Tolerance toward migrants among Italian adolescents and young adults : The role of civic and political participation

This paper aims at clarifying the relationship between being involved in different forms of participation and tolerance toward migrants in young people. Almost 3000 participants from two European-funded research projects – FP7 PIDOP and H2020 CATCH-EyoU – answered a questionnaire that measured socio-demographics variables, the dimension of fairness in school climate, different forms of civic and political participation, and tolerance toward migrants and refugees. The results are consistent between the two studies, showing that civic participation demonstrated a major positive effect on tolerance. Being older, female, born in a foreign country, having more educated parents, and perceiving fairness at school, were also conditions, which sustained the development of tolerance.