Educational Attainment of Second Generation Immigrants1

• Main Author: Anna Di BARTOLOMEO
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oradea, Research Centre on Identity and Migration Studies-RCIMI 2009-11-01
• Series: Journal of Identity and Migration Studies
• Subjects: educational attainment; second-generation immigrants; international comparison
• Online Access: http://e-migration.ro/jims/Vol3_no2_2009/BARTOLOMEO_JIMS_Vol3_No2_2009.pdf
• ISSN: 1843-5610; 1843-5610

This paper aims to study the determinants of the educational gap between children of immigrants and natives. In particular, by comparing the performances of the first and second generation of immigrants with natives we aim to verify if there is a specific effect related to the generation status. Thus we control our dataset for the most common determinants of school performance and verify (as residual) to what extent generation status exerts an independent effect on early school performance net of economic resources, cultural capital background, pupils’ aspirations and ethnic school segregation. We analyze and compare the cases of three countries, which mainly correspond to three different stages of immigration of developed European economies. We confirm the importance of the traditional determinants. In Italy, the gap mainly depends on school-segregation dynamics and socioeconomic differences, but the second-generation status is also per se a determinant. In France, the second-generation status has no additional effect and school segregation dynamics are the most important factor in explaining the gap. On the contrary, in Germany, the traditional determinants are not able to fully explain the raw disadvantages of second generations; here, the main determinants in reducing the observed gap are cultural-capital background and language skills.