From “Them” to “Us”: Intergroup contact leads to improved intergroup attitudes through building common ingroup-identity—Longitudinal evidence from four European countries

<p dir="ltr">The successful integration of minority youth in Western Europe is largely contingent on positive intergroup relations between minority and majority groups. Drawing on the common ingroup identity model, we argue that for minority youth, intergroup contact (e.g., friendship) with majority youth leads to more positive attitudes towards the majority group when such contact promotes stronger common-ingroup identity. Using three-wave panel data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (N = 5, 447), we found strong support for our hypothesis: intergroup contact predicted more positive attitudes towards the majority groups over time, due to increase in common-ingroup identification. Findings suggest that intergroup friendship can indeed play a key role in immigrant youth integration, through facilitating a sense of belonging to a shared identity with the majority group.</p>