‘Trying to find the extra choices’: migrant parents and secondary school choice in Greater Manchester

Abstract

This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The article argues that migrants’ experience is embedded in gendered, classed and racialised processes and that, despite the heterogeneity of the category, migrants often face particular barriers in negotiating the school system. Nonetheless it also explores the importance put on education by the migrants who were interviewed and the active labour they engage in to try and achieve the best results for their children.

Keywords:

• school choice
• migrants
• gender
• race
• ethnicity
• social capital

Notes

1. Public debate was reflected in the recent BBC 2 series The Big School Lottery. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/seasons/schoolseason/

2. Much of the literature on school choice uses notions of ‘capital’, economic, social and cultural taken from Pierre Bourdieu (1994).

3. The study draws on a one-year study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council entitled ‘School Choice and Local Place: Parental Perceptions and the Impact of Race, Ethnicity and Class’ (RES-000-22-3466).

4. Of course not all migrants are racialised as minorities (many are white). But in this study, all the migrants we interviewed were also racialised minorities (see below for more details).

5. Taking ward level statistics from the 2001 census, 87% of Cheadle residents, 79% of Chorlton residents and 48% of Whalley Range residents were white; 22% of Whalley Range residents were Pakistani Asian and 8% Black British; 24% of the population of Whalley Range were born outside the United Kingdom, compared with 9% of those from Chorlton and 7% from Cheadle (http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk).

6. The study was not designed to specifically target migrant parents, which accounts for the small sample, but was broadly representative of the proportion of migrant parents in the schools.

7. We were looking for parents of Year Six children in the three areas and approached selected primary schools. We had permission from the schools to be inside the schools for the parents’ evening, but the schools played no role in selecting potential interviewees and, after the initial contact, all further research was conducted away from school premises. We only interviewed the parents. All names have been changed to ensure confidentiality.

8. It should be noted that there were a high number of women living alone in the sample.