Immigrant-origin Groups Research Articles

Ambitious, misaligned, or uncertain? The occupational and educational aspirations of immigrant-origin youth in Germany

ABSTRACT Immigrant-origin students often hold higher educational aspirations than native-origin peers, accounting for socioeconomic status and school grades. The consequences of this ‘Immigrant Aspiration Paradox’ (IAP) on their socioeconomic attainment are debated. Although individuals’ occupational aspirations and how they compare with their educational aspirations (i.e. their alignment) also affect status attainment, they are understudied in the IAP literature. We contribute to the debate on the benefits of the IAP by investigating immigrant-native gaps in the level, (mis)alignment, and (un)certainty of teenage occupational and educational aspirations and their consequences on educational attainment in Germany. First, we describe immigrant-native gaps in teenage aspirations. Then, we investigate whether these differences mediate immigrant-native gaps in upper secondary attainment and tertiary enrollment. In line with the immigrant optimism theory, Asian-origin and Turkish-origin students are more likely to hold aligned high aspirations. On average, immigrant-origin students are less likely to have aligned low aspirations compared to native-origin students, and equally likely to hold misaligned or uncertain aspirations. We find that students from most immigrant-origin groups have a higher upper secondary attainment and tertiary enrollment than native-origin students, net of controls. Large portions of these advantages are mediated by the aspirations of immigrant-origin students, which we interpret as evidence of the benefits of the IAP.

Competing Family Pathways for Immigrants and Their Descendants in Germany

Immigrants bring contemporary demographic changes to the destination country through their contributions to diversity, and future population. In this study, we examine the partnership and fertility trajectories for individuals with Turkish, Russian, Kazak, Polish, and Southern European backgrounds born between 1970 and 1999. We adopt a life course perspective using event history techniques on retrospective partnership and birth histories of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) Survey. By treating first entrance into cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood as competing events, we illuminate not only the differences in family ideologies between natives and immigrants but also highlight the heterogeneity among immigrant origin groups and generations in family formation pathways. Convergence with natives occurs at different paces for immigrant groups. Controlling cohort effects and socioeconomic conditions, individuals with Turkish background stand out with an earlier and higher level of entrance into marriage and parenthood, with only modest changes across birth cohorts and migrant generations. The risk of nonmarital or pre-marital childbearing is lower for non-European immigrants than for German natives. Marriage remains an important institution to individuals of some immigrant backgrounds, despite global trends in the rise of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing in recent years. This work serves to highlight the diversification of family types in a leading migration country.

Non-cognitive skills and immigrant-native inequalities in the labor market in Europe

Non-cognitive skills are increasingly essential in the labor market, especially given technological advances and evolving work environments. Unequal distribution of non-cognitive skills among various groups in the population may contribute to labor market inequalities. This article investigates the significance of non-cognitive skills for immigrant-native inequalities in the European labor market. Specifically, we examine the potential differences in non-cognitive skills between native and immigrant groups and how these differences may affect their income. Additionally, we explore whether equal levels of non-cognitive skills have comparable payoffs for native and immigrant groups in society. We use, comparative survey data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies and OLS regressions with country fixed effects. Our findings show that many immigrants exhibit lower levels of non-cognitive skills than native-born workers, despite differences between origin groups. This difference in non-cognitive skills explains part of the immigrant-native inequality in the labor market for most immigrant-origin groups. Moreover, our results indicate that immigrants, especially those from Central and Eastern European countries, benefit less from exercising comparable non-cognitive skills than native-born workers. Our study highlights the importance of non-cognitive skills in addressing the labor market disadvantage faced by immigrants, and emphasizes that policymakers and educators should recognize the significance of these skills when developing policies targeting immigrants.

Diverse College Students' Cultural Background and College Persistence

Tinto (1975) created a college persistence model, emphasizing institutional academic and social integration, that continues to guide U.S. university retention strategies. This longitudinal study followed 584 college Freshman from diverse backgrounds, testing for group differences in the relationship that Tinto’s key constructs have on college persistence, over time, for U.S.-White, U.S.-minority, and immigrant-origin groups. We found significant positive associations between Academic Integration and Intentions to Persist for all ethnic groups, but group differences in Social Integration and Intentions to Persist. Additionally, Intentions to Persist was a significant predictor of actual persistence for all groups, suggesting predictive power overall.

Language Choices at Home and Their Relationship With Educational Outcomes, With a Special Focus on Children With Origins in Former Yugoslavia and Turkey in Six European Countries.

Language has been conceptualized as both a measure as well as a predictor of integration among immigrants and their children. However, the relationship between language spoken at home and different educational outcomes remains poorly understood. Many studies indicate that nurturing students' first languages is positively associated with their learning at school. Other research suggests that one of the reasons why children of immigrants tend to perform worse at school is due to speaking a language other than that of instruction at home. In order to shed further light on the role of language choices at home for education, we examine both the correlates of language use at home as well as the relationship between this and reading scores and educational expectations. We differentiate between three language use groups: those who mainly use the language of origin at home, those who only use the language of instruction at home, and those who use both of these. We analyze these relationships using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In order to examine country differences, we place a special focus on two immigrant-origin groups that are present in significant numbers in a number of European countries: children with origins in Turkey and former Yugoslavia. These two groups have also been identified as being at major educational disadvantage across Europe. Our results suggest that continuing to (mainly) use the language of origin at home is more prevalent among children from socioeconomically more disadvantaged families, but is supported by more socioeconomically advantaged and more diverse school environments. In the majority of countries studied, switching to the language of instruction is associated with higher reading scores but not with higher educational expectations than continuing to speak mainly the language of origin at home. These relationships are to a large extent confounded (or in some cases potentially mediated) by family factors such as socioeconomic status and school-related factors such as school's socioeconomic composition. We conclude by highlighting the role that linguistically responsive pedagogies and a positive school climate can play for the education of all young people but in particular newly-arrived immigrants.

The Motherhood Penalty of Immigrants in France: Comparing the Motherhood Wage Penalty of Immigrants From Europe, the Maghreb, and Sub-Sahara With Native-Born French Women.

To date, relatively few studies analyzed the motherhood penalty as experienced by immigrant women. The principal objective of this research is to establish whether the negative effect of motherhood on wages is higher for immigrants than it is for the native population; and how this effect may vary across different immigrant regions of origin. Using data from the Enquête Revenus Fiscaux et Sociaux from 2009 to 2012 (INSEE, 2009–2012)1, a series of linear regression models were calculated to examine whether the effect of motherhood on wages differs for immigrant women and native women; and to what extent this effect varies across different immigrant origin groups. Specifically, this study explores the effect of motherhood on immigrant labor market integration in France from three regions of origin, as compared to native French women: immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco), and from European countries (each and every region of origin is considered separately in comparison to native French women). The results revealed substantial differences in the motherhood penalty between the different regions of origin and assert the existence of an especially pronounced motherhood penalty for mothers from the Maghreb. Given the gap in the research with regards to the cost of motherhood for immigrants in the labor market of the host country, this research sheds light on specific mechanisms influencing the integration patterns of immigrant women. Moreover, by choosing France, which is one of the main immigration destinations in Europe, and a country where the motherhood penalty for the native population is almost non-existent, this study provides a new perspective on the intersection of motherhood, immigration, and region of origin in the immigrants' labor-market integration process.

Social dominance orientation and differential affect toward immigrant origin groups: Evidence from three immigration-receiving countries

Recent evidence suggests that majority group members in immigration-receiving societies express differential levels of prejudice and stereotyping toward various immigrant origins. However, there is little research on whether this tendency to differentiate between more vs. less liked immigrant groups is informed by essential psychological motivations and systematically related to individual differences. In this paper, I test whether majority group members’ propensity to express greater differences in affect toward immigrant origins is associated with social dominance orientation. Using survey studies carried out in the Netherlands, the United States, and Britain, I demonstrate that majority group members’ tendency to express differential affect toward immigrant origins holds across national contexts. I also show that individual-level inclination to differentiate between more and less liked immigrant groups is consistently related to social dominance orientation in all three countries. Overall, my findings confirm the group-specific character of anti-immigration attitudes and highlight the role of social-dominance motivations in prejudice toward immigrants.

Immigration and Multicultural Citizenship in Europe: Insights from the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities

Abstract Multicultural citizenship, a set of group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups, is now a common feature of most domestic legal systems in Europe. The conventional view, widely reflected in practice, suggests that ‘strong’ rights of this sort should be restricted to so-called ‘historical’ minorities. However, the increasingly long-standing presence of distinct cultural groups of immigrant origin raises the question of whether, and to what extent, the latter should also be granted stronger forms of multicultural citizenship. This article addresses this question by reference to the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, a central pillar of the international minority rights regime in Europe. The article analyses the application of the treaty to immigrant-origin groups in the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, showing that the scope of protection afforded to such groups is stronger than previously assumed, though less far-reaching as compared to their ‘historical’ counterparts.

The Context of Immigrant Reception in the American South

Past research has shown the Southern United States to have more conservative immigration attitudes compared to more established immigrant destination states. However, it is unclear whether or not the places that immigrants have arrived share these conservative attitudes and how this impacts the reception of immigrant groups. Analyzing the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I find that U.S.-born White attitudes toward immigration are less conservative in zip codes where immigrant-origin groups in the South are most likely to live, often by substantial margins. This indicates that immigrant-origin groups in the South are likely to encounter Southern Whites with a more liberal orientation than Southern Whites more generally. The implications for how these attitudes compare to established immigrant destination states and counties are addressed in detail, as are Southern Black attitudes toward immigration. Regardless, on various questions approximating racial experience/understanding, immigrant-origin groups in the South do not report more negative feelings than those in established destinations and report more positive feelings in some cases, although these results could also indicate a lower awareness of racial issues. Overall, these findings point to a context of reception in the South that is likely more positive than past research on Southern immigration attitudes has implied.

Fault Lines Among Asian Americans: Convergence and Divergence in Policy Opinion

Sociologists have long argued that a racial and ethnic category can be made under certain circumstances and remade under anothers. The panethnic category of Asian American was in fact devised to mobilize different immigrant-origin groups in the 1960s. Today’s Asian Americans have diverse opinions on numerous issues. Given this divergence, it is possible that the category will be subject to remaking or unmaking. Using survey questions from the 2016 pre-election National Asian American Survey, this article analyzes where respondents’ policy opinions converge and diverge. Using latent class models, it shows that though many Asian Americans support government interventions in health care, education, climate change, and racial justice, some diverge sharply in regard to Muslim immigration. Logistic regression models show that different experiences of immigration and differences in national origins undergird such divergence. I discuss the implications of these fault lines for the future of the Asian American category.

Foreign Language Curricula and the Influence of Immigrant-Origin Groups

Despite theoretical claims that assimilation is a multidirectional process, most studies assess the behaviors of immigrants and their children. The author departs from this tradition to ask whether immigrant-origin populations influence the availability of Advanced Placement Spanish and Chinese/Japanese language courses. Building on past work, the author treats foreign language programs as a marker of institutional change and a greater acceptance of immigrant culture. County-level data are pooled from the American Community Survey, the Common Core of Data, the Voting and Elections Collection (CQ Press), and the College Board between 2000 and 2017. The results indicate that Hispanic and Chinese/Japanese populations exert an influence on school curricula, but this relation varies depending on historical patterns of immigrant settlement. The author also finds that Spanish and Asian foreign language programs are most likely to be demanded in locations with highly educated populations. This article provides evidence that mainstream institutions can move toward immigrant and minority culture.

What’s Behind a Racial Category? Uncovering Heterogeneity Among Asian Americans Through a Data-Driven Typology

Despite emphasis on the importance of intragroup heterogeneity in much theoretically inclined migration and race scholarship, quantitative research routinely relies on split sample approaches in which ethnoracial groups are the categories of analysis. This cumulatively contributes to the reification of groups under study when research findings are assessed and groups compared side by side. In this paper, we ask: How are Asian Americans internally differentiated, and how does this heterogeneity matter for broader patterns of immigrant inclusion? Using latent class analysis, we produce a typology at the intersection of class, gender, regional location, and immigrant generation, pointing to vulnerable, ordinary, hyper-selected, rooted, and achieving Asian Americans. These subgroups reveal differentiation in the experience of race and suggest that racialization and inclusion dynamics are jointly occurring social forces among Asian Americans. Our approach offers a blueprint for inductive analyses of immigrant-origin groups emphasizing heterogeneity and reflexivity vis-a-vis racial and national-origin categories.

Educational attainment, political sophistication and anti-immigrant attitudes

Among a national sample of Dutch respondents (N = 1,155), this study examined whether the belief configuration of personal political orientation differs for individual level of education, and how it is related to negative attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and refugee policies. In agreement with the ideological sophistication perspective, the endorsement of social conformity and the acceptance of group-based inequality were found to be more strongly part of the political orientation of higher compared to the lower educated participants. Furthermore, the endorsement of social conformity and acceptance of group-based inequality were associated with more negative feelings toward immigrants and more negative attitudes toward policies in relation to refugees. These findings add to the existing literature that has predominantly examined education and political orientation as two independent correlates of anti-immigrant and refugee attitudes.

Interculturalism and the Acceptance of Minority Groups

Abstract. Multiculturalism has been criticized and rejected by an increasing number of politicians, and social psychological research has shown that it can lead to outgroup stereotyping, essentialist thinking, and negative attitudes. Interculturalism has been proposed as an alternative diversity ideology, but there is almost no systematic empirical evidence about the impact of interculturalism on the acceptance of migrants and minority groups. Using data from a survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, we examined the situational effect of promoting interculturalism on acceptance. The results show that for liberals, but not for conservatives, interculturalism leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and increased willingness to engage in contact, relative to multiculturalism.

Echoes of the 'White Republic': Racial Prejudice, Xenophobia and the Erosion of Democracy in the United States

We argue that in a racially and ethnically diverse society such as the U.S., public support for anti-democratic norms among the white majority may be driven, in part by threat related to immigrants. Following racial priming theory, we suggest that for members of the white majority who harbor strong negative priors about immigrants, immigrant-origin groups’ demands for democratic inclusion may be perceived in zero-sum terms. We further argue that threat to the white cultural primacy by outgroups may drive anti-immigrant whites to support anti-democratic norms that may better protect the elevated social status of whites over democratic norms that extend equality and cultural representation to racialized immigrant groups. We test this theory via two original threat priming experiments and an LDV analysis using 2017-2018 panel data from the VSG. Our findings suggest that when threat from immigrants is salient, it causes declining support for democratic norms among anti-immigrant whites. The LDV models also show that anti-immigrant attitudes are a strong and positive predictor of support for anti-democratic norms even accounting for the lagged DV.

Ethnic diversity in the UK: new opportunities and changing constraints

ABSTRACTThe study of ethnicity and migration is a fast evolving field. Much remains to be understood about economic, social, demographic and health outcomes across ethnic groups and generations, and the extent of integration and exclusion of different immigrant-origin groups in countries of destination. While cross-national studies are increasingly shedding light on issues of differential migrant selection and institutional influences, detailed single-country studies, based on high quality nationally representative data have much to offer in enhancing our understanding of diversity within and between groups. The introduction to this special issue on ‘ethnic diversity in the UK: new opportunities and changing constraints’ provides a background to the contributions in the issue by outlining key research agendas relating to immigrant and ethnic minority groups in Western Europe. It then elaborates why the UK represents a good case for exploring ethnic diversity and change; and outlines the contributions made by the papers in the issue. We highlight the distinctive features of the data source used in the papers, Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study. We also consider limitations in the data and in the applications in the issue. We conclude by briefly outlining the policy-relevant contributions of the papers in the issue.

Visibly restricted: public opinion and the representation of immigrant origin communities across Great Britain

ABSTRACT This research brings together literatures on public opinion and political representation into a political opportunity framework to investigate the impact that changing public opinion toward immigration has on the parliamentary descriptive representation of immigrant groups in Great Britain. It breaks down Britain’s immigrant groups into white and non-white (ethnic minority) backgrounds, so as to investigate the specific barriers posed by both immigrant status and minority ethnic status. Using new data on the backgrounds of nearly 1,500 MPs over the past five parliaments, and Stimson dyadic-ratios aggregations of 1,000 survey marginals on immigration from five high-quality sources, this research concludes that increasingly negative public opinion does indeed restrict the descriptive representation of ethnic minority immigrant origin groups in Britain, but not white immigrant origin groups. Preliminary analysis of candidate data suggests that parties place minority candidates in “unwinnable” seats in areas of high anti-immigrant public opinion.

How Durable Are Ethnoracial Segregation and Spatial Disadvantage? Intergenerational Contextual Mobility in France

Building on emerging research into intergenerational contextual mobility, I use longitudinal data from France (1990-2008) to investigate the extent to which second-generation immigrants and the French majority continue to live in similar neighborhood environments during childhood and adulthood. To explore the persistence of ethnoracial segregation and spatial disadvantage, I draw on two measures of neighborhood composition: the immigrant share and the unemployment rate. The analysis explores the individual and contextual factors underpinning intergenerational contextual mobility and variation across immigrant-origin groups. The results document a strong stability of neighborhood environments from childhood to adulthood, especially with regard to the ethnoracial composition of the neighborhood. Individual-level factors are quite weak in accounting for these patterns compared with the characteristics of the city of origin. Moreover, the degree of contextual mobility between childhood and adulthood varies across groups. I find that neighborhood environments are more stable over time for non-European second-generation immigrants. The findings offer important new empirical contributions to the French literature on the residential segregation of immigrants and will more broadly be of interest to scholars of intergenerational spatial and social mobility.

Visible, Elected, but Effectively Nominal: Visibility as a Barrier Maintaining the Political Underrepresentation of Britain’s Immigrant Origin Communities

AbstractEthnic minority groups have been and remain underrepresented in the British political system. However, we know little about how white immigrant origin groups—who share outgroup status based on non-native history, but differ to ethnic minority groups in terms of not having minority status—compare. Further, contemporary representational study also must concern itself with the quality, not just presence, of representation provided. This research therefore longitudinally compares the access to parliamentary roles for ethnic minority, white immigrant, and white British MPs. It finds that visibility of non-native status holds back descriptive representation—based on both appearance and non-British sounding names.

Multiculturalism and Attitudes Toward Immigrants: The Impact of Perceived Cultural Distance

Multiculturalism can be construed in different ways with different effects on majority members’ attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups. Thinking about why the broad goals of multiculturalism are important for society might reduce feelings of outgroup threat and less prejudicial attitudes. In contrast, thinking about how exactly these goals can be accomplished might evoke feelings of threat that lead to prejudice. The aim of this experimental research conducted in France and the Netherlands was to examine the effect of these two construals of multiculturalism of attitudes toward immigrants and whether these effects depend on perceived cultural distance. The findings show that a focus on why multiculturalism is important for society is more beneficial for attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups for people perceiving relatively high cultural distance. In contrast, a focus on how the goals of multiculturalism can be accomplished has a more detrimental effect on attitudes for people perceiving relatively low cultural distance.