjustment outcomes of immigrant- and refugeebackground youth. Yet, most of the research has concentrated on proximal aspects of the school context and there

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are few multilevel studies, which simultaneously investigate effects at different levels of the school context. This type of study would be required to compare effects across levels and also to test for interactions and indirect effects across levels. In addition, there is also a need for more integrative studies, which simultaneously include multiple aspects of the school context within a level. Often, different research lines, sometimes reflecting different disciplines, are concerned with different aspects of the school context and different aspects of adjustment.

We therefore need more interdisciplinary work in this area. This could mean, for example, collaborating with sociologists or political scientists to study how multicultural and immigrant integration policies at country level are associated with more proximal layers of the school context and/or individual academic outcomes and adjustment of immigrant-background youth (for exemplary studies see Arikan, van de Vijver, & Yagmur, 2017; Schachner, He, et al., 2017). It could also mean turning to linguistics for the effects of language policies and teaching in schools.

Finally, research from education and didactics may shed light on effects of specific teaching practices. In school development research, increasing interest has also been paid to the role of the principal. A concept of culturally responsive school leadership has been put forward (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016), yet, we are not aware of any studies linking school leadership to outcomes among immigrant-background students.

For education practitioners and policymakers, research on diversity policies and climate provides interesting new insight into possible points for intervention. Whereas the ethnic composition of schools depends on hard to control factors, such as the ethnic composition of the neighborhood and parental decisions of where to enroll their children in school, diversity policies and climate within schools are easier to change. Such changes, combined with teacher training initiatives, may help to alter teacher beliefs and shape interactions, both between students and teachers, and among students themselves. Teacher training initiatives are most effective when they are part of teacher education at university. Yet, those initiatives differ considerably in content, intensity, and effectiveness (Civitillo, Juang, & Schachner, in press). Improving and consistently providing training to better prepare teachers to work in culturally diverse schools requires this as a top priority on the political agenda. Finally, although this may take longest to change, early streaming should be abolished, in favor of comprehensive schooling. Besides the benefits this may bring for students of immigrant background, more diverse, inclusive schools are also a more adequate reflection of today’s societies in Europe and beyond. Attending such schools can help all students prepare for life in a diverse society.

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04.001 Zagefka, H., & Brown, R. (2002). The relationship between acculturation strategies, relative fit and intergroup relations: Immigrant majority relations in Germany. European Journal of Social Psychology, 32, 171–188. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.73 Received March 31, 2017 Revision received September 14, 1017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Maja Katharina Schachner Inclusive Education University of Potsdam Karl-Liebknecht-Str.24-25 14476 Potsdam (OT Golm) Germany maja.schachner@uni-potsdam.de

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Maja K. Schachner is a postdoctoral researcher in Inclusive Education at the University of Potsdam, Germany, as well as a fellow in the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research. She is also the presidentelect of the Early Researchers’ Union of the European Association of Developmental Psychology (EADP).

Her main research interests include cultural diversity in schools, crossethnic friendships, acculturation and school-related outcomes of adolescents of immigrant background.

Ursula Moffitt is a PhD candidate and research associate in Inclusive Education at the University of Potsdam, as well as a lecturer in social sciences at Humboldt University Berlin. Her work focuses on norms of national and cultural identity, how they are transmitted and understood in and outside of school, and how they relate to discrimination, Islamophobia, and conceptions of the self in context. She is particularly interested in critical and qualitative methods.

Linda Juang is a Professor in the Department of Inclusive Education at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

She has a doctorate in Developmental Psychology and her research focuses on how experiences of immigration relate to adolescents’ and young adults’ development and adjustment in family, school, and community contexts.

Fons J. R. van de Vijver is Professor of Cross-Cultural Psychology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and has extraordinary chairs at North-West University, South Africa, and the University of Queensland, Australia. He has authored more than 400 publications and he is the recipient of the 2013 International Award of the American Psychological Association. He is Past-President of the European Association of Psychological Assessment and President of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.

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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Parenting in a New Land Immigrant Parents and the Positive Development of Their Children and Youth Birgit Leyendecker,1 Natasha Cabrera,2 Hanna Lembcke,1 Jessica Willard,1 Katharina Kohl,1 and Olivia Spiegler1,3 1

Department of Psychology, Ruhr-Unversität Bochum, Germany

2

Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

3

FernUniversität Hagen, Germany

Abstract: Immigrant parents face a double challenge in rearing their children in a foreign country. In addition to the tasks that all parents face, they must also try to find a balance between the norms and expectations of their heritage culture and those of the culture they live in. How do immigrant parents support their children and contribute to their positive adaptation? The goal of this review is to highlight selected aspects of parenting and family relationships that are strongly linked to children’s development and resilience. With regards to family processes, we underscore the contribution of fathers, the role of a potential acculturation gap between parents, and the benefit of speaking the heritage language in the family. For the connection to the world outside of the family, we highlight the advantage of having proficiency in the majority language and of parental involvement in schools. Finally, we outline the specific challenges and stressors as well as the importance of family relationships for families with refugee status. We conclude by making the case that immigrant parents should be encouraged and supported in rearing their children in a way that fosters family cohesion and reflects their heritage culture as well as the culture of the host country. This requires support and intervention programs that are not only culturally sensitive but are also two-generational and focus on mothers, fathers, and children.

Keywords: parenting, immigrant families, resilience, refugees, positive development

The biggest challenge for immigrant children and youth is to successfully navigate between at least two cultures (Motti-Stefanidi, 2017). In this process, parents play a vital role in facilitating children’s connection and access to the culture of their heritage as well as of the receiving country (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Parents shape their children’s experiences and life trajectories in multiple ways, including making resources available to them within the family and beyond. Migration, whether voluntary or not, is another way through which parents hope to provide for a better future for their children. This pathway to child well-being is very challenging for immigrant parents. They must not only confront and deal with the normative challenges of parenting itself (Teti, Cole, Cabrera, Goodman, & McLoyd, 2017) but they must also adapt to the norms, values, and expectations of a new country (Bornstein, Deater-Deackard, & Lansford, 2007).

This article is framed within a resilience perspective that explores how personal and social resources in the family environment both promote positive development and Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

protect children from the negative effects of the migration process (Masten, Liebkind, & Hernandez, 2012; MottiStefanidi & Masten, 2017). Much of the research on how migration impacts parenting is still at its infancy and what is available is primarily informed by research based on North-American populations. The focus of our review is on parenting and supportive family relationships that protect children but also promote adaptation in the European context. To this end, we highlight a set of selected dimensions of parenting that are empirically-based and known to explain variation in children’s development rather than to provide a comprehensive overview of the ecology of parenting.

Our review is centered on three aspects of the ecology of the family. First, we highlight key relationships within the family, including the much-neglected topic of paternal involvement, the acculturation gaps between parents, which is common in the EU where family reunion is the primary legal way of migration, and the role language plays in the adaptation process. Speaking the heritage language is European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000316

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important for relationships within the family and speaking the majority language is important for fostering relationships with everyone beyond the family. Second, we discuss research that shows that parents who encourage children to become competent in the majority language and who promote their academic competence through parental school involvement serve as a bridge to the outside world. Lastly, we turn to the issue of increased immigration of refugee families from war-torn countries who are entering Europe and contributing to the increasing diversity of the population. We discuss the unique importance of family relationships for the adaptation of these particularly vulnerable parents and children. We conclude by making a strong case for investing in both generations of immigrant and refugee-status families to ensure that they have the resources and services they need to raise healthy and successful children.

The Nature of Immigration and Implications for Families and Research For many centuries, Europe was the continent of emigration to the New World. In the second part of the 20th century, this direction shifted and Europe became the intended destination of choice for many immigrating families. We can roughly differentiate three distinct types of immigrants in Europe: (1) actively recruited low-skilled labor immigrants and highly-skilled professionals, (2) political asylum seekers and refugees, and (3) undocumented laborers. For people from outside of the EU, family unification has become a major source of legal immigration for many minority groups. In the current economic situation, some European countries have been making efforts to attract highly-skilled professionals from all over the world. This group is likely to experience considerable financial, legal, and practical support for their families by the companies who recruited. These support systems might compensate to some extent for the support which native-born majority families have through their extended families, well-established social networks, and longstanding ties with the community and educational institutions.

There is a lack of research on the highly mobile group of skilled professionals, although studies of this group could inform us how internal and external resources of immigrant parents can foster their children’s adaptation and development. Instead, the focus of research has been on the large majority of immigrants who left their countries with limited human and financial capital. These families are likely to lack the important informal support networks

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of native-born majority families and the knowledge and information that can be derived from these networks. Upon arrival in their new country of residence, they likely experienced no or only limited financial and social support. Thus, one can argue that parents’ role and their contribution to their children’s positive development might even be amplified in the case of immigration when other resources are diminished.

Furthermore, the number of immigrants and asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, specifically from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, has risen considerably during the past decade, especially since 2015. While the need for research on refugee families has been recognized, there is essentially no awareness and almost no research on undocumented immigrant families in Europe (Rojas & Yoshikawa, 2017). Therefore, there are no reliable numbers available for inclusion in this paper. Undocumented immigrants are often young men rather than families, although along with the recent influx of refugees, families from Northern Africa, who previously lived as undocumented immigrants in Spain, have moved to Germany as asylum seekers and are thus starting to become visible.

The classification of immigrants into these groups is not exhaustive and they do not represent specific countries or ethnic groups. For example, a family from Turkey could be living in a country in the EU because the parents are former labor migrants, recently recruited, highly-skilled professionals, or asylum seekers. The reasons for migration, the exit from the home country, either carefully planned or done hastily under pressure, as well as the legal status and context of the reception in the receiving country, differ between these distinct immigrant groups. These reasons are likely to go together with different social and financial resources as well as vulnerabilities. These experiences shape their pathways into the receiving country and they have the potential to impact the process of adaptation and integration (Bornstein et al., 2007; Rumbaut, 1997).

Despite the many reasons for immigrating to another country, the diversity of receiving countries, and the broad range of resources and challenges immigrants’ families face, there is one common thread: a family presents a primary resource, as well as a potential constraint, for the adaptation process. In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the role of fathers in families and in children’s lives. In particular, there is a growing body of research showing that fathers make unique contributions to children’s development, over and above the contribution of mothers (Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2007). This raises the question under which circumstances immigrant fathers are able to activate and use these resources beneficially for their families and the father-child relationship (Strier & Roer-Strier, 2010).

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Father Involvement and Children’s Development Research on the ways in which fathers help their children grow and develop has been steadily growing over the last few decades. Despite research and policy attention to the role of fathers in children’s lives, this body of research is still limited (Cabrera, Fitzgerald, Bradley, & Roggman, 2014). One of the limitations is the lack of research on specific groups of fathers, such as immigrants, whose parenting behaviors unfold in a particular context bounded by social and cultural challenges as well as opportunities.

Because context is a critical aspect of what fathering looks like, research conducted with specific groups does not always generalize to other groups. However, cultural scholars have also pointed out that although there are culturespecific ways to parenting, there are also universal parenting behaviors that are similar across cultural groups. Thus, in this section, we review studies of fathers and draw cautionary conclusions about whether these findings generalize to immigrant fathers. In keeping with the general scholarship on fathers, in this section we focus on several dimensions of fatherhood to highlight how fathers might impact their children’s development: (1) how involved are fathers with their children? (2) how does fathers’ involvement influence children’s development?

Several studies have shown that fathers, like mothers, can be sensitive and responsive to their children’s needs; parental sensitivity is consistently linked to children’s cognitive skills (Shannon, Tamis-LeMonda, London, & Cabrera, 2002; Shears & Robinson, 2005; Tamis-LeMonda, Shannon, Cabrera, & Lamb, 2004). These effects seem to be long-term as studies have shown that immigrant fathers’ sensitivity during infancy, and engagement in cognitive stimulating activities at 9 months (e.g., reading and singing songs) predicted their toddlers’ cognitive and social skills at 48 months (Cabrera, Hofferth, & Chae, 2011). In terms of how fathers matter for children, the evidence thus far points to both direct effects on children’s development and also indirect through other aspects of the home environment (Cabrera & Leyendecker, 2017; Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, Bradley, Hofferth, & Lamb, 2000; Flouri & Buchanan, 2004).

Across cultural groups, the most important role for fathers is to provide for their families. Rooted in economic principles, theories of family investment posit that compared to lower-SES parents, high-SES parents have access to financial (e.g., income), social (e.g., occupational status), and human resources (e.g., education), which they invest on their children’s development resulting in better developmental outcomes (Conger & Donnellan, 2007). The investments parents make for their children are multifaceted and include providing learning materials such as books or toys Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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in the home, providing direct parent stimulation, (e.g., reading) or purchasing childcare or enrichment classes, meeting the family’s basic needs such as food, housing, clothing, medical care, and living in good neighborhoods (Conger & Donnellan, 2007). This investment perspective is in alignment with theories of immigration and segmented assimilation (Rumbaut, 1997), in that the adaptation of immigrant parents, and by extension the well-being of their children, varies as a function of the resources they bring to the receiving society.

Longitudinal studies with American samples have found that immigrant fathers who have higher levels of education and income are more likely to have children who have the cognitive skills they need to succeed in school; these effects are stronger in the earlier years (Brooksgunn & Duncan, 1997). Compared to fathers with less education, fathers with high levels of education tend to interact with their children in more responsive ways and are more attentive to their needs. In contrast, a study of Turkish immigrants in Germany found that fathers’ level of education was not related to paternal involvement in everyday tasks of childrearing. However, generational status was, first-generation fathers were more involved than second-generation fathers (Leyendecker & Agache, 2016).

A central aspect of immigrant children’s adaptation is having positive peer relationships. In this domain, research shows that fathers also play an important role. Specifically, fathers who allow their toddlers to explore, provide positive interactions, and do not overly dictate the child’s activities have children with fewer behavioral problems (Shears & Robinson, 2005). When fathers engage in physical play that is positive and use less directive or coercive tactics, children tend to be less aggressive and exhibit more competent social behaviors than when fathers are negative or coercive (McDowell & Parke, 2009). These findings have also been observed among first-generation, Spanish-speaking Latino fathers and mothers of young children (ages 4–9). Positive parenting practices, including monitoring and effective discipline, seem to be important predictors of children’s positive conduct (Domenech Rodríguez, Rodríguez, & Davis, 2006). Studies that have assessed children’s perception of fathers’ involvement report similar results. When children report feeling close to their fathers, they are more likely to report positive peer relationships and exhibit fewer behavioral problems than their counterparts (Cabrera, Cook, McFadden, & Bradley, 2012). Similarly, youth who report having high father acceptance were better adjusted than youth who reported low father acceptance (Davidson, Updegraff, & McHale, 2011).

The importance of fathers to the social development of their children has also been observed within immigrant populations in Europe. Turkish immigrant children in Germany with highly involved fathers reported higher European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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levels of well-being before and after the transition into first grade (Leyendecker & Agache, 2016). However, the same study found that when paternal involvement is inconsistent or negative, children are more likely to exhibit behavior problems, peer difficulties, and lower social competencies (Jäkel, Leyendecker, & Agache, 2016). Collectively, these studies suggest that fathers can play an important role in helping their children develop the social and cognitive skills they need to adapt and succeed. However, it is less clear how immigrant fathers can successfully help their children to become socially competent when they parent in highly social and economically stressful conditions.

Another important aspect of father involvement is that they may interact with their children differently depending on children’s characteristics. In a study of immigrant Mexican families, Updegraff, Delgado, and Wheeler (2009) found stronger associations between parentadolescent relationship qualities and youth adjustment for girls than for boys. Fathers, in comparison to mothers, reported lower levels of acceptance toward adolescents, lower knowledge of adolescents’ daily activities, and they spent less time with daughters than with sons. These findings suggest that gender socialization practices of the country of origin might be a potential source of conflict or support, depending on the degree to which these norms converge or diverge.

Fathers can also negatively influence their children through their own mental health, conflict with mothers, and through the stresses brought home from work, all of which can negatively affect parenting behaviors (Garfield et al., 2014). Immigrant parents were found to experience long periods of constant stress (Suárez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim, 2010). We know that parents living under conditions of chronic stress are more likely to enact negatively motivated behavior and less likely to enact positively motivated behavior (McLoyd, 1998). A study of Mexican American two-parent families found that mothers’ and fathers’ work pressures were related to fathers’ depressive symptoms, which were, in turn, related to lower levels of warmth and higher levels of conflict with their adolescents (Wheeler, Updegraff, & Crouter, 2011). These findings are suggestive of potential points for intervention. For example, programs and policies should focus on the quality of the relationship of immigrant fathers with their partners, especially in the early years. Moreover, programs should focus more on immigrant father’s mental health, which is often overlooked despite the fact that living under conditions of constant stress or at certain transitions in the life cycle, such as the transition to parenthood, places men at risk for the onset of depression, especially for low-income, minority men (Garfield et al., 2014).

The literature briefly described above makes the case for the importance of fathers in their children’s lives, but it European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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does not speak well as to what it is like to parent in another country, away from one’s norms and expectations (Aldoney & Cabrera, 2016). This research is beginning to emerge, and as it is not well developed, no certain conclusions can be drawn. It is important to note that immigrant parents have the additional challenge of trying to find a balance between the culture of the heritage country and the new country of residence in terms of the parenting practices that are considered optimal to rear a child. On the one hand, a strong orientation toward the family values of the culture of origin can increase paternal involvement after the immigration (Taylor & Behnke, 2005). On the other hand, a onesided orientation toward the culture of heritage and the traditional role models, along with a reluctance to be open to the new culture can lead to less paternal involvement and to increased conflicts between fathers and children (Costigan & Dokis, 2006). There are hints in the literature that the immigrant parents may consciously select certain aspects of the culture of heritage and certain aspects of the culture of the receiving country with which they would like to socialize their children (Aldoney & Cabrera, 2016).

In our work with Latino immigrant fathers and mothers, we found that parents value familism, which is a strong characteristic of Latino families, but they also like the value of independence that American parents instill in their children (Aldoney & Cabrera, 2016). Immigrant fathers who show more openness toward the culture and language of the new country tend to report higher well-being, a better marital relationship, an increase in parent-child interaction, and overall increased paternal involvement than fathers who do not (Aldoney & Cabrera, 2016; Jain & Belsky, 1997; Roopnarine, Krishnakumar, Metindogan, & Evans, 2006).

Acculturation Gaps Between Partners – A Resource for Parents in Immigrant Families In most European countries, family reunification has become the most preferred pathway to immigration. These laws, in combination with a preference for a partner from the home country, have led to an increase of so-called marriage migration. This can lead to acculturation gaps (also referred to as acculturation mismatch, dissonance, or discrepancy) between family members. Is this gap a resource or a burden for the family? As mentioned above, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001) argue that immigrant parents play an important role in teaching their children appreciation for both the heritage culture and the host culture. Family members, however, can hold different Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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attitudes toward the heritage culture maintenance and host culture adoption. The numerous studies that focused on the acculturation gap between parents and children concluded that immigrant children acculturate at a faster pace to the host culture than their parents, leading to intergenerational differences in values, behaviors, and language skills (Telzer, 2010; Vedder & Motti-Stefanidi 2016).

The acculturation gap-distress model suggests that acculturation gaps between parents and children have the potential to evoke family conflict and higher levels of youth maladjustment (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993). Strong empirical support for the acculturation gap-distress model comes from a recent meta-analytic review of 61 research reports based on Asian- and LatinoAmerican families (Lui, 2015). It was found that parentchild acculturation gaps elevate intergenerational cultural conflicts and have negative implications on youth’s mental health and academic performance. Another review points to the complexities of parent-child acculturation gaps and concludes that the evidence for invariably negative implications on family functioning and youth adjustment is not straightforward (Telzer, 2010). Qualitative research studies underscore that many families navigate their cultural differences successfully and may even perceive acculturation gaps, especially in the host culture domain, as a family strength (Bacallao & Smokowski, 2007; Buckingham & Brodsky, 2015).

Research on the combined acculturation of parents is scarce and there is an emerging debate on whether the acculturation gap-distress model can be extended to spouses. Research among immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union shows that host culture language gaps can be a stressor for the marital relationship (KanatMaymon, Sarid, Mor, Mirsky, & Slonim-Nevo, 2016; Kisselev, Brown, & Brown, 2010). The authors argue that host language differences can erode marital satisfaction due to daily hassles, isolation, and feelings of inferiority on the part of the less proficient partner and the additional, wearing responsibilities on the part of the more capable partner. Among first-generation Mexican immigrant couples in the US, host culture language gaps were not related to relationship quality, but heritage culture language and host culture value gaps were associated with less partner warmth and relationship satisfaction (Cruz et al., 2014).

It is argued that acculturation gaps disrupt communication and promote a sense of distance between spouses, whereas a similar emphasis on a cultural domain fosters caring and mutual respect.

Other studies found either no link between spousal acculturation gaps and adjustment, or only a positive one. For example, among Bosnian refugee couples in the United States, differences between husbands’ and wives’ behavioral acculturation to the American culture were not linked Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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to marital stress (Spasojević, Heffer, & Snyder, 2000).

Behavioral acculturation gaps even were a protective resource for Mexican American couples in terms of fights about relatives, verbal and physical aggression, and conflict resolution (Flores, Tschann, Marin, & Pantoja, 2004).

Among Turkish immigrant parents in Germany, identity and language gaps were mostly not related to spouses’ acculturative stress but in some cases, acculturation gaps were a resource for mothers (Spiegler, Leyendecker, & Kohl, 2015). Taken together, these studies show that acculturation gaps can be a resource for parents. How is this possible?

Acculturation gaps might reflect some sort of task sharing among marriage partners. Specifically, one parent might be responsible for the family’s heritage culture maintenance, whereas the other oversees the family’s adaptation to the host culture. For a while, this could be a unique way to be integrated, as a unit, which still bears the widely-known benefits of integration (Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999). Consider the host language gaps among immigrant couples from the former Soviet Union. There is a chance that the parent with lower host language proficiency is more fluent in the heritage culture language, and therefore more responsible for the family’s connection to local heritage culture communities and relatives in the heritage country.

In summary, acculturation gaps between immigrant parents are an understudied research area and future studies need to identify the precise conditions under which these gaps become a resource or a source of distress for each spouse (Costigan, 2010). Virtually no research exists on how parental acculturation gap affects children’s adaptation. If parental acculturation gap compromises the quality of marriages, it is likely that the quality of parent-child relationships suffers as well (Erel & Burman, 1995). However, if parental acculturation gap is a form of task sharing that is valued and appreciated by each parent, then it may provide an important resource for their offspring as this can greatly facilitate children’s access to both cultures, provide them with more freedom of choice, and allow them to take advantage of all opportunities available.

The Importance of Speaking and Understanding Heritage and Host Language for Children’s Well-Being Children of immigrant parents often have the opportunity to learn two languages during childhood. There is good reason to argue that both languages are connected to their well-being, and that their mastery contributes an important building block for the development of resilience European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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(Toppelberg & Collins, 2010). Children’s heritage language, often learned at home, is likely to enable them to connect with their family, grandparents, or other family members in the country of origin, as well as with their cultural heritage. Furthermore, parents may feel more effective and respected in their role as a parent if they use the heritage language, in which they may feel more competent, than if they use the host language. Thus, by striving to maintain the heritage language with their children, parents may create better family relationships, and thereby indirectly affect children’s well-being.

Research supports the idea that maintenance of the heritage language is connected to children’s well-being through better family relationships. One often cited case study by Fillmore (2000) described the situation of a Chinese immigrant family to the US. The Cantonese speaking parents worked long hours, and their children learned very little Cantonese. The parents and their children felt estranged because they had no way to effectively communicate, and the parents eventually lost contact with one of their children.

This is certainly an extreme case, but there are a handful of studies with samples of immigrant children or adolescents that support the connection between familial maintenance of the heritage language and family relationships (Tseng & Fuligni, 2000). Children of immigrant Chinese mothers in Canada, who used a lot of Chinese, experienced less conflict with their parents when they also used the Chinese language frequently (Costigan & Dokis, 2006).

Other studies indicate that it may rather be children’s heritage language proficiency, instead of shared heritage language use, that is connected to the quality of family relationships (Oh & Fuligni, 2010). For example, adolescent children from Russia had less disagreement with their parents if they spoke Russian well (Birman, 2006).

Even though maintaining the heritage language may benefit family relationships, and thus child well-being, immigrant parents may receive advice from preschool teachers and pediatricians to speak to their children solely in the host language. The rationale behind this wellintended advice is that increased host language use is assumed to boost children’s host language development.

However, there is actually contrary evidence, showing that abandoning the heritage language in favor of a host language, which may not be spoken well by parents, mainly harms children’s heritage development and does not help host language development (Hammer, Davison, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2009; Place & Hoff, 2011). Importantly, if parents stop speaking the heritage language with their children, it is very unlikely that someone else will. As family use of the heritage language is vital for its development, parents should carefully consider such decisions (Hammer et al., 2014; Willard, Agache, Jäkel, Glück, & Leyendecker, 2015).

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While maintenance of the heritage language enables children to connect with their families, mastering the host language enables them to connect with the world outside their family. It enables them to navigate everyday situations, make friends outside of their own cultural group, and succeed in school and career-wise. Research has often focused on the importance of the host language for academic achievement (Hoff, 2012). Both in the US and Europe, it has been found that children of immigrants may enter schools with host language skills that differ from those of nonimmigrant children (Becker, 2010; Giesen, Agache, & Leyendecker, 2017; Hoff, 2012; Relikowski, Schneider, & Linberg, 2015). These differences may be one factor in explaining the, on average, lower levels of academic achievement of children of immigrants (Müller & Stanat, 2006). Thus, it is important for parents to emphasize the value of the host language and to provide their children with access to it.

The reviewed research focuses on the benefits of the heritage and host language individually. There is also a growing body of research on whether joint competency in the heritage and host language is related to the well-being of the children of immigrants. Typically, these studies have compared bilingual children, sometimes with varying levels of heritage and host level competence, to nonimmigrant monolingual children. For socio-emotional development, there is some evidence that bilingual children may be rated more favorably by teachers in terms of self-control and behavioral problems (Han, 2010; Han & Huang, 2010).

However, more research is needed as there is conflicting evidence, and children’s socioeconomic status appears to be a much more predictive variable than bilingual status (Halle et al., 2014).

For cognitive development, the earliest studies during the first half of the 20th century were interpreted as evidence that bilingualism had negative effects (for a review, see Hakuta, 1986). The research of the last decades has shown no evidence that bilingualism harms children’s cognitive skills. Moreover, there are several studies that suggest bilinguals may have an advantage over monolinguals in the realm of executive functioning (Adesope, Lavin, Thompson, & Ungerleider, 2010). However, the existence of such a “bilingual advantage” has not always been supported by subsequent research. Thus, the verdict is still out on whether a bilingual advantage in executive functions exists under very specific, but yet unknown conditions (Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2015).

How can immigrant parents support their children’s heritage and host language development? There is agreement that frequent high-quality language input is a key proximal factor for children’s language development (De Houwer, 2011; Zauche, Thul, Mahoney, & Stapel-Wax, 2016). Within immigrant families, there are numerous distal factors that Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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are related to the language input they provide. Firstgeneration immigrants are generally more likely to use the heritage language, which in turn is connected to children’s better heritage language skills (Fishman, 2004; Willard et al., 2015). Even though immigrant parents with higher SES are likely to provide more varied and stimulating language input, they were sometimes found to have children with lower heritage language skills, an effect which is likely to be mediated by their heritage language use (Oller & Eilers, 2002). Parents’ well-being is another distal factor that has been found to be connected to immigrant children’s language development, ostensibly by way of enabling frequent stimulating positive verbal interactions.

Specifically, immigrant children of mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms have been found to show slower growth in the heritage language (Cycyk, Bitetti, & Hammer, 2015; Willard, Hammer, Bitetti, Cycyk, & Leyendecker, 2017).

Fortunately, language input is a malleable proximal factor. Parents can be made aware that frequent high-quality input in both languages is necessary to develop high competence in both languages. Second-generation and highlyeducated immigrant parents especially, should be made aware that in order to pass on a language they may strongly cherish, they need to provide frequent interactions in that language. All immigrant parents can be made aware of the need to also seek opportunities for their children to engage in rich verbal interactions in the host language.

Families and Schools: Why and How Should Parents Support Their Children’s Academic Success in School?

In addition to their home environment, children’s school environment provides another very important influence for their development, as children spend a lot of time in school, and adjustment in school, as well as school success, are important developmental outcomes. From an ecological perspective, it is not only important to look at home and school as independent developmental contexts, but to take into account the connection between these two environments. In this section, we therefore examine parental involvement of immigrant parents in school and its effects on children’s adaptation and academic development.

There is no consensus on the definition of parental involvement and on the forms it can take on, making the literature somewhat vast and inconsistent. Most researchers, however, see parental involvement as a multifaceted Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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construct comprising a wide variety of parents’ behaviors and attitudes in home and school (e.g., El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal, 2010; Fishel & Ramirez, 2005).

Frequently, a distinction is made between school-based (e.g., participation in school events, formal and informal communication with teachers) and home-based (e.g., helping with homework, talking to the child about school) forms of involvement (Walker, 2016; X. T. Fan & Chen, 2001).

Even though the picture on the effects of parental involvement is very complex, parental involvement is generally considered to be an important resource for children’s and adolescents’ educational success (Grolnick, Benjet, Kurowski, & Apostoleris, 1997; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995). Positive effects of parental involvement have been demonstrated for a wide variety of educational outcomes and in different countries and cultures (W. H. Fan & Williams, 2010; Wilder, 2014).

It is important to note, however, that there might be differences in frequencies, forms, and differential effects, as well as predictors of parental involvement, depending on the context (OECD, 2017). These could reflect differences in the structure of the school systems and in the norms and expectations concerning the role of immigrant parents in their children’s education (Kohl, Jäkel, Spiegler, Willard, & Leyendecker, 2014; OECD, 2017). For example, behaviors that are commonly adopted, or even required in certain school systems or countries, can be considered inappropriate in other contexts. These potential cultural differences need to be considered in research as well as in practice.

The involvement of immigrant parents has often been viewed critically – in regard to the parents’ capability to promote their children’s educational success, their motivation to become involved, or the actual amount of their involvement (Kim, 2009). Research clearly contradicts these notions. The involvement of immigrant parents has consistently been found to be an important factor in children’s school success, demonstrated, for example, for Latino parents in the US (Jeynes, 2017), Turkish immigrant parents in Germany and the Netherlands (Kloosterman, Notten, Tolsma, & Kraaykamp, 2011; Kohl, Jäkel, & Leyendecker, 2015; Kohl et al., 2014), and for Albanian immigrant parents in Greece (Anagnostaki, Pavlopoulos, Obradovic, Masten, & Motti-Stefanidi, 2016). Researchers therefore see the involvement of immigrant parents as a powerful resource with the ability to reduce achievement gaps (Jeynes, 2017), and to help build more inclusive societies (OECD, 2017).

There is evidence that all parents are interested in their children’s success in school, regardless of their socioeconomic or cultural background, and that many immigrant parents have even higher academic expectations for their children, as well as valuing education even more than nonimmigrant parents do (Kohl et al., 2014; Villiger, European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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Wandelera, & Niggli, 2014). More research is needed, however, to establish a clear picture on possible differences between immigrant and nonimmigrant parents regarding the frequency with which different forms of involvement are being adopted, and regarding which forms are most effective. Findings so far have been inconsistent, and depend on the form and measure of parental involvement, as well as on the specific immigrant group and country examined. Interestingly, several studies found that immigrant parents take a more active role in home-based rather than in school-based involvement (Etxeberria, Intxausti, & Joaristi, 2013; Walker, Ice, Hoover-Dempsey, & Sandler, 2011), and that they face certain barriers and obstacles with regard to specific forms of involvement (Turney & Kao, 2009).

Concerning parents’ involvement in home-based forms, two aspects are particularly noteworthy. First, these forms of involvement are usually not visible for teachers or schools, which could contribute to the perception that immigrant parents are less involved (Altschul, 2011).

Second, many forms of home-based involvement, such as talking to children about school or communicating expectations and the value of school, are not only important resources for children’s educational success, but also feasible for all parents as they do not require special knowledge or skills (Walker, 2016).

Potential barriers concern different factors that have been proposed to predict why and how parents become involved (Grolnick et al., 1997; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 2005). Again, potential cultural differences could be important. Immigrant parents might, for example, differ from teachers, and nonimmigrant parents in how they perceive their own role in their children’s schooling, and in the appropriate forms that a relationship with teachers may take (Elbers & de Haan, 2014; Kohl et al., 2014). They might lack confidence in their capability to promote their children in school, or experience language difficulties (e.g., not being able to understand the written information provided in school, being hesitant to get in contact with teachers; Fleischmann & de Haas, 2016).

Research indicates that immigrant parents feel less welcome to participate, because they do not feel that they are taken seriously by the school, or intimidated by the school setting or by unfamiliar rules and norms. They may also perceive that teachers less often invite and encourage immigrant parents to become involved (Kim, 2009). Again, it is very plausible that at least some of these barriers and difficulties are specific to immigrant groups and countries. Furthermore, it is important to note that the factors that influence if and how parents become involved are malleable. Interventions specifically designed to promote the involvement of a certain group of immigrant parents have been found to be effective (Walker, 2016).

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In sum, research supports the assumption that the involvement of immigrant parents is valuable and an important resource for children’s success in school. It is important to recognize that many immigrant parents already are involved and bring important characteristics that need to be acknowledged, as well as reducing the specific involvement barriers that immigrant parents might face. Examples of such strategies to reduce barriers include educating immigrant parents on the ways in which the school system of the host country functions and which forms of parental involvement are appropriate, required, and beneficial. Another strategy is to help them overcome language barriers by providing information in different languages. Future research is needed to provide more detailed information on the different immigrant groups, including specific barriers and differential effectiveness of varying forms of involvement. This knowledge is necessary to inform schools, teachers, and parents, and to develop, conduct, and evaluate effective intervention programs.

The Importance of Family Relationships for Well-Being and Mental Health of Refugee Children Refugees are a special population of immigrants, as they were forcibly displaced and experienced a series of adverse events. Consequently, children of refugee families, even in second generations (Belhadj Kouider, Koglin, & Petermann, 2015; Dalgaard, Todd, Daniel, & Montgomery, 2016), are susceptible to developing psychopathological symptoms (Fazel, Reed, Panter-Brick, & Stein, 2012). They show higher rates of internalized problems, such as withdrawal, depression, anxiety, or psychosomatic symptoms, when compared to children of non-refugee families (e.g., Ajdukovic & Ajdukovic, 1998; Belhadj Kouider et al., 2015). However, many refugee children demonstrate positive adjustments. That is to say, they exhibit an absence or a decrease of psychopathological symptoms over time (Ajdukovic & Ajdukovic, 1998; Almqvist & Broberg, 1999; Fazel et al., 2012; Montgomery, 2010; Panter-Brick, Grimon, & Eggerman, 2014; Pieloch, McCullough, & Marks, 2016; Vaage, Thomsen, Rousseau, Wentzel-Larsen, Ta, & Hauff, 2011).

It is a common finding that refugee children from mothers with elevated levels of psychopathological symptomatology and stress are more likely to experience psychological difficulties themselves when compared to refugee children of well-adjusted mothers (Ajdukovic & Ajdukovic, 1998; Almqvist & Broberg, 1999; Panter-Brick et al., 2014).

Similarly, a higher degree of mothers’ psychological Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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well-being was related to better psychological adaptation of their children in an Iranian refugee sample (Almqvist & Broberg, 1999), and absence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in parents was related to better psychological outcomes in Iraqi refugee children (Daud, af Klinteberg, & Rydelius, 2008). Concerning second-generation refugee children, Dalgaard et al. (2016) could not confirm a transgenerational trauma transmission from Middle Eastern refugee parents to their children, even though children showed significantly higher rates of psychological difficulties than their Danish peers. Furthermore, there was no clear association between parents’ and children’s total number of psychological problems in a Vietnamese refugee sample in Norway (Vaage et al., 2011). The impact of a father on children’s well-being may differ from these findings (Almqvist & Broberg, 1999; Vaage et al., 2011) and needs further investigation.

The protective quality of refugee families commences in the most basic ways. Family members guide minors to the host country, provide them with food and water, and protect them from strangers. However, these natural processes are hindered at various stages of forced displacement, which can have dramatic consequences. This becomes particularly apparent when considering unaccompanied minors, who travel and migrate without the support and protection of their family. Hodes, Jagdev, Chandra, and Cunniff (2008) compared the number of traumatic experiences of unaccompanied and accompanied minors who sought refuge in the UK. They found that 55.8% of unaccompanied minors died on the way to their host country, compared to 11.8% of accompanied children. Additionally, unaccompanied children experienced significantly higher rates of malnutrition, illnesses, lack of shelter, combat situations, forced isolation and separation, sexual exploitation, murders and unnatural deaths, as well as kidnapping. These numbers underscore the special relevance of protection by family members in the refugee population.

A secure relationship between refugee children and their parents seems to be crucial for the activation of resources to cope with war-related and resettlement-related risk factors (Ajdukovic & Ajdukovic, 1998; Betancourt, Abdi, Ito, Lilienthal, Agalab, & Ellis, 2015). In fact, Ajdukovic and Ajdukovic (1998) found that depressive symptoms of Croatian refugee children were more strongly related to the family situation than to the number of experienced traumatic events. That is, mothers’ rejection, as perceived by the child, as well as deteriorating relationships within the family, increased the likelihood of elevated levels of depression in children. Furthermore, a supportive relationship with parents was the strongest protective factor against depression in a study on Iraqi refugee adolescents in the US. However, this was not true for traumatic stress symptoms, on which the number of experienced traumatic Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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events showed a stronger impact (Trentacosta, McLear, Ziadni, Lumley, & Arfken, 2016). Angel, Hjern, and Ingleby (2001) reported weak associations between war-related experiences and children’s symptomatology in a Bosnian refugee sample. Surely, a secure attachment is beneficial for any child regardless of his or her background. However, as many refugee mothers and fathers must cope themselves with stressful war-related and displacement-related factors, there might not be a sufficient amount of parental cognitive and emotional resources available in order to ensure a secure attachment. Further research is needed in order to account for the influence of parenting, including its mediators and moderators on refugee children’s developmental outcomes.

One topic that benefited from attention in the realm of research on refugee children’s resilience factors is family communication, which constitutes only one aspect of parenting. Family communication is particularly relevant in the context of refugee families – compared to other families where it is certainly beneficial too – as potential traumatic experiences and post-migration stressors (e.g., discrimination, unemployment, language barriers) puts a burden on the family as one entity. Family members’ symptoms of depression and trauma might affect another’s well-being.

One study showed that, in fact, not talking about traumatic experiences in the family context emerged as a meaningful protective factor for children’s well-being in the Bosnian sample (Angel et al., 2001). In contrast, a review on the topic of trauma communication in refugee families concluded that disclosure might be adaptive for second-generation refugee children, who did not witness the traumatic events themselves (Dalgaard & Montgomery, 2015). Furthermore, a study on Middle Eastern refugee families in Denmark showed that those children benefiting from good family communication, as characterized by the ability of the child to speak about problems with either parent, were less likely to suffer from long-term psychological consequences of traumatization (Montgomery, 2010).

Another topic that has been debated is the role of family cohesion and family unity. Family cohesion may be partly independent of parental psychopathology, as the severity of PTSD symptomatology of parents showed no impact on family cohesion (Vaage et al., 2011). Rousseau, Drapeau, and Platt (2004) reported an association between family environment, that is cohesion and conflict, and externalizing symptoms in Cambodian adolescents. Additionally, living in a two-parent household seemed to be protective against developing internalizing problems. However, adolescents from single-parent household reported a higher degree of feelings of competence. Panter-Brick et al.

(2014) investigated 681 Afghan refugee caregiver-child dyads and found that family unity promoted children’s prosocial behavior and protected against interference of European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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domains of social life. Likewise, family cohesion, as characterized by open communication, spending time together, and flexible attitudes, had positive impacts on adding structure, security, and normalcy to adolescent African refugee children, as assessed by qualitative interviews (Weine et al., 2014). Results of a study on adult refugees corroborates these findings, as it was found that family cohesion to be associated with low levels of depression (Nam, Kim, DeVylder, & Song, 2016).

Qualitative studies and case reports also underscore the significance of family support in refugee samples. For instance, Weine et al. (2014) interviewed 73 Burundian and Liberian refugee adolescents and their families in the USA. Using grounded theory, the authors identified emotional, material, and educational support, monitoring and supervision, cultural connections, as well as access to faith communities as sources of support that families commonly provide. However, parent’s own difficulties constituted as a distraction from helping their children.

The influence of family on refugee children’s development is twofold. On the one hand, trauma and depression might be transmitted transgenerationally through various factors. On the other hand, families can provide protective aspects that foster positive adjustment. Most studies on refugee families focus on child-parent interactions. Studies on the influence of extended family members, foster families, and siblings are scarce. However, considering that many refugee children arrive without parents, research on other attachment figures is needed as well.

Conclusion The central aspects of parenting that we have chosen to focus on in this paper highlight parents’ role for children’s positive development and cultural adaptation both within and beyond the family, and show some important pathways for prevention and intervention programs. First, our findings suggest that family-focused support programs and interventions should increase parental involvement not just by focusing on mothers, but by including fathers as well.

Second, programs should go beyond the typical aspects of the couple relationship to include the acculturation gap between parents, which can be a source of stress but also a source of support. Third, the expectations of school systems regarding parental involvement differ not only across Europe but also worldwide, including the countries of birth of immigrant families. In societies where parental involvement in school is expected or even required, schools need to be aware that this type of involvement may be neither required nor expected in other countries. Parental involvement in schools can serve as a bridge between home and European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 57–71

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the schools and has the potential to promote children’s academic success and overall well-being. Fourth, speaking a common language with one’s parents – which is likely to be the heritage language in first-generation immigrant families – is important for the nurturing of positive relationships within the family and the fostering of family cohesion and well-being. Learning and speaking the majority language is important for fostering relationships with individuals from the host country. Learning the heritage language should be supported by preschools and schools both as a way to support children’s bicultural adaptation but also in its own right as an asset that is important for individuals to thrive and succeed in today’s global economy. Finally, research on immigrant families and well-being has to be extended to include families with refugee status. The literature reviewed in this paper point to the importance of refugee children’s well-being to maintain and to reestablish a secure relationship with their parents. Because parental stress is transmitted to children through negative parenting, interventions should address the mental health needs of both children and their parents. In addition, programs should take particular note of the protective factors existing within the family that support a policy of family reunification.

The ability of many immigrant parents to raise healthy children is remarkable, especially under conditions of consistent stress and disruption. Yet to increase the chances of raising healthy children, immigrant parents need support.

Luthar and Eisenberg (2017) raise concerns that some intervention programs target children without paying much attention to the context that they live in. This concern has begun to be addressed in the field, but more is needed.

For example, Child-Parent Centers provide comprehensive education to children combined with family services (Reynolds, Ou, Mondi, & Hayakawa, 2017). Other interventions are designed to strengthen the couple and foster paternal involvement in co-parenting (Pruett, Pruett, Cowan, & Cowan, 2017). Still others focus on helping parents learn developmentally appropriate child development knowledge that can help them increase parenting practices and behaviors (Cabrera, Reich, & Kuhns, 2017) and competence to foster their resilient adaptation (Yoshikawa, Whipps, & Rojas, 2017).

To conclude, the roles that parents and programs play in promoting immigrant children’s positive development and cultural adaptation are multifaceted. Investing in the wellbeing of parents, increasing family cohesion, and promoting positive parent-child relationships can be effective ways to provide immigrant and refugee children with the resources they need to become successful members of society and to minimize their maladjustment that can be more costly and burdensome for both families and the host country. Parents who have sufficient resources both personal and from the Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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host country are likely to be in a good position to socialize their children in a bicultural, or multicultural, context that encourages family cohesion and mutual support among parents. This in turn can enable children to have access to the resources they need to lead happy and productive lives in their new country.

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Received May 15, 2017 Revision received November 26, 2017 Accepted December 13, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Birgit Leyendecker Ruhr-Universität Bochum Fakultät für Psychologie GAFO 04/611 44780 Bochum Germany birgit.leyendecker@rub.de

Birgit Leyendecker, DSc, is a professor of developmental psychology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

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Natasha Cabrera, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, College of Education, at the University of Maryland, USA.

Jessica Willard, PhD, received her Master’s Degree at the University of Braunschweig. She is now a postdoc at the Ruhr-University Bochum.

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Hanna Lembcke (MSc., MA) received her Master’s degrees in psychology and pedagogical sciences from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is currently comanaging research projects on refugee families at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. Her main research interests are socio-emotional developmental trajectories in at-risk populations.

Olivia Spiegler, PhD, received her Master’s Degree at the FriedrichSchiller University of Jena and her doctoral degree at the RuhrUniversity Bochum. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, UK.

Katharina Kohl, PhD, received her Master’s Degree at the University of Trier. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Ruhr-University Bochum.

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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Adaptation of Young Immigrants A Developmental Perspective on Acculturation Research Peter F. Titzmann1 and Richard M. Lee2 1

Department of Psychology, Leibniz University Hanover, Germany

2

Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, MN, USA

Abstract: We draw upon developmental psychology theory to highlight the developmental process of acculturation in adolescent immigrants.

First, we describe different ways in which development and acculturation have been combined in past research on immigrant youth.

These studies mainly considered developmental and acculturation-related changes, predictors, and stages, or utilized the developmental context model by Bronfenbrenner (1977). However, developmental considerations are often only implicitly implemented in existing research and not in a very systematic manner. The dynamic aspects of development are particularly understated in acculturation research. For this reason, we reference and expand upon concepts pertaining to the biological, social, and psychological changes in pubertal development to highlight ways in which acculturation research can be made more dynamic and less static. We specifically present the concepts of acculturative timing, tempo, pace, and synchronicity as a means to systematically study acculturative changes over time in immigrant adolescents. In summary, in this review, we present a more dynamic and less static understanding of acculturation processes that includes normative developmental aspects for a more complex understanding of immigrant youth’s psychosocial adaptation.

Keywords: development, acculturative timing, acculturative tempo, acculturative pace, acculturative synchronicity, adolescent immigrants

Over the past few decades, there has been made substantial progress in describing, understanding, and predicting the acculturation of immigrants. Despite this progress, one of the first definitions of acculturation is still relevant: according to Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits (1936, p. 149), acculturation is defined as “those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups.” Based on this definition, researchers have addressed interethnic or intercultural contact phenomena of immigrants by primarily using social learning approaches to study behavioral outcomes (e.g., Wilson, Ward, & Fischer, 2013), stress-coping approaches to understand psychological adaptation and adjustment (Berry, 2006), and social identity theories to predict cultural belonging and group-based processes (e.g., Stoessel, Titzmann, & Silbereisen, 2014). These approaches have contributed solid milestones to the understanding of immigration processes (Ward, 2001), but there remains a need to integrate a developmental perspective in acculturation models (Fuligni, 2001; Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Sam, & Phinney, 2012). Adolescents in particular undergo substantial biological, social, and psychological changes that may overlay or interact with acculturative processes.

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In this paper, we propose an expanded developmental perspective as a fourth line of immigrant research (Garcia Coll et al., 1996; Schönpflug, 1997). We focus primarily on the adolescent years, because developmental processes play a particular role during this life period (Adams & Berzonsky, 2003).

Adolescence is marked by an interaction of biological, psychological, and social changes that can influence and instigate each other. In biological terms, adolescence is marked by hormonal changes, as well as the development of primary and secondary sexual characteristics and sexual maturation (Kulin & Müller, 1996). Neuropsychological changes include a decrease in gray matter (mainly consisting of cell bodies and axons with only little myelination) and an increase in white matter (e.g., long myelinated axons; Fuhrmann, Knoll, & Blakemore, 2015). Psychological changes include better cognitive abilities, better working memory, and improved problem solving (Fuhrmann et al., 2015). In the social domain, early adolescents show an increased reward-seeking behavior, which can include higher risk-taking, but additional changes in the brain’s cognitive control system in late adolescence lead to better self-regulation and a subsequent decrease in risk-taking (Steinberg, 2015). Furthermore, peer relations become more differentiated (e.g., best friends, friendship Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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cliques, crowds, romantic relationships) and mutual (Brown & Klute, 2006). Within the family, there is a renegotiation of autonomy and attachment (Laursen & Collins, 2009). These biological, social, and psychological changes occur approximately at the same time, but none of them are necessarily the driving force behind the others (Graber & Brooks-Gunn, 1996). Among immigrant adolescents, these changes co-occur with acculturation-related processes. For example, the onset of language brokering behavior begins between 8 and 9 years and continues during the adolescent years (Morales & Hanson, 2005).

Other acculturation-related tasks include the bridging of cultural differences, the acquisition of cultural-adequate skills and behaviors, the familiarization with new social roles, and the dealing with negative acculturative experiences associated with minority status, such as discrimination (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001). These acculturation-related tasks seem to suggest that adaptation to the new culture is the only direction of change. This, however, is not necessarily the case. In fact, the nature of acculturation-related tasks is more complex and the decision to maintain the heritage language and skills may be one way of solving it.

Interplay of Development and Acculturation in Existing Research Developmental and acculturative changes co-occur in adolescence, but only few developmental considerations are explicitly reflected in existing acculturation models.

Acculturation orientations (Berry, 1997), for example, are one of the most prominent concepts in acculturation research, but have been rarely studied across longer periods of time (e.g., decades) or across different developmental stages. More recent models on the adaptation of immigrants reflect a complex interplay of cultural distance, intercultural contact, and contexts of acculturating individuals (Ward & Geeraert, 2016). These studies, however, tend to focus on a particular moment in the acculturation process rather than on the process over time.

Although there is an increase in research addressing the interplay of acculturative and developmental processes, developmental theory is not employed very systematically.

We now present different streams of research together with empirical results that demonstrate the utility of studying development and acculturation in combination. These approaches pertain to the study of change patterns, the combination of predictors related to acculturative and developmental processes, the comparative investigation of developmental and acculturative stages, and the application

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of developmental contextual theory to acculturation research. The following sections can also be read as guidelines for which methodological designs can be applied to differentiate between acculturation and development.

Acculturative and Developmental Changes To illustrate the importance of including developmental considerations in acculturation models, we use an empirical example that utilized a comparative longitudinal approach introduced by Fuligni (2001). The longitudinal study (Michel, Titzmann, & Silbereisen, 2012b) started with the observation that acculturation theory predicts a decrease in depressive symptoms over time due to decreasing levels of (acculturative) stressors and improvements in sociocultural skills. This assumption was, however, primarily supported in adult samples, whereas results in adolescent samples were less clear. One explanation for the different findings across age groups was related to the adolescentspecific developmental increase in depressive symptoms, which may counteract the acculturation-driven decrease.

In a study on ethnic German immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Germany, propensity score matching procedures were applied to define three demographically comparable groups: a native group, a newcomer immigrant group (many acculturative changes), and an experienced immigrant group (fewer acculturative changes). When the longitudinal trajectories in depressive symptoms were compared across these groups, results showed a normative developmental increase in depressive symptoms among native adolescents and experienced adolescent immigrants, but no significant change in depressive symptoms among newcomers. Additional analyses supported the interpretation that both normative developmental changes and acculturative changes co-occur in newcomer adolescent immigrants and counterbalance each other.

This example demonstrates the utility of comparative longitudinal designs (Fuligni, 2001) in the disentangling of developmental and acculturative changes in outcomes of adolescent immigrants. Developmental and acculturative changes may affect an outcome not only in the same direction, but – like in the example of depressive symptoms just mentioned – also in the opposite direction. Having both processes in mind can help in preventing misleading conclusions. In the case of the newcomer ethnic German adolescents, for instance, the zero change in depressive symptoms may have led to the wrong conclusion that this group does not adapt psychologically to the new environment, although they obviously do when compared with the changes found in natives and more experienced immigrants.

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Acculturation-Related and General Predictors for Developmental Outcomes

Developmental and Acculturation-Related Stages

A second challenge in some of the immigration studies is the use of predictors that can be attributed primarily to acculturation-related or to developmental processes.

Including only one of these perspectives in the predictors can be misleading. An overemphasis on acculturation may highlight interethnic or cultural differences and thereby create intergroup barriers even when these groups are, in fact, more similar than different. An overemphasis on developmental aspects, however, may ignore the necessary attention toward immigrant-specific needs and processes. Research that includes predictors pertaining to both developmental and acculturative processes can avoid such unidirectional views on the psychosocial functioning of adolescent immigrants – even in concurrent associations.

The utility of combining developmental and acculturationrelated predictors is demonstrated by an Israeli study focusing on adolescent delinquency (Walsh, FogelGrinvald, & Shneider, 2015): among immigrants in Israel, a Jewish-Israeli identity (an indicator for the adaptation to the Israeli society) was negatively associated with levels of delinquency in bivariate assessments, but was not associated with the outcome when normative developmental factors (e.g., parental support and limit setting) were added in a multivariate structural equation framework.

The implications of this result are that any outcome should be seen in light of normative developmental theory and acculturation theory and that predictors from both theoretical perspectives have to be implemented in research. Developmental and acculturation-related predictors can be independent and cumulative sources of interindividual differences in a given outcome. Some studies revealed that acculturation-related factors contributed an additional, albeit smaller, share of explained variance in delinquency than general developmental factors (G. W. J. M. Stevens, Vollebergh, Pels, & Crijnen, 2005; Titzmann, Silbereisen, & Mesch, 2014). Even acculturation-specific behaviors, such as language brokering, may have developmental components, because language brokering “may be seen as a normal expectation of the child-adult relationship” (Dorner, Orellana, & Jiménez, 2008, p. 521).

Developmental and acculturative predictors can, however, also interact or mediate one another. A study on ethnic German immigrants showed, for example, that language brokering accelerated normative autonomy processes in adolescent-mother communication (Titzmann, Gniewosz, & Michel, 2015). Another study of Korean and Chinese American adolescents found language brokering for the mother was related to lower externalizing problems through respect for the mother (Shen, Kim, Wang, & Chao, 2014).

It can be expected that acculturation processes differ depending on the developmental stage of individuals, because a core principle in life course theory states that “the developmental impact of a succession of life transitions or events is contingent on when they occur in a person’s life” (Elder, 1998, p. 3). Accordingly, acculturation processes have been found to differ with age (Cheung, Chudek, & Heine, 2011). As such, it is important to consider the associations between age, length of residence, and age at immigration (G. Stevens, 2006): Adolescents, who differ in age, but not in length of residence, naturally differ in the age of immigration. Hence, comparisons of age groups imply that age at immigration is compared if both age groups have been in the country for a similar period of time, a factor that has a substantial impact on acculturation processes (Titzmann & Silbereisen, 2012; Tsai, Ying, & Lee, 2000). Similarly, stages in the acculturation process need to be considered. A standard theory about acculturation stages does not exist, but several theoretical approaches suggest phases in the adaptation process (Gonsalves, 1992; Hurh & Kim, 1990; Sluzki, 1979). These theories concur in the assumption that immigration can be seen as a phase transition (Granic & Patterson, 2006) or transitional period (Graber & Brooks-Gunn, 1996), a time in which established behavioral patterns are destabilized and a reorganization of the developmental system becomes necessary. Transitions can have positive effects, for instance, when adolescents use the transition to a new country to desist from delinquency (Zdun, 2014), but can also have negative effects. Particularly in early phases of the acculturation process, some protective factors may be less powerful in buffering developmental risks. For example, higher age, a protective factor against victimization, was found to show its protective quality only after 3–4 years post-migration, independent of the country of settlement, which was Israel or Germany (Jugert & Titzmann, 2017). Before this period of time, the known protective effect of age was empirically not detectable. These findings imply that adolescents need these years to settle and activate the various protective mechanisms of age (Smith, Madsen, & Moody, 1999).

The examples show that it is worth considering developmental or acculturative stages in the study of adolescent immigrants. The implication for designing studies is that researchers have to be aware that adaptation processes may differ if adolescents are at different stages in their development. These stages may be assessed by proxies. Age may be a proxy for developmental processes, whereas generational status or length of residence may be proxies for acculturative changes (Jugert & Titzmann, 2017). However, given the substantial inter-individual differences in the age of

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puberty timing (Graber & Brooks-Gunn, 1996), and the substantial differences in acculturation (Stoessel et al., 2014), direct measures of the underlying processes may be more advisable. Developmental processes may be better assessed by variables pertaining to whether or not an adolescent has solved important developmental tasks (Havighurst, 1948; McCormick, Kuo, & Masten, 2011) or is currently in a sensitive period of development to do so (Havighurst, 1948; Nurmi, 1993). Measures for acculturative stages may include levels of mastering the new language, the establishment of a satisfying social life in the new society, or the development of an achieved ethnic identity (Phinney, 1993).

Developmental Context Theory Development cannot be studied without taking into account the contexts in which developmental processes take place.

In this regard, the ecological developmental theory of Bronfenbrenner (1977) has been identified to be particularly fruitful in describing the contexts of immigrant adolescents (Motti-Stefanidi et al., 2012; Oppedal & Toppelberg, 2016; Titzmann & Fuligni, 2015; Ward & Geeraert, 2016).

Bronfenbrenner (1977, p. 514) assumed that human development is the result of constant exchange between the “growing human organism and the changing immediate environments in which it lives, as this process is affected by relations obtaining within and between these immediate settings, as well as the larger social contexts, both formal and informal, in which the settings are embedded.”

He offered a taxonomy for describing the immediate environment of individuals that consists of microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems. Although most studies on immigrant youth can be pinpointed to address particular systems of Bronfenbrenner’s taxonomy, studies rarely reflect the limitations of omitting other systems.

Microsystems are proximal contexts with which an individual is directly linked, in constant interaction. For adolescents, microsystems may involve the exchanges that take place between the adolescent and parents, school teachers, or peers. Microsystems have received substantial interest in acculturation research. In relation to families, the family structure and potential role reversal has been addressed (e.g., Portes, 1997; Titzmann, 2012); in school relations the adolescent-teacher relationship has been investigated (e.g., Froehlich, Martiny, Deaux, & Mok, 2016); and in the peer domain, interethnic friendships are still a topic of intensive research (e.g., Jugert & Feddes, 2017). Microsystems are largely interrelated. Parents have contact with teachers through letters, emails, or direct interaction. Such interrelations can have unique effects on human development and are referred to as mesosystems Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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(Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Research on mesosystems of adolescent immigrants has been conducted to a lesser extent than on microsystems. Crosnoe and Ansari’s study (2015) is one example and reveals common misconceptions in mesosystems: Although both mothers and teachers endorsed the need for mutual collaboration, the communication was marked by a teacher-to-mother directed assignment of tasks and by little freedom for mothers to independently decide what to do with their children. This study clearly showed how research can profit from addressing mesosystems, that is, the linkage between different microsystems (school and family in this case). Sun (2014) describes the phenomenon of “transnational kinscription” among parachute children who attend school in the United States but whose parents remain in Taiwan. He found “parents recruit helping hands to raise their children and to shape the next generation’s familial and cultural belonging through cross-border kin ties” (p. 1432).

Adolescent immigrants can also be affected by settings that are indirectly connected through other microsystems, collectively known as an exosystem. A prototype for an exosystem for adolescents is their parents’ workplace or their teachers’ work environment that affect an adolescent through their parents’ or their teachers’ mood and behavior. Surprisingly, few studies deal with exosystems. The overarching macrosystem refers to the culture or subculture with the specific economic, legal, or political system, which affects all other systems in the developmental ecology. In an immigration situation, all ecological systems are affected by the transition to a new country or by the situation of being a member of a minority. Although there is a substantial amount of research on macrosystems (e.g., in crosscultural comparative work), the generalizability of findings across different immigrant groups and receiving societies is less often empirically addressed. This poses a challenge to immigration research, because models developed for one group or society may not necessarily apply to another.

The “immigrant paradox” revealed that first-generation immigrant adolescents often do better in terms of school grades and school motivation than second- and latergeneration adolescents (Marks, Ejesi, & García Coll, 2014), a finding that is less consistently replicated in Europe (Dimitrova, Chasiotis, & van de Vijver, 2016).

The implications of developmental context theory for acculturation research are that studies on immigrant adolescents can certainly profit from raising the awareness of the different layers in developmental contexts (MottiStefanidi et al., 2012; Ward & Geeraert, 2016), because they highlight the complexity of contextual variation that is often ignored in single context studies. Adjustment to one microsystem can, for example, come at high costs in another. This was shown in a study on adolescent immigrants in Germany: their desire for interethnic peer European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 72–82

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contacts is certainly beneficial for positive intergroup relations (Titzmann, Silbereisen, & Schmitt-Rodermund, 2007), but was related to more family conflict if their parents did not share this desire (Titzmann & Sonnenberg, 2016). Hence, culture maintenance may be beneficial in one context whereas cultural adaptation may be beneficial in another and only studying both contexts in combination will allow assessing adolescent immigrants’ struggle in bridging cultures and contexts.

Berenbaum, 2014; Mendle, Harden, Brooks-Gunn, & Graber, 2010) and add concepts like pace and synchrony (Caspi, Lynam, Moffitt, & Silva, 1993) for a better understanding of how acculturation processes unfold over time for immigrants. Although we focus more on adolescent immigrants in this paper, we see these processes as occurring for all age groups and across the lifespan.

Acculturation Timing

Developmental Considerations in Acculturation Research: The Timing, Tempo, Pace, and Synchrony of Acculturation In later publications, Bronfenbrenner (1986) added the chronosystem to his model, which refers to developmental changes over time. The chronosystem offers potential for innovation in acculturation theory, because the immigration experience is neither passive nor static, but rather an active and dynamic process. Individuals across the lifespan engage in acts of self-determination in their given contexts.

They do not simply assimilate new norms, values, customs, and behaviors of the host culture. In fact, straight-line cultural assimilation is not possible in most cases due to structural, cultural, and individual racism and discrimination against members of a given ethnic and racial group (McBrien, 2005). As a result, immigrants adopt a myriad of behaviors and skills to help them facilitate, react, resist, and redefine their acculturation experience and adaptation to the host country. They are “active agents creating their own personal narratives and directing their present and future lives” (R. M. Lee, Kim, & Zhou, 2016, p. 1062).

A developmental perspective can particularly inform the dynamics in the acculturation process of youth. As discussed, adolescent immigrants are concurrently undergoing biological, social, and psychological changes related to puberty. And adolescent immigrants must negotiate these changes as they learn to navigate different ecological systems that can facilitate or impede their development.

Consequently, we turn to developmental theories on puberty to advance and illustrate a more nuanced understanding about acculturation processes. These theories provide unique perspectives that inform how immigrant adolescents actively negotiate their acculturation processes.

Adolescence and puberty are most distinguished by the biological changes that occur as a child’s body begins to physically develop and change, signaling the onset of adulthood. We specifically draw upon pubertal concepts like timing and tempo (Beltz, Corley, Bricker, Wadsworth, & European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 72–82

Acculturation timing at the coarsest level of analysis refers to the onset of acculturation processes. It is an index for when a person begins to experience cultural and psychological changes related to the meeting of two or more cultures.

We propose three facets of acculturation timing that need to be considered independently and collectively when understanding and studying acculturation processes. The onset of acculturation consists of chronological timing, transition timing, and relative timing. These facets of acculturation timing may occur at the same point in time or not, as there is both intra-individual and inter-individual variation and it is dependent on contextual opportunities and demands.

Chronological Timing Onset of acculturation is traditionally understood in terms of chronological age at time of migration (see above discussions). Not surprisingly, children who migrate as infants and toddlers undergo acculturation changes at an earlier age than children who migrate at older ages. There is, for instance, a well-established correlation between age of immigration and second-language proficiency (G. Stevens, 1999). Additionally, children who immigrate prior to adolescence switch their language preference to the secondlanguage much sooner than children who immigrate at later ages (Jia & Aaronson, 2003), and children who immigrate before adolescence identify more strongly with their host country compared to children who immigrate after the start of adolescence (Tsai et al., 2000). These studies and earlier discussions in this paper clearly demonstrate the ways in which age at immigration is a reasonable proxy for when acculturation begins and how quickly children acculturate in certain domains of development. However, acculturation timing is more complex than just chronological age at time of migration.

Transition Timing Acculturation timing may begin before or after the transition to a new country, that is, the actual physical immigration. That is, it is not always bound to chronological age of immigration. Acculturation timing often begins in the homeland when there is intent to migrate. For example, Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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about 20% of ethnic German immigrant adolescents reported that they were prepared for the immigration process by relatives and about 13% even spoke the new language before the actual migration took place (Stoessel et al., 2014). As children and families prepare for migration, they engage in varying degrees of effort to learn about the new host culture, including language, customs, laws, and education. This premigration process may begin weeks, months, or years prior to the actual move. Acculturation also can occur before intent to migrate. Ferguson (2013, p. 251) proposed the term “remote acculturation, which denotes nonmigrant acculturation arising from indirect and/or intermittent intercultural contact with geographically separate culture(s).” For example, youth in many countries learn English as preparation for living and working in a global society. Early language exposure concurrently exposes youth to new values, customs, and cultural nuances that will benefit them if they do migrate to an English-speaking country. Similarly, acculturation may begin through the international export and consumption of movies, music, and social media. In contrast to remote acculturation, delayed acculturation may occur among youth who experience “various bumps (either imposed by the host society or invented by immigrants themselves)” (Gans, 1992, as cited in Zhou, 1997, p. 980). For instance, adolescent immigrants may experience racial marginalization that prevents them from readily acculturating to the new environment or they may live in ethnic enclaves which allow them to maintain their ethnic language, heritage, and customs so that acculturation processes may not begin despite having made the move to the new country. Zhou (1997) also describes how some immigrant youth acculturate to other marginalized cultures in the host context. For instance, Asian immigrants may identify with Black culture due to residential propinquity and shared experiences with White oppression. Transitional onset to acculturation may help to explain acculturation discrepancies among youth who immigrate at the same chronological age.

Relative Timing Less studied in the literature is the fact that the acculturation process, including onset, is relative to the acculturation processes of peers from the same cohort and context.

In this respect, it can be on time, early, or late compared to peers – much like the study of pubertal timing (Mendle, 2014; Weichold, Silbereisen, & Schmitt-Rodermund, 2003).

Relative acculturation timing is distinct from the relative acculturation extended model by Navas et al. (2005); the latter concept is an intra-individual construct that compares the acculturation orientation adopted in practice with the acculturation orientation that is ideally preferred. Relative acculturation timing, by contrast, is an inter-individual

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construct that can explain why two peers who migrate during the same time period from the same country vary in their current acculturation status. One may be relatively quick at adapting to the new host country and the other may be relatively slow or resistant to cultural adaptation.

S. J. Lee (2009) vibrantly captured differences in relative acculturation timing in her seminal book, Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype, where she found that refugee youth from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam were relatively late in acculturation timing compared to voluntary immigrant peers from South Korea and China. Individual differences in personality/temperament, cognitive development, and socialization experiences, as well as variations in social and cultural capital, may contribute to differences in cultural adaptation. Although many studies discuss these factors as relevant in the acculturation process (e.g., Norrman & Bylund, 2016; Ward & Fischer, 2008; Weine, Ware, & Klebic, 2004), hardly any study considers the variation in predictors and outcomes as effect of a different relative timing.

It is important to note that culture maintenance may also be developmentally adaptive for adolescent immigrants.

Hence, a delay of adaptation (large difference between chronological and transition timing) can be appropriate.

In intra-ethnic enclaves, for example, cultural maintenance behaviors can keep adolescents in alignment with peers and parents. At the same time, culture maintenance may lead to differences in relative timing if the intra-ethnic peers or the parents differ in their timing from that of adolescent immigrants (Telzer, 2010; Titzmann & Jugert, 2015).

These three facets of acculturation timing – chronological, transition, and relative – have the potential to explain differences in current acculturation status among immigrant youth. But it is important to note that they are not independent of each other. Differences in relative acculturation timing may be due to chronological acculturation timing (e.g., immigration at different ages) or transition acculturation timing (e.g., some learning English prior to migration). Early transition acculturation timing likewise may offset immigrating at a later age, which is a typical marker for chronological acculturation timing. What is important here is that acculturation timing can be conceptualized and measured in many different ways.

Acculturation Tempo Puberty tempo refers to the time an adolescent takes to progress through the different stages of puberty (Mendle et al., 2010). Similarly, acculturation tempo refers to the duration period of acculturation until competency in a given domain develops within an individual. It refers to intra-individual change over time. In most cases, the start of acculturation

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tempo aligns with acculturation timing or when the acculturation process begins. But acculturation tempo may differ according to the facet of acculturation timing used as the start point. For example, children who immigrate at an earlier age will likely have a shorter acculturation tempo compared to others who immigrate in adolescence because they acquire the new language more easily (Hakuta, Bialystok, & Wiley, 2003).

Acculturation tempo also has a relatively defined stop time when competency is established. Defining competence is critical to accurately measuring acculturation tempo.

Competency is domain-specific. In acculturation research, it may involve language acquisition, sociocultural knowledge, behaviors, and skills, and more general psychological processes, such as connectedness and identity development.

When competency is achieved may be based on objective and/or subjective markers and likely varies by domain.

For instance, language proficiency may be measured by various tests including listening comprehension, reading comprehension, or correct grammar use (Farhady, 1982).

Acculturation Pace Acculturation pace refers to the speed at which acculturation occurs. Group comparisons of diaspora immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel and Germany showed, for instance, that the acculturation pace was less pronounced in Israel: whereas adolescents in Israel reported an annual decrease in the share of ingroup friends among all friends of about 1.5%, the respective decrease was reported to be 4% in Germany, a difference in acculturation pace that is probably related to the more established Russian-speaking infrastructure in Israel (Titzmann, Silbereisen, & Mesch, 2012). Acculturation pace is related to timing and tempo but restricted to the rate of change.

As such, pace may explain relative timing (e.g., whether adolescents are early, on time, or late in comparison to peers) but may vary within tempo. That is, pace can be linear or curvilinear. It may occur quickly at first due to motivation and available supports and then slow down as a person experiences more frustration, fewer supports, or barriers to developing competency. But it may be the opposite pace for other individuals, going from initial resistance to acculturation to later rapidity as motivation increases due to increased opportunities and incentives.

Studies investigating changes in acculturation pace found that acculturation can resemble a learning curve with more pronounced acculturation-related changes in initial stages of the acculturation process and less pronounced changes later on (Michel, Titzmann, & Silbereisen, 2012a; Ward, Okura, Kennedy, & Kojima, 1998). Detecting acculturation pace requires, of course, longitudinal data and analyses.

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Acculturation Synchrony Synchrony in pubertal timing refers to differences in maturation across biological, social, and cognitive spheres.

Early maturating girls may be biologically mature, but immature in their social roles, a mismatch that is associated with disruptive outcomes (Caspi et al., 1993).

Acculturation synchrony refers to variations in acculturation and adaptation across different domains and contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Mendle, 2014): The timing, tempo, and pace of acculturation processes for immigrant youth may be synchronous or asynchronous. An adolescent immigrant may develop competency in the host language at a young age, for example, but may still hold on strongly to heritage values and customs in everyday family interactions (Arends-Tóth & van de Vijver, 2004; Noels & Clément, 2015). In most immigrant cases, this asynchrony is likely the norm rather than the exception. Acculturation synchrony can and should be differentiated from other concepts, such as the broader sociological construct of segmented assimilation (Portes & Zhou, 1993). Whereas segmented assimilation reflects an inter-individual pattern of adaptation to different social strata, acculturation synchrony as a psychological construct refers to an intraindividual pattern of adaptation to account for variations within a given adolescent youth.

The assessment of acculturation timing, tempo, pace, and synchronicity is challenged by the fact that not all individuals reach and also do not aim for reaching a certain level of competency in a given host culture domain (Zhou, 1997). For example, some immigrant youth may prefer to (concurrently) engage in heritage culture maintenance or acquisition. For youth born in the host country, many may seek to learn their heritage language or to enact heritage cultural practices at the same time as they are acculturating to the host culture (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). In these latter instances, heritage culture engagement will still involve timing, tempo, pace, and synchrony. A person-oriented approach (Bergman, Magnusson, & El-Khouri, 2003) may provide a more fruitful research methodology to employ as it allows for the identification of subgroups of immigrants with different heritage and host culture acculturation timing, tempo, pace, and synchronicity.

Conclusion The aim of this paper was to highlight the need for implementing developmental considerations into acculturation research. Each individual who moves from one culture to another is simultaneously confronted with both processes: acculturation and development. Research may profit from

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the differentiation between these processes because otherwise immigrant youth may be unnecessarily stigmatized (e.g., by highlighting the differences between immigrants and natives, although they are in fact more similar than different) or may not receive the required support (e.g., when their specific needs are not recognized). The overview presented here shows that various approaches exist that can differentiate between development and acculturation.

These studies draw on comparative longitudinal research, the combined investigation of predictors pertaining to developmental and acculturation theories, the investigation of acculturation and development at different stages in the acculturation process or different stages in normative development, respectively, and on contextual developmental theories. Each of these approaches has unique implications for research designs. In addition to these approaches, we utilized theories on pubertal development to better capture the dynamic of acculturation processes.

This leads to the introduction of concepts like acculturation timing, acculturation tempo, acculturation pace, and acculturation synchrony, as new ways to capture the dynamics in acculturative processes.

How development and acculturation affect an individual may differ depending on the particular outcome, the context in which these processes take place, and the life stage of the acculturating person. At some point in the life course (most likely at younger ages), the developmental processes may be stronger in forming the experience and behavior of adolescent immigrants. This situation is depicted in Figure 1: an individual at this age has not yet developed a cultural script for particular situations and acculturation may be more like an enculturation process, that is, “learning, what the culture deems necessary [by being] encompassed or surrounded by a culture” (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002, p. 29). In this situation it may even be complicated to distinguish both processes (see the concept of acculturation development by Oppedal & Toppelberg, 2016). Later on, however, the developmental and acculturative processes may be similar in strength. For adolescents who are older when moving to a new country, it is more likely that they have developed cultural scripts prior to actual migration (not depicted).

In this case, acculturative processes may be stronger and may be prominent in affecting the development of these individuals. Hence, the effects of developmental on acculturative factors and vice versa may be stronger or weaker and whether acculturation or development is more influential needs empirical assessments. Studying this interplay seems promising and certainly will help in a better understanding of and dealing with immigrant youth so that these adolescents have the opportunity to develop their full potential as members of modern multicultural societies. Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Figure 1. Hypothetical model of the interplay of development and acculturation at different stages in developmental and acculturative processes.

Acknowledgment Research for this project was supported in part by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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Zhou, M. (1997). Segmented assimilation: Issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation. The International Migration Review, 31, 975–1008. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/2547421 Received April 27, 2017 Revision received August 3, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Peter F. Titzmann Department of Psychology Leibniz University Hanover Schlosswender Strasse 1 30159 Hanover Germany titzmann@psychologie.uni-hannover.de

Peter F. Titzmann is Professor for Developmental Psychology at the Leibniz University Hanover, Germany.

His general research interest is in the interplay between normative development and migration-related adaptation among adolescents with immigrant background. He investigated this interplay in various developmental outcomes, such as experiences of stress, delinquent behavior, friendships, and autonomy.

Richard M. Lee is Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA. His general research interest is in the ways race, ethnicity, and migration relate to the development, wellbeing, and mental health of individuals and families from diverse cultural backgrounds with a specific focus on Asian American populations. He is the current editor-inchief for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.

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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

Attitudes Toward Immigrants Among the Youth Contact Interventions to Reduce Prejudice in the School Context Siân Jones and Adam Rutland Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Abstract: In recent years in our increasingly globalized world in many countries we have seen the rise of anti-immigrant feelings among the youth. This has resulted in both discrimination against immigrants and negative psychological outcomes which harm both the individual and hinder social integration within society. In this article, we highlight how psychological research can play an important role in informing the design and conduct of educational interventions based on intergroup contact theory that are aimed at reducing prejudice toward immigrants.

We review recent research showing anti-immigrant attitudes among the youth across the globe, and how these attitudes are related to parental and peer relationships. Research indicates that a color-blind approach to prejudice reduction among youth is not helpful and, in contrast, it suggests a more effective approach could be a multicultural approach to diversity, which celebrates both group differences and similarities while promoting social integration through quality contact between different social groups. Recent psychological research shows that this contact can take many forms, ranging from direct contact (i.e., cross-ethnic friendships), to extended contact (i.e., reading a book in which someone from your group has a positive interaction with someone from another group) and even imagined contact (i.e., engaging in imagined play involving characters from different groups having positive relations). The findings of this research demonstrate that it is possible to challenge anti-immigrant attitudes when and where they develop in young people.

Keywords: youth, prejudice, attitudes, immigrants

Children and adolescents in Europe are growing up in an increasingly culturally diverse school context, with a higher level of immigration into and across Europe in the last 20 years. For example, between 1993 and 2015 the number of foreign-born immigrants in the United Kingdom (UK) almost doubled from 7% to 13.5% of the population (Rienzo & Vargas-Silva, 2017). At the same time, in the USA there has also been rapidly changing demographics, largely fueled by immigration. In 2015, a total of 1051,031 immigrants became legal permanent residents of the United States (US Census Bureau, 2015). Governments, until recent times, have recognized the benefits of diversity brought by immigrants, but at the same time have consistently sought to restrict their numbers due to concerns about public opinion and social cohesion (Home Office, 2015).

Indeed in recent years, in many parts of Europe and the USA, an anti-immigration sociopolitical climate and controversial rhetoric around immigration has developed in the media and schools (Moore & Ramsay, 2017; Taylor, 2015). Research in the US has shown that while children Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

are explicitly taught about their nation being founded upon immigration, in everyday settings, they are consistently exposed to anti-immigration sentiments (Brown, 2011).

In spite of these conflicting messages, research suggests intergroup contact (i.e., interaction between social groups) may be beneficial for young people since it improves social relations, and reduces prejudice between individuals from different ethnic groups, including immigrants (e.g., Bagci, Rutland, Kumashiro, Smith, & Blumberg, 2014; Feddes, Noack, & Rutland, 2009). In this regard, research shows that reading in a book that someone from your group has a friendship with someone from another group (i.e., extended contact) is enough to improve young people’s attitudes toward those with an immigrant background (see Cameron, Rutland, Brown, & Douch, 2006). Such interventions have much promise but has research truly shown that such interventions – or indeed any school-based intervention – can change behavior toward immigrants? In this paper, we review evidence for interventions grounded in intergroup contact theory that purport to reduce prejudice European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 83–92 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000310

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and thereby promote the social inclusion of immigrant youth. We consider how far such interventions may be considered effective in this mission.

attitudes of children and adolescents toward immigrants and whether they distinguish between legal versus illegal immigrants. Recent research suggests that young people often do hold negative attitudes toward immigrant youth in school settings (British Youth Council, 2016; Brown & Lee, 2015; Gniewosz & Noack, 2015). For example, Brown (2011) examined European American children’s attitudes toward immigrants and found the while a majority of children were relatively positive about legal immigrants they also believed illegal immigrants should be imprisoned.

Developmental research has shown that important socialcognitive, normative, and moral processes underlie the development of intergroup attitudes through childhood into adolescents (Killen & Rutland, 2011; Raabe & Beelmann, 2011; Rutland, Killen, & Abrams, 2010). In particular, research focusing on socialization of ethnic and racial prejudice has indicated a significant, moderate parent-child concordance (for review, see Degner & Dalege, 2013).

Beyond this, Jugert, Eckstein, Beelmann, and Noack (2015) examined moderators of the parent-child transmission of intergroup attitudes, while the strength of intergenerational transmission has been shown to be moderated by relationship quality, that is, the better the relation the stronger the parental influence (Miklikowska, 2016). Therefore, unsurprisingly, research suggests that young people’s attitudes toward immigrants are related to parental attitudes (Enesco, Navarro, Paradela, & Guerrero 2005; Gniewosz & Noack, 2015). For example, Gniewosz and Noack (2015) conducted a longitudinal five-wave cohort-sequential multi-informant survey study on attitudes toward immigrants among German adolescents and their parents. They found that attitudes among adolescents were predicted over time by maternal and parental attitudes, especially from early adolescence until the age of 16 years. This result suggests that early adolescence is a sensitive developmental period for the emergence of negative attitudes toward immigrants.

Teachers are also influential adults in children’s attitudes toward immigrants. In particular the relationship between teacher and student might be key to youth attitudes. For example, Thijs and Verkuyten (2012) found that ethnic minority students who shared a closer relationship with their ethnic majority teacher had more positive attitudes toward the ethnic majority group in general. Geerlings, Thijs, and Verkuyten (2017) used data from native Dutch children (8–13 years) to assess the importance of studentteacher relationships on attitudes to ethnic minorities. Their research showed that student-teacher relationships were associated with more positive outgroup attitudes, and that this association is mediated through students’ desire for intercultural openness. Consequently, when considering the influences of schools on students’ attitudes, ethnically diverse classrooms and forms of multicultural education are important, but the relationships that teachers develop

Immigration and Attitudes Among Youth In recent times we have seen significant increases in antiimmigrant attitudes in Europe (Ciupijus, 2011; Gniewosz & Noack, 2015). For example, this was evident when the National Police Chiefs’ Council (2016) in the UK recorded a 42% increase in racist hate crime in the month following the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union.

Relatedly, in the UK the Youth Select Committee (2016) gave evidence that interracial prejudice is becoming normalized in schools, with a Ditch the Label report (2015) stating that 8% of their sample had had negative racial identity-based comments directed at them. Concurrently, research has found high levels of social isolation among adolescent immigrants, with one of five reporting they feel that they do not belong to or are accepted by society (Oxman-Martinez et al., 2012).

The psychological consequences of discrimination are well-documented, and include deleterious effects on young people’s academic performance, self-esteem, and prosocial behavior (Leary, 1990; Twenge & Baumeister, 2005).

Relatedly, Motti-Stefanidi and Asendorpf (2017) report that an immigrant youth cohort, dealing with significantly greater effects of discrimination since an economic recession in Greece, had worse outcomes on markers of wellbeing than their nonimmigrant counterparts. Other research suggests that adolescent immigrants may be particularly sensitive to anxiety and depression arising from intergroup prejudice (McKenney, Pepler, Craig, & Connolly, 2006; Strohmeier, Kärnä, & Salmivalli, 2011). Moreover, when negative discrimination is directed toward an individual because of their race or ethnicity, the psychological impact on the target may be greater, as an immigrant identity is internal, stable, and uncontrollable (McKenney et al., 2006). Increasingly, social-developmental psychological theories have highlighted the role of social contexts, in particular parents, peers, teachers, and intergroup friendships (e.g., Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) to explain the development of anti-immigrant attitudes that lead to incidents of intergroup discrimination.

Research on adults shows that they often hold negative attitudes toward those from an immigrant background and that they make a strong distinction between legal versus illegal immigrants holding considerably more negative views of the latter compared to the former (Lee & Fiske, 2006; Short 2004). Yet we know little about the European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 83–92

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with their students also matter for the development of positive ethnic outgroup attitudes.

In schools, peer influence also contributes to youth attitudes in important ways. Longitudinal studies (e.g., Van Zalk, Kerr, Van Zalk, & Stattin, 2013) have shown the effect of peers’ anti-immigrant attitudes on changes in adolescents’ prejudice over time, while Blanchard, Crandall, Brigham, and Vaughn (1994) and Sinclair, Lowery, Hardin, and Colangelo (2005) experimentally showed an effect of peers’ opinions on adolescents’ interracial attitudes.

Nonetheless, the long-term relations between peer influence and youth attitudes at different stages of development are unclear. It has been suggested that the influence of parents might diminish in middle and late adolescence, compared to earlier periods, given that adolescents spend more time with their peers. Conversely, it has been suggested that the effects of peers might decrease between ages 14 and 18 years, when the resistance to peer influences increases (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007).

Recent longitudinal research in Sweden has shown significant effects of parents’ attitudes, peers’ attitudes, and intergroup friendships, on changes over time in anti-immigrant attitudes among adolescents (Miklikowska, 2017). This research also showed that adolescents with immigrant friends are less affected by parents’ and peers’ prejudice than youth without immigrant friends, and that this effect was mediated by adolescents’ empathy. These findings fit with the proposed link between development of empathy, peer relationships, and intergroup attitudes, with empathy theorized to mediate the effects of intergroup friendships on adolescents’ intergroup attitudes (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). That is, intergroup friendships lead to increases in empathy, and in turn, to decreases in prejudice. In this regard, empathy may moderate the effects of humanitarian concern on immigrant policies (Newman, Hartman, Lown, & Feldman, 2013) and the effects of ingroup norms on outgroup liking (Nesdale, Griffiths, Durkin, & Maass, 2005).

In line with this reasoning, the attitudes of highly empathic adolescents might be less affected by their parents’ or peers’ prejudice, or alternatively, heightened by their positive attitudes toward immigrants. Previous research conducted in the UK, also supporting the importance of empathy and intergroup friendships in reducing antiimmigrant biases, suggests that children are more likely to challenge intergroup bias toward immigrants if they have high levels of empathy (Abbott & Cameron, 2014).

Another factor that has been shown to bear upon intergroup attitudes is what adolescents and children think their peer groups expect them to say about those from other groups. These group norms have the potential to influence the attitudes youth hold toward immigrants. Developmental research shows that from middle childhood youth are highly sensitive to group norms about forming intragroup

and intergroup relationships (Abrams, Rutland, Cameron, & Marques, 2003; Castelli, De Amicis, & Sherman, 2007; Nesdale, Durkin, Maass, & Griffiths, 2005; Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005; Jugert, Noack, & Rutland, 2011; Tropp, O’Brien, & Migacheva, 2014). Therefore, children being told about a cross-ethnic friendship are more likely to interpret group members’ actions as representative of the ingroup and outgroup peer norms and respond in a manner reflective of their prescribed ingroup norm. In this vein, Cameron, Rutland, Hossain, and Petley (2011) showed that among older children, attitudes toward ethnic outgroups are affected by ingroup norms surrounding inclusion. Future research should examine the role of ingroup and outgroup peer group norms in determining the development of anti-immigrant attitudes in youth.

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How Can Anti-Immigrant Attitudes Be Reduced in Youth?

Surprisingly, despite increasing research on intergroup attitudes in children and adolescents, interventions to reduce prejudice toward immigrants in childhood and adolescence are not widespread and are rarely informed by developmental science (Killen, Rutland, & Ruck, 2012). A recent review of over 900 studies (Paluck & Green, 2009) included only a few child-focused interventions, and these programs focused specifically on the use of reading materials for children and media-based intervention programs such as Sesame Street (Cole et al., 2003; Cole & Dollard, 2017). Moreover, the review did not address the developmental factors that contribute to prejudice. In contrast, an earlier report on prejudice reduction in school settings in the United States focused specifically on children and adolescents (Pfeifer, Brown, & Juvonen, 2007). The authors, who are developmental scientists, reviewed school-based curricula such as cooperative learning and multicultural curricula. These programs produced modest gains in positive attitudes and were supported by several empirical studies. The authors pointed out, however, that some of the evaluations of these programs overlooked the social context. The report demonstrated the ways that these programs helped to make desegregation a positive learning environment (Pfeifer et al., 2007).

The need to take such social factors into account is illustrated in one intervention commonly used in UK schools, and promoted by an organization called Philosophy4Children, for tackling ethnic prejudice, based on a colorblind ideology (see Dovidio, Gaertner, & Saguy, 2015). This approach argues that everyone should be treated equally, and attempts at differential treatment by ethnicity should be disregarded and dismantled (see http://www.philosophy4children.co.uk/). However, if teachers use this strategy, European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 83–92

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are they implicitly telling children not to talk about ethnicity?

Indeed, a recent study by Apfelbaum, Pauker, Ambady, Sommers, and Norton (2008) and Cameron, Brady, and Abbott (2013) suggests such a color-blind perspective is common among children. They tested a group of children using a version of the children’s game, “Guess Who?.” The game was contrived, so that asking about the ethnicity of your opponent’s character would enable winning more quickly than not asking about it. Yet, rarely would children ask this question – and they were even less likely to do so in ethnically diverse classrooms. In other words, children would rather lose a game, than mention ethnicity. This tendency to ignore ethnicity or race in schools makes explicitly challenging negative attitudes toward immigrants difficult since any contact between immigrants and nonimmigrants is not likely to be perceived as representative of interethnic or cultural contact (Cameron et al., 2006; Hewstone & Brown, 2005).

Books typically used in school often do not explicitly mention ethnicity or race. Indeed, Chetty (2014) argued that two books, Elmer’s Special Day and Tusk Tusk, both by David McKee, and both recommended by Philosophy4Children practitioners as starting points for philosophical enquiry into ethnic prejudice, multiculturalism, and diversity, do not truly allow for an open discussion. Rather, in line with the above findings, he argues, “animal stories” separate racism from its temporal and spatial context, limiting opportunities for engaging philosophically with the topic – and maybe even contributing, paradoxically, to the taboo (however, in their review of polyculturalism, Morris, Chiu, & Liu, 2015 point out that, depending on the particular area and outcome assessed, multicultural education need not necessarily be always better than color-blind approaches). Research in the US also shows that European American mothers adopted “colormute” and “colorblind” approaches to socialization around interethnic relations, as demonstrated by examining how they read storybooks to their children (Pahlke, Bigler, & Suizzo, 2012). This study, contrary to the color-blind ideology, showed that such an approach is not related to low levels of ethnic bias among children even though their parents showed positive explicit ethnic attitudes. In light of the problematic taboo around ethnic origin, which lies in heart of the color-blind ideology, and the findings of previous research, there is good reason, to look further toward developmental-social psychological theory to inform educational interventions aimed at reducing bias and prejudice toward immigrants.

context is intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). It is based on the idea that positive contact (meeting Allport’s optimal conditions of cooperation, common goals, equal social status, and institutional support) between a member of one’s own group and another group can improve intergroup attitudes. In this vein, Zagefka et al. (2015) conducted two surveys in Chile with indigenous Mapuche participants, finding that intergroup contact with the nonindigenous immigrants reduces prejudice. However, such direct contact is difficult to set up, and can be costly (Miles & Crisp, 2014), in the segregated societies in which many youths live. Moreover, Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, and Ropp (1997) contend that attitude change does not necessarily require a direct contact in another group; mere knowledge of ingroup members having close relationships with outgroup members can result in more positive intergroup attitudes. This is known as the extended contact hypothesis.

Studies among children, adolescents, and adults have now shown extended friendship to be associated with more positive intergroup attitudes (e.g., Turner, Hewstone, Voci, & Vonofakou, 2008; Wright et al., 1997). Liebkind and McAlister (1999) conducted a field experiment on the effect of contact among 1,480 Finnish students (ages 13–15 years).

In experimental schools, printed stories of ingroup members’ close friendship with members of outgroups were presented as examples of successful intergroup contact.

Intergroup attitudes were measured before and after the experimental intervention. In experimental schools, intergroup acceptance improved, while attitudes worsened or stayed the same in the control schools. Relatedly, Liebkind, Mähönen, Solares, Solheim, and Jasinskaja-Lahti (2014) looked at relations between nonimmigrants and immigrants in culturally diverse schools. Both groups showed a tendency to perceive future intergroup contact as more important after an intergroup contact intervention.

Along similar lines, Cameron et al. (2006) read stories to British children about other British children interacting positively with an immigrant refugee child. The results showed that attitudes toward immigrant refugee children became more positive among children who received the intervention compared to those in a control group. Additional evidence from Vezzali, Capozza, Giovannini, and Stathi (2012) examined the effects of extended contact on immigrant attitudes among Italian primary school children. Their results revealed that extended contact (measured by the number of immigrant friends of participants’ best ingroup friend) was associated with reduced implicit prejudice, but only among those with fewer immigrant friends of their own. This finding is compatible with research in the UK which also showed that an extended contact intervention could significantly reduce explicit biases toward an ethnic minority group of an immigrant background in a non-diverse

Intergroup Contact and the Reduction of Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Youth One such line of theory that might helpfully be applied to reduce prejudice toward immigrant youth in a school European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 83–92

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location but had little effect in an ethnically heterogeneous area (Cameron, Rutland, Hossain, & Petley, 2011). A longitudinal study of children from an ethnically diverse community in Germany, asked German and Turkish immigrant (living in Germany) children who were their best friends and how many friends of these best friends were German or Turkish, to measure direct and extended contact, respectively (Feddes et al., 2009). They found that direct contact but not extended contact among German children predicted positive outgroup ethnic attitudes. These studies conducted in three different European nations together show that direct contact can reduce biases against ethnic minority groups with immigrant backgrounds, but when actual contact between different groups does not happen then extended contact is effective at changing children’s attitudes to others of an immigrant background.

A relatively new sister to the extended contact approach is known as imagined contact. This is, simply “the mental simulation of a social interaction with a member or members of an outgroup category” (Crisp & Turner, 2009, p. 234), and can improve intergroup attitudes. According to Crisp and Turner (2009) the imagined-contact technique has several key strengths: it can be used where actual or extended contact is impractical, for example, in contexts of physical segregation. Unlike direct and extended contact, imagined contact does not require a child to live in a context where they have contact with outgroup members, where outgroup members are known to anyone from the ingroup or where material is readily available which presents positive extended cross-group contact. Rather, it can be used in low-diversity contexts where contact rarely happens or is discussed, and it is exactly these types of locations where intergroup bias is most likely to form and go unchallenged (e.g., Rutland et al., 2005).

Research suggests that the effect of imagined contact on reduced intergroup biases may be driven by a drop in intergroup anxiety (Turner, Crisp, & Lambert, 2007). Intergroup anxiety is the negative emotional reaction that can occur at the prospect of intergroup contact. However, after individuals have had a successful interaction with an outgroup member, their level of intergroup anxiety is likely to be reduced. Consistent with this reasoning, several studies in diverse intergroup settings with adults have found the positive effect of intergroup contact with immigrants on reducing prejudice to be mediated by intergroup anxiety (Turner, Hewstone, & Voci, 2007; Voci & Hewstone, 2003). Less, however, is known about the role of intergroup anxiety in indirect contact with immigrant youth. Future studies should examine if imagined contact can reduce anti-immigrant attitudes by hindering intergroup anxiety about immigrants.

Another factor that might underline the power of indirect contact is empathy. A correlational study (Vezzali,

Hewstone, Capozza, Trifiletti, & Bernardo, 2017) investigated extended contact between Italian and immigrant primary school children. Results showed that extended contact was associated with improved intergroup empathy, which, in turn, was associated with more positive outgroup attitudes, stereotypes, and behavioral intentions. As above, these effects were significant only among participants with a low or moderate level of direct contact with immigrants.

A field study (Vezzali, Giovannini, & Capozza, 2010) of 68 Italian (majority) and 31 immigrant (minority) secondary school students also showed that intergroup anxiety and empathy mediated the longitudinal effects of quantity of contact on intergroup attitudes for both Italians and immigrants.

Imagined contact has great potential as a prejudicereduction technique for use in education as it can be used with a wide age range of children from diverse backgrounds and abilities. There are now studies demonstrating that imagined intergroup contact is an effective strategy for reducing prejudice among youth (e.g., Cameron, Rutland, Turner, Blake, Holman-Nicolas, & Powell, 2011; Stathi, Cameron, Hartley, & Bradford, 2014). Regarding immigrants, Vezzali et al. (2012) conducted a 3-week experimental intervention asking Italian children to imagine a positive meeting with an unknown immigrant child in different social situations. Results revealed that, compared to their counterparts in a control condition, children in the imagined intergroup contact condition had stronger intentions to meet immigrant children and less implicit prejudice toward them.

In adolescents, Turner, West, and Christie (2013) showed British high school students aged 16–17 years a picture of a same-gendered immigrant asylum seeker who had recently arrived from Zimbabwe. They were asked to imagine having a positive interaction with this individual, before writing a detailed outline of the interaction they imagined. Compared to control participants, students who imagined contact reported a greater desire to befriend immigrant asylum seekers (e.g., get to know them). Together these studies suggest that imagined contact may be an effective strategy when trying to reduce anti-immigrant attitudes in youth.

To date one research study (Jones, Rutland, & Rea, 2017) has examined the effectiveness of a form of imagined contact with immigrants in reducing anti-immigrant attitudes in young 5- to 9-year-old children. This type of imagined contact was specifically designed for young children to make imagining interaction with an immigrant easier, as the children could simulate their imagination using 3-D toys.

This type of intervention was based upon the premise that imagined contact will be more effective, when it actively involves the child, as opposed to merely observing or hearing about intergroup interactions, for example through being passively read a book or shown a TV program. Developmental research suggests that children will pay more

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attention when key features of the world are perceptually salient (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990) and the social group membership of the individuals during an interaction are also made actively salient (Cameron, Rutland, Brown, & Douch, 2006).

In the study by Jones, Rutland, and Rea (2017) imagined contact was induced via pretend play – bringing the imagined contact into a 3-D realm, where children imagined interacting in a physical space. This study found that British children aged between 5 and 9 years from ethnically and culturally diverse areas, respond in increasingly negative ways toward different groups of immigrants to their school, with age, but that these negative attitudes were moderated by imagined contact with an immigrant involving 3-D play.

Interestingly, in the sample as a whole, children’s play reflected elements of both concrete reality (e.g., let’s play football) and fantasy play (e.g., let’s pretend we can fly), and the imagined contact intervention was equally effective when both forms of play were shown by children.

These findings fit with extended contact research by Vezzali, Stathi, Giovannini, Capozza, and Trifiletti (2015), who showed that extended contact stories are effective even when the contact does not involve an ingroup member, or even “real” social groups (i.e., pretend or fantasy characters). In the study by Vezzali and colleagues Italian elementary school children read passages once a week for 6 weeks from fictional J. K. Rowling Harry Potter book series, presenting themes of prejudice followed by a group discussion. They found this fantasy-focused extended contact intervention was effective in promoting positive attitudes toward immigrants. Given these findings, future research should seek to capitalize on this – to explore the power of children’s imaginative and fantasy play, and how this may be exploited to enhance the positive influence of imagined contact in anti-immigrant attitudes in youth.

As a note of caution, while the use of imagined contact interventions remains relatively new, especially in the context of immigration and youth, there have been several published replication failures of imagined contact (e.g., Klein et al., 2014; McDonald, Donnellan, Lang, & Nikolajuk, 2014) in adults. Along these lines, West and Greenland (2016) conducted two studies with adults and showed that self-regulatory focus moderates the effectiveness of imagined contact interventions. Their findings suggest that a prevention self-focus when experiencing imagined contact can limit its effectiveness. A prevention self-focus involves a lot of attention on being social evaluated and concerns about social rejection which can produce negative emotions, vigilance motivation, and ironically a higher attention to stereotypical information. More recently, Hoffarth and Hodson (2016) have pointed to important moderator variables (e.g., level of previous intergroup contact) that may determine the effectiveness of imagined

intergroup contact. Relatedly, a study by Jones, Rutland, and Mariescurrena (2017) shows that, when it comes to children with disability as an outgroup for children, direct contact accentuates the impact of imagined contact. However, we do not believe that this is a reason for dispensing with imagined contact altogether at this stage, especially in circumstances where direct contact is not possible. Rather, we would argue that future research using imagined contact in youth to reduce anti-immigrant attitudes needs to examine the factors that limit and enhance such interventions.

Then we would know more about why and when it can be effective in reducing anti-immigrant attitudes in youth.

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Future Directions In parallel with our intentions, the furtherance of contact interventions to reduce prejudice toward immigrant youth is limited only by the researchers’ imaginations. However, a number of discrete avenues for future research have been brought to light in this review. Many of these studies consider only children belonging to the majority status group.

Thus, it is of primary importance to test indirect contact effects among both majority and minority status children.

In the case of minority children, a further consideration arises. In many instances, the number of immigrant children in a class is low, which reduces the opportunity for immigrant children to learn about a fellow ingroup member (i.e., another immigrant) who has majority status group member friends. However, immigrant children may well have majority status group friends, and indeed research in Italy has found that minority status members generally do have a higher number of cross-group friends compared with the majority status (Vezzali et al., 2010).

If minority status (immigrant) children have friends in the majority status group, who themselves have immigrant friends, then we should also take into account this form of extended contact, because it provides children with knowledge of ingroup and outgroup members engaging in contact (and not just contact; also friendships).

Although the effects of intergroup contact have now been shown by numerous studies, many of them were either cross-sectional or experimental. One exception to this is Munniksma, Stark, Verkuyten, Flache, and Veenstra (2013), who studied social networks of Dutch and immigrant high-school children by asking participants to nominate their five best friends in class. These social network data also allowed the researchers to identify the friends of a child’s friends by examining their nominations (in other words; their extended contact). However, the authors state that these data lacked the power needed to determine the main effect of extended contact. Another exception is Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Wölfer, Schmid, Hewstone, and Van Zalk (2016) who showed that intergroup contact predicts the development of attitudes in adolescence, whereas acquired attitudes buffer against decreasing intergroup contact in adulthood.

Future studies might then similarly follow the model provided by Wölfer, Faber, and Hewstone (2015) which combines self-report with social network data, in order to look at the effects of imagined contact with immigrant youth.

Reliance on cross-sectional data means that little is known about the long-term relation between contact and prejudice. In this regard, the effect of imagined contact on anxiety and attitudes has thus far been demonstrated up to just 3 months later (e.g., Vezzali, Stathi, Giovannini, Capozza, & Visintin, 2015). A short-term longitudinal study of Van Laar, Levin, Sinclair, and Sidanius (2005) showed weak-to-nonsignificant effects of friendships in real life, suggesting that their effects might wear off over time. This might be particularly likely in middle and late adolescence when intergroup friendships are less stable (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003).

we argue against a color-blind approach to prejudice reduction among the youth. Instead we suggest a multicultural approach to diversity may be more effective, as it celebrates both group differences and similarities while promoting social integration through quality contact between different social groups.

We have described psychological research which demonstrates that educational interventions based on intergroup contact between individuals from different groups can reduce prejudice toward immigrants among the youth. This contact can take many forms, ranging from direct contact (i.e., cross-ethnic friendships), to extended contact (i.e., reading a book in which someone from your group has a positive interaction with someone from another group) and even imagined contact (i.e., engaging in imagined play involving characters from different groups having positive relations). There is still much research to be done to extend and evaluate effective educational interventions to reduce prejudice toward immigrants in youth, yet the research to date suggests it is possible to challenge anti-immigrant attitudes when and where they develop in youth today.

Summary Today’s youth live in increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse societies and attend schools where many more of the students will either be immigrants or of an immigrant background. Such diversity can have many benefits for the individual and society, yet in recent years in our increasingly globalized world in many countries we have seen the rise of anti-immigrant feelings. This has been evidenced among the youth and in the school context, as such feelings has meant many immigrants have experienced pervasive discrimination in school settings (British Youth Council, 2016; Brown & Lee, 2015; Gniewosz & Noack, 2015).

Psychological research can play an important role in informing the design and conduct of educational interventions aimed at reducing prejudice toward immigrants.

This is important since such prejudice means youth are often social excluded within schools resulting in poor psychological outcomes for individuals and a lack of social integration within societies.

In this article, we have highlighted research showing anti-immigrant attitudes among the youth in various nations is an important issue, and how these attitudes are related to parental, teacher and peer relationships. We have argued that educational interventions aimed at reducing prejudice need to consider the social context in which the youth live (i.e., their relationships with parent, teachers, and peers) if they are to be successful. Social group memberships, such as immigrant or nonimmigrant, are important in our increasingly diverse societies, and this is why Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Turner, R. N., Hewstone, M., & Voci, A. (2007). Reducing explicit and implicit outgroup prejudice via direct and extended contact: The mediating role of self-disclosure and intergroup anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 369–388. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.3.369 Turner, R. N., Hewstone, M., Voci, A., & Vonofakou, C. (2008). A test of the extended contact hypothesis: The mediating role of intergroup anxiety, perceived ingroup and outgroup norms, and inclusion of the outgroup in the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 843–860.

Turner, R. N., West, K., & Christie, Z. (2013). Outgroup trust, intergroup anxiety, and outgroup attitude as mediators of the effect of imagined intergroup contact on intergroup behavioural tendencies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 196–205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12019 Twenge, J. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2005). Social exclusion increases aggression and self-defeating behavior while reducing intelligent thought and prosocial behavior. In D. Abrams, M. Hogg, & J. Marques (Eds.), The social psychology of inclusion and exclusion (pp. 27–47). New York, NY: Psychology Press.

US Census Bureau. (2015). American community survey. Retrieved from https//www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/ Van Laar, C., Levin, S., Sinclair, S., & Sidanius, J. (2005). The effect of university roommate contact on ethnic attitudes and behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2004.08.002 Van Zalk, M., Kerr, M., Van Zalk, N., & Stattin, H. (2013).

Xenophobia and tolerance toward immigrants in adolescence: Cross-influence processes within friendships. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41, 627–639. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10802-012-9694-8 Vezzali, L., Capozza, D., Giovannini, D., & Stathi, S. (2012).

Improving implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes using imagined contact: An experimental intervention with elementary school children. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15, 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430211424920 Vezzali, L., Giovannini, D., & Capozza, D. (2010). Longitudinal effects of contact on intergroup relations: The role of majority and minority group membership and intergroup emotions. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 20, 462–479.

Vezzali, L., Hewstone, M., Capozza, D., Trifiletti, E., & Bernardo, G. A. D. (2017). Improving intergroup relations with extended contact among young children: Mediation by intergroup empathy and moderation by direct intergroup contact. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 27, 35–49. https://doi. org/10.1002/casp.2292 Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2015). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45, 105–121. https://doi. org/10.1111/jasp.12279 Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Visintin, E. P. (2015). And the best essay is. . .. Extended contact and crossgroup friendship at school. British Journal of Social Psychology, 15, 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12110 Voci, A., & Hewstone, M. (2003). Intergroup contact and prejudice towards immigrants in Italy: The mediational role of anxiety and the moderational role of group salience. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 6, 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1368430203006001011 West, K., & Greenland, K. (2016). Beware of “reducing prejudice”: imagined contact may backfire if applied with a prevention focus. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46, 583–592. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12387

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Developmental dynamics of intergroup contact and intergroup attitudes: Long-term effects in adolescence and early adulthood. Child Development, 87, 1466–1478. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/cdev.12598 Wright, S. C., Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., & Ropp, S. A. (1997).

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European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 83–92

Received June 16, 2017 Revision received September 11, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Siân Jones Department of Psychology Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross London SE14 6NW UK s.jones@gold.ac.uk

Siân Jones is a Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her research interests focus on children who experience prejudice and bullying, and on group-level explanations for these experiences.

She looks at how children’s imagined play, using toy figures affects their responses to those who are discriminated against.

Adam Rutland is Professor in Developmental Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. His research interests are the development and self-presentation of childhood prejudice, children’s implicit and explicit racial and national attitudes; intergroup contact and the reduction of childhood prejudice, the development of ethnic identity, acculturation orientation and psychological wellbeing among immigrant children and the development of subjective group dynamics (person-focused intergroup bias).

Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?

Original Articles and Reviews

How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People Martyn Barrett School of Psychology, University of Surrey, UK

Abstract: This paper reviews existing evidence on how the intercultural competence of young people can be promoted by schools. It begins by examining the concept of intercultural competence, and the values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that together comprise this competence. The various actions that can be taken by schools to promote the intercultural competence of young people are then reviewed.

These actions include: encouraging intercultural friendships; organizing periods of study abroad; arranging for students to have Internet-based intercultural contact; setting up school-community links and partnerships; encouraging and supporting students’ critical reflection on their intercultural experiences and on their own cultural affiliations; using pedagogical approaches such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; using pedagogical activities that enhance the development of some of the specific components of intercultural competence (such as role plays and simulations, the analysis of texts, films, and plays, and ethnographic tasks); using a culturally inclusive curriculum; and adopting a whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights. It is argued that, while there is evidence for the effectiveness of all these various actions, further evaluation studies using more robust methods are still required. Additional research is also required to identify the circumstances under which each form of action is most effective and the subgroups of young people who benefit the most from each action.

Keywords: intercultural competence, intercultural encounters, school education, educational interventions, prejudice

This paper reviews existing evidence on how the intercultural competence of young people can be promoted by schools. The promotion of intercultural competence is crucial for tackling some of the most profound challenges that European societies currently face. These challenges include increases in intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination toward minority ethnic and religious groups, which are higher now in Europe than at any time in the past 50 years (European Commission, 2014; FRA, 2015). There have also been significant increases in hate crimes and violence against minority groups in recent years, in part due to higher levels of violent attacks on religious minorities including both Muslims and Jews and the harassment of women over their religious clothing (Pew Research Centre, 2014).

In addition, far-right political parties in Europe, which openly espouse Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and racist rhetoric and policies, have made considerable gains in recent national elections as well as in elections for the European Parliament (Human Rights First, 2015).

These phenomena are deeply disturbing for anyone who cares about the peaceful coexistence of cultural groups Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

and about respect for the dignity and rights of all human beings. Action is urgently required to tackle these challenges. One action which may be taken is to harness school systems to boost young people’s commitment to respect and tolerance for people from other national, ethnic, and religious groups. There is very good evidence that educational interventions can be used with children and adolescents ranging in age from 5 to 18 years to counter racial, ethnic, and national prejudice and intolerance (Aboud & Levy, 2000; Paluck & Green, 2009; Pfeifer, Spears Brown, & Juvonen, 2007). The present paper describes the various ways in which schools can act not only to reduce students’ prejudice but also to boost their intercultural competence more generally. In addition, this paper provides a critical commentary on the research that has explored the effectiveness of these methods.

An important qualification is necessary at the outset, however. The promotion of students’ intercultural competence is only one of many actions that needs to be taken if the societal challenges noted above are to be tackled.

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is required at the level of institutional structures and procedures (Barrett, 2013a; Council of Europe, 2008, 2011). For example, there needs to be legislation to combat all manifestations of discrimination, hatred and intolerance, and public information campaigns about the societal and personal consequences of intolerance and hatred. All staff working for public authorities, public services, and educational and civil society organizations should be trained in intercultural issues (including teachers, a point which will be revisited in the final section of this paper), and measures to promote intercultural dialog, interaction, and exchanges in the community and in the workplace. Indeed, Barrett (2013a) lists 14 distinct policy actions that should be taken by public authorities to tackle the problems of intolerance, prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. One of the policy actions identified is harnessing the formal education system to ensure that all school leavers are properly equipped with intercultural competence. It is this specific action that the current paper addresses.

What Is Intercultural Competence?

For the purposes of the present paper, intercultural competence is defined as the set of values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that are needed for understanding and respecting people who are perceived to be culturally different from oneself, for interacting and communicating effectively and appropriately with such people, and for establishing positive and constructive relationships with such people.

This definition is rooted in a particular perspective on the nature of culture that construes cultural groups as being internally heterogeneous (Barrett, 2013b, 2016; Barrett, Byram, LĂĄzĂĄr, Mompoint-Gaillard, & Philippou, 2013). This heterogeneity arises because the members of cultural groups adopt a range of diverse beliefs and practices, and because the core beliefs and practices that are most typically associated with a group constantly change and evolve over time, with different members varying in their uptake and utilization of newly emerging cultural beliefs and practices. Moreover, all individuals belong to multiple groups and have multiple cultural affiliations and identities (e.g., ethnic, religious, linguistic, national, occupational, generational, and familial). Because each person participates in a different constellation of cultures, the way in which they relate to any one culture depends, at least in part, on the other cultures to which they also belong. In other words, cultural affiliations intersect, and individuals occupy unique cultural positionings. This is a further reason why all cultural groups are internally heterogeneous.

Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultural affiliations are fluid and dynamic, with the subjective salience of cultural identities fluctuating as European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93â&#x20AC;&#x201C;104

individuals move from one situation to another, with different affiliations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or different constellations of intersecting affiliations â&#x20AC;&#x201C; being highlighted depending on the particular social context encountered. Fluctuations in the salience of cultural affiliations are also linked to the changes that occur to peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interests, needs, goals, and expectations as they move across situations and through time (Baumann, 1996; Onorato & Turner, 2004).

Many human interactions in everyday life take place at the interpersonal level, with cultural differences playing a minimal role. However, sometimes cultural differences become salient. There are several factors that can prompt an individual to shift their frame of reference from the interpersonal to the intercultural (Ellemers, 2012; Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). This shift typically takes place when one or more of the following conditions apply: When there are perceptually salient cultural signs, emblems, or practices present that serve to elicit the cultural category in the mind of the individual.

When cultural categories are frequently used by the individual to think about other people, so that these categories are primed and are readily accessed by that individual when he or she interacts with, or perceives, other people.

When cultural categories help the individual to make sense of the pattern of similarities and differences between the people who are present within a situation When cultural categories help the individual to make sense of why another person is behaving in the way that they are.

When the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own cultural affiliations are experienced as being disadvantaged, devalued, discriminated against, or threatened in some other way by the cultural group to which the other person is perceived as belonging.

In situations where other people are perceived as members of another cultural group rather than as individuals, the self is then also categorized as a cultural group member rather than in purely individual terms, with intergroup comparisons being made (Oakes et al., 1994). These comparisons are often automatic and implicit rather than conscious and explicit.

The crucial point is that in an intercultural situation, one does not respond to the other person on the basis of their own individual characteristics, but on the basis of their affiliation to another culture or set of cultures. Intercultural situations, identified in this way, can involve people from different countries, people from different regional, linguistic, ethnic, or faith backgrounds, or people who differ from each other because of their lifestyle, gender, social class, occupation, or sexual orientation. When an interpersonal situation becomes an intercultural situation, because Ă&#x201C; 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People

cultural differences have been perceived and made salient either by the situation or by the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own psychological orientation or cultural positioning, these are the conditions under which intercultural competence becomes relevant.

Hence the definition of intercultural competence that was given earlier â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it is the set of values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that are required for understanding and respecting those who are perceived to be culturally different from oneself, for interacting and communicating effectively and appropriately with them, and for establishing positive and constructive relationships with them. Intercultural competence is therefore a broader construct than either tolerance or respect.

As far as children are concerned, research has revealed that they start to classify people into racial and ethnic groups from as early as 3 or 4 years of age, with intergroup comparisons and attitudes emerging immediately thereafter (Barrett & Buchanan-Barrow, 2011); likewise, the classification of people into national groups, along with national group comparisons and attitudes, begins between 3 and 5 years of age (Barrett, 2007). Thus, by the time that children start school, some of the group memberships that are key to making racial, ethnic, and national intergroup comparisons are already salient to them. Hence, the preceding considerations concerning the nature of intercultural situations apply not only to adults but also to children from the time that they begin to attend school.

The Components of Intercultural Competence As the preceding definition of intercultural competence implies, this competence consists of many psychological components. Numerous theoretical models of these components have been proposed over the years. A useful overview of the models is provided by Spitzberg and Changnon (2009). Despite the range of available models, there is significant consensus among researchers concerning the main components of intercultural competence. This conclusion emerged clearly from a study by Deardorff (2006), who used a survey to collect the views of scholars of intercultural competence. Deardorff found that 80% or more of the respondents agreed about 15 of the main components of intercultural competence.

More recently, Barrett (2016) conducted an audit and analysis of 48 models of intercultural competence as part of a larger audit of models of both intercultural and democratic competence. A set of principled criteria was used to 1

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identify the core components contained across the models, and these components were used to construct a new integrative conceptual framework. This framework contains all of the components identified by Deardorff but organized in a more systematic manner, as well as additional components not identified by her study. An initial draft of the framework was submitted to an international consultation with academic experts, educational practitioners, and educational policymakers, and the framework received strong endorsement in the consultation. This framework proposes that intercultural competence consists of the following 14 components1: Values Valuing human dignity and human rights.

Valuing cultural diversity.

Attitudes Openness to cultural otherness and to other beliefs, worldviews, and practices.

Respect for other people and for other beliefs, worldviews, and practices.

Self-efficacy.

Tolerance of ambiguity.

Skills Analytical and critical thinking skills.

Skills of listening and observing.

Empathy (in particular, cognitive and affective perspective-taking skills).

Flexibility and adaptability.

Linguistic, communicative, and plurilingual skills.

Knowledge and critical understanding Knowledge and critical understanding of the self.

Knowledge and critical understanding of language and communication.

Knowledge and critical understanding of culture, cultures, and religions.

Each of these components is described and explained in full in Barrett (2016). The framework proposes that an interculturally competent individual is someone who is able to mobilize, orchestrate, and deploy subsets of these components in a dynamic, fluid, and adaptive manner in order to meet the fluctuating demands, challenges, and opportunities of intercultural situations. It is clear from the list of components that some of them (e.g., openness and empathy) may be targeted from a relatively early age at preschool and primary school, whereas others are more

These 14 components are extracted from a longer list of 20 components that covers not only intercultural competence but also democratic competence. The other six components (which include, e.g., civic-mindedness and valuing democracy and the rule of law) have greater relevance to democratic rather than intercultural competence and are therefore omitted here. See Barrett (2016) for further details.

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Table 1. A list of the actions that schools can take to promote the intercultural competence of students Actions based on intergroup contact

Encouraging intercultural friendships

Organizing periods of study abroad

Arranging for students to have Internet-based intercultural contact

Setting up school-community links and partnerships, and implementing service learning projects

Actions based on pedagogical approaches

Supporting studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; critical reflection on their intercultural experiences and on their own cultural affiliations

Using pedagogical approaches such as cooperative learning and project-based learning

Using other pedagogical activities to enhance the development of specific components of intercultural competence (e.g., activities emphasizing multiple perspectives, role plays and simulations, the analysis of texts, films, and plays, and ethnographic tasks)

Actions based on school institutional policies

Using a culturally inclusive curriculum

Adopting a whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights

suitable for targeting in upper secondary school or even in higher education (e.g., knowledge and critical understanding of culture). As such, promoting intercultural competence is a task that applies across all levels of formal education, from preschool through primary and secondary education to higher education.

From the point of view of the present review, the important point to note is that educational practices and experiences that enable young people to develop and use one or more of these 14 components within intercultural contexts are those that can be used to promote intercultural competence. By boosting studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mastery of these components, intercultural competence itself is boosted. Some of the main actions that can be taken by schools to promote studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; intercultural competence, and to reduce their intercultural prejudices, are listed in Table 1, where they have been categorized according to whether they are actions based on intergroup contact, actions based on pedagogical approaches, or actions based on school institutional policies.

The review follows this tripartite categorization.

Actions That May Be Taken by Schools to Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People Actions Based on Intergroup Contact Encouraging Intercultural Friendships It is now well established that encouraging students to form intercultural friendships is an effective method for reducing intercultural prejudice. The evidence comes from extensive research into the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). This hypothesis proposes European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93â&#x20AC;&#x201C;104

that intergroup contact can reduce prejudice toward people from other cultural groups, and that four contact conditions maximize this effect: The contact should take place between people who perceive themselves to be of equal status within the contact situation.

The contact should be sufficiently prolonged and close that it has the potential to allow meaningful relationships or friendships to develop between the participants.

The contact should involve cooperation on joint activities that are aimed at achieving common goals (rather than competition between groups).

The contact should be backed by an explicit framework of support by those in authority or by social institutions.

There is now a wide range of robust evidence which indicates that contact under these four conditions does indeed lead to the reduction of prejudice, not just in adults but also in children, adolescents, and college students (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).

These conditions mean that, in the school context, simply bringing students from different cultural backgrounds into contact with one another may not be sufficient for reducing prejudice. Instead, students who have different cultural affiliations need to cooperate within the classroom on tasks where they have common goals (e.g., through cooperative learning tasks where they are required to collaborate together â&#x20AC;&#x201C; see below for further discussion of cooperative learning), and they need to see themselves as having equal status within the collaborative situation (e.g., they should have an equal opportunity to express their views, make suggestions, and influence group decisions). The school itself should also provide explicit policies expressing its support for intergroup contact and friendships, and class teachers should explicitly endorse these policies. Ă&#x201C; 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Interestingly, there is evidence that not only direct contact but also indirect contact can reduce prejudice. Three forms of indirect contact that have been investigated are extended contact (i.e., when a fellow ingroup member is friendly with an outgroup member), vicarious contact (i.e., observing an ingroup member interacting with an outgroup member), and imagined contact (i.e., imagining oneself interacting with an outgroup member), all of which have been found to be effective in reducing prejudice in adults (Dovidio, Eller, & Hewstone, 2011). There is considerable potential here to develop classroom interventions based on these forms of indirect contact (Turner & Cameron, 2016).

For example, one intervention based on extended contact developed by Cameron, Rutland, Brown, and Douch (2006) involved reading a series of stories once a week over a 6-week period to 5- to 11-year-old children.

In the stories, peers from the children’s own ingroup were described as having close friendships with a refugee child. Compared to controls, this intervention led to significantly more positive attitudes toward refugee children.

Another intervention using imagined contact developed

by Stathi, Cameron, Hartley, and Bradford (2014) required 7- to 9-year-old children to create three stories using pictures in which they had to imagine that they were interacting positively in multiple contexts with a same-age peer belonging to another cultural group. The intervention significantly improved the children’s outgroup attitudes compared to controls, and made them more willing to have contact with outgroup members in the future. Imagined contact has also been found to be successful for improving outgroup attitudes in 16- to 17-year olds (Turner, West, & Christie, 2013).

Organizing Periods of Study Abroad As an alternative to intercultural contact within the classroom (which is not always possible when schools are ethnically homogeneous), students can encounter people from other cultural groups in various other ways. One way is to spend a period of time studying abroad. Several studies (e.g., Anquetil, 2006; Vande Berg, 2009) have shown that studying abroad does not always enhance students’ intercultural competence; indeed, under some conditions, studying abroad can actually be a deeply distressing, stressful, and unsettling experience (Ayano, 2006). However, when students are provided with appropriate preparation and support, the experience can result in significant gains in intercultural competence.

This finding emerges clearly from a series of studies evaluating the impact of the AFS study abroad program.2 On this program, high school students spend 10 months 2

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living and studying abroad. Crucially, AFS provides a highly structured experience. Preparation activities include predeparture orientations, student research into the host country, and the provision of advice on language learning and on forming friendships in the host country. During the period of study abroad, students also receive several host country orientations. Students are only placed with suitable host families and host schools, and they also have access to a local liaison volunteer.

Evaluation studies (AFS, 2012; Hammer, 2004; Hansel, 2008a, 2008b) show that, compared to controls, high school students who have participated in the AFS program have higher levels of intercultural competence, experience less anxiety when interacting with people from other cultures after returning home, and have more friendships with people from other cultures. They also, not unexpectedly, have greater knowledge of the host country and greater fluency in the language of the host country. Importantly, students maintain these advantages 20–25 years later: compared to controls, after this period of time, they are still more likely to speak at least one other language fluently, to have friends from other cultures, to be more comfortable in different cultural settings, and to seek jobs that involve contact with other cultures. They are also more likely to encourage their own children to meet people from other cultures and study abroad, suggesting that communication and interaction with people from other cultures has become a core part of their value system.

Arranging for Students to Have Internet-Based Intercultural Contact Not all school students are able to take advantage of study abroad schemes. The financial costs of student mobility, in particular, can be a significant inhibitor of participation.

However, even in the case of students who attend ethnically homogeneous schools and whose families cannot afford to send them on a lengthy period of study abroad, there are other actions that schools can take to ensure that their students have suitable intercultural experiences and contact.

Creative use of the Internet is one such action (Barrett, Byram, Lázár, et al., 2013; Fisher, Evans, & Esch, 2004).

The Internet provides students with an almost unlimited opportunity to access information about other cultures, to communicate with students from those cultures, and to exchange views and perspectives with diverse people whom they might otherwise never meet or interact with in person. For example, online video conferencing and social media can be used for collaborative projects between students in different countries, in which the students

AFS (originally the American Field Service) is an international organization that operates in over 80 countries and provides study abroad opportunities for over 13,000 students and teachers annually.

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present themselves, interview each other, discuss issues, and complete tasks designed by their teachers. If communication becomes difficult or breaks down, there is the opportunity for discussions with the teacher about what went wrong, what unintended messages might have damaged the communication, and how future communications can be conducted in a more interculturally sensitive manner.

Online activities using social media could therefore enable students to develop, inter alia, openness, listening skills, perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity, respect for others, critical thinking skills, communication skills, cooperation skills, and critical understanding of culture and cultures.

While detailed and robust research is still needed into the extent to which it is possible to implement optimal intergroup contact conditions through the Internet, there are some existing studies which suggest that this may well be possible. For example, Byram, Golubeva, Hui, and Wagner (2017) draw together a series of studies involving higher education students that explored the outcomes that can occur when students in different countries, who are of equal status to each other, cooperate on focused projects through email, Skype, and/or a dedicated project wiki, with support and encouragement from their teachers. The studies involved collaborative projects that were set up by foreign language teachers in such a way that they required the students in the different countries to communicate and cooperate closely with each other, to become aware of their own cultural presuppositions, to engage in critical thinking, and to foster the acquisition of the different components of intercultural competence. The projects ranged across a variety of different topics but always had to result in some kind of civic or political activity by the students in their own communities that addressed a specific topic or issue (e.g., recycling, graffiti, or climate change).

The studies were qualitative rather than quantitative, and employed relatively small samples. However, analyses of the conversations that took place between the students, and analyses of the students’ reflections on the collaborative process, revealed that these students came to form “bonded” international groups, developed common international identifications, gained new intercultural and international understandings, acquired skills of criticality, developed their intercultural competence, and learned how to apply their intercultural competence through action in their own communities.

Collaborative e-projects do not necessarily need to involve students in different countries. They can also involve students living in different regions of the same country.

For example, McKenna, Ipgrave, and Jackson (2008) set up a project in which primary school children living in a large multicultural city in England used email to communicate with same-age children living in a monocultural rural area European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104

in England. They found that the children communicated well with each other, formed relationships, learned about each others’ cultural worlds through their communications, and developed their intercultural competence in the process. Similar findings have been obtained with high school students (White & Abu-Rayya, 2012).

Setting Up School-Community Links and Partnerships, and Implementing Service Learning Projects Another way in which schools can create opportunities for students to experience contact with members of other cultural groups, even when those schools are ethnically homogeneous, is by forming educational links and partnerships with organizations and individuals in their local community.

There are numerous possibilities here. For example, individuals with other cultural affiliations can be invited to the school to work with or talk to students in the classroom; students can also interview visitors using questions prepared in advance with the teacher. In addition, students can visit community organizations and places of worship in their neighborhood, and they can also interview community members in their own environments. Finally, students can be required to make observations and reflect critically on their own responses to meeting people who have different cultural affiliations from themselves. Jackson (2014) provides detailed guidance on the preparations that teachers need to undertake to manage these kinds of intercultural contacts effectively in order to maximize the likelihood of appropriate outcomes being achieved.

There is evidence that involving external visitors from different cultural backgrounds in primary school students’ activities in the classroom does indeed help to reduce those students’ cultural stereotypes and prejudices and enhance their cultural knowledge (Christou & Puigvert, 2011).

In addition, service learning projects that are undertaken in the community seem to be highly effective in fostering several components of intercultural competence. These projects require students to participate in organized service activities that benefit the community beyond the school, with the activities being based on what has been learnt in the classroom; afterwards, students are required to reflect critically on their service experience in order to develop their academic learning and to gain further understanding of course content (Bringle, 2017; Rauschert & Byram, 2017). Undertaking service learning activity in the community that involves contact with individuals from other cultural backgrounds seems to be especially effective with both high school and higher education students, leading to better self-knowledge, self-efficacy, empathy, and understanding and tolerance of cultural otherness (Bringle, 2017; Morgan & Streb, 2001). Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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Actions Based on Pedagogical Approaches Supporting Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Critical Reflection on Their Intercultural Experiences and on Their Own Cultural Affiliations It is important to reiterate that intercultural contact is more likely to reduce prejudice, increase tolerance, and boost intercultural competence if the four intercultural contact conditions are fulfilled and if students are appropriately prepared for their intercultural encounters. In addition, intercultural competence is most likely to be enhanced if students are encouraged to reflect critically on their intercultural encounters (Alred, Byram, & Fleming, 2003; Byram et al., 2017; Vande Berg, 2009). Furthermore, it has been found that if 11- to 18-year-old students actively explore their own cultural identities and heritage, this exploration can also contribute to their levels of intercultural competence over and above the contribution that is made by their contact with people from other cultural backgrounds (Schwarzenthal, Juang, Schachner, van de Vijver, & Handrick, 2017). Thus, encouraging students to reflect critically on their intercultural experience and encouraging them to explore their own cultural identities and heritage are two important additional strategies that can be used for building their intercultural competence.

Two educational tools that have been developed specifically to support and scaffold studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; critical reflections on their intercultural encounters and on their own cultural identities are the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (AIE; Byram, Barrett, Ipgrave, Jackson, & MĂŠndez GarcĂ­a, 2009) and the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM; Barrett, Byram, Ipgrave, & Seurrat, 2013). These tools provide students with structured sequences of questions that are designed to progressively channel and deepen their thinking about their intercultural encounters, about their reactions to those encounters, and about their own cultural positioning. The AIE supports critical reflection on face-to-face encounters that have involved communication with cultural others, while the AIEVM supports reflection on images of cultural others that have been encountered in visual media such as television, cinema, newspapers, and magazines. At the time of writing, a third tool is in the process of development which supports studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; critical reflection on intercultural encounters involving communications that have taken place through social media. All three tools are designed to be used repeatedly over an extended period of time (such as an entire year of school study) in relationship to multiple encounters, over the course of which the various components of intercultural competence are progressively strengthened through the process of critical reflection. There are two versions of each tool: one for use by younger students aged between 5 and 11 years old, and one for students aged 11 years and older.

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Studies into the effects of using the AIE and AIEVM with students in higher education (Lindner & MĂŠndez Garcia, 2014; MĂŠndez GarcĂ­a, 2017) suggest that these tools are indeed effective for enhancing studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; intercultural competence, especially their intercultural awareness, selfawareness, and perspective-taking abilities. However, these evaluation studies are small scale and qualitative in nature.

Further studies using larger samples, younger samples, and experimental methodology are still needed to test the effects of using these tools on studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; intercultural competence.

Cooperative Learning One pedagogical approach that has been found to be extremely effective in boosting intercultural competence in students of any age from 3 years upwards is cooperative learning (see Johnson, 2003, 2009; Johnson & Johnson, 1999; Parrenas & Parrenas, 1990; Slavin, 1991, 1995).

Cooperative learning does not simply mean students working together in pairs or small groups in an unstructured manner. Instead, it involves students working together on tasks that have some specific cooperative features built into their structure. Johnson and Johnson (2009) argue that the following features are required: Positive interdependence: students need to perceive that they are linked with other group members in such a way that they cannot succeed in achieving the common group goal unless they work together on the given task.

Individual accountability: the performance of each individual student needs to be regularly assessed and the results given back both to the group and the individual.

Promotive interaction: students need to help, share, and encourage each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to complete the tasks and achieve the group goals.

Appropriate use of social skills: students need to be taught the social skills that are required for high-quality cooperation (e.g., decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills) and be motivated to use these skills (note that some of these skills are components of intercultural competence).

Group processing: groups need to reflect periodically on how well they are functioning and how they might improve the working relationships between the group members.

Positive interdependence is particularly important in cooperative learning, because it enables students to recognize that everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts are needed in order to achieve the group goals, and this in turn generates a commitment to other studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; success as well as their own.

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Cooperative learning that follows these principles, especially when the group members are drawn from different cultural groups, helps to boost the number of intercultural friendships, the significance that is attached to those friendships, studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; acceptance of cultural differences, an appreciation of the strengths of diverse people, empathy, and communication skills (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1999).

An alternative form of cooperative learning is the jigsaw classroom. This involves dividing the class up into groups of five or six students. Each member of a group is assigned some unique information to learn that must later be shared with the other members of that group in order for the group to achieve its common goal (Aronson & Patnoe, 2011). The distinctive characteristics of a jigsaw group are: All of the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; individual assignments within a group are related to each other in such a way that every student receives some but not all of the pieces of the overall group assignment.

Individual students have to master their own assignments and then teach them to the other members of the group â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thus, each individual spends a part of their time taking on the role of an expert and exercising their communication skills.

Each student must listen to all the other students in their group, ask appropriate questions, and master all of the material â&#x20AC;&#x201C; thus, the assignment requires both individual work and team work.

The overall group assignment is to synthesize all of the individual contributions in order to construct a complete picture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the assignment therefore culminates in a whole group problem-solving task.

The structure of the jigsaw activity means that every group member becomes equally important. Because students have to rely on each other in order to do well, their competitive attitudes are reduced and their cooperative attitudes are enhanced â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the group can only succeed if every student succeeds. It has been found that jigsaw activities lead to increases in studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; empathy and positive attitudes toward their peers, and reduce their levels of racial prejudice when the groups are composed of students drawn from different cultural backgrounds. Much of the evidence for these conclusions comes from work with fifth and sixth grade children (Blaney, Stephan, Rosenfield, Aronson, & Sikes, 1977; Geffner, 1978; Walker & Crogan, 1998).

Project-Based Learning Another pedagogical approach that has been found to be effective in developing studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; intercultural competence is project-based learning (Cook & Weaving, 2013; Trilling & Fadel, 2009). Such learning involves students participating

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in real-world situations or tasks. A project needs to be meaningful and engaging, and based on a set of core questions that have to be answered by the student. Projects can vary in scope from short projects that address a single specific issue through to lengthy projects that result in the creation of substantial products and presentations that may be made to one or more audiences. Projects typically require the student to undertake planning and design work, decision-making, investigative activities, and problemsolving as part of the project. Projects are usually undertaken in collaboration with other students, although they may also be conducted independently. Critical selfreflection on the process of conducting the project, and particularly on the learning process, is usually an integral component of a project, with evaluations of learning taking place throughout the progress of the project.

Projects based on group work at both primary and secondary school level have been found to be effective in building various aspects of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; intercultural competence, including linguistic and communicative skills, listening skills, perspective-taking skills, and respect for others (Bell, 2010; Harper, 2015; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012).

Other Pedagogical Activities In addition to cooperative learning and project-based learning, there are numerous other pedagogical activities that can be employed by teachers to promote the intercultural competence of students. For example, Barrett, Byram, LĂĄzĂĄr, et al. (2013) describe all of the following: Activities emphasizing multiple perspectives: these take the form of a verbal description or a visual recording of an event or phenomenon which is then supplemented with or juxtaposed to other descriptions or recordings of the same event or phenomenon provided by other people who see it from different perspectives.

Such activities can help to develop studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity, openness, and skills of listening and observation.

Role plays and simulations: these help students to experience at first-hand what it is like to be different, to be criticized, or to be marginalized or excluded.

They can enable students to understand that, although people might exhibit superficial differences in appearance or differences in beliefs and values, they nevertheless still have dignity and are deserving of respect.

Analyzing texts, films, and plays: depending on the choice of text, film, or play, and the teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s framing of the exercise, which could involve asking students to explain their own judgments or to take the perspective of characters that have been depicted, this type of activity can be used to build knowledge and understanding of people from diverse cultural backgrounds,

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to stimulate critical reflection on cultural issues, and to enhance openness, empathy, respect, critical thinking skills, and the valuing of human dignity, human rights, and cultural diversity. Staging plays extends this learning still further because acting enables people to personally explore and reflect on experiences which they would probably never otherwise have.

Ethnographic tasks: these tasks involve students either observing or talking to people beyond the classroom and bringing their observations or notes back into the classroom which they can then compare, analyze, and reflect upon. Reflection can help them to think critically about what they have observed or heard and about how they themselves reacted within the ethnographic situation. If the activity involves interviewing people, students can also develop their active listening skills, perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity, and respect.

Actions Based on School Institutional Policies Using a Culturally Inclusive and Relevant Curriculum A further way in which some of the components of intercultural competence can be promoted in students is through the use of a culturally inclusive and relevant curriculum.

This approach treats the cultural affiliations of minority students who are in the class as a resource for learning.

School curricula are often based on the national history and culture of the majority cultural group, and exclude the culture and contributions of minority groups. Culturally inclusive curricula include coverage of the histories, cultural practices, beliefs, and contributions that have been made by minority cultural groups as well as those of the majority national group, and they can provide a much more accurate representation of the diversity that is often present within the classroom. For this reason, they can have far greater relevance to both minority and majority students within the classroom, especially if the cultural affiliations of both minority and majority students are treated on an equal footing (Nieto, 2000). It has been found that, when primary and secondary schools introduce culturally inclusive curricula, it helps to reduce studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cultural prejudices and fosters greater respect toward minority groups that are usually marginalized within society (Cammarota, 2007; Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b; Sleeter, 2011).

Adopting a Whole School Approach to Valuing Diversity and Human Rights A whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights involves ensuring that all aspects of the school â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not just curriculum content but also teaching and learning Ă&#x201C; 2018 Hogrefe Publishing

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methods, leadership, governance, school decision-making structures and policies, codes of behavior, interpersonal relationships including staff-student relationships, extracurricular activities, and external links to the community â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are based on the valuing of diversity and the valuing of the dignity and human rights of everyone within the school community and beyond (including both majority and minority group members). A wide range of actions can be taken to implement a whole school approach to valuing diversity.

In addition to using a culturally inclusive curriculum, actions can include holding inclusive celebrations of cultural and religious festivals, respecting all studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; holiday traditions, ensuring that all studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cultural or religious needs are met, and appointing staff who have minority cultural affiliations (Billot, Goddard, & Cranston, 2007).

A particularly noteworthy example of a whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights is provided

by UNICEF UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme.

To become members of this scheme, schools have to place the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; United Nations, 1989) at the heart of their planning, policy, practice, and ethos. Through a wide range of activities, these schools teach children about their own rights and about the key principles inherent in upholding human rights, including dignity, responsibility, accountability, nondiscrimination, interdependency, and participation.

The principle of nondiscrimination requires schools to work to achieve positive outcomes for all children irrespective of their cultural affiliations, while the principles of participation, dignity, and accountability require schools to provide opportunities for pupils to make active contributions to the life and community of the school. Rights respecting schools ensure that their policies and structures apply a rights-based approach to all decisions and activities within the school and not just in the classroom. The schools function as communities where studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rights are learned, taught, respected, promoted, and protected, and where students and indeed the entire school community learn about human rights by putting them into practice every day. The schools also monitor and review their activities to ensure that childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights are being protected, using the UNCRC as a framework, and making explicit how everything they do promotes and protects human rights. The rights-based approach is applied across all school relationships, including children, teachers, parents, governors as well as the wider local and global community (UNICEF UK, 2017).

Research into the impact of the Rights Respecting Schools Award in both primary and secondary schools has revealed that, in these schools, students develop a clear understanding of not only their own rights but also their responsibilities toward other people, become supportive of the rights of others locally, nationally and globally, develop positive and socially responsible identities, develop listening European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93â&#x20AC;&#x201C;104

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skills, empathy and respect for others, develop higher order critical thinking and reasoning skills (as a consequence of thinking about rights dilemmas in particular), and feel empowered as citizens who can challenge injustice, inequality, discrimination, and poverty in the world.

Students in these schools also have high self-esteem and feel valued, are more engaged and feel empowered, have positive attitudes toward inclusivity and diversity in society, have cooperative relationships with their peers, and are ready to accept responsibility for their own mistakes (Covell, 2013; Sebba & Robinson, 2010). In short, these students develop many of the components of intercultural competence to a high level.

Conclusions It is clear that there are numerous actions that can be taken by schools to promote the intercultural competence of young people. These include actions based on intergroup contact, actions based on pedagogical approaches, and actions based on school institutional policies (for a summary, see Table 1).

However, for these various actions to be successfully implemented, teachers need to act as agents of transformation in students’ lives. This is an extremely significant role, and teachers need to be adequately prepared for it. Such preparation should involve both pre-service and in-service training to ensure not only that teachers’ own intercultural competence is sufficiently developed to enable them to deliver suitable educational experiences to their students, but also that they are sufficiently familiar with and experienced in using the various methods that can be used to promote students’ intercultural competence.

This paper has reviewed a large number of such methods, together with the studies that have been conducted to evaluate their effectiveness. The studies provide an optimistic picture that young people’s intercultural competence can indeed be enhanced through the use of these various methods. However, the existing evaluation studies are often not optimal. Many studies use small samples, use qualitative methods but do not perform reliability checks on the interpretations drawn from the data, fail to employ control groups, and often fail to even report the precise ages of the students who have participated in the studies. There is an urgent need for new evaluation studies, based on more rigorous research methods, to assess the effectiveness of many of the actions identified in this paper.

In addition, further studies are required to assess the effectiveness of these various actions in different cultural settings. It is possible that a particular action promotes the development of intercultural competence in one setting

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(e.g., in an ethnically heterogeneous school) but not in another (e.g., in an ethnically homogeneous school).

A further complication is that it is also possible that particular actions are only effective in promoting the intercultural competence of highly specific subgroups of young people. The intercultural experiences of children and adolescents are likely to be specific to particular subgroups defined in terms of their age, gender, ethnicity, locale, and nation (e.g., specific to younger females from a minority background living in a large multicultural city in a particular country, or specific to older males from a national majority background living in a monocultural rural area of another country). In other words, young people occupy very specific cultural positionings, and different methods may be needed to boost their intercultural competence according to their positioning. Both teachers and researchers need to be aware of the internal diversity that exists within all cultural groups, alert to the possibility that different actions may be required to promote intercultural competence within different subgroups of young people, and avoid drawing over-general conclusions that go beyond the actual evidence base.

In short, there is a considerable research agenda that still needs to be pursued in this field. While existing work has identified a wide range of actions that can be used to promote the intercultural competence of young people in schools, more research is required to identify the precise circumstances under which particular actions are most effective and the subgroups of young people who can benefit the most from each action.

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Turner, R. N., & Cameron, L. (2016). Confidence in contact: A new perspective on promoting cross-group friendship among children and adolescents. Social Issues and Policy Review, 10, 212–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12023 Turner, R. N., West, K., & Christie, Z. (2013). Outgroup trust, intergroup anxiety, and outgroup attitude as mediators of the effect of imagined intergroup contact on intergroup behavioural tendencies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 196–205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12019 UNICEF UK. (2017). Rights respecting schools award: Showing evidence of impact, schools’ guide to the RRSA evaluation.

London, UK: UNICEF UK. United Nations. (1989). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York, NY: United Nations.

Vande Berg, M. (2009). Intervening in student learning abroad: a research-based inquiry. Intercultural Education, 20(Suppl. S1–2), S15–S27.

Walker, I., & Crogan, M. (1998). Academic performance, prejudice, and the jigsaw classroom: New pieces to the puzzle. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 8, 381–393.

White, F. A., & Abu-Rayya, H. M. (2012). A dual identity-electronic contact (DIEC) experiment promoting short- and long-term intergroup harmony. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 597–608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.01.007 Received June 24, 2017 Revision received October 3, 2017 Accepted October 17, 2017 Published online March 16, 2018 Martyn Barrett School of Psychology University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 7XH UK m.barrett@surrey.ac.uk

Martyn Barrett is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK. His primary research interests are focused on young people, race, ethnicity and nation, and the societal challenges that arise from cultural diversity. He is currently working on a flagship project, “Competences for Democratic Culture,” for the Council of Europe, which is producing a new European Reference Framework of the competences that young people require to participate effectively in democratic culture. He is also currently working with the OECD PISA team developing the conceptual framework and assessments of global competence for PISA 2018.

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EFPA News and Views Meeting Calendar May 2–4, 2018 Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Nottingham, UK Contact: http://beta.bps.org.uk/ events/annual-conference-2018 May 16–20, 2018 VII International Conference “Early Childhood Care and Education” (ECCE 2018) Moscow, Russia Contact: https://en.ecceconference. com/ May 24–25, 2018 6th ICPLR 2018 – International Conference on Psychology & Language Research Lisbon, Portugal Contact: https://gplra.org/6th-icplr2018—international-conference-onpsychology-and-language-researchportugal-24-may-25-may-2018about-56

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European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 105 https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000322

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The best ways to support the healthy development of children and adolescents and their families Kristin S. Mathiesen / Ann V. Sanson / Evalill B. Karevold (Editors)

Tracking Opportunities and Problems from Infancy to Adulthood 20 Years With the TOPP Study 2018, x + 272 pp.

US $49.80 / € 39.95 ISBN 978-0-88937-543-7 Also available as eBook The unique longitudinal study “Tracking Opportunities and Problems (TOPP)” began following nearly 1,000 children and their families in Norway in 1993. Few studies have ever accumulated such extensive information from such a large number of families.

Eight waves of data on many aspects of child and family life have been collected from children aged 18 months to 18 years. The TOPP Study has provided new knowledge about and insight into the precursors, developmental paths and predictors of both good adaptation and mental health problems of children, as well as into parenting and family relationships.

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parental and family-related factors, including parental couple relationships. Part 3 looks at methodological issues, including the sample, response rate and measurement and analytical approaches. Each chapter reviews the existing knowledge in these areas in relation to the TOPP findings and provides extensive reference lists for those who want to dig deeper.

This unique book provides thoughtprovoking insights into the TOPP findings to help guide therapeutic practice, to suggest new avenues of research, to inform teaching, and to shape policy planning and preventive actions. It is thus an invaluable resource for all professionals, researchers, educators, policy makers, and students working with children and adolescents and their families.

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Evidence-based approaches to repairing parent–child relationships “A powerful resource for those professionals assisting in the process of reunifying parents with their children. ” Alfred J. Horowitz, Circuit Court Judge in the Family Division, Fort Lauderdale, FL

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Reunification Family Therapy A Treatment Manual 2018, xii + 148 pp.

US $59.00 / € 46.95 ISBN 978-0-88937-491-1 Also available as eBook Childhood problems are often related to and exacerbated by the disintegration of the family structure, whether through parental separation and divorce, military service, or incarceration. Reunification therapy is a therapeutic process incorporating different empirically based methods (CBT, humanistic, and systemic) to help repair relationships between parents and children and restore not only physical contact but also meaningful social, emotional, and interpersonal exchanges between parents and children.

This unique manual, bringing together the vast experience of the author, outlines the many situations many families currently face and why the need for reunification therapy exists. Dr. Faust has worked for 30 years in both

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clinical practice and research with children and families who have faced numerous challenges and traumas, including divorce, chronic and life-threatening illness, and child abuse. In her treatment protocol, the therapist works firstly with the individual family members and then with all family members in conjoint sessions. The manual expertly guides clinicians through pretreatment decisions and processes to enable them to decide where, when, and in what form reunification therapy is appropriate, taking into account ethical, legal, and special family issues. Detailed chapters outline the structure and issues for the individual and conjoint sessions, as well as a step-by-step treatment plan template. Additional tools in the Appendix enable clinicians to monitor and effectuate change.

Cultural diversity – challenge and opportunity “It’s a book that we were all waiting for, and will be useful not only to psychologist practitioners and students, but also to stakeholders and policy makers in education.”

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Cultural and Ethnic Diversity How European Psychologists Can Meet the Challenges 2018, x + 222 pp.

US $56.00 / € 44.95 ISBN 978-0-88937-490-4 Also available as eBook Culture and diversity are both challenge and opportunity. This volume looks at what psychologists are and can be doing to help society meet the challenges and grasp the opportunities in education, at work, and in clinical practice. The increasingly international and globalized nature of modern societies means that psychologists in particular face new challenges and have new opportunities in all areas of practice and research.

The contributions from leading European experts cover relevant intercultural issues and topics in areas as di-

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verse as personality, education and training, work and organizational psychology, clinical and counselling psychlogy, migration and international youth exchanges.

As well as looking at the new challenges and opportunities that psychologists face in dealing with people from increasingly varied cultural backgrounds, perhaps more importantly they also explain and discuss how psychologists can deepen and acquire the intercultural competencies that are now needed in our professional lives.