The Dynamics of Interethnic Friendships and Negative Ties in Secondary School: The Role of Peer-Perceived Ethnicity

This study examines ethnic integration in secondary school. Social identity theory suggests that perception of relevant individual attributes plays a crucial role in defining ingroups and outgroups, contributing to befriending, and disliking others. Therefore, we analyze the role of peer-perceived ethnicity in social ties. Networks of friendship, dislike, and perceived ethnicity were modeled together using dynamic stochastic actor-oriented models, separating the effect of perceived ethnicity on social ties from that of social ties on perceived ethnicity. Data came from a Hungarian sample of 12 school classes with one minority group: the Roma. Treating friendship and dislike as mutually exclusive and comparing them to neutral relations, we found evidence for the role of perceived ethnicity in dislike—majority students disliked those they perceived as minority peers. However, we saw no direct effect of ethnicity on the friendship network. Implications of the joint modeling of mutually exclusive relationship aspects are discussed.