Parental Transmission of Trust or Perceptions of Institutional Fairness: Generalized Trust of Non-Western Immigrants in a High-Trust Society

Looking at young immigrants from low-trust, non-Western countries in the high-trust society of Denmark, two perspectives on how generalized trust is formed can be examined. The first is a cultural perspective emphasizing that trust is a stable cultural trait passed on from one generation to the next through parental socialization. The second is an experiential perspective emphasizing the role of perceptions of fairness of state institutions concerning equal treatment of immigrants and natives. Building on a new Danish survey, results show that both parental transmission of trust as well as perceptions of institutional fairness matter for the level of trust of young immigrants, but the impact of the latter is considerably stronger. Additional analyses show that these perceptions are mainly formed by concrete experiences of fairness of teachers in school.