Longitudinal Survey Of Immigrants Research Articles

Determinants of identity: the influence of generational status, religiosity, and school context on immigrant identity in Europe

ABSTRACTThis paper examines determinants of identity through examining the generational status, religiosity, and school context of migrant youth in Europe. The first part of this study focuses on the presumptions of assimilation theory for identity by testing for generational differences and evidence of ethnic revival in acculturation identity. This study also explores the influence of religion- which has often been perceived as a hindrance to integration- and school context on the types of identities students express. The questions are explored using the migrant sample of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU; England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Results of multilevel logistic regressions challenge previous presumptions of identity among migrant youth and find no strong evidence for either assimilation or ethnic revival among second generation students compared with their first generation peers. However, evidence of assimilation is observed among students with a foreign-born and native parent. Religious salience, perceived discrimination, and high share of migrants at the school-level are also associated with a lower likelihood of assimilated identity and higher likelihood of integrated and separated identities, suggesting the social and contextual nature of identity formation and highlighting the role of ethnic diversity in facilitating dual identities.

Does identity matter for adaptation? The influence of acculturation identity on the well-being and delinquency of adolescent students in Europe

ABSTRACT This study examines the implications of identity for the adaptation of immigrant children in the European context. Using the migrant sample from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), this study examines how identity is related to the outcomes of well-being and delinquency of high school students. Results from multilevel models lend partial support to the theorized role of acculturation identity. Integrated students had higher well-being compared with assimilated students, challenging the notion that sole national affiliation is the most advantageous strategy for adaptation and thereby supporting a selective acculturation perspective. In addition, separate analyses of European and non-European immigrant students produced divergent results. While the ethnic identity of students with non-European backgrounds was negatively associated with delinquent behavior, separated students of European background reported higher delinquency compared with their assimilated counterparts, suggesting that acculturated identity works in different ways between immigrant groups and that the protective effect of ethnic identity against delinquency is only present for migrants students of non-European backgrounds.

Statusübergang im Bildungssystem und Wohlbefinden von Migranten-Jugendlichen im internationalen Vergleich

This paper investigates the well-being of adolescent migrants compared to their native counterparts during the status transition at the end of lower secondary school in England, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. We use data from wave 1 and 3 of the CILS4EU-Project (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries) and analyze well-being (life satisfaction and problem behavior) as a function of the welfare systems, their institutionalized educational trajectories and the cultural distance between the country of origin and the host society. We find that during the transition, the well-being of all students increased in those countries where well-being scored lowest (England and Germany) and decreased where it scored highest (the Netherlands and Sweden) in advance. The greater the distance to the culture of the host society was, the stronger the decrease in well-being was. Interestingly, while the well-being of native students decreased with upward track mobility, it increased for culturally distant students (vice versa effects are shown for downward track mobility). This result remained stable even after controlling for personal characteristics.

De sociale opleidingskloof op school

Summary The education gap in school. The effect of school context on adolescent inter-educational track friendshipsUsing data from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) and data from the Dutch Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO) this article tests to what extent different organizational characteristics of schools influence friendships between adolescents in different educational tracks. There being multiple educational tracks within the same school, instead of only one track, adolescents from different tracks being in the same classroom (‘brugklas’) and, relatively speaking, a small number of students in the same track have a positive effect on the number of friends an adolescent has in a different track. The descriptive analyses show that the friendship networks of adolescents are relatively homogenous within their school, most friends that go to the same school are in the same track. The friendship networks outside of the school are more heterogeneous. The opportunities an adolescent has to meet others who are in a different educational track thus strongly influence the number of friends an adolescent has in an educational track different from their own track.

Similar or divergent paths? Religious development of Christian and Muslim adolescents in Western Europe

Little is known about the religious development of youth in Europe. In light of the growing ethnic diversity of Western European populations, this paper examines two groups of youth with an immigrant background, i.e. Christian and Muslim youth, and compares their religiosity to that of Christian native youth. We differentiate between three indicators of religiosity, namely, subjective importance of religion, frequency of service attendance, and praying frequency. In addition to comparing the changes in the mean of religiosity between groups, we also investigate variations within groups over time. We employ the first three waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), which were collected between 2010 and 2013 with adolescents residing in 958 classes within 480 schools in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Multiple group linear growth models show that there is an overall slight decrease in subjective importance of religion, frequency of service attendance and praying frequency for Christian youth, while Muslim youth do not experience any significant change on these accounts. Furthermore, the changes in service attendance and praying frequency vary significantly between youth within all groups, while the change with regard to subjective importance of religion varies most within Christian youth and least within Muslim youth.

Intergenerational transmission in religiosity in immigrant and native families: the role of transmission opportunities and perceived transmission benefits

ABSTRACTIn this paper I investigate intergenerational transmission in religiosity among immigrants and natives, comparing families affiliating with Christianity, Islam or any other religious denomination in Germany. Thereby, I focus on the role of transmission opportunities and perceived benefits of religious transmission within and outside the family on the chance of successfully passing on religious attachment from parents to children. Furthermore, I investigate whether these factors contribute to explain group differences in the intergenerational transmission in religiosity. Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU), my empirical results show that family characteristics and everyday interactions influence the strength of intergenerational secularisation, but they can only partly account for differences in divergent transmission patterns.

The value of education among immigrants and non-immigrants and how this translates into educational aspirations: a comparison of four European countries

ABSTRACTStarting out from the frequent empirical finding that immigrants exhibit higher educational aspirations than non-immigrants, we analyse the role of immigrants’ value of education, i.e. the subjective belief that education is beneficial for one’s life, in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations in four distinct institutional settings, comparing Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and England. While the first part of the analyses relates to how immigrants differ from non-immigrants in the value they assign to education, the second part centres on country differences considering immigrant integration policies and education systems as crucial factors. A third part relates to the links between the value of education and educational aspirations to gain some insight into how the value of education may contribute to educational decisions. Analyses are based on longitudinal data of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU). While results show that immigrants assign a higher value to education, the value of education does play a minor role in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations. The results of the country comparison are rather ambivalent, including very weak support for the argument that immigrants strive for education to a higher extent in countries with less favourable conditions.

Differences in Language Proficiency and Learning Strategies Among Immigrant Women to Canada

ABSTRACTImmigrant women to Canada face unique challenges in gaining mastery of English or French, the country’s two official languages. The study focuses on differences among women with respect to pre-migration and post-migration characteristics that position them differently with respect to language learning in the social contexts where they assert their immigrant identity. This study examines issues in language acquisition among adult immigrant women and their strategies to improve language skills within four years of arrival, using nationally representative data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC). The study shows that older women, less educated women, and some immigration class groups (i.e., spouse/dependents, family class, refugees) have lower language proficiency at arrival and less chances to improve. Since immigrant women represent a heterogeneous group in terms of pre-migration language skills and access to language learning, adequate language learning support is required to facilitate their effective integration in the Canadian society.

Name-Based Measures of Neighborhood Composition: How Telling Are Neighbors' Names

Name-based ethnicity classification is a common tool in the sampling of minority populations. In recent years, however, it has become a popular technique to construct measures of neighborhood composition if more objective data are unavailable. In this article, we test the accuracy of such name-based measures of neighborhood composition, relying on the example of German neighborhoods. Drawing upon previous research, we assert that ethnic groups differ as to how well they are identifiable via name-based classification. Moreover, the ethnic mix in neighborhoods varies systematically, the ethnicities of immigrants residing in majority-dominated neighborhoods differing from those residing in minority-dominated neighborhoods. Taken together, these two notions imply that a name-based classification bias should be neighborhood-specific. Results indicate a tendency to overestimate majority shares in minority-dominated neighborhoods and slightly underestimate them in majority-dominated neighborhoods. All analyses rely on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) as well as on neighborhood compositional data from local statistics of two German cities. The article closes with a discussion of potential strategies to cope with the name-based classification bias.

Religion and National Identification in Europe: Comparing Muslim Youth in Belgium, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

How inclusive are European national identities of Muslim minorities and how can we explain cross-cultural variation in inclusiveness? To address these questions, we draw on large-scale school-based surveys of Muslim minority and non-Muslim majority and other minority youth in five European countries (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey [CILS]; Belgium, England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Our double comparison of national identification across groups and countries reveals that national identities are less strongly endorsed by all minorities compared with majority youth, but national identification is lowest among Muslims. This descriptive evidence resonates with public concerns about the insufficient inclusion of immigrant minorities in general, and Muslims in particular, in European national identities. In addition, significant country variation in group differences in identification suggest that some national identities are more inclusive of Muslims than others. Taking an intergroup relations approach to the inclusiveness of national identities for Muslims, we establish that beyond religious commitment, positive intergroup contact (majority friendship) plays a major role in explaining differences in national identification in multigroup multilevel mediation models, whereas experiences of discrimination in school do not contribute to this explanation. Our comparative findings thus establish contextual variation in the inclusiveness of intergroup relations and European national identities for Muslim minorities.

Explaining differences in gender role attitudes among migrant and native adolescents in Germany: intergenerational transmission, religiosity, and integration

ABSTRACTThis study examines gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents in Germany and attempts to explain why adolescents of Turkish, former Yugoslavian, and Eastern European origin tend to have more traditional attitudes than their native peers. In order to do so, it combines a migrant–native comparative approach that highlights the impact of religiosity and host society integration with an intergenerational transmission perspective that emphasises the continuity of gender role attitudes across generations. The empirical analysis relies on dyadic parent–adolescent data (N = 2744) from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries. It demonstrates the importance of incorporating intergenerational transmission processes to fully understand attitude differences between natives and migrants: a substantial part of native–migrant gaps in gender role attitudes can be attributed to migrant parents’ more traditional attitudes and a strong transmission of attitudes across generations. Once intergenerational transmission and the influence of religiosity and integration have been accounted for, the remaining differences between gender role attitudes of native and migrant adolescents are small.

Optimal Immigration and Investment into Cultural Assimilation

Cultural assimilation of immigrants is an integral part of a well functioning multicultural society that leads to better communication and frictionless interactions between immigrants and native-born. Cultural assimilation is a form of learning that occurs through engagement with the local culture over time or through investment into cultural capital accumulation. The model developed in this paper introduces an explicit investment decision to a matching model with communication frictions represented by knowledge of the local culture. All immigrants face a cost to assimilating, but invest into a process of cultural assimilation. Cultural investments are shown to be an important contributor to cultural assimilation with evidence from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada: Waves 1-3. I show that selection for assimilating immigration based on host country characteristics are weak contributors to language accumulation in the presence of formal and informal language investment. Further insights are provided on the optimal policy tools available to host countries interested in selecting purely assimilating immigrants, and formalize the externalities associated with type of immigration.

Positive choices for all? SES- and gender-specific premia of immigrants at educational transitions

Although often disadvantaged with respect to educational achievement, immigrants usually outperform natives at educational decisions, achievement inequalities taken into account. However, less is known about whether these ethnic premia hold true for all SES-groups and for males and females alike. Using data from the German part of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) and focussing on the transition after lower secondary education into academic tracks or the vocational training system and the labour market, positive choice effects among immigrants are confirmed. However, this only holds true for native-immigrant comparisons of low-SES groups. Furthermore, immigrant girls seem to attain similar transitions compared to immigrant boys, indicating no additional female advantage for immigrant girls. However, group-specific analyses reveal that such a double advantage (female advantage in addition to positive choices among immigrants) actually exist for Turkish girls, with this group showing the highest probabilities of transition into upper secondary education. Regarding an explanation, positive choice effects among immigrants are due mainly to differences in aspirations and seem to be less attributable to perceived or expected discrimination on the labour market.

Immigrant Integration and Youth Mental Health in Four European Countries

The mental health of children of immigrant background compared to their majority peers is an important indicator of integration. We analyse internalizing and externalizing problems in 14–15-year-olds from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (n = 18,716), using new comparative data (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries). Studying more than 30 different origin countries, we find that despite potential problems with acculturation and social stress, children of immigrants—particularly from geographically and culturally distant countries—report systematically fewer internalizing and externalizing problems than the majority population, thus supporting the ‘immigrant health paradox’ found in some studies. However, surprisingly, we do not find that this minority advantage changes with time in the destination country. Externalizing problems are most prevalent in our English sample, and overall Swedish adolescents show the least mental health problems. A plausible account of our results is that there is a positive selection of immigrants on some persistent and intergenerationally transferable characteristic that invokes resilience in children.

Does money buy happiness? Financial and general well-being of immigrants in Australia

Improving one's own living standards is one of the main drivers of immigration; however, there is not much research on the well-being of immigrants after their relocation. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors affecting the well-being of Australian residents, and to examine whether the well-being of Australians born overseas is different from that of native-born Australians, with a special emphasis on the financial aspect of immigrants' well-being. Well-being in this study is defined by the respondents' own assessments of their satisfaction with life and financial well-being is measured by both objective and subjective measures. This analysis was carried out using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Australia (LSIA) and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). The findings indicate that although initially lower, immigrants' life satisfaction tends to increase within 20 years in Australia to become equal to that of Australian-born residents. Lower life satisfaction of recent immigrants can be partially attributed to the lack of improvement in their relative financial status after migration, despite them having less difficulties with timely payments of basic bills than native-born residents. Cultural shock experienced by new settlers can also negatively. affect their well-being.

A threat in the air? Perceptions of group discrimination in the first years after migration: Comparing Polish Migrants in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and Ireland

Discrimination is a problem for both minority groups and the societies in which they live. Perceived group discrimination reflects the direct experiences of immigrants but is also an indicator of reception context and social cohesion in the host country. This paper examines perceptions of group discrimination among recently migrated Polish immigrants to four Western European countries, and specifically focuses on changes over time in these individual perceptions, using a new longitudinal survey of immigrants. Are there cross-national differences in (changes in) perceived group discrimination, and how is discrimination related to exposure to and experiences in the host country? By employing a panel design we find that perceived discrimination is higher among Polish migrants in the Netherlands in Wave 1 than in the other three countries; perceptions of discrimination also increase more there between waves of the survey, as well as in the UK. Perceptions of group discrimination are related to some aspects of exposure to the host country, but most strongly associated with negative experiences in the host country. Differences in country contexts – attitudinal climate and national discourses – seem to play a role in understanding perceived group discrimination among new Polish immigrants in Western Europe.

The ethnic composition of schools and students’ problem behaviour in four European countries: the role of friends

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relation between the proportion of co-ethnics in school and adolescents’ problem behaviour in school (e.g. skipping class and arguing with teachers) and whether friendship patterns are underlying this relationship. We use data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries on ±16,000 students in England, Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden and find that children display less problem behaviour when the proportion of co-ethnics in school is higher. This relationship is mediated by the characteristics of the friends that students have: the proportion of co-ethnics in school positively relates to students’ proportion of in-school friends and co-ethnic friends in class, which are in turn negatively associated with problem behaviour in school. The strength and significance of these paths depend on students’ ethnicity and country of residence. Implications of this study are discussed in the conclusion.

Modes of incorporation: a conceptual and empirical critique

ABSTRACTEntering the debate over segmented assimilation, this paper seeks to refocus discussion on a core, but neglected claim: that inter-group disparities among immigrant offspring derive from differences in a contextual feature shared by immigrant and immigrant descendants: a nationality's mode of incorporation. The paper engages in both theoretical and empirical assessment. We critically examine the concept of mode of incorporation, demonstrating that its operational implications have not been correctly understood; consequently, the core hypothesis has never been appropriately tested. The second part of the paper implements those tests, making use of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey. We do so by using nationality as a proxy for mode of incorporation, systematically contrasting more advantaged against less advantaged nationalities. We show: (a) that tests systematically varying modes classified as more or less advantageous yield inconsistent outcomes; (b) that positive or negative modes of incorporation are associated with few long-lasting effects; (c) that differences in governmental reception are particularly unlikely to be associated with interethnic disparities; and (d) that compared to theoretically relevant nationalities, neither Mexicans, a nationality assigned to a negative mode of incorporation, nor pre-Mariel Cubans, a nationality assigned to positive mode of incorporation, prove distinctive.

Impact of Remittance Behaviour on Immigrant Homeownership Trajectories: An Analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants in Canada from 2001 to 2005

Although homeownership is recognised as an important marker of immigrant integration in Canada, overall evidence suggests a declining trend in homeownership among immigrants in the last two decades. The factors scholars have focused on in their attempt to explain immigrant housing trajectories and overall homeownership trends tend to be dominated by immigrant characteristics and the circumstances prevailing in the housing market. This research extends this attempt at understanding immigrant housing trajectories by examining the influence of remittances. Using data from the longitudinal survey of immigrants in Canada we applied negative log–log regression modelling techniques to examine the influence of remittances on homeownership over time among recent immigrants in Canada. The results indicate that participation in remittance has negative consequences for homeownership over time. The findings make a case for the inclusion of immigrant transnational engagement in the attempt to explain immigrant integration.

Estimating Social and Ethnic Inequality in School Surveys: Biases from Child Misreporting and Parent Nonresponse

We study the biases that arise in estimates of social inequalities in children’s cognitive ability test scores due to (i) children’s misreporting of socio-economic origin and (ii) parents’ nonresponse. Unlike most previous studies, we are able to draw on linked register data with high reliability and almost no missingness and thereby jointly consider the impact of measurement error and nonresponse. Using data on 14-year-olds (n = 18,716) from a new survey conducted in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries), we find that child reports on parental occupation are well aligned with parents’ reports in all countries, but reports on parental education less so. This leads to underestimation of socio-economic disparities when child reports of education are used, but not occupation. Selective nonresponse among parents turns out to be a real problem, resulting in similar underestimation. We also investigate conditional estimates of immigrant–non-immigrant disparities, which are surprisingly little affected by measurement error or nonresponse in socio-economic control variables. We conclude that school-based surveys on teenagers are well advised to include questions on parental occupation, while the costs for carrying out parental questionnaires may outweigh the gains.