In Chapter 3 I have shown that Western European countries differ in the extent to which second-generation immigrants suffer from migrant-specific penalties in educational achievement. The empirical analyses presented there have also made it clear that such differences cannot be reduced to different compositions in the immigrant populations, leaving room for an institutional explanation. In this chapter, I explore the role of educational systems in explaining such cross-country variability in migrant achievement penalties. In order to identify potential explanantes, I move from the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2, and focus on four main institutional dimensions: (i) the duration of schooling, i.e., the amount of time pupils spend in the educational system; (ii) its degree of stratification, i.e., the structural differentiation of students within given grades; (iii) the allocation of human and financial resources; (iv) the degree of standardization in the quality of education provided nationwide. I also consider contextual elements of Western European countries, in particular those connected to the history of immigration and to the linguistic composition of immigrants. In what follows, I review previous studies that, albeit following different approaches, have put forward country-level explanations of migrant learning disadvantage. My empirical investigation of which institutional configurations, embedded in which contexts, produce more or less severe degrees of migrant achievement penalties is carried out with both variable-oriented and diversity-oriented methods.

Previous studies

Educational institutions and socioeconomic disadvantage

Education is often seen as a double-edged sword in the stratification process (Shavit et al. 2007). On the one hand, it is able to provide learning opportunities to all individuals irrespective of their family background and it is therefore the key instrument of social mobility, as opposed to inherited privileges. On the other hand, education mediates the intergenerational transmission of inequality, since children with a favorable family background are more likely to gain access to high educational levels and to successfully complete them. Whether one function prevails over the other depends, among other factors, on the way the educational system itself is organized.

There is a rich literature aimed at identifying the role of the features of the school system in shaping educational inequalities associated with socioeconomic background.