Populism is one of the current challenges of democracies. Yet, relatively little is known how education in general and schools specifically can prepare students to withstand populistic strategies (Noack & Eckstein, 2023; Schäfer, 2022). This paper explores the relationship of schooling, complex identities and confidence in the political system. For political systems to persist, that is to change in accordance with the needs of its (emerging) citizens while retaining a stable core, it depends on the political support of its participants (Easton, 1975; Norris, 2011). The most diffuse and stable aspect of political support is the identification of people with their political system: Only when people feel like they are part of the system they will participate in the maintenance of it.

The relationship between identity, system support and populism is not clear-cut: While identity is important for the stability of nation, populism employs specific constructs of identity to destabilize the political order of a system. Populism employs ideas of identity as monothematic and oppositional (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022). Populist strategies include the reduction of complexity by suggesting that the membership with an in-group implies the exclusion of the other (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022; Rico et al., 2017). This idea is in tension with conceptions of complex identities from social psychology. Complex identities are characterized by a feeling of belonging to multiple different groups at the same time: People can feel part of the country they inhabit and a sports team and a religious community. Reporting a complex identity is positively related to measures of tolerance and decreased outgroup dehumanization (Prati et al., 2016). Within the context of migration, complex identities are referred to as hybrid identities. Students with families that migrated have a hybrid (and complex) identity when they identify with the country they are living in and the country of (parental) origin. Students’ hybrid identities are assumed to be connected to better psychosocial and academic outcomes (Berry, 2013).

The adolescence is a formative age of identity formation (Erikson, 1959/1994). According to Marcia (1966) the active engagement with information (identity exploration) and finding modes of belonging (commitment) are central mechanisms of identity formation. Schools have the opportunity to foster identity formation by giving students access to relevant information, to reflect and to interact with other students in a safe manner (Waterman, 1989). It was also shown, that positive social relationships at school are positively related to national as well as an European identities (Ziemes et al., 2019). Social support might enable students to explore different identities safely.

To date, relatively little is known concerning the schools ability to foster complex identities among students. As shown, complex identities are not only relevant for the psychosocial development of students, but also for the persistence of the political system and its resilience against populistic polarization. To engage with this research gap this paper will investigate the identity structure of students and what aspects of schooling might be used to foster complex identity.

To achieve this we use data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2022. In a first step, questions on belonging will be used in a latent class analysis to identify patterns of identity among students. In a second step, aspects of socialization at school will be explored that relate to these patterns. Finally, the classes will be related to measures of political trust and system satisfaction.

Sample: We used a ICCS 2022 subsample (Schulz et al., 2023). ICCS explores how students around the world are prepared to become citizens. In the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) additional information concerning students’ sense of belonging are available. In NRW 3.269 students participated in 152 schools (one class in each school). The sample was stratified to ensure that, given proper weighting, the results can be interpreted as representative. In NRW 33% of participating students were born outside of Germany or had two parents, which were born outside of Germany. About half of the sample was girls (45%) and a small minority reported to belong to a further gender (2%) Measurement of identity: To assess students belonging student were asked to answer on a four-point Likert scale (Not at all, Somewhat, Mostly, Completely) to what degree they identify with ten different communities: Their class, a group of friends, their school, the area they live in (e.g. neighbourhood), Germany, a country but Germany, Europe, the community of the world, a religious community, and the LGBTQ+ community. Measurement of socialization at school: Opportunities to learn about politics were assessed by asking students to which extend the hat the opportunity to learn about different aspects of the political system (e.g., “How to become a candidate in a local election”). Relationships to other students were measured with three and relationship to teacher with five statement to which students were asked to indicate their agreement (e.g., “Most of my teachers treat me fairly.”). Measures of system support: Trust in political institutions was measured with six items asking students how strongly they trust the government, the parliament, the police, and the courts of justice, political parties, and their local government. Satisfaction with the political system was assessed with four items asking students to indicate their agreement to four statements concerning their attitudes towards the political system (e.g., “The political system in Germany works well”). Analysis: Latent class analyses were conducted with Mplus 8.7 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2018). Next, the group memberships were be correlated with dimensions of schooling and political support using the IEA IBD Analyzer 5.023 (IEA, 2022)and RStudio 2023.12 (R Core Team, 2023). The latter analyses fully employed sample weights. For the measures of systems support and socialization, the dataset provides scale values, which are used in these analyses.

Identity items were dichotomized to indicate either a weak or strong sense of belonging to the respective communities. Next, the latent class analyses were conducted (Sinha et al., 2021). The fit criteria indicated the superiority of a four-class solution. The entropy was acceptable (.722) and the AIC, BIC, and aBIC improved minimally with the inclusion of further classes. The first class (“Low”, 12% of students) includes students with a relatively low sense of belonging to most communities. The second class (“Global”, 18%) includes students with a low identification with their class, school, and neighbourhood, but who report a higher identification with the other aspects of belonging. The third class (“Local”, 23%) includes students with a strong sense of belonging with their class, friendship groups and school, but a weaker identification with Europe and the world. Members of the fourth class (“High”, 47%) report a strong sense of belonging to regional and superregional groups and entities. Aspects of school socialization: Class one membership probability (“Low”) was negatively correlated with opportunity to learn politics, student relationships and student teacher relationships. Class two (“Global”) showed a similar pattern for relationships at school, but not for learning opportunities). Class three (“Local”) related not meaningfully to relationships at school or learning opportunities Class 4 (“High”) related positively to learning opportunities and positive student-teacher relationships. Results support the idea that supported information gathering and support of teachers can foster a more complex identity in students. Aspects of support: Class one (“Low”) and two (“Global”) membership probabilities related to a decreased trust in political institutions and system satisfaction. Group four (“high”) membership probabilities related positively to both aspects. These results indicate that students with a more complex identity also created a stronger bond to the political institutions of the country.

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