Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Bullying Towards a Same-Country or Immigrant Peer

Abstract: This study investigated students' perspectives about bullying towards same-country and immigrant peers. Thirty-five Italian and immigrant students (age range: 11–15) took part to the study. Participants were probed with two bullying scenarios, depicting respectively a new classmate from another Italian city and from a foreign country. A Grounded Theory approach was adopted to examine participants' perspectives about the motives for bullying. 

Findings showed that a process of socializing deviance is at the core of both forms of bullying. This social process refers to a series of shared beliefs within the peer group about the victim's deviant features. Three sub-categories related to both forms of bullying emerged from the core concept: (a) Rejecting the newcomer deviance, (b) Rejecting physical deviance, (c) and Rejecting personality deviance. These sub-categories were related to the sub-categories of bullying towards immigrant peers: (d) Rejecting cultural deviance, (e) and Learned racism. Findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical relevance. (Mazzone et al., 2018)

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- Mazzone, A., Thomberg, R., Stefanelli, S., Cadei, L., & Caravita, S. C. S. (2018). "Judging by the cover": A grounded theory study of bullying towards same-country and immigrant peers. Children and Youth Services Review, 91, 403-412.
- photograph by Rob Brenner via

1 comment:

  1. I look forward to every new post from you. Thank you!

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