Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15784
Authors: Sule Alan; Ipek Mumcu; Elif Kubilay; Enes Duysak
Abstract: Using detailed data on primary school children and their teachers, we show that teachers who hold prejudicial attitudes towards an ethnic group create socially and spatially segregated classrooms. We identify this relationship by leveraging a natural experiment where newly arrived refugee children are randomly assigned to teachers within schools. We elicit children's social networks to construct multiple measures of social exclusion and ethnic segregation in classrooms. We find that teachers' ethnic prejudice significantly lowers the prevalence of inter-ethnic social links, increases homophilic ties among host children, and puts refugee children at a higher risk of peer violence. Biased teachers' exclusionary classroom practices emerge as a likely mechanism that explains our results. We find that biased teachers tend to spatially segregate refugees, seat them at the back corners of classrooms, away from attention. Our results highlight the role of teachers in achieving integrated schools in a world of increasing ethnic diversity.
Keywords: teacher effects; ethnic prejudice; social exclusion; ethnic segregation
JEL Codes: I24; J15
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Teachers' ethnic prejudice (J15) | Number of social ties enjoyed by refugee students (I24) |
| Teachers' ethnic prejudice (J15) | Homophilic ties among host students (C92) |
| Teachers' ethnic prejudice (J15) | Peer violence for refugee students (C92) |
| Teachers' ethnic prejudice (J15) | Language acquisition of refugee children (I25) |