Do Moral Values Moderate the Relationship Between Immigrant-School Concentration and Violent Offending? A Cross-Level Interaction Analysis of Self-Reported Violence in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The study examines whether school-level immigrant concentration is related to students’ involvement in violence, and whether students’ moral values moderate the relationship between immigrant concentration and violence. The study is based on six nationally representative school surveys conducted by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention between 1999 and 2011, with a combined sample of 38,711 adolescents. We have combined different surveys to create one large pooled data set to evaluate segregation effects at the school level. Multilevel linear probability models are used to examine cross-level interaction effects. This study shows that contextual effects impact students differently, and that the relationship between immigrant concentration and violence is considerably stronger for adolescents with weak personal moral values. The paper provides empirical support for the differential vulnerability hypothesis. Policy and practice would benefit from a focus on the further development of programs and interventions that target personal moral values, not least in schools.

KEYWORDS:

• violent offending
• school level
• immigrant concentration
• moral values
• cross-level interaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available on specific request for researchers. Such requests should be addressed to [email protected].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zoran Vasiljevic

Zoran Vasiljevic is a senior lecturer at the Department of Criminology at Malmö University, Sweden. He received his PhD in Criminoloy from Malmö University. His research interests cover a range of topics whithin crime and devience, such as crime trends, segregation, and immigration and crime.

Lieven Pauwels

Lieven Pauwels is full professor at the Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law at Ghent University, Belgium. He received his PhD in Criminology from Ghen University. He is responsible for courses on biological anthroplogy, criminology, and statistics. His current research interests are the dark sides of human prosociality, and especially the role of evolved (moral) emotions in the explanation of cooperation failures.

Eva-Lotta Nilsson

Eva-Lotta Nilsson, PhD, is a researcher at the Department of Criminology at Malmö University, where she also received her PhD. Her research interests centers mainly around adolescents delinqency, with a special focus on family socialization processes. Her research interests also include victimization and early prevention.

David Shannon

David Shannon is head of the research and development unit at the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. He received his PhD in Criminology from Stockholm University. His research focus has varied, and has included discrimination in the justice system, crime against children, youth crime and responses to crime.

Robert Svensson

Robert Svensson is professor at the Department of Criminology at Malmö University, Sweden. He received his PhD in Sociology from Stockholm University. His research interests span a range of topics in the field of crime and devience, with a special focus on crime and deviance among adolescents.