Reducing the social distance between children from the Serbian, Roma, and Burundian populations

The concept of social distance is frequently mentioned when talking about intergroup relations. Often there are findings about the distance between members of the majority population and various marginalized groups. Inspired by Allport’s and later ideas about the contact hypothesis, that is, that the social “gap” between groups can be alleviated if their members cooperate and have a pleasant interaction, we decided to conduct action research with children from the majority (Serbian), minority (Roma) and refugee (Burundian) population, who were beneficiaries of humanitarian aid in Belgrade (Serbia). We aimed to reduce the social distance between them. All three groups were represented by 9 girls and 10 boys aged 11-12 (M = 11.16, SD = 0.37). In the first phase, respondents were given the Bogardus social distance scale with (yes/no) questions about their willingness to accept different types of relations (being neighbors, schoolmates, friends, family members) with children from the other two groups. The obtained answers indicated a relatively high distance: acceptance of being neighbors varied from 21.1% to 100%, of being schoolmates from 15.8% to 73.7%, of being friends from 26.3% to 47.4%, and of being family members from 0% to 26.3 %. After that, the humanitarian workers organized a series of joint activities (sports, technical workshops, environmental workshops, art workshops, familiarization with cultural differences, and excursions) which included children from three target groups together in a period of three months. These activities were designed to enable children from different populations to get to know each other as well as possible and interact together. After involving in these activities for three months, respondents were again asked the same questions from the Bogardus scale. New answers were different: acceptance of being neighbors varied from 94.7% to 100%, of being schoolmates from 63.2% to 100%, of being friends from 84.2% to 100%, and of being family members from 21.2% to 100 %. The obtained data were then analyzed using Chi-square statistic. The results showed that the social distance was significantly reduced on almost all questions and among children from each target group. The Chi-square statistic values ranged from χ² (1, N = 38) = 4.47 (p = .034) to χ² (1, N = 38) = 27.64 (p = .001). These findings support the contact hypothesis and suggest that mutual activities and interaction effectively overcome the social distance between different social groups