Cross-National Comparison of Provision and Outcomes for the Education of the Second Generation

Abstract

This article introduces the special issue, which focuses on the ways in which educational institutions in Europe and North America are responding to the growing number of children of immigrants entering schools and universities. It discusses the ways in which the needs of children of immigrants Europe, North America, and other economically advanced societies have received millions of international migrants since the 1950s and now face the important task of integrating not only the immigrants themselves but also their children. Of the institutional domains involved in this process, one of the most crucial is the educational system: More than half of the student body in many urban schools and postsecondary educational institutions in Europe and North America were born abroad or are children of immigrants, presenting new challenges to these systems as they seek to prepare young people for employment and citizenship. This special issue considers the implications of this changing demography and the ways in which educational systems in Europe and North America are responding. It examines both the different approaches that countries are taking toward the integration of children of immigrants, and the more subtle ways in which general educational policies and the structure of education systems affect the trajectories that children of immigrants take into further education or the labor market and into their lives as citizens. The issue focuses primarily on the children of immigrants, or the second generation, as they are often referred to. 1 This is because most first-generation immigrants arrive as adults and, with the exception of foreign students in higher education (many of whom return), they do not generally attend school in the host country. It is also because it is the experience of their children that gives the first clear indication of how well immigrants are being integrated into the economic, political, and social life of the host country. A great deal of the research on immigrant integration focuses on the immigrants themselves, on the material resources and social and cultural capital that they bring with them, and their ability to use them to build new lives in the host country. Much less attention has been paid to the institutional arrangements they confront and the opportunity structure framed by these arrangements. But pathways and outcomes for immigrant groups depend crucially on the nature of educational policy and provision, the extent to which educational institutions constrain and maximize choice, and the ease with which they can be navigated. We recognize, of course, that the resources of immigrant groups and the agency of immigrant families are extremely important factors in shaping pathways and outcomes and that structural factors are not determining. Nonetheless, because the role of pagina 1 van 1