Ethnic diversity fosters the social integration of refugee students.

Forced migration has become a global megatrend, and many refugees are school aged. As social integration is key to their wellbeing and success, it is pivotal to determine factors that promote the social integration of refugee youth within schools. Here, using a large, nationally representative social network dataset from Germany, we examine the relationships of refugee adolescents with their peers (304 classrooms, 6,390 adolescents and 487 refugees). We find that refugee adolescents have fewer friends and are more often rejected as desk mates than their classmates. Crucially, however, they are less rejected in more diverse classrooms. This results from two basic processes: (1) more opportunities to meet other ethnic minority peers, who are more accepting of refugees in general and (2) higher acceptance of refugee adolescents by ethnic majority peers in more diverse settings. Our results can help promote the social adjustment of young refugees in school and mitigate the negative consequences of prejudice.

School track and ethnic classroom composition relate to the mainstream identity of adolescents with immigrant background in Germany, but not their ethnic identity.

Although developing a cultural identity is a core task for adolescents from immigrant families and the school is a highly important context in adolescence, to date, few studies have examined whether adolescents with particular cultural identities cluster in certain school contexts. Using data from a representative German sample including 7702 secondary school students of immigrant background from 1643 classrooms, we examined how the attended school track and four aspects of ethnic classroom composition relate to adolescents' cultural identity (i.e., their ethnic identity and mainstream identity). Two-level structural equation models indicated that students' ethnic identity was not systematically associated with the attended school track and the ethnic composition of the classroom. However, attending the academic school track, a classroom with a low proportion of classmates with immigrant background and frequently using German with classmates related positively to mainstream identity. Ethnic diversity and proportion of co-ethnics in class did not relate to mainstream identification. Our findings suggest that the ethnic identity of adolescents with an immigrant background in Germany is largely independent from the different socialisation contexts related to school tracks and the ethnic classroom composition. Yet, students' with a strong mainstream identity cluster in certain school contexts.

Is Integration Always most Adaptive? The Role of Cultural Identity in Academic Achievement and in Psychological Adaptation of Immigrant Students in Germany.

Immigrant adaptation research views identification with the mainstream context as particularly beneficial for sociocultural adaptation, including academic achievement, and identification with the ethnic context as particularly beneficial for psychological adaptation. A strong identification with both contexts is considered most beneficial for both outcomes (integration hypothesis). However, it is unclear whether the integration hypothesis applies in assimilative contexts, across different outcomes, and across different immigrant groups. This study investigates the association of cultural identity with several indicators of academic achievement and psychological adaptation in immigrant adolescents (N = 3894, 51% female, M age= 16.24, SD age = 0.71) in Germany. Analyses support the integration hypothesis for aspects of psychological adaptation but not for academic achievement. Moreover, for some outcomes, findings vary across immigrant groups from Turkey (n = 809), the former Soviet Union (n = 712), and heterogeneous other countries (n = 2373). The results indicate that the adaptive potential of identity integration is limited in assimilative contexts, such as Germany, and that it may vary across different outcomes and groups. As each identification is positively associated with at least one outcome, however, both identification dimensions seem to be important for the adaptation of immigrant adolescents.

Why bother with testing? The validity of immigrants' self-assessed language proficiency.

Due to its central role in social integration, immigrants' language proficiency is a matter of considerable societal concern and scientific interest. This study examines whether commonly applied self-assessments of linguistic skills yield results that are similar to those of competence tests and thus whether these self-assessments are valid measures of language proficiency. Analyses of data for immigrant youth reveal moderate correlations between language test scores and two types of self-assessments (general ability estimates and concrete performance estimates) for the participants' first and second languages. More importantly, multiple regression models using self-assessments and models using test scores yield different results. This finding holds true for a variety of analyses and for both types of self-assessments. Our findings further suggest that self-assessed language skills are systematically biased in certain groups. Subjective measures thus seem to be inadequate estimates of language skills, and future research should use them with caution when research questions pertain to actual language skills rather than self-perceptions.