European identity among ethnic majority and ethnic minority students: understanding the role of the school curriculum

ABSTRACT Schools are an important setting wherein different identity dimensions are made available to youth. This paper argues that European identity can be a relevant unifying collective identity in ethnically diverse contexts. We study whether (or not) students who are confronted with a European and/or a multicultural dimension in their school curriculum, identify more strongly with a European identity. More specifically, we analyse whether the importance of these dimensions for European identification differs between a sample of ethnic majority and ethnic minority students. The results show that both the European and the multicultural curriculum predicted a stronger European identity for both groups. The effects of both dimensions on European identity were similar for ethnic majority students, while the multicultural dimension had significantly stronger effects on European identity for ethnic minority students. The paper thus highlights how curricula contribute to changing patterns of identification in a diversifying society.