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Recommended reading: Family involvment and educational success of the children of immigrants in Europe. Comparative perspectives
Ignacio Urquijo
20 January 2016
Family involvement and educational success of the children of immigrants in Europe. Comparative perspectives.
Philipp Schnell, Rosita Fibbi, Maurice Crul and Martha Montero-Sieburth have analysed a series of article related to family involvement and education success of the children of immigrants in Europe.
The authors noticed that “few – if any – studies have systematically explored the importance of family involvement for upward mobility and educational achievement by children of immigrants in Europe from a comparative and cross national perspective”, even though “amongst the factors which counterbalance the impact of disadvantaged origin, the literature ascribes special importance to parental involvement in children’s upbringing and education”.
Five articles have been compared in order to find “common patterns of family involvement observable across ethnic origin groups within and between European countries”. The objective was to determine which patterns and type of family involvement are behind the success attained by children of immigrants in Europe and which strategies of involvement can be identified for immigrant families across Europe to achieve upward mobility for their children.
The first paper analysed is written by Rosita Fibbi and Jasmine Truong and deals “with the differences within the Kosovar community, one of the largest second generation groups today in Switzerland and regarded in public opinion as a problematic group”.
Fibbi and Truong found that “educational success is associated with an authoritative parenting style practised by parents of various socio-cultural backgrounds. On the contrary, lack of educational success is to be found in families where parents cannot provide supporting to their children, whatever their previous educational achievement is”.
The following paper, by Sara Rezai, Maurice Crul, Sabine Severiens and Elif Keskiner, focuses the attention on the second generation men and women of Turkish and Moroccan background in the Netherlands.
Their findings reveal that “informational support, such as homework or study advice is the least common type of support that immigrant parents provide to their children, partially because these parents lack adequate language skills, sufficient knowledge of the Dutch education system and have generally low levels of education”. However, the paper also suggests that “other types of parental involvement, such as emotional, notional and instrumental support are not only frequent, but also perceived by the successful second generation as essential for their accomplishments”. For example, “strong family discipline combined with emotional support seems to translate into higher aspirations for second-generation young adults and becomes a major factor for their upward mobility”.
The paper by Laure Moguérou and Emmanuelle Santelli focuses on immigrant and majority families in France, particularly on descendants of Turkish, Maghreb or Sub-Saharan African origin from working class backgrounds.
Their analysis reveals that “informational support, such as concrete help with homework, is found to be less frequent among immigrant parents in France”. Results from the author’s post-survey interviews uncover, however, “that immigrant parents develop alternative ways of getting involved in their children’s schooling activities in order to compensate for the lack of instrumental support”. The most frequent ways of involvement include “recurring talks on school matters and the importance of achieving upward mobility”. Furthermore, Moguérou and Santelli’s results show that “these tangible actions are often provided by the oldest child in the family home.”
The article that follows, by Philipp Schnell, studied Turkish families in three selected North-Western European countries: Austria, France and Sweden.
Findings show that “parental involvement by Turkish parents and older siblings is on average most frequent in Austria, followed by France, and least frequent in Sweden”. Schnell’s paper suggests that “these different findings across countries have to be read in the light of interaction mechanisms with institutional settings of the given education systems”. “The family becomes the main focal point of an education system which due to its half-day training system delegates learning and homework to the family home. By contrast, in the case of systems such as those in France and Sweden –offering full-time education and supervised homework sessions in schools– the role of additional help provided by parents at home becomes less important”.
Finally, Elif Keskiner’s paper poses “the question of whether it is merit or parental involvement that matters for second-generation Turks to successfully navigate through the first selection moment in the French and Dutch education system”.
The author found out that, in the case of Amsterdam, “the education system limits direct parental involvement in the selection process”, while in the case of Strasbourg, “cultural capital by immigrant parents makes a difference for their children’s tracking decision as the French education system allows for active participation by parents”. As she concludes, “this finding might explain the larger numbers of students in the academic track in Strasbourg compared to Amsterdam and contributes therefore to the explanation of cross-national differences in outcomes among the Turkish second-generation between France and the Netherlands”.
Suggestions for future research
As the authors pointed out, “the institutional arrangements of national education system determine the relevance and type of family involvement that immigrant parents have to provide in order to set their children on the successful educational paths”.
The authors considered that “it is imperative to collect more systematic data on family involvement and its link to educational success for children of immigrants in Europe”. Additionally, “future (survey based) studies should include measures of siblings’ involvement in school related issues for the second-generation”. It is also essential “to unpack the effect of different national or local parental involvement policies which might also contribute to cross-national differences in outcomes by children of immigrants”.
Source: http://www.comparativemigrationstudies.com/content/3/1/14
Philipp Schnell, Rosita Fibbi, Maurice Crul and Martha Montero-Sieburth have analysed a series of article related to family involvement and education success of the children of immigrants in Europe.
The authors noticed that “few – if any – studies have systematically explored the importance of family involvement for upward mobility and educational achievement by children of immigrants in Europe from a comparative and cross national perspective”, even though “amongst the factors which counterbalance the impact of disadvantaged origin, the literature ascribes special importance to parental involvement in children’s upbringing and education”.
Five articles have been compared in order to find “common patterns of family involvement observable across ethnic origin groups within and between European countries”. The objective was to determine which patterns and type of family involvement are behind the success attained by children of immigrants in Europe and which strategies of involvement can be identified for immigrant families across Europe to achieve upward mobility for their children.
The first paper analysed is written by Rosita Fibbi and Jasmine Truong and deals “with the differences within the Kosovar community, one of the largest second generation groups today in Switzerland and regarded in public opinion as a problematic group”.
Fibbi and Truong found that “educational success is associated with an authoritative parenting style practised by parents of various socio-cultural backgrounds. On the contrary, lack of educational success is to be found in families where parents cannot provide supporting to their children, whatever their previous educational achievement is”.
The following paper, by Sara Rezai, Maurice Crul, Sabine Severiens and Elif Keskiner, focuses the attention on the second generation men and women of Turkish and Moroccan background in the Netherlands.
Their findings reveal that “informational support, such as homework or study advice is the least common type of support that immigrant parents provide to their children, partially because these parents lack adequate language skills, sufficient knowledge of the Dutch education system and have generally low levels of education”. However, the paper also suggests that “other types of parental involvement, such as emotional, notional and instrumental support are not only frequent, but also perceived by the successful second generation as essential for their accomplishments”. For example, “strong family discipline combined with emotional support seems to translate into higher aspirations for second-generation young adults and becomes a major factor for their upward mobility”.
The paper by Laure Moguérou and Emmanuelle Santelli focuses on immigrant and majority families in France, particularly on descendants of Turkish, Maghreb or Sub-Saharan African origin from working class backgrounds.
Their analysis reveals that “informational support, such as concrete help with homework, is found to be less frequent among immigrant parents in France”. Results from the author’s post-survey interviews uncover, however, “that immigrant parents develop alternative ways of getting involved in their children’s schooling activities in order to compensate for the lack of instrumental support”. The most frequent ways of involvement include “recurring talks on school matters and the importance of achieving upward mobility”. Furthermore, Moguérou and Santelli’s results show that “these tangible actions are often provided by the oldest child in the family home.”
The article that follows, by Philipp Schnell, studied Turkish families in three selected North-Western European countries: Austria, France and Sweden.
Findings show that “parental involvement by Turkish parents and older siblings is on average most frequent in Austria, followed by France, and least frequent in Sweden”. Schnell’s paper suggests that “these different findings across countries have to be read in the light of interaction mechanisms with institutional settings of the given education systems”. “The family becomes the main focal point of an education system which due to its half-day training system delegates learning and homework to the family home. By contrast, in the case of systems such as those in France and Sweden –offering full-time education and supervised homework sessions in schools– the role of additional help provided by parents at home becomes less important”.
Finally, Elif Keskiner’s paper poses “the question of whether it is merit or parental involvement that matters for second-generation Turks to successfully navigate through the first selection moment in the French and Dutch education system”.
The author found out that, in the case of Amsterdam, “the education system limits direct parental involvement in the selection process”, while in the case of Strasbourg, “cultural capital by immigrant parents makes a difference for their children’s tracking decision as the French education system allows for active participation by parents”. As she concludes, “this finding might explain the larger numbers of students in the academic track in Strasbourg compared to Amsterdam and contributes therefore to the explanation of cross-national differences in outcomes among the Turkish second-generation between France and the Netherlands”.
Suggestions for future research
As the authors pointed out, “the institutional arrangements of national education system determine the relevance and type of family involvement that immigrant parents have to provide in order to set their children on the successful educational paths”.
The authors considered that “it is imperative to collect more systematic data on family involvement and its link to educational success for children of immigrants in Europe”. Additionally, “future (survey based) studies should include measures of siblings’ involvement in school related issues for the second-generation”. It is also essential “to unpack the effect of different national or local parental involvement policies which might also contribute to cross-national differences in outcomes by children of immigrants”.
Source: http://www.comparativemigrationstudies.com/content/3/1/14
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