Ethnic identity and scholastic effort: a multifaceted approach

Giuseppina Autiero

doi:10.1186/s40176-017-0088-0

Abstract

When one analyses the influence of social identity on scholastic effort, ethnic identity largely contributes to determine it. In this paper, ethnic identity is meant as the attachment to one’s cultural heritage and the adaptation to host societies; this allows considering how conflicting demands and social pressure from parents, peers, ethnic community and host societies influence children’s effort. Attention is also paid to the locus of control; thereby, the effects of the interaction between the social context—ethnic identity—and personal traits such as the locus of control are considered. The analysis is developed through a theoretical model whose results partly show that children’s effort may be influenced positively by parents with strong attitudes towards adaptation and negatively by their peers in school who belong to marginalized groups vulnerable to discrimination and convinced that school does not improve one’s socio-economic status. Nevertheless, the drawbacks of the social context can be counterbalanced by a strong locus of control.JEL Classification: I20, I29, Z10

Highlights

Great attention has been recently paid to the determinants of immigrants’ attachment to their cultural background and of their identification with host countries (Zimmermann et al 2006)
5 Conclusions How ethnic identity triggers children’s scholastic effort is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which entails the interaction among the influence of several factors such as parents and ethnic communities, the specificity of ethnic culture and children’s attachment to it, their internal attitudes and perceived discrimination and schools’ academic standard
Parents and school peers belonging to the same ethnic community may help children to adapt to the host country culture through schooling

Summary

Introduction

Great attention has been recently paid to the determinants of immigrants’ attachment to their cultural background and of their identification with host countries (Zimmermann et al 2006). By considering the two components of identities—adaptation and ethnicity—it is possible to hold that higher values of both adaptation IOki and ethnicity Ek imply that children are strongly integrated as they tend to adjust to mainstream school culture through their home background, which further strengthens their effort.

Results

Conclusion