The educational divide in openness towards globalisation in Western Europe

Education level is an important predictor of whether people are open or closed to globalisation in Western Europe. While those with higher education levels support immigration and further European unification, those with less education are wary of the inflow of foreigners and transferring national sovereignty to the European Union. Although this association is well-established, we currently lack a clear understanding of what the exact role of education is in crystallising these orientations. In this dissertation, I open this ‘black box’ and examine to what extent, and how, education shapes openness towards globalisation. The dissertation draws three conclusions. First, education does necessarily increase openness towards globalisation. Using panel and quasi-experimental methods, I find that attitudes remain largely stable through education, which indicates that selection could be a viable explanation for educational differences in openness towards globalisation. Second, people’s social origins, i.e. their parental milieu, remains to play a role in people’s attitudes towards globalisation even after they have left this environment. Consequently, education cannot completely override predispositions that people have learned in early childhood. Third, educational institutions, by means of school segregation, can potentially perpetuate existing differences between students in openness towards globalisation by creating school environments where they are more likely to meet peers that come from similar social backgrounds and as a consequence have similar views towards globalisation.