Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between ethnic identity and school performance of Moroccan youth living in Barcelona (Spain), particularly in cases of academic success. The bulk of the article makes reference to examples from ethnographical research to pinpoint the strategies used by some of these youths and their families to transcend the cultural, linguistic, and social barriers they face both in school and in their wider community. In so doing, we shift our gaze from John Ogbu?s immigrant/involuntary typology to the patterns of variability along ethnic, class and gender lines that exist within this minority group. Results from recent ethnographic research points out that high academic performance does not necessarily entails neither rejection of ethnicity nor simple conformity. Rather, some of these Moroccan youth adopt an instrumental view of education that promotes the development of new and proactive cultural identities inside and outside the school arena.

Highlights

  • This is not a conventional article about the academic performance of minority students

  • There has never been any systematic effort to record the academic performance and paths of Moroccan students living in Spain, it seems that many of the insights made in this field have forgotten to embed what should be one of the most important attitudes in any critical approach: the epistemological suspicion

  • In order to claim the necessity of rethinking the relationship that exists between ethnic identity and school performance, we need to point out the diversity of located points from which one can experience, interpret and plan social and educational projects -even inside what we constrain as ‘Moroccan youth’ and their families, and the possibility of performing academically well in spite of the ‘cultural’ and ‘structural’ barriers that would affect ‘Muslim’ groups according to certain points of view

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

This is not a conventional article about the academic performance of minority students. Alerted against the perverse consequences of these attitudes by the works of authors like Margaret Gibson (1988) and Signithia Fordham (1996), and by my previous experience in different research projects, I co-authored four studies on the vast field of ‘minority education’ between 1999 and 2002 (vide Bibliography) Their ethnographic data constitute the corpus of information used in this article to talk about the strategies used by Moroccan youth to manage the cultural, linguistic, and social barriers they face both in school and in their wider community. Results from our ethnographic research points out that high academic performance among Moroccan youth does not necessarily entails neither rejection of ethnicity nor simple conformity Rather, some of these youths adopt an instrumental view of education that promotes the development of new and proactive cultural identities inside and outside the school arena (Herrera 2002; Bonal et al 2003;)

PATTERNS AND QUESTIONS
AN INTERPRETATION
THE COMPLICATION OF THEORY
GENERAL IMPLICATIONS
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