Catching up? The educational mobility of migrants’ and natives’ children in Europe

Abstract

Migrants into European countries are often less educated than European natives. We analyse whether migrants’ children are more or less likely than natives’ children to achieve upward educational mobility across generations, and study differences in the factors, which contribute to differences in mobility for the two groups. We find that migrants’ descendants are more often upwardly mobile (and less often downwardly mobile) than their native peers in the majority of countries studied, and show that the main factor contributing to these patterns is the education level of parents. Although a lower parental education means that their children are less likely to access the same amount of human, social and financial capital as children of more highly educated parents, migrants’ descendants over the last two generations were able to make significant progress in reducing education gaps with natives.

Quando a democracia incuba desigualdade e heteronomia: autoritarismo e nacionalismo na UE

“…This means that immigrants may have a more favourable educational background and are increasing their education levels faster. Previous studies already pointed to a significant increment in education among immigrants compared to natives in developed countries (Eurostat, 2018;Oberdabernig and Schneebaum, 2017). 16 And when we compare intergenerational variation in education amongst electorates we see that the lowest progress is in the AN electorate (table 10).…”

Parental education and neighbourhood‐effect heterogeneity in educational attainments of native and minority youth in Belgian metropolitan cities

“…Growing up in a household with unfavourable structural and cultural conditions and in a deprived neighbourhood hampers a successful educational career, both in ethnic majority and minority groups. Our (Oberdabernig & Schneebaum, 2017). This highlights the need to create different nonuniversalist models by ethnicity that allow for probing how contextual configurations specific to subgroups generate different pathways to scholarly success (Davis-Kean & Sexton, 2009).…”

Genetic Influence on Intergenerational Educational Attainment

“…Intergenerational educational attainment can be defined as the degree of similarity between the education levels of parents and their offspring ( Kuntz & Lampert, 2013 ; Oberdabernig & Schneebaum, 2016 ). We operationalized intergenerational attainment by looking at parents’ attainment of an undergraduate degree and twins’ attainment of an A Level at age 18.…”