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Having friends influences students' academic, socio-emotional as well as health development. Especially, students with special educational needs (SEN) are at a high risk to belong to the subgroup of students without friends in class. Within a sequential explanatory design, two study phases have been implemented in the present study. In phase 1, a sociometric network analysis of 449 students from 25 inclusive primary school classes (4 th grade, age = 9-11 years) were examined at t1. To assess students' friendships, sociometric nominations of the students' top five friends have been used. Results showed that the agreement of students' and teachers' rating varies strongly across classes (r = .18 -.71). In phase 2, interview data from a subsample (a sub-sample selected from phase 1) comprising teachers (n = 2) and students (n = 15) was qualitatively analysed. The evaluation of teachers' interviews identified three explanations for missing accuracy in the sociometric networks. From students' interviews, six subcategories describing friendship were found.

Social participation is an important factor for students’ socio-emotional/academic development. The literature on the topic discusses four domains in this regard: friendships, interactions, social acceptance, and self-perception of social inclusion. It shows that marginalized groups (e.g., students with behavioral problems/learning deficiencies/physical disabilities) are experience difficulties in those domains. Little, however, is known about the effect of a migration background (one of the most commonly marginalized groups) in this context. Therefore, self-ratings and peer ratings of 818 fourth graders (148 with a migration background, defined by their first learned language not being German) were assessed. The results of the ANOVA indicate that students with a migration background show a decreased level of friendships, interactions, and social acceptance. Gender effects on self-perceived social inclusion were also found. This suggests that social participation is a rather complex concept, which is also impaired for marginalized groups due to social factors like a migration background.

The social participation of students can be defined as one of the fundamental goals of inclusion. However, current literature shows that (a) children from minorities can belong to groups at risk of low social participation and (b) relatively little is known as yet about changes in social participation over time (longitudinal study). This study therefore seeks to investigate more closely the stability of social participation for students with a migration background. A total of 353 year 4 students (45% girls, including 16% with German as their second language) from North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) were surveyed about their social participation (friendships, interactions, etc.) using a paper-and-pencil questionnaire at the beginning (September 2018) and at the end (June/July 2019) of a school year. All schools of common learning in North Rhine-Westphalia were contacted and asked to participate voluntarily. Only students who participated in the survey at both measurement points were considered. At the first measurement point, students had an average age of 9 years (SD = 0.42; range 8–11). At the second measurement point, students had an average age of 10 years (SD = 0.57; range 9–12). Student responses were largely in the form of sociometric ratings or sociometric nominations. One finding of the variance analyses (ANOVA with repeated measures) was that, for the most part, there was no difference longitudinally between students with and those without a migration background. However, students with a migration background were found to have significantly fewer stable friendships than their peers. No other differences in relation to changes over time were recorded in any other areas. The findings thus also illustrate that a possible lack of social participation by students with a migration background remains constant, and that the period when students first come into contact with each other appears to be of fundamental importance.

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