Ethnic preferences in friendships and casual contacts between majority and minority children in the Netherlands

Children bond with other children that are similar to them with regard to many aspects, one of which is ethnic background. In this study, we use network analysis to test whether this is equally true for two different qualities of relations; friendship and common social interaction. Participants were 266 6th grade elementary school children from 14 multi-ethnic schools in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, like in many other countries, schools have the task to make sure that children develop positive social relationships with all children, irrespective their ethnic and cultural background. We found that children form both friendships and social interaction networks with others that have a similar ethnic background while controlling for structural network effects, sex effects and effects of sociometric status. For schools it is important that this was found for both types of interaction networks, because schools have more means to impact on casual relationships than on friendship relationships.