Embracing Neighborhood Diversity
Castells (2005) argues that the dominant identity principle in Latin America is national identity, constructed around a nation-state that promoted a development project and a distinctiveness in relation to other countries. As the nation-state becomes integrated into globalization and detaches from its traditional foundations, “the separation between state and nation leads to a crisis of national identity as a principle of social cohesion” (Castells, 2005, p. 40). In Chile, interactional inequalities have become the most perceived and most strongly rejected forms of inequality among the population (Araujo, 2013). These types of inequalities refer to the ways in which individuals are treated by others or by institutions in everyday and concrete social interactions (Araujo, 2019). According to Araujo (2019) a malignization of otherness, has taken root, where the other is constructed as a threat and an adversary, thereby breaking the notion of a shared space and framing ordinary relationships among urban inhabitants in terms of confrontation and conflict.
According to Castells (2005), identity becomes a weakened principle, insufficient to sustain a sense of collective life. It is replaced by individualism legitimized by the market, which emerges as a source of rationality and personal project, while simultaneously giving rise to stronger community-based identities—such as the resurgence of religion or ethnic identities. In response to this issue, Social Identity Theory offers a conceptual framework for explaining group processes and intergroup relations by analyzing the interaction of cognitive, interactive, and societal social processes, placing identity self-conception at the core of this dynamic (Hogg, 2016). Intergroup interaction is understood as a functional resource that emerges from specific contextual and individual conditions in order to provide individuals with strategies to affirm their identity (Scandroglio et al., 2008). In this sense, the construction of social identity defines and evaluates one’s self-concept and shapes how one is perceived and treated by others. Therefore, when individuals make comparisons between their own group and an outgroup, they are motivated to ensure that their group is positively distinctive—clearly differentiated and evaluated more favorably than outgroups (Hogg, 2016).
In this way, the exclusion or rejection of different social groups from a neighborhood can be understood as a form of social closure, in which boundaries are established between social sectors or classes through the construction of identities, communities, and the monopolization of opportunities, with the aim of excluding others from that circle or class (Parkin, 1984). Along the same lines, Tilly (2000) rgues that all societies exhibit persistent inequalities, since inequalities based on “race, gender, ethnicity, class, age, citizenship, educational level, and other seemingly contradictory principles of differentiation are formed through similar social processes and are, to a significant extent, organizationally interchangeable” (Tilly, 2000, p. 23). On the one hand, these inequalities—beyond explicit forms of racist violence—tend to materialize as lack of access or reduced access to the nation, the city, the neighborhood, housing, bars, politics, and/or the media (Van Dijk, 2013). Van Dijk (2013) describes this as a differentiated social practice, commonly referred to as discrimination, which is based on racist prejudices and ideologies about the superiority of a majority and the inferiority of a minority. On the other hand, Díez-Nicolás & López-Narbona (2019) conceptualizes these phenomena as forms of social exclusion, often linked to ideas such as stigma, discrimination, and prejudice. However, reducing or intensifying certain attitudes will have little effect on these persistent inequalities, which is why the focus must be placed on the social mechanisms that generate inequality in the first place (Tilly, 2000).
Measuring (in)tolerance is a subject of ongoing debate across various disciplines, which generally converge around two central approaches. On the one hand, tolerance toward subordinate groups—such as migrants, ethnic minorities, and women—has been assessed through frameworks centered on rights (Miranda et al., 2018; Treviño et al., 2018), prejudice (Meeusen & Dhont, 2015; Weber, 2020), and perceptions of material and/or symbolic threat (Raijman & Semyonov, 2004). On the other hand, Díez-Nicolás & López-Narbona (2019) conceptualize these dynamics as forms of social exclusion often linked to stigma, discrimination, and prejudice. Additionally, ten Dam et al. (2011) suggest that for young people, civic attitudes are manifested through everyday social tasks. In this study, tolerance is measured through respondents’ acceptance or rejection of different social groups living in the same neighborhood as the surveyed students. Thus, accepting diversity in the neighborhood refers to the absence of exclusionary attitudes toward traditionally marginalized subordinate groups. Specifically, this theoretical perspective makes it possible to assess whether students accept or reject living near people of Indigenous origin, from another country or region, with a different sexual orientation, social class, skin color, or religion.
Political Socialization Processes of Attitudes toward Social Diversity
Through differentiated and continuous processes of socialization over time, individuals are shaped by specific conditions associated with a particular class-based mode of existence (Bourdieu, 2007). While Bourdieu (2007) ’s framework can help explain individuals’ dispositions to generate and reproduce practices of social exclusion toward various social groups, it does not fully account for how these dispositions are formed. In this regard, Archer (2009) highlights a persistent limitation in the sociology of education: the tendency to focus solely on the practices and processes that occur within schools, without recognizing that “both teachers and students are immersed in broader sociocultural relations, which they bring with them into the classroom” (Archer, 2009, p. 39). This suggests an interaction between context and social activity, although these elements do not co-vary over time—they are temporally out of sync. Lahire (2012) emphasizes the importance of understanding the social world at the individual level while also attending to the social (and discursive) conditions under which the moral and ideological individual is produced, since these are socially constructed elements. In this context, the aim of this research is to understand how different modes of socialization interact with one another and produce the dispositions to either exclude or accept certain social groups. Lahire (2012) puts it, “socialized individuals may have durably internalized a certain number of habits, and yet have no particular desire to apply them” (Lahire, 2012, p. 87).
For sociology in general—and the sociology of education in particular—the articulation of socialization processes can be understood as a sociology of modes of socialization (both within and outside of school), which must be linked to a sociology of knowledge in order to broadly comprehend a disposition by reconstructing its genesis (Lahire, 2012). In other words, this involves jointly addressing the role of the family and the school in the political socialization of attitudes toward social diversity, along with the context in which these processes take place.
In articulating different modes of socialization, Aedo Henríquez (2015) highlights the importance of considering Bourdieu’s notion of strategy, as it involves situating oneself in relation to others within specific field contexts, where socialized expectations about one’s position vis-à-vis others are called into question. Bourdieu’s concept of strategy refers to the idea that “in the social world, we act according to certain inclinations that we have internalized throughout our social experience, within the framework of socialization processes—inclinations or dispositions that function as facilitators of our practices or actions” (Aguilar, 2017, p. 280).
Thus, families strategically select schools and neighborhoods in which to integrate their children according to their dispositions—in other words, they are capable of choosing the social spaces in which their children will be socialized. Similarly, the disposition toward exclusion—and the social closure it entails—can be understood as having two temporal dimensions. On the one hand, it reflects the outcomes of prior familial socialization processes; on the other, it expresses the family’s current objective conditions, which shape the ongoing process of socialization.
Family Political Socialization of Attitudes toward Social Diversity
The process of family political socialization is understood as a set of parenting practices or concrete socialization strategies aimed at shaping children’s behavior in accordance with the values and personality traits deemed favorable for their future social integration and development (Ramírez, 2005). In this way, families reproduce and socialize values through a process of attitude transmission that serves to ensure the perpetuation of the social group and the preservation of status and privilege (Bernstein, 2005; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1998).
Within the strategies of the family political socialization process, two key elements have been identified. First, Lipset (1997) emphasizes the importance of the family’s objective socioeconomic conditions in the acquisition of democratic values and practices. Second, for Bandura (1969), social learning theory suggests that parents’ attitudes and behaviors influence the interests and behavioral patterns of their children, thus highlighting the need to study the intergenerational transmission of attitudes as a core aspect of the socialization process.
In this regard, various studies have highlighted the predominant role of socioeconomic resources in shaping students’ political participation expectations (Castillo et al., 2014), and more specifically, in influencing students’ attitudes toward one or more subordinate groups, depending on levels of tolerance (Farkač et al., 2020), prejudice (Weber, 2020), or support for equal rights (Isac et al., 2012; Miranda et al., 2018). On one hand, Miranda et al. (2018) demonstrate the importance of parental education level, occupational status, and the number of books at home in fostering students’ positive attitudes toward gender equality, and how the latter two factors also shape attitudes toward equal rights for immigrants and ethnic minorities. Similarly, Ortiz (2016) show that these three indicators play a significant role in shaping general attitudes toward social tolerance, while Castillo et al. (2014) find that parents with higher education levels and greater availability of books at home strongly influence students’ expectations of political participation. On the other hand, Sincer et al. (2020) show that a higher proportion of low-socioeconomic-status students in schools negatively impacts students’ competence to deal with social differences. Finally, regarding the intergenerational transmission of attitudes, research shows the significant influence of parental attitudes on children’s disposition toward interethnic conflict (Medjedovic & Petrovic, 2021), the role of parental political participation in shaping political engagement among younger generations (Bacovsky & Fitzgerald, 2021), and that upper-class families tend to prioritize symbolic-relational values such as good manners and respect for others, while lower-class families are more likely to emphasize mobility-oriented values such as hard work and saving (Santander Ramírez et al., 2020).
Thus, the process of family political socialization is reflected in the following hypotheses:
H1: Students from families with greater socioeconomic resources will exhibit a higher level of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
H2: Students whose parents express higher levels of acceptance of different social groups living in their neighborhoods will also exhibit a higher level of acceptance of diversity in their own neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
Political Socialization of Attitudes toward Social Diversity in School
Research on the political socialization of attitudes in school often attributes to the educational system the goal of “arousing and developing in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual, and moral states required both by political society as a whole and by the specific environment to which the child is particularly destined” (Durkheim, 1999, p. 60), and that the school’s socializing function “consists in the development within each individual of those skills and attitudes that constitute essential requirements for their future functioning in life” (Parsons, 1976, p. 65). In this line of thought, recent studies continue to frame the school as a key agent in the formation of citizens (Cox & Castillo, 2015; Groof et al., 2008; Treviño et al., 2017), emphasizing the capacity of schools to contribute to civic development and democratic attitudes among young students.
The school is understood as the primary space for socialization and interaction among individuals from different backgrounds, functioning as a micro-society (Groof et al., 2008). The structural characteristics of schools are a key dimension in explaining differences in student outcomes (Treviño et al., 2018). To some extent, this is due to the way students from different socioeconomic strata are distributed across schools depending on their type of administration (Bellei, 2013), as well as the knowledge, skills, and social values that these institutions are able to provide to their students (Groof et al., 2008). Specifically, both schools and classrooms may differ in terms of their shared values and norms, how students interact with one another, and how teachers approach and treat their students (Bayram Özdemir et al., 2020).
First, civic knowledge and the opportunities provided by schools for its development are essential elements in the socialization of shared values and norms. Civic knowledge refers to the civic and citizenship-related information that students acquire and use when engaging in more complex tasks that help them better understand the political world (Carstens & Schulz, 2018), while Sampermans et al. (2020) argue that civic knowledge depends directly on the civic learning opportunities promoted by schools. Several scholars have shown that civic knowledge has a positive influence on students’ attitudes toward tolerance of immigrants (Groof et al., 2008; Isac et al., 2012; Torney-Purta et al., 2008).
Second, one of the fundamental structural characteristics of schools is the provision of spaces for discussion. In classrooms where students are exposed to real-world political issues, discourse and debate offer them the opportunity to engage with political and social matters, allowing them to learn a vital component of participatory democracy (Campbell, 2008). This can only be achieved when communication and dialogue are actively promoted and safeguarded among students of different nationalities, ethnicities, languages, skin colors, socioeconomic backgrounds, and interests (Riedemann et al., 2020). Research has shown that this indicator influences students’ attitudes toward tolerance of immigrants (Eckstein et al., 2021; Groof et al., 2008; Isac et al., 2012; Maurissen et al., 2020), their support for equal rights for immigrants, ethnic minorities, and women (Treviño et al., 2017, 2018), students’ civic attitudes in general (Barber & Ross, 2020; Trolian & Parker, 2022), and the development of civic knowledge (Barber et al., 2015; Sampermans et al., 2020). Accordingly, the role of the school in the political socialization of attitudes is summarized in the following hypotheses:
H3: Students with higher levels of civic knowledge will exhibit a greater degree of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
H4: Students who perceive greater openness to discussion in their classrooms will exhibit a greater degree of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
Finally, given the role of the educational system under the framework of new public policies on inclusion and citizenship education, it is proposed—on an exploratory basis—that schools may be capable of mitigating social inequalities of origin and/or strengthening positive attitudes in the formation of students’ acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods. This implies that schools play a moderating role in the development of students’ attitudes and, therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:
- H5: The school socialization process moderates the influence of socioeconomic resources and parental attitudes on students’ attitudes toward the acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Implications in the Political Socialization of Attitudes toward Social Diversity
The increase in social diversity within neighborhoods has varying effects on social coexistence and tolerance toward what is perceived as different. On the one hand, in heterogeneous neighborhoods—with greater diversity of social contacts and more frequent interaction among individuals from different backgrounds—conditions may be more favorable for the development of prosocial behaviors (DiPrete et al., 2011). However, it has also been argued that increased interaction between distinct groups can reinforce existing prejudices (Putnam, 2007). On the other hand, the pronounced urban segregation characteristic of the Chilean context—which fosters the formation of socially homogeneous neighborhoods—is generally unfavorable for positive intergroup contact and the reduction of prejudice (Garreton, 2017). In the same vein, Garreton et al. (2021) show that social capital—that is, the extent of positive ties and social connections—is negatively correlated with socioeconomic diversity, but positively correlated with immigrant diversity, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between these two contextual dimensions in the development of social capital.
In each neighborhood, different patterns of segregation are associated with substantial disparities in access to the labor market and to other cultural and social resources (Fernández et al., 2016). According to Baldassarri & Abascal (2020), competition among minorities is greater in areas where these groups are more numerous. This is because ethnic and racial minorities often cannot access high-quality jobs—even when they are qualified—and are instead forced to compete for lower-quality or informal employment. As a result, individuals from lower social classes may perceive minorities as a threat more frequently than those from higher social classes (Baldassarri & Abascal, 2020). This sense of threat—arising from competition over jobs and resources—tends to reduce trust between different groups, thereby hindering the development of social ties (Côté & Erickson, 2009).
In this way, the specific characteristics of each neighborhood may affect students’ attitudes in different ways, depending on material conditions, the availability of resources, and the quality and quantity of contact and interaction with people from different social groups. For example, research has shown that higher levels of residential segregation are associated with more negative attitudes toward immigrants, particularly among native residents in areas where diversity has increased significantly in recent years (Kawalerowicz, 2021). Similarly, the physical environment of the neighborhood—such as accessibility to different types of urban public spaces—can contribute to more positive attitudes toward immigrant inclusion by fostering stronger neighborhood interaction (Wang & Liu, 2022). In contrast, in areas with high levels of trust in foreigners, this trust has been found to be unrelated to the proportion of immigrants in the neighborhood population (Schönwälder et al., 2016). However, some of these elements fall outside the scope of this study and the limitations of available data. Therefore, three hypotheses are proposed regarding neighborhood characteristics that may influence whether students accept or reject the presence of different social groups in their neighborhoods:
H6: Students living in neighborhoods with a higher proportion of individuals who identify with an ethnic group will exhibit lower levels of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
H7: Students living in neighborhoods with a higher proportion of immigrant population will exhibit lower levels of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.
H8: Students living in neighborhoods with a higher average level of educational attainment will exhibit higher levels of acceptance of diversity in their neighborhoods, holding all other variables constant.