Culture, identity, belonging, and school success

The big puzzle of inequality in education is not that children of immigrant parents with low levels of formal education do not succeed in school; this is the expected outcome. More interesting is why some of these children succeed against all odds, or how what Bourdieu (1990) called cultural reproduction can be disrupted (Cooper et al., Chapter 5). Some researchers have looked at parental, school, and teacher factors, while others have emphasized systemic institutional educational factors. Much less attention is spent on the impact of factors like culture, belonging, identity, and future orientation. Culture, both working‐class culture and the culture migrants bring with them, is often regarded as impeding success when the implicit (and often explicit) goal of schooling is cultural assimilation. In this volume, however, the authors examine, with different types of often long‐running ethnographic research, how immigrant cultures can be a resource or under which conditions they can become one

How key transitions influence school and labour market careers of descendants of Moroccan and Turkish migrants in the Netherlands

Most educational research examines school outcomes at certain stages or at the final stage of the school career. This article looks at the entire school career and the transition to the labour market. It focuses on key transitions to identify the educational institutional arrangements that either help or hinder school and labour market success among the most disadvantaged groups in the Netherlands: young people of Moroccan and Turkish descent. The Dutch educational system is one of the most complicated school systems in Europe. Consequently, parents and children have to make many ‘choices’ when navigating it. Many of these key ‘choice’ moments are selection points, either because they are not real choices but dependent upon a teacher’s recommendation or because parents and pupils need a great deal of information about the school system in order to make a choice. This usually results in inequalities for the most disadvantaged groups. Because selection is disguised as ‘choices’, the structural inequalities of the Dutch school system are not usually perceived as blocking mechanisms for disadvantaged students

Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation

International migration changed large West European cities dramatically. In only two generations’ time, their ethnic make-up is turned upside down. Cities like Amsterdam and Brussels now are majority–minority cities: the old majority group became a minority. This new reality asks for an up-to-date perspective on assimilation and integration. In this article, I will show why grand theories like segmented and new assimilation theory no longer suffice in tackling that new reality of large cities, and I will question critically whether using the perspective of super-diversity is more pertinent for our analyses. Children of immigrants nowadays no longer integrate into the majority group, but into a large amalgam of ethnic groups. Next to the diversification of ethnic groups, we see diversification within ethnic groups in the second and third generations. I will focus on intergenerational social mobility patterns given that they are key to existing grand theories of assimilation. I will argue that super-diversity theory can only partially show us the way. To further build an alternative theoretical perspective, we also need to borrow from the intersectional approach and the integration context theory

Reflection on the Education of Refugee Children: Beyond Reification and Emergency

Introductio

The ability to deal with difference:Turkish-Dutch professionals as go-betweens in the education sector

Based on sixteen semi-structured interviews, this article examines how second-generation Turkish-Dutch education professionals experience their professional position in the ethnically homogeneous upper echelons of the Dutch education sector. The analysis shows that second-generation education professionals, being newcomers to higher-level positions in the sector, have to engage with diverse cultural repertoires at work. Instead of being stuck in-between these repertoires, second-generation education professionals actively “go-between” repertoires, employing their ability to deal with difference. In the increasingly super-diverse Dutch classrooms, this “go-between” attitude functions as a second-generation advantage and is conceptually better suited than in-betweenness to describe the position of second-generation professionals

Natuurlijk helpen ze hun neefje op school

__Abstract__ Negen van de tien allochtone studenten helpen jongere kinderen bij hun huiswerk. Ze weten hoe ze zelf hebben moeten ploeteren

A new angle to the assimilation debate in the US

With _“The Other Side of Assimilation”_ Jiménez provides an important and urgently needed new angle to the assimilation debate in the US. He investigates a key assumption of assimilation theory: assimilation as a two-way process in which both migrants and established groups will change through interacting with each other. In integration research, the urgency of looking at established groups in diverse cities is increasing, because in many cases they are becoming a numerical minority themselves. The different empirical building blocks Jiménez brings to the table should bear no other conclusion than that existing assimilation theories are becoming increasingly inadequate for explaining the dynamics in especially superdiverse majority minority neighbourhoods. We urgently need to look into what I would call a paralyzed white identity. Paralyzed because of losing –or the fear of losing– its dominant position, and the apparent inability to react to the changing circumstances

Upward mobility and questions of belonging in migrant families

Introduction to the Special Issue Social Mobility and Identity Formation. This special issue analyses the question of the effects of processes of intergenerational upward social mobility in a thematic context which, at the same time, adds and highlights certain dimensions in both aspects of social mobility: (a) the specific structural barriers and conditions for immigrants and their children to insert themselves into the given social structure of the ‘receiving’ society; and (b) the implications of moving up the educational and/ or professional ladder in relation to their parents – and mostly also the majority of their peers from school and neighbourhood – for subjective feelings of belonging and being ‘admitted’ to social spheres whose codes do not correspond to those learned in childhood and youth, but that have also frequently not been particularly characterised so far by cultural and/or ethnic diversity

How the Architecture of Housing Blocks Amplifies or Dampens Interethnic Tensions in Ethnically Diverse Neighbourhoods

This article explores how the architecture of neighbourhoods influences interethnic tensions in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. We found that people of Dutch descent living in apartments in four storey walk-ups in ethnically diverse innercity neighbourhoods seem less likely to feel threatened by ethnic diversity than people living in in similarly diverse suburbs characterized by larger housing blocks featuring inner courtyards and galleries. Further analysis reveals that the residents of these suburbs share various types of semi-public spaces and have competing interests in using them, whereas the residents of inner-city neighbourhoods share fewer semi-public spaces and therefore have more scope to choose when and how to engage in interethnic contact with other residents. We also explore residents’ housing histories and examine differences between people who either have more negative or more positive views on diversity with regard to their active participation in various organizations. This last piece of the puzzle will be used to analyse the potential for both negative and positive messages about ethnic diversity to spread. Based on the empirical findings, we will formulate some building blocks that can help to further explain the level of perceived ethnic tensions in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods

Introduction: Scholarly engagement and decolonisation:Views from South Africa, The Netherlands and the United States

Considering that one of the core tasks of academia is to provide social critique and reflection, universities have an undeniable role to formulate the contours of a more inclusive academia in contrast to visible and normalised structures of exclusion. Translating such ambitions into transformative practices seems to be easier said than done. Academics need mutual inspiration and exchange of thoughts and practices to reflect on their actions and their own knowledge productions. The authors in this book mirror the challenges and achievements of academics and practitioners in three national contexts, which could serve as a foundation for academia to move towards dismantling elitist and privileged-based assumptions, and formulating new forms of knowledge production and institutional policies, inside and outside academia. The book aims to help create a more inclusive society in which academics, students and practitioners can engage, learn and transform structures of inequality, exclusion and disconnection where it seems to have the biggest impact