Children of migrants in Europe: which equal opportunities?

In the last decades, education has become an increasingly important element of social policy in Europe, as part of the new perspective of ‘social investment’ (Ferrera 2009; Van Kersbergen and Hemerijck 2012; Nolan 2013). The social investment strategy has been actively supported by international organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since the late 1990s (OECD 1997) and has recently gained a renewed impetus with the adoption of a specific package by the European Commission (European Commission 2013; see also the ‘New Skill Agenda for Europe’ in European Commission 2016). The underlying idea is that welfare state systems could be recalibrated, giving a greater importance to the life course perspective and focusing on the roots of social problems. Hence, social policies would shift from compensation toward prevention (Ferrera et al. 2000; Room 2002; Allmendinger and Leibfried 2003). In this sense, educational policy – including early child education and care, and support for lifelong learning – has a pivotal role in human capital investment in sustaining the development of individual skills to improve future life prospects and in reducing social risks.

The social investment perspective has a strong focus on inclusion and cohesion. As a consequence, international organizations have repeatedly called for reforms in European educational and training systems fostering quality and equity at the same time (European Commission 2006; OECD 2012). School systems should provide equal learning opportunities to all students, including the more disadvantaged ones. Among the latter, students of immigrant background are particularly worthy of attention. They are often at risk of underachievement and school failure, and are considered one of the most important social groups to monitor in the future (European Commission 2008).

In effect, internal and external migrations are a social phenomenon of growing magnitude in the European continent. Most importantly, the last decades have once and for all destroyed the illusion of the transience of immigration settlement, raising the issue of new risks connected to the lack of integration of long-term immigrants in the host societies. New dividing lines in the stratification patterns of life chances have been uncovered, emerging as a problem of collective relevance to be targeted by public policy (Castles and Miller 2003).