Educational Aspirations and Attainments : How resources relate to outcomes for children of immigrants in disadvantaged Swedish schools
Sammanfattning: In this dissertation, I study educational aspirations among children of immigrants in disadvantaged schools, the factors that influence them, and their relation to educational attainments. The dissertation is based on four research papers, each examining a specific research question using survey or registry data.In Study I, I examine the relationships between pre-migration status, post-migration social capital, and educational aspirations for young people in disadvantaged Swedish schools. High pre-migration status was positively associated with access to social capital, and both factors contributed to higher educational aspirations. This suggests that pre-migration resources influence the accumulation of post-migration resources, highlighting not only what is lost but also what is retained in migration.In Study II, I explore the extent to which social contexts influence students’ aspirations differently under different institutional settings. Early tracking was associated with less optimism about realizing educational aspirations for students in disadvantaged schools, and peer-group attitudes were more strongly associated with educational aspirations when tracking was later. This suggests that educational institutions affect aspirations by structuring both outcomes and students’ interactions.In Study III, I and Alireza Behtoui examine the extent to which access to, and educational returns from, social capital vary between children of immigrants and children of non-immigrants. Students with an immigrant background had equal or better access to social capital, compared to children with at least one parent born in Sweden, and similar rates of returns from social capital. Social capital thus seems to be a partial but incomplete buffer against disadvantages.In Study IV, I explore how migration background and family resources relate to differences in school-to-work trajectories among early school leavers. High pre-migration status was associated with a higher likelihood of education-oriented trajectories, but having an immigrant background was associated with slower labour market establishment. This suggests that children of immigrants are both affected by their families’ pre-migration past and the discrimination of the local labour market in the present during their school-to-work transitions.Taken together, the four studies indicate an interplay between resources lost, retained, and created in and after migration, but also suggest that these resources are often insufficient to compensate for disadvantages in the institutions of education and the labour market.
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