Ethnic gaps in Swedish upper secondary school completion: Is ‘immigrant optimism’ the problem?

In many Western countries, researchers have documented ‘immigrant optimism’ in education, i.e., the tendency for immigrant-background students to choose academically more demanding routes than others at given levels of grade point averages (GPA). For some, this indicates structural integration, while others alert against an ‘immigrant optimism trap’ when ambition trumps ability, leading to high risks of non-completion. Using longitudinal Swedish population data (n≈90,000), we estimate the upper secondary ‘completion gap’ to 12% to the detriment of immigrant-background students. We then address the ‘trap hypothesis’ via two counterfactual analyses. The first shows that if immigrant-background youth made similar educational choices as other students at the same GPA, the completion gap would shrink by 3.4 percentage points. The second analysis suggests that restricting admission to programmes based on prior GPA, which would lead to a massive relocation of low- and mid-GPA students to vocational programmes, would reduce the completion gap by 2.2 percentage points. These changes must be considered marginal in view of the substantial restrictions of choice that either of these measures would entail. We conclude that completion gaps are not primarily a result of immigrant optimism, and optimistic choices are likely to be a net positive for structural integration.

Immigrant optimism or immigrant pragmatism? Linguistic capital, orientation towards science and occupational expectations of adolescent immigrants

Background Studies demonstrate that occupational optimism can boost adolescents’ academic attainment and perseverance in education. To contribute to this literature, we consider two hypotheses. The first posits that bilingual immigrants are remarkably resourceful and determined. Thus, they are more occupationally ambitious than their peers. The second proposes that immigrant students engage in “strategic adaptation” by specializing in science, viewed as a level playing field. Methods To assess these hypotheses at two points of time, we analyze data from 19 societies that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2006 and 2015. Our primary method is path analysis with balanced replicate weights (BRR) undertaken separately for each country’s data. Results We find that, in many countries, bilingual immigrants expect to enter higher status occupations than non-immigrants. However, immigrants who do not speak another language are also optimistic, so linguistic resources cannot explain occupational ambition. Furthermore, immigrants accord science more instrumental value and enjoy it more at school, which accounts, across societies, for up to 12% of the variation in vocational optimism indicated by the expected occupational status, and up to 41% in plans to pursue a career in science professions. Conclusion Our results align with the “strategic adaptation” argument that many young immigrants might seek to specialize in science as a pragmatic tactic to ensure high occupational attainment.

The Educational System and the Ethnic Skills Gap among the Working-Age Population: An Analysis of 16 Western Immigration Countries

Research shows that children of immigrants, the “second generation,” have comparatively high educational aspirations. This “immigrant optimism” translates into ambitious educational choices, given the second generation’s level of academic performance. Choice-driven (comprehensive) education systems, which allow the children of immigrants to follow their ambitions, are therefore regarded as facilitating their structural integration. The authors focus on an underappreciated consequence of these findings. If the second generation strives for higher qualifications than children of native-born parents with similar performance, working-age children of immigrants should have lower skills than children of native-born parents with comparable formal education. This could result in (statistical) employer discrimination and ultimately hamper integration. This pattern should be particularly pronounced in choice-driven education systems and in systems that emphasize vocational education. Two-step regression models using data on 16 countries support these expectations. The authors explore implications of these findings for comparative research on ethnic gaps in labor market attainment.

Does generational status matter in college? Expectations and academic performance among second-generation college students in the US

Using the 2004–2009 wave of the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative sample of students who enroll in college in 2004, we examine generational differences in the relationship between educational expectations, academic achievement, and college persistence among native-born and immigrant youth in the United States. Using the theory of immigrant optimism, which has primarily focused on high school youth, we examine whether immigrant parents provide children an advantage in completing their college degrees. Our analyses suggest that students who have at least one immigrant parent are (1) more likely to expect to earn advanced degrees and (2) more likely to complete college on time and less likely to withdraw with no degree compared to their counterparts with native-born parents. We also find that the higher expectations held by these students are associated with higher levels of persistence and attainment. We argue that the optimism conferred by having immigrant parents persists through young adulthood.

Ethnicity and higher education: The role of aspirations, expectations and beliefs in overcoming disadvantage

The papers in this issue examine various aspects of ethnic differences in higher education. The first three papers, all of which focus on Britain, attempt to explain the very high motivation behind enrollment in higher and further education by ethnic minority students. These papers argue that investment in higher education is a defiance strategy that is used by ethnic minorities to counterbalance the effect of ethnic penalties. It seems that aspirations are still significant in shaping the educational attainment and are fuelled by the grim structural barriers facing ethnic minorities. The anticipation of labour market discrimination on the one hand, and the belief in the value of education as the main means for social mobility on the other hand, lead ethnic minorities in Britain to over-invest in education. The fourth paper tells a different story, in that immigrant students experience systematic disadvantages throughout their school careers including a much lower enrollment in higher education. These young immigrants hold more negative perceptions towards the value of education, not only in comparison with their Italian counterparts, but it seems also in comparisons with minority young people in Britain. However, in the last paper, the results resemble the British case, in that the second generation students hold higher academic expectations than their non-immigrant origin peers, and that these higher expectations are associated with higher levels of persistence and attainment. The authors here highlight the importance of the theory of immigrant optimism in explaining the between-groups differences. However, this theory does not seem to have strong explanatory power in the Italian case, if anything, perhaps ‘immigrant pessimism’ is a better theory to explain the low aspirations for higher education and poor educational attainment among immigrants in Italy. Of course, further evidence is required to substantiate this claim.

Turning Migration Disadvantage into Educational Advantage. Autobiographies of Successful Students with an Immigrant Background

The article focuses on unexpected pathways of successful students with an immigrant background, in order to investigate the implication of this phenomenon from a theoretical, methodological and empirical point of view. After a review of the main sociological studies on “immigrant optimism” towards educational success, I will reflect on biographical approach, particularly suitable to study this topic. A on-going research project based on the collection of educational autobiographies of successful immigrant-origin students, attending upper secondary schools in Northern Italy, is presented. Then, the story of Destiny, a 16 years-old girl with Moroccan origin, is used as a case study to explore transformative actions that lead second-generation students to educational success and to identify the social logic enrolled in a single case. Destiny, with the support of parents and teachers, shows the capacity to turn the disadvantage of migration into an educational advantage, through specific strategies developed to contrast adversities and inequalities, assuming education to handle social constraints. In Destiny autobiography, migration reveals its nature of biographical resource and its important role to lead disadvantaged students to excellent school outcomes: migration appears as a an experience of familiar sufferance and failure, but also a source of a biographical learning; a chance of reflexivity on failure and of awareness of disadvantage; an experience that transmit and foster non-cognitive skills, that are strong predictor of educational success. The methodological choice of “educational autobiography” is thus considered crucial to track new narratives and discourses on ethnic inequalities in education.

Ethnic choice effects at the transition into upper-secondary education in Switzerland

Compared to natives, students with immigrant background are – other things being equal – more likely to choose academic tracks over vocational education and training (VET) at upper-secondary level. Evidence of so-called ethnic choice effects is mostly based on education systems where vocational tracks are often regarded as ‘unfavourable’. Our study investigated ethnic choice effects at the end of compulsory school in Switzerland, a country with a strong VET sector offering competitive incentives, particularly for students with lower or average achievement. Based on longitudinal data from the ‘Transitions from Education to Employment’ (TREE) survey, we found that most migrant groups were more likely to choose academic-track pathways preparing for university admission over VET preparing more directly for employment. Nested logistic regression analyses revealed that a large share of these ethnic choice effects was explained by immigrant optimism. Our findings shed light on general educational decision-making processes among migrant families and their potential consequences for ethnic inequality in post-compulsory education.