Ethnic coexistence at school: Attitudes and perceptions in adolescence

The aim of the article is to detect teenagers' perceptions of issues of ethnic coexistence and identity. Our observations are based on the processing of survey data conducted in 2010 on students of four educational groups in Attica, where 855 questionnaires were collected. The subject of the research concerns the attitudes and perceptions of pupils at the beginning of adolescence (aged 12-14) on a series of political and social issues, their basic ideological orientations, as well as elements of their identity. The theoretical framework of this article includes two basic theories dealing with the issue of coexistence and its consequences for members of the numerically dominant group (co-native students) and for the disadvantaged group (foreign students): 1) Contact Hypothesis (Allport,1954), which argues that contact between co-native and non-native people contributes to forming more positive attitudes towards the second group, and 2) Ethnic Conflict Theory (Blalock,1967), which argues that this contact increases the negative predisposition of co-native students. The research questions in this article concern the following: 1) students' evaluative perceptions of coexistence with foreigners within the school environment; 2) students’ evaluative perceptions of the national identity of the Greeks; 3) socio-demographic factors that may influence the formation of the above students' attitudes (schooling, gender, parenting profession).