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Children's Use of Multiple Categorisations in Practice in a Multicultural Setting
Author(s) -
Woods Ruth
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/chso.12254
Subject(s) - multiculturalism , ethnography , ethnic group , salient , opposition (politics) , sociology , race (biology) , population , gender studies , social psychology , psychology , pedagogy , demography , geography , anthropology , political science , politics , law , archaeology
Little is known about whether and how children combine categories of race, ethnicity, language and religion in multicultural settings where more than one of these dimensions is salient. Ethnographic data from a multicultural London primary school found that children usually organised multiple categories congruently (e.g. ‘If you're Indian you are Sikh’), despite strong opposition from teachers. This congruent organisation may originate in an undifferentiated experience of categories in the family and/or represent the best ‘fit' with a local population in which categories were correlated. Children used congruent organisation to infer peers’ group membership, which may amplify intergroup contrasts.