School violence and bullying represent core challenges for schools. Constructions of otherness form part of the justifications children participating in bullying use to explain away their harmful (non-)behaviour. Thus, all possible facets of diversity carry the risk of serving as an excuse for bullying. One source of diversity lies in children’s characteristics as related to migration, ethnicity, nationality, language, and culture. To date, the research literature has yielded a mixed picture regarding the relationship between bullying and migration. Many European countries lack national anti-school bullying prevention strategies and usually apply a general approach to prevention, neglecting evidence-based policy solutions targeting specific groups of students such as minorities, immigrants, or refugees.

Against this background, we compared 43 anti-bullying programs from five European countries. Our analysis was led by the following questions: How (if at all) do these programs target immigrant youth? What is the evidence base of these programs? We found that most do not target immigrant youth but sometimes refer to issues of inclusion and of overcoming discrimination and racism. Of the 43 programs, only 13 explicitly refer to migration-related diversity. Information regarding the evidence base of these 13 programs was available for 8 programs only, with only 2 having a strong evidence base as to their effectiveness in reducing bullying.