Educational expectations among children of immigrants and natives: a European comparative analysis on the role of schools and family

Alessandra Minello, Università Bocconi
Helga A. G. de Valk, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Children of immigrants are an increasing share of students in the European school systems. This paper focuses on the effects of school characteristics and family on the educational expectations of students of immigrant and native origin in four European countries. We make use of the latest wave of PISA data (OECD 2009) to investigate students’ intention to attend university, considering both parental and school determinants. The PISA 2009 data include an individual student questionnaire and are in some selected countries also complemented with a separate additional questionnaire for parents and the school. This detailed information coming from child, parent and school representatives provide us with better and more detailed measures for parental background and school characteristics. It allows for example to disentangle effects of human capital, other family resources as well as, parental attitude towards school on educational expectations of natives and children of immigrants. Furthermore, it is a unique opportunity to study the interplay of school characteristics and parents and its relation with educational expectations of children of immigrant and native origin. We start with providing a detailed and original overview of educational expectations of children of diverse origin in Europe making a challenging comparative analysis between two more established migrant settlement countries (Portugal and Belgium) and two countries with more recent immigration experiences (Italy and Ireland). In the multivariate analyses the different factors of influence on educational expectations are studied in more detail applying a multi-level school design to account for clustering in schools.