Mitchell Centre Seminar Series
| Dates: | 8 October 2025 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Karoly Takas |
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Karoly Takas, Linkoping University
Are High-Performing Ethnic Roma Students Excluded from their Minority Peer Group? Friendship Relations, Ethnic Identification, and Labeling
It is a puzzle whether and how social exclusion mechanisms hinder the academic performance of disadvantaged minority groups. Using unique social network panel data from elementary school students in Hungary, we test different predictions of the cultural-ecological theory among the Roma, one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Europe. First, we investigate whether high-achieving Roma students are excluded from the minority peer group (acting white hypothesis). Second, we examine whether high-achieving Roma students aim at passing for white by disidentifying with their ethnic minority group (disidentification hypothesis). Third, we test whether peers and teachers perceive high-achieving Roma students as belonging to the non-Roma group (labeling hypothesis). The findings contradict the acting white and the disidentification hypotheses. In line with the labeling hypothesis, however, higher academic achievement is associated with a lower likelihood of being perceived as Roma. This indicates that with high achievement, Roma students might lose their ethnic membership as perceived by others. In the second part of the talk, we explore the internal logical consistency of theoretical accounts of oppositional culture by rigorously investigating the above micro mechanisms and their consequences on the expected gap in effort between members of the advantaged and disadvantaged group with Agent-Based Models.
Speaker
Karoly Takas
Role: Professor of Sociology
Organisation: Linkoping University
Travel and Contact Information
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2.016
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
