Full Description
The goal of successfully incorporating ethnic minorities represents a decisive challenge for modern societies. However, migratory background continues to negatively affect the life trajectories of migrants' descendants. 'Hard' and 'soft' barriers determine long-term inequality gaps and low intergenerational social mobility in both longstanding and more recent European immigration countries.
This book complements the sparse findings on education, labour market outcomes, and wellbeing relating to immigrant offspring by providing original research in order to individuate strategies for removing the obstacles that the migrants' descendants face. Chapters offer in-depth analyses that have been performed for specific Southern European contexts to explore the specific inequality patterns that are emerging in these more recent and unexplored immigration contexts. The main findings suggest that the lower academic performances of immigrants' descendants can be raised through language-support programmes, mentoring programmes, positive role and disciplinary climate, extra-scholastic activities, and parental involvement. Equality opportunities in education should support school-to-work transitions and better allocate the underutilised human capital reserves of migrants' descendants. Conversely, long-lasting penalties in educational careers and integration processes may arise when children are physically separated from their parents because of delayed family reunification.
This book will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of sociology, ethnic and racial studies, international politics, and migration studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Contents
Introduction - Breaking down the barriers: educational paths, labour market outcomes and wellbeing of children of immigrants 1. Understanding why immigrant children underperform: evidence from Italian compulsory education 2. The academic resilience of native and immigrant-origin students in selected European countries 3. Home-school distance among native and immigrant-origin lower secondary students in urban Northern Italy 4. The occupational attainment and job security of immigrant children in Spain 5. Early career trajectories of first- and second-generation migrant graduates of professional university 6. The impact of physical separation from parents on the mental wellbeing of the children of migrants
