Blending ahead: the advantages of young people of mixed origin in Portuguese compulsory schooling

ABSTRACT

Young people of mixed origin are gaining greater recognition in migration and integration studies. Increasing rates of intermarriage are leading to the growth of mixed populations, namely in educational settings. In this paper we discuss the social conditions and school experiences of students of mixed native-immigrant families in Portugal, comparing them with those of their peers. The analysis is based on a survey involving 1,194 9th-grade students. The results have revealed that mixed origin students outperform their peers in terms of average classifications and top grades, showing more positive conditions and experiences than either native students or those with migrant backgrounds. Results recommend taking a more cautious approach when mixing these youngsters into the broad category of children of immigrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed origin
• young people
• education
• children of immigrants
• integration
• intermarriage

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous referees and the editor for their very constructive and valuable comments and suggestions on the first version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data supporting the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Notes

1 The Portuguese education system is comprehensive in structure and divided in pre-school education (from the age of 3 until the start of basic education), basic education (6 to 15 years old), and upper secondary education (15 to 18 years old). Basic education (ISCED 1, 2, and 3) is universal, compulsory, free and it comprises 4 cycles: the first cycle consists of first four years of schooling (grades one to four); the second cycle corresponds to the next two years (grades five and six). The third cycle lasts three years and corresponds to lower secondary education (grades seven to nine). Upper secondary education lasts three years and corresponds to grades 10, 11, and 12.

2 The application of the questionnaire was preceded by a pre-testing phase at a school outside the school groups selected with the aim of refining the questions, detecting any deviations in their understanding and the range of possible answers as well as calculating the time needed for its completion.

3 This means that while the student may have been born in a foreign country, if their parents and grandparents were born in Portugal they are classed as native.

4 There is a number of residual cases in which only one grandparent of the student surveyed was born in a foreign country while all the rest of the student’s family born in Portugal. In this case, the classification attributed to this student was native. Around 1.3% of native students had grandparents who were born in a foreign country. Where the student marked “don’t know/no reply” in relation to a family member, the classification was made using the rest of the information made available. Only one student did not provide any information about the country of origin of any of their relatives, in whose case the classification was made in relation to the student’s country of birth (in this case, Portugal).

5 Some foreign parents of native-immigrant mixed families are themselves mixed. In these cases, mixed origin is an inherited family experience.

6 We recognise that in the population of immigrant children there are families of mixed origin, which is also little studied and may be a relevant object of future research.

7 The social classes were analysed using a classification resulting from linking the socio-professional category of the parents and which is based on the ACM typology (Costa 1999). The definition of middle- and upper-class include leading businesspeople and liberal professionals, technical professionals, and the self-employed.

8 School social support services seek to ensure equality of access and academic success. Regulated by the Portuguese Ministry of Education and implemented by school social support services, they provide different levels of support. This support targets specific categories of students in vulnerable situations and involves the supply of meals, transport tickets, and subsidies for school materials among other things in keeping with the needs of families and their respective incomes.

Additional information

Funding

The means of empirical data collection were developed under the auspices of two projects financed by the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology and implemented by CIES-IUL: ‘Ethnicity, academic trajectories and professional careers: young descendants of immigrants at the end of compulsory schooling’ (POCI/SOC/57872/2004) and ‘Young descendants of immigrants and the future: academic trajectories and professional careers at the end of compulsory schooling’ (IME/SOC/49863/2003). The data is available for consultation on request from the author.