Research on immigrants’ assimilation is widespread both in the U.S. and Europe. While it has been extensively studied how immigrants fare compared to natives on socio-economic indicators, few studies have focussed on immigrants’ perception of their position. In this paper we focus on comparing life satisfaction of immigrants and natives across Europe and on the role of social embeddedness. Using data from the first six rounds (2002–2012) of the European Social Survey, a repeated cross-sectional survey, we find that life satisfaction among immigrants is lower than among natives even though differences diminish over generations. For first generation immigrants part of the life satisfaction gap is explained by the lower level of social embeddedness they have compared to natives. We also find that social embeddedness is a key explanatory factor for life satisfaction for both immigrants and natives. For two out of the three indicators of social embeddedness that we consider we however find different patterns of association with life satisfaction for immigrants compared to natives.

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In this article we describe and explain how children of immigrants navigate their educational careers. Sequence analyses followed by optimal matching is used to cluster individual educational trajectories in four European countries, which differ in national educational systems, ranging from comprehensive to highly differentiated (Sweden, Belgium, Austria and Germany). Samples are young adults of the Turkish and Moroccan second-generation and the majority group (aged 18–35) in seven cities in the selected countries ( N = 4022). We examine how perceived segregation and friendship networks affect the routes that students take through the educational system, i.e. school trajectories. Across school systems, having majority group friends increases the chances of following academic trajectories that end with university attendance. The effects of perceived school segregation are mixed. More comprehensive school systems protect against negative effects of segregation for second-generation students.