Education, xenophobia and nationalism: A comparative analysis

Abstract

This paper sets out to scrutinise the relation between levels of education on the one hand, and nationalist sentiment and xenophobia on the other. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme it empirically compares ten carefully chosen countries in order to be able to assess the relation between education and the attitudes expressed. The article concludes that the effect of levels of education is not country-specific. In other words, levels of nationalist sentiment as well as of xenophobia decrease with increasing levels of education in all the countries examined, despite substantial differences between the educational systems in the countries.