From Superdiversity to Consolidation: Implications of Structural Intersectionality for Interethnic Friendships

This study advances a theoretical framework of consolidation as a measure of structural intersectionality and applies it to study interethnic friendships in Western European classrooms. Results show far fewer interethnic friendships in more consolidated classrooms (in which students from different ethnic backgrounds also tend to differ in socioeconomic status). This implies that the salience of ethnic boundaries is contingent on the joint configuration of socioeconomic status and ethnicity within social contexts. As populations and social settings are increasingly characterized by multidimensional configurations of attributes that range from superdiversity to consolidation, scholars should analyze multiple axes of differentiation to understand the conditions under which intergroup boundaries are brighter.