School Tracking of Migrant-Ethnic Youth in Germany

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 17. Schools and Education

Abstract

The nation of Germany has a long history of being a migrant receiving destination and today 23.3 percent of the population has a migration background. Despite this history of immigration however, economic integration of non-German ethnic populations has been slow. School tracking of migrant-ethnic youth into university-bound tracks is one such measure of economic integration in which non-Germans remain disadvantaged. This disadvantage stems from both the lower socioeconomic class membership of migrant-ethnic families and factors directly related to the migrant experience, including parental language ability and experience with the German schooling system. Taking these factors into account, this study utilized a nationally representative sample of German youth in order to investigate heterogeneity in both school tracking among several focal migrant-ethnic groups in Germany and the socioeconomic and migration-related mediators that account for their disadvantaged schooling outcomes. Preliminary results show that for most migrant-ethnic groups, namely those of Turkish- and Eastern European ethnicity, family-level socioeconomic factors explain the relationship between ethnicity and school tracking, while migration-related factors were shown to also impact the probability that migrant-ethnic adolescents were assigned to university-bound secondary education. Further investigation will need to be made in order to explore the role of German citizenship in this relationship.

Author

• Max Reason, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill