The joint schooling of children with and without disabilities in inclusive classrooms has become daily routine in many educational systems in Europe over the last decades. As part of this development various studies have been conducted regarding the academic development of students in inclusive classrooms (Gebhardt, Schwab, Krammer, & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2012), the social and emotional integration of students in inclusive classrooms (Guralnick, Neville, Hammond, & Connor, 2007; Gebhardt, Schwab, Krammer, & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2012; Schwab, Gebhardt, Krammer, & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2014, Schwab, 2014), teaching developments, like collaborative teaching etc.

Other studies have focused on the attitudes towards inclusive schooling. Attitudes of the general population as well as attitudes of special populations (such as regular teachers or special needs teachers) have been profoundly investigated. In summary, the results of these studies have shown that differences existed in the attitude towards the inclusive schooling of children with disabilities regarding the kind of disability (Gebhardt, Schwab, Reicher, Ellmeier, Gmeiner, Rossmann, & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2011). In fact, both teachers and other groups assumed that it is easier and more likely to successfully integrate children with physical disabilities in an inclusive classroom than children identified with behavioral disorders (Schwab, Gebhardt, Ederer-Fick & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2012, de Boer, Pijl & Minnaert, 2011 ).  

Inclusive classrooms, however, do not only refer to including children with disabilities. The concept of inclusion aims at guaranteeing a system prepared for different individuals and their unique requirements.  Hence, also the integration of refugee and migrant children in mainstream classes has been investigated. Taylor and Sidhu (2011), for example, investigated schooling practices and conditions as well as the social and emotional integration of refugee and migrant students. Others examined psychopathological issues refugee children might face (Hodes, 1998) or the relationship between school performance and emotional problems  in refugee children (Rousseau, Drapeau, & Corin, 1996).

Until now, however, there is a dearth of research concerning the attitude towards the inclusion of refugee children identified with different forms of disabilities in general classrooms. Only some research exits which investigates the relation between the attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities and the relation to racism and sexism (Akrami, Ekehammar, Claesson, & Sonnander, 2011). Multiple discriminations, in particular the intersectionality of different dimensions of discrimination, have been examined more profoundly. Intersections and multiple discriminations have been found for black woman or homosexual people with low social status and/or educational disadvantages, for example (Crenshaw, 1993; Supik, 2009).

Therefore, this piece of research aims at filling this gap and investigates the attitude of the Austrian population towards the inclusive schooling of Austrian children with disabilities as well as refugee children with and without disabilities. More precisely, it will be investigated whether refugee children with disabilities are affected by multiple discriminations in regard to joint schooling or not. The attitude of the general population towards the inclusive schooling of Austrian children with disabilities and refugee children with disabilities will be compared. Finally, conditional factors of multiple discriminations will be investigated. The following two research questions are posed:

(i). Are refugee children identified with physical disabilities or behavioral disorders affected by multiple discrimination in regard to schooling in inclusive classrooms?

(ii.) If refugee children identified with physical disabilities or behavioral disorders are affected by multiple discriminations, what are the conditional factors that promote / predict these multiple discriminations?

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