It is all about Hope: Immigrants Educational Expectations in Spain

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Immigration and Education

Abstract

The children of immigrant families are shown to be a population at risk of educational failure. On the other hand, there is empirical evidence that immigrant families overall hold rather positive attitudes about their children’s educational prospects, and their expectations are vastly more optimistic than those held by natives from similar social backgrounds. The literature does not provide a satisfactory explanation for what is described as the paradox of immigrant optimism. In this paper, using a new survey, the 2011 Chances Survey, which cluster students of immigrant and native origin across schools, we investigate educational optimism among Latin American immigrants in Spain. Based on our findings, we conclude that, contrary to the existing literature, optimism in educational expectation is not simply a matter of ethnic cultural disposition, specific to national contexts, or immigrants' lack of information regarding host society educational systems. We argue that immigrant families process information about education differently, not because of their ethnic cultural dispositions, but because of a) a culture of hope associated with migratory processes; b) the institutionalized (positive) cultural signals (and hope for future) that education transmits.

Authors

• Hector Cebolla-Boado, UNED

• Amparo Gonzales, CSIC Madrid

• Yasemin Soysal, University of Essex