Portrayal of immigrants and refugees in textbooks worldwide, 1963–2011

Abstract

Sociologists have long studied the educational incorporation of immigrants and refugees, but most scholarship focuses on questions of access, achievement, attainment, and acculturation. We extend this literature by examining the incorporation of immigrants and refugees in the cultural content of schooling, drawing on a unique dataset spanning 509 textbooks from 80 countries, representing all regions of the world from 1963 to 2011. Our descriptive and multilevel regression analyses reveal a mixed picture. On one hand, textbook discussions of immigrants and refugees have expanded over time and are especially pervasive in textbooks that invoke post-national conceptions of citizenship and in countries that host large foreign-born populations. But we also document stagnating discussions of immigrants and refugees in recent decades, a casting of these groups as part of the historical past more than contemporary civics and society, and a tendency toward their curricular omission in countries with a recent history of war.