Pre-Migration Status, Social Capital, and the Educational Aspirations of Children of Immigrants in Disadvantaged Swedish Schools

Abstract

High aspirations can be an important factor for educational attainment, especially for youth in disadvantaged schools who are otherwise more likely to leave school early. In this article, I study the relationships between pre-migration status, social capital, and educational aspirations among youth in disadvantaged Swedish schools, using data on 960 students collected in 2014. Regression results showed that access to social capital was related to pre-migration status, and that both factors contributed to high university aspirations among children of immigrants, partly through high expectations from parents. The findings consequently show how post-migration resources and outcomes relate to pre-migration factors, challenging the destination country bias that is often present in studies on immigrants and their children.

Immigration Background and Differences in School-to- work Trajectories of Early School Leavers

“…Meanwhile, it did not substantially alter the associations between parents' region of origin and any of the other trajectories. This indicates that education rank is a better predictor than years of education for early school leavers propensity of returning to education, highlighting the connection between pre-migration factors and post-migration educational outcomes (Nygård 2021). However, it also highlights how these factors do not translate into similar advantages in the labor market.…”

The role of recent refugees' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany

“…Among the consequences of educational selectivity, outcomes that refer to the next generation's education may be the best empirically confirmed. Previous research analyzed the role of educational selectivity for the second generation's educational attainment (Feliciano, 2006b , 2018 ; Ichou, 2014 ; Feliciano and Lanuza, 2017 ; van de Werfhorst and Heath, 2019 ) as well as for a range of educational outcomes that influence children's later educational attainment, such as expectations and aspirations (Feliciano, 2006a , b ; Engzell, 2019 ; Cebolla-Boado et al, 2021 ; Nygård, 2021 ; Tong and Harris, 2021 ) and educational decisions (Feliciano, 2005a , 2006b ; van de Werfhorst et al, 2014 ; Engzell, 2019 ; van de Werfhorst and Heath, 2019 ; Brunori et al, 2020 ; Tong and Harris, 2021 ).…”

The value of immigrants' human capital for labour market integration

“…The native-born population, while being the point of reference in this study, is, of course, not homogeneous, and part of it is exposed to stigmatisation and discrimination based on earlier generations migratory experience (Anderson, 2019;Portes & Zhou, 1993). Children of immigrants have their life-chances affected by their parents' origin (Andersson et al, 2018;Behtoui, 2013;Nygård, 2021). How they accumulate domestic human capital, how they use it and how it is being valued are research questions in their own right (Nygård, 2020).…”