Pre-Migration Status, Social Capital, and the Educational Aspirations of Children of Immigrants in Disadvantaged Swedish Schools

ABSTRACT

High aspirations can be an important factor for educational attainment, especially for youth in disadvantaged schools who are otherwise more likely to leave school early. In this article, I study the relationships between pre-migration status, social capital, and educational aspirations among youth in disadvantaged Swedish schools, using data on 960 students collected in 2014. Regression results showed that access to social capital was related to pre-migration status, and that both factors contributed to high university aspirations among children of immigrants, partly through high expectations from parents. The findings consequently show how post-migration resources and outcomes relate to pre-migration factors, challenging the destination country bias that is often present in studies on immigrants and their children.

KEYWORDS:

• Children of immigrants
• social capital
• migrant selectivity
• aspirations
• education

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the RESL.eu project for kindly providing access to the survey data. Thanks to Alireza Behtoui, Anders Neergaard, Andrey Tibajev and Danuta Lindekrantz for commenting on drafts throughout the research process. Your insights and support have been extremely valuable.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).