The educational attainment’s gap between immigrants’ children and natives: an international comparison

Anna Di Bartolomeo, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

This paper aims to study the determinants of the educational gap between children of immigrants and natives. In particular, by comparing the performances of the first and second generation of immigrants with natives we aim to verify if there is a specific effect related to the generation status. Thus we control our dataset for the most common determinants of school performance and verify (as residual) to what extent generation status exerts an independent effect on early school performance net of economic resources, cultural capital background, pupils’ aspirations and ethnic school segregation. We analyze and compare the cases of three countries, which mainly correspond to three different stages of immigration of developed European economies. On this respect our study is relevant for policymaking as our cases together fully represent the development of the immigration process and integration.