Aspiring High in the Swiss VET-Dominated Education System: Second Generation Young Adults and Their Immigrant Parents

ABSTRACT

Often second generation young adults and their immigrant parents aspire high and towards general education despite a modest socioeconomic background. Little is known about the interrelation between educational aspirations and institutionally co-structured educational pathways. These interrelations are particularly important in an early tracking and a highly segregated education system like Switzerland, where – in contrast to many other countries – vocational education and training is highly valued and frequently attended. We evaluate how educational aspirations amongst young adults of the second generation and Swiss natives change as young people move through the education system – and thus through different educational contexts. We analyse how these changes interfere with group-specific reference systems, educational pathways and structure.

Keywords:

• educational aspiration
• immigrant optimism
• second generation
• dual vocational education
• training system

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2022.2139746

Notes

1. Project: Parental Investment in Children’s Education (PICE), SNSF Grant 184906.

2. We find here a majority of young people who aspire to University at t0 and t3 (General: stable). Lower or higher general aspirations are not well represented.

3. We aim to reduce the intergroup socio-economic composition effect.

4. Note that the bivariate results account for truncated but not calibrated weights.

5. Vocational aspiration obtained by summing the proportion of the four vocational aspiration types and general aspiration by summing the two general aspiration types.

6. Note that this difference is not statistically significant, probably given our limited sample size.

7. The sequence plots are based on the quantitatively surveyed monthly educational status.

8. See sequence plot in the annex.

9. Even though the father has therefore a tertiary degree, he cannot convert it in the Swiss labour market. Furthermore, the daughter did not mention the tertiary degree of the father in the quantitative questionnaire; therefore it applies to the ‘success against the odds’ definition of our sample.

10. Abbreviation for ‘Kaufmann/Kauffrau’, in English, Medical office assistant.

11. Abbreviation for ‘medizinische Praxisassistent:in’, in English, Commercial employee.

12. In this article, we refer to the ‘Swiss’ native group as a whole even though we are aware of the language-specific differences in Swiss educational and reference systems.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under Grant 184906.