School segregation and political socialization in school

The school has a goal to foster political citizen, i.e. provide the students with competencies and skills needed to realize their status as political actors in a democratic society.

The overall objective of this research proposal is to examine the school’s goal of nurturing political citizens in the context of school segregation.

By exploring unique Swedish data on mock election results from Swedish schools in combination with register data about students, their parents, and teachers, we have three specific research questions: 1) In Political school segregation – electoral participation and political preferences in Swedish schools over the last 20-years we aim to investigate if school segregation by student family background also implies increased segregation in electoral participation and political preferences among the students. 2) in School choice and political school segregation we ask if the introduction of free choice of school leads to more homogeneous schools in political preferences among the students as well as in voter turnout. 3) in Mock elections in school and later voter turnout we ask if participating in mock elections during school affects students’ later participation in general elections.