Perceived discrimination of students from minoritized ethnic groups in Germany: Individual, family, and school conditions

Abstract

Although numerous studies corroborated that perceived discrimination is a developmental risk factor for students from minoritized ethnic groups, less is known about conditions contributing to feelings of ethnic discrimination of adolescents, particularly in contexts outside the U.S. Based on a nationwide dataset, we investigate conditions of perceived discrimination among students from minoritized ethnic groups in Germany. We distinguish several minoritized ethnic groups, examine a variety of individual, family-related, and school-related factors, and focus on two types of discrimination (i.e., perceived personal and group discrimination). Using multilevel structural equation models with data from 4087 ninth graders from minoritized ethnic groups, we found that students with backgrounds from Turkey or an Arabic-speaking country reported more discrimination than their counterparts. In contrast, girls, students with a stronger national identity, students with higher grades, and students with more coethnic peers in their classroom reported lower levels of discrimination than their counterparts. The family's socioeconomic status and sociocultural background as well as the classroom's proportion of minoritized students, its ethnic diversity, and the attended school track were largely unrelated to students' perceived personal and group discrimination. Overall, our findings suggest that conditions at different levels shape perceptions of discrimination of minoritized ethnic groups in Germany.