At the end of primary school, parents and children in Germany are faced with the choice of a type of secondary school; early differences in performance often prevent immigrants and their descendants from attending a high-track school (Gymnasium). ISS researchers Hanno Kruse and Clemens Kroneberg investigated the effects of such unequal school transitions in a study forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology. The study, which was carried out as part of the ERC project SOCIALBOND, combines administrative spatial data on all secondary schools in Germany with extensive survey data on identities and friendship networks.

The remarkable result: Ethnic inequality in access to high-track schools affects not only the educational trajectories of immigrant students, but also their identities and social relationships with their classmates.

In areas where adolescents with a migration background rarely attend high-track schools, their attendance at these schools is associated with assimilative tendencies: Minority students show a much greater willingness to identify as German and these feelings are more relevant for their friendships with majority students. In turn, majority students also tie their acceptance of minority students to the latter’s identification with the majority group. Hence, in areas with strong ethnic stratification, educational placement is strongly associated with identification and friendship formation.

In areas where adolescents with an immigrant background are also well represented at high-track schools, this coupling of educational advancement and boundary crossing is absent: Minority students have no increased tendency to feel German and identification as German is also less relevant for cross-group friendships.

In brief, high-track schools appear to function as "schools of the nation" in ethnically stratified areas, whereas they tend to be "schools of diversity" in which the question of identification as Germans is less important in areas with greater educational equality. At the same time, however, the belonging of minority youth is not only a question of the local context: For Muslim minority students, Kruse and Kroneberg found no heightened inclination to identify as German – even in local contexts that are particularly conducive to crossing the native-immigrant boundary.