Family involvement and educational success of the children of immigrants in Europe. Comparative perspectives

Philipp Schnell,Martha Montero-Sieburth,Rosita Fibbi,Maurice Crul

doi:10.1186/s40878-015-0009-4

Abstract

Recent literature has emphasised the importance of family involvement within immigrant families in determining their children’s educational pathways. On the one hand, the focus on family involvement and the transmission of familial resources becomes more important when disentangling ethnic educational inequalities for second-generation youth. On the other hand, particular practices of family involvement seem to counterbalance disadvantaged origins and become the driving force for educational success. However, few, if any, studies systematically explore the importance of family involvement for educational success by children of immigrants from an international comparative perspective. This introduction paper attempts to fill this gap. In addition to previewing the contents of the articles found in this issue, we include a comparative review of the main communalities found in the contributions of this special issue. The paper concludes with suggestions for future comparative research on family involvement and educational success by children of immigrants in Europe.

Highlights

Research on the educational trajectories and achievements of the children of immigrants in Europe has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, as well as public interest
The factor that most strongly predicts educational pathways for children of immigrants and explains their disadvantaged positions compared to the majority student population tends to be socioeconomic background, Schnell et al Comparative Migration Studies (2015) 3:14 i.e. the social class position of their parents (Glick & White, 2003; Heath & Brinbaum, 2007; Kao & Thompson, 2003)
Rezai and her colleagues apply the framework of House (1981) to investigate patterns of family involvement and educational success in which they distinguish between informational, notional, emotional and instrumental support second-generation Turks and Moroccans receive from their parents. Their findings reveal that informational support, such as homework or study advice, is the least common type of support that immigrant parents provide to their children, partially because these parents lack adequate language skills, sufficient knowledge of the Dutch education system and have generally low levels of education. This finding is in line with the results presented in the paper by Schnell within this special issue and the research literature for parental involvement from the U.S The paper by Rezai et al suggests, that other types of parental involvement, such as emotional, notional and instrumental support are frequent, and perceived by the successful second generation as essential for their accomplishments

Summary

Introduction

Research on the educational trajectories and achievements of the children of immigrants in Europe has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, as well as public interest. This finding is in line with the results presented in the paper by Schnell within this special issue and the research literature for parental involvement from the U.S The paper by Rezai et al suggests, that other types of parental involvement, such as emotional, notional and instrumental support are frequent, and perceived by the successful second generation as essential for their accomplishments.

Results

Conclusion