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

Abstract

This paper uses the example of newly arrived refugees to examine the role of recent migrants' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany. Building on a theoretical model that understands participation in the educational system as the sum of investment decisions of rational individuals, we assume that positively selected parents are more ambitious about having their children admitted to higher-level secondary schools. The role of parental educational selectivity should be particularly pronounced in federal states in which school administrations allow for greater parental involvement. We use data from the first and second face-to-face interviews of the Refugees in the German Educational System (ReGES) project, with an analytical sample of 1,437 adolescents who came to Germany from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran between 2014 and 2017. To generate a household-level index of educational selectivity, we furthermore rely on various country-of-origin-specific data that we aggregate as reference educational distributions. We run linear probability regression models to analyze the role of parents' educational selectivity in adolescents' school placement. Our findings suggest that parental educational selectivity is beneficial beyond parents' absolute educational levels for adolescents' higher-level school placement. Among the five German federal states represented in our analytical sample, the role of parental selectivity is particularly pronounced in two federal states in which parents are provided with greater possibilities to become involved in their children's educational decisions.

Recent refugees’ educational selectivity and its role for their children’s education and language competencies in Germany

“…In this quality they differ from migrants with a higher generational status, especially second-generation or third-generation migrants, who did not migrate themselves but grew up in Germany, while it was their parents or grandparents who migrated, often decades ago. In contrast, the group of refugees that are this thesis' focus migrated only recently, which goes along with special conditions for their integration, such as learning the German language from scratch or entering the German educational system laterally (Welker and Will, 2023). These are addressed more in-depth in the four studies that build the core of this thesis.…”

“…On the one hand, positively selected parents might have greater ambitions for their children. For instance, they might take more ambitious educational decisions for them and be more motivated to invest in their education and competencies (Welker and Will, 2023;Welker, submitted). On the other hand, they might to some extent transmit motivational characteristics to their children , so that their children themselves have greater ambitions, for instance, to pass successfully through the educational system or to acquire competencies (Welker and Will, 2023;Welker, submitted).…”

“…Accordingly, the children of positively selected parents might themselves tend to have greater abilities, which should make them more efficient learners. This might, for instance, help them to succeed at school or to acquire new (observable) competencies (Welker and Will, 2023;Welker, submitted).…”

“…Furthermore, migrant children may have this expectation themselves if parents transmit their habitus to them. To match their parents' pre-migration status, children with higher premigration social backgrounds (i.e., whose parents are positively selected on education) have to invest more and acquire greater education than children with lower pre-migration social backgrounds (i.e., whose parents are negatively selected on education) (Welker and Will, 2023).…”

“…Two parts may be identified: The first part, consisting of the thesis' first and second studies , has its main focus on the description of recent refugees' educational selectivity profiles in Germany and comparisons to other migrant groups as well as to refugees in different destinations. The second part, consisting of the third and fourth studies, addresses consequences of refugees' educational selectivity for their children's education (Welker and Will, 2023) and competencies (Welker, submitted).…”