Youths’ perception of discrimination experienced by immigrants and ethnic minorities and these students’ views concerning the acknowledgement of equal rights to such groups across a variety of social domains are of intrinsic interest and also provide an opportunity to explore the drivers of ethnic and migratory-based forms of social inequality across Europe.

The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2022 (sponsored by the IEA- International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) is a recurring, large-scale international assessment focusing on how young people deal with the responsibilities and rights of citizenship and, more specifically, on levels of competence and understanding, attitudes and perceptions regarding civic awareness and civil coexistence. The recent 2022 edition of the study is based on the administration of questionnaires – across 22 countries (18 of which in Europe), plus two “benchmarking entities” in Germany – to representative national samples of 8th grade pupils (usually 14-year-olds), teachers and school leaders. ISSC 2022 – with its robust sampling strategy – provides an exceptional opportunity to investigate the topics mentioned in the opening paragraph.

In fact, some of the topics investigated in the ICCS 2022 study are directly related to inequalities affecting immigrants and ethnic minority groups:
- students' orientations regarding equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities associated with ethnic minority groups and immigrants;
- students' perceptions of forms of discrimination experienced by immigrants and ethnic minorities.

The specific domains explored in the first sub-topic relate to access to the labour market, voter and active voting rights, maintenance of customs and habits of the places of origin, benefits brought to the country of destination, enjoyment of equal rights in general, and equal access to educational opportunities.

The recent international ICCS report (Schulz et al. 2025) deals with some interesting baseline results in its Section 5.4 “Attitudes towards Equal Rights”, which mainly underscores differences between countries on an index combining the individual items. Similarly, the recent ICCS *European report (Damiani et al. 2025), in its Section 3.2 “Students’ Perceptions of Discrimination in Europe”, also provides some general findings.

However, our analyses will focus on developing results which emphasise the comparison *across individual items*, i.e., students’ tendency to differentiate their orientations from one domain to another (for example, how widespread is the tendency to have a more favourable view of equal rights in the realm of education with respect to the realm of access to jobs?, and so on).

Our analyses will also be strengthened with information concerning the educational environments (presence of ethnic conflict or intolerance towards immigrants; teacher preparedness in addressing diversity; use of cultural and ethnic differences in teaching; engagement in multi-/inter-cultural activities) family resources (economic, social and cultural status of parents).

In addition, country-level findings will be compared with other sources involving adults’ perceptions and political systems’ immigration integration policies in order to identify instances of homo-/heterogeneity (see next section).

The European countries participating in ICCS 2022 – and that will be, by and large – the focus of the paper are: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

The paper will consist mainly of a secondary yet original analysis of the microdata available on the IEA website, generated via the administration of the following ICCS 2022 data collection instruments: - international student questionnaire; - European student questionnaire; - teacher questionnaire; - school questionnaire. Standard bivariate and multivariate descriptive statistical analysis will be employed, possibly with some inferential statistical analysis. The “other sources” mentioned in the previous section, involving adults’ perceptions and political systems’ immigration integration policies, will be drawn from the Migration Integration Policy Index (2020 edition), as regards both overall integration and specific areas (education, political participation, etc.), the Programme for International Assessment (2022 edition, where items similar to those used in ICCS 2022 were administered to the parents of 15-year-olds), the Special Eurobarometer 493 on “Discrimination in the European Union” (European Commission 2019) and the Special Eurobarometer 519 on “Integration of Immigrants in the European Union” (European Commission 2022).

We expect to find significant intercountry differences (that in all likelihood mirror those found in surveys addressing adults) and, within each country, appreciable interdomain differences, with greater support for equal rights and opportunities in the domain of education with respect to other domains, and greater support for equal opportunities among immigrant-origin students compared to “natives”; also, greater relative hostility towards voting rights customs among Eastern European countries, consistently with findings from PISA. We also intend to ascertain whether students’ attitudes and perceptions are sensitive to activities undertaken by their schools to address multi-culturalism.

Afana, Yasin, Falk Brese, Hannah Kowolik, Diego Cortés, Wolfram Schulz (eds,) (2024), “ICCS 2022 User Guide for the International Database”, Amsterdam: IEA Damiani, Valeria, Bruno Losito, Gabriella Agrusti, Wolfram Agrusti (2025) Young Citizens' Views and Engagement in a Changing Europe: ICCS 2022 European Report, Cham: Springer European Commission (2019), “Special Eurobarometer 493. Discrimination in the European Union”, Brussels: European Union. European Commission (2022), “Special Eurobarometer 519. Integration of Immigrants in the European Union”, Brussels: European Union. Gasperoni, Giancarlo, Francesca Fauri (2024), “Support for Education Opportunities and Other Attitudes Towards Immigrants’ Rights Among Students’ Parents”, paper delivered at the 17th Conference of ESPAnet (European Network for Social Policy Analysis) Italia on “Accounting for Inequalities and Reframing Social Policies”, Naples, 4-6 September Schulz, Wolfram, Julian Fraillon, Bruno Losito, Gabriella Agrusti, John Ainley, Valeria Damiani, Tim Friedman (2022), “IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2022 Assessment Framework”, Cham: Springer Schulz, Wolfram, John Ainley, Julian Fraillon, Bruno Losito, Gabriella Agrusti, Valeria Damiani, Tim Friedman (2024), Education for Citizenship in Times of Global Change: ICCS 2022 International Report, Cham: Springer Schulz, Wolfram, Tim Friedman, Julian Fraillon (eds.) (2024), ICCS 2022 Technical Report, Amsterdam: IEA