Abstract
This study examines friendship and hostility relations between Roma students and the ethnically homogeneous non-Roma majority in Hungarian schools. Using data on friendship and hostility relations of 15-year-old students from 82 schools, the study focuses on the interaction between exposure to the other ethnic group and academic achievement of Roma students. High-achieving Roma students are shown to have significantly more friends and fewer adversaries than low-achieving ones, due to better inter-ethnic relations while having similar within-ethnic group relations. As a result, higher exposure to Roma students translates to more friendship and less hostility from non-Roma students in environments where more of the Roma students have higher achievement. Therefore, policies helping the achievement of Roma students can have immediate as well as long-term positive effects. Simulations suggest that a mixed policy of desegregation and closing the achievement gap may best foster positive inter-ethnic relations.
Funding statement: Our research was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFI-101409 project, ‘The role of parenting and networks in human capital formation’). Gábor Kertesi gratefully acknowledges support from the CEU Institute for Advanced Study. The funding sources had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2017-0289).
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