What Kind of Contact Is Needed to Promote Integration? A Study With Primary School Teachers

Contemporarily, multiethnic contexts lead to the focus on the processes that are at the basis of integration and of mutual respect and social recognition. Simple contact is not a guarantee of harmonious intergroup relationships, but it could be if inspired by the “contact hypothesis” and mediated by empathy. Focusing on school as a “potential place” to a positive contact, teachers’ attitudes become relevant. This issue involves the need of professional training for teachers based on “how to be” in addition to the “know”. The aim of our study was to explore the attitudes that a group of primary school teachers has on migration processes and North-African immigrants. Our hypotheses are: 1. Empathy is associated with a reduction of prejudices; and 2. The innovative intercultural Comenius project of the European Union (EU) affects the representations of those teachers involved in it in terms of less prejudices towards migration and North-African immigrants. Results seem to delineate a complex framework. Even though our sample expressed positive attitudes towards immigrants on an implicit level, an aversive form of racism seems to emerge. The data also seem to confirm the first hypothesis but not the second.