Ethnic Discrimination and the Collective National and Ethnic Identities of Turkish and Moroccan Minority Students in Flemish Secondary Schools

Many scholars focused on the negative consequences of racial/ethnic discrimination on different behavioral and psychological outcomes. However, there is a lack of large-scale quantitative studies giving insight in the experience of racial/ethnic discrimination by peers and teachers within a school-context, especially in non-Anglo-Saxon contexts. The first goal of this study is to examine the impact of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination on the anti-school attitudes of students of Turkish and Moroccan descent in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Furthermore, in the literature, racial/ethnic discrimination is seen as a risk factor that increases the probability of negative outcomes without directly causing them. As such, it is interesting to focus on factors that can buffer or compensate for the experience of racial/ethnic discrimination. Research in the US shows that identification with collective national and ethnic identities both compensate for and buffer against the impact of perceived discrimination. It is theoretically interesting to test this for Turkish and Moroccan minority students in Flanders. Hence, the second goal of this study is to explore whether Turkish and Moroccan minority students’ identifications with collective national and ethnic identities mediates and/or moderates the relationship between (perceived) racism and anti-school attitudes. On the one hand we take identification with the dominant society into account (e.g., Flanders and Belgium), on the other hand we focus on different dimensions of the ethnic identity (centrality, private and public regard of the Turkish or Moroccan identity). To answer the research questions, we will analyze data from a large-scale study (N=767 students of Turkish and Moroccan descent, 47 schools) collected during the school year 2011-2012 and designed to study ethnic discrimination and racism in Flemish secondary schools.