The Relevancy of Schooling for Local and Supra-Regional Sense of Belonging. Results from the International Civic and Citizenship. Education Study (ICCS 2022)

(Civic and citizenship) education in schools takes place against the backdrop of challenges for democracies. Forms of belonging, as an aspect of identity, are protective factors for the academic and psychosocial development of pupils and resources for political systems to overcome these challenges. This study uses data from North Rhine-Westphalia from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2022; Abs et al., 2024) to examine students' sense of belonging, with a particular focus on citizenship as a formal indicator of belonging to a political system. The analyses show that students without German citizenship have a reduced affinity to Germany, but more to other countries, religions and the global community. A confirmatory factor analysis was able to distinguish between local and supra-regional identities, even though both aspects correlate substantially. Social relationships at school predicted both, but especially the local sense of belonging. Learning opportunities regarding Europe were weakly related to both aspects of belonging. Differences between pupils with and without citizenship were no longer found in the regression model.