Parental involvement of Eastern European immigrant parents in Canada: whose involvement has capital?

Abstract

This study focuses on the parental involvement among Eastern European immigrant parents of elementary school students in Canada. Interviewed parents (N + 19) were educated in several Eastern European countries and had children attending elementary schools in the province of Ontario at the time of the study. The analysis was informed by the concepts of social and cultural capital developed by Pierre Bourdieu. It was found that Eastern European immigrant parents see their role supporting children mainly in the home by emphasizing academic achievement and extracurricular activities. Despite high levels of cultural capital there was a variation in the amount of social capital available to immigrant parents. Those who managed to recreate rich social networks in the new country communicated with teachers more successfully and were satisfied with school.

Keywords:

• Parental involvement
• cultural capital
• immigrant parents

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Notes

1. Some scholars differentiate between the term parental engagement (with students’ learning, e.g. extra tuition, organized arts and sports activities outside of school, learning in the home) and parental involvement (in schools, e.g. attending parent-teacher conferences, curriculum nights, volunteering in the classroom, taking part in fundraising and school governance) (Goodall and Montgomery 2014). Being aware of this debate, I use parental involvement as a broader term that includes both home-based and school-based activities.

2. Here I focus mostly on Eastern European countries. Former Soviet Union republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia are not included in the present analysis as their (post)colonial and (post)socialist trajectories are slightly different.

3. Bourdieu views symbolic capital not as a separate form of capital, but as a recognized from of other capitals (economic, social, cultural), which provides its owner with distinction and prestige (Bourdieu 2013).

4. Middle-class defines people with university education involved in non-manual labor with significant degree of workplace flexibility. On the contrary, working-class members are understood as persons without postsecondary education, who perform manual labor (Lareau 2011). These are not monolithic groups and the definitions are hotly contested (Savage et al. 2015; Silva 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the funding from the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) program.