FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EDUCATIONAL AMBITIONS OF SECOND GENERATION CHILDREN IN EUROPE

The literature shows that family background only partially accounts for the association between minority status and educational outcomes. In particular, when compared to same-background native peers, the children of foreign-born parents and especially those from lower backgrounds often display higher educational ambitions, even in spite of low school performances. My first step is to analyse the occurrence of these phenomena using different datasets from national and international European surveys. A currently under-explored path of research identifies the main reason behind these paradoxes with the fact that the definition of socioeconomic background may be different for immigrants, so that the same mechanisms identified in the general population are still in place, but with a different point of reference. Following this path, I propose an operationalization of family background that is more appropriate to the peculiar experience of migration and includes the immigrants' subjective social status, a new component based on the relative value of their education. My second step of analysis is the actual test of the association of this new measure with the university ambitions of second generation students and their parents, in the same datasets where the phenomena of interest were investigated. Finally, I discuss the results.