Minority Youth and Social Integration

Many young people with a migrant background feel less attachment to their social environment and institutions. Their marginalized position is often seen as an explanation for their over-representation in problem behaviours such as crime, drug use or school dropouts. Migrant families live more often in disadvantaged areas because of their high levels of unemployment and economic deprivation, and these areas suffer from high crime levels. Residential turnover further weakens social bonds and social control in these areas. This chapter uses the third sweep of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study to examine whether there is a difference in the bonding of young migrants with their family, school, teacher, friend and neighbourhood compared with people who have been born within the country. It assesses whether differences in bonding explain the over-representation of migrant youth in problem behaviour as delinquency, substance use and truancy.

This chapter uses the third sweep of the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD3) to explore the prevalence and predictors of parental violence against children. Using the 27 countries in the 2017 dataset of ISRD3, it shows very wide variations across country. Clear correlations also emerged across country between the prevalence of parental physical punishment and that of more serious physical abuse. The hypothesized relationships between parental use of violence and poverty and deprivation (measured by the Human Development Index) were not initially found. However, migrant status was clearly a significant predictor, and when this was taken into account in analysis, a correlation between parental violence and HDI scores becomes visible. The chapter used data from a subproject of ISRD3, Understanding and Preventing Youth Crime (UPYC), to test different hypotheses for the higher rates of parental violence. Support was found both for the importation hypothesis and the deprivation hypothesis. It was expected that the predictive effect of migrant status would disappear when deprivation variables were included in the analysis. However, controlling for deprivation attenuated the relationship between migrant status and use of parental violence but did not make it disappear completely—offering some support for both competing hypotheses.

We explore the links between religion/religiosity and school attitudes among junior high school students in five countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA). Socialization of children is undertaken, in part, through schools that equip them with skills, instill values and impose rules and sanctions (compulsory attendance, behavioural standards). Attachment or detachment vis-à-vis school may be critical in the socialization of children and their integration into broader society. Using multilevel models and controlling for socio-economic indicators, we find small effects of religious denomination (Muslim pupils being less attached) and religiosity (more religious children being more attached), as well as that of minority concentration (attending schools with minority concentration leads to lower attachment). This is an important finding, indicating that while such effects can be statistically significant, the main causes do not lie in variables related to religion or religiosity. Even in countries such as France and the UK where ethnicity, a variable interlinked with denomination, is a predictor of more distrust and tensions with the police, such a mechanism does not appear to be strong regarding schools. Survey data are from the UPYC dataset and the ISDR3 questionnaire.

Stratified school systems select children into different educational tracks according to ability, in some countries as early as age 10. Tracks substantially determine future education and career opportunities. Comprehensive school system have no such selection before age 15. Children with a migrant background are often overrepresented in lower tracks, and possible negative consequences may affect them more than native-born children. We use data from the third wave of the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD3) to examine direct and indirect influences of school system on self-reported life-time offending of native and migrant students in eight countries, four countries with comprehensive and four with stratified school systems. We find that migrant students are indeed overrepresented in lower tracks and report higher levels of offending across all tracks than native students. No such differences exist for comprehensive systems. Our analysis also shows a stronger (direct) relationship between lower-track enrolment and offending for migrant than for native students, while (indirect) protective influences in the school system are reduced and risk influences are magnified for migrant students.

Earlier sweeps of the International Self Report Delinquency Survey (ISRD) made no attempt to cover teenagers’ attitudes towards criminal justice institutions. ISRD3 goes a little way to filling this gap by including a short suite of questions on trust in the police and perceptions of police legitimacy, that sets out to see if well-established insights into adults’ attitudes, built on procedural justice theory, also hold true for teenagers. Results are presented in this chapter. To anticipate our conclusions, the results very largely reflect those that have emerged internationally for adult samples: that trust in procedural justice is a precondition for legitimacy, reducing preparedness to break the law, and that the quality of teenagers’ experience of the police is a clear determinant of their trust in the police.

This chapter deals with perceived police unfairness amongst young members of minority groups in four Western European countries (France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands). It focuses on the way perceived police unfairness is associated with ethnicity, as well as two other sources of minority group belonging: Islamic affiliation and neighbourhood. Key findings are as follows. Living in the most disrupted neighbourhoods is the strongest predictor of beliefs about police unfairness, though minority ethnic origin also has an independent predictive effect, controlling for other factors. With controls in place, Muslim identity is not a significant predictor (even when taking into account attachment to Islam). Police contact after having committed an offence and attitudes towards discrimination show a significant mediating effect, but these variables do not fully account for the effect of neighbourhood or ethnicity. As for national differences, pupils from France, the UK and the Netherlands are significantly more likely to see the police as unfair than those from Germany.

Much comparative research has charted the difficult relationships that often develop between the police and people with migrant backgrounds, especially those from minority ethnic groups. However there is very little research into the ways in which these issues play out with young teenagers. This chapter first examines the relationships between migrant status and variables relevant to procedural justice theory (mainly perceptions of procedural fairness and of legitimacy) and self-reported crime, amongst the countries that form the UPYC sub-project of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study: France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK (disaggregated here into English and Scottish sub-samples) and the US. In four out of the six countries and in the analyses combining all six countries, migration has an effect consistent with most previous studies, namely migrants confer less trust and legitimacy on the police. The second part of the paper examines factors that appear to mediate these effects. Living in conditions of disadvantage and in disorganised neighbourhoods explains almost completely the correlation that we observe between migrant status and perceptions of legitimacy. In the third and final part of the paper we look deeper into the effect of migration on trust, legitimacy and self-reported offending by also incorporating ethnic minority status into the analysis. It is shown that minority status is the main driver of the effects apparently associated with migrant status. These results are interpreted in terms of the histories of integration—or of failed integration—of migrants from visible ethnic minorities into the host population. Implications for public policy and social science are discussed.