Abstracts Economics

Selective Friendship? A Study of Immigrant Segregation within Finnish Classrooms

by Ellen Sahlström

This thesis investigates the within-school segregation of Finnish students using survey data on friendships. The difference in academic performance between students with and without immigrant backgrounds is large, and in order to make it smaller, the study environment for students with immigrant backgrounds must be understood. Identifying the extent to which students with immigrant background experience a different social environment is one step in that direction. Individual segregation is the extent to which the social network of an individual is composed of individuals similar to each other regarding some specific trait. This study investigates the existence of individual segregation in Finnish schools using information on who the fifth grade students participating in the study are friends with. The individual segregation level is calculated based on the background of friends, dividing students into two groups: students with or without immigrant backgrounds. This gives an indication of the possible segregation at an individual level, created through friend choice. Additionally, the correlation between individual level segregation and age at arrival to Finland and academic skills respectively is studied. Clear evidence of individual level segregation among immigrants is found. Students with immigrant backgrounds are more likely to have friends with immigrant backgrounds and more likely to be lonely, as in have no friends. However, neither correlation between in- dividual segregation and age at arrival nor correlation between individual segregation and academic skills can be found. This could be explained by problems with the data, but can also indicate that peer effects in class are smaller than what was expected based on previous research. It seems that also segregation patterns differ from what has been found in similar American studies. More research need to be done, but this thesis shows that students with immigrant backgrounds experience a different social environment when it comes to friends than students with non-immigrant backgrounds do, as the share of friends with im- migrant backgrounds is significantly higher for students who themselves have immigrant backgrounds.