Cultural capital analysis, or class analysis more generally, exacerbates rather than resolves the anomaly of why non-white ethnic minorities in Britain are over-represented in higher education. Some of these groups have a disproportionate lower, socio-economic profile and yet at least some of these groups are more likely to pursue and achieve entry into higher education than whites, especially, their white working-class peers. They also suffer additional disadvantages such as racism and cultural marginality. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital is designed to explain why members of a disadvantaged class achieve less educational success than an advantaged class. It is not helpful in explaining why some disadvantaged groups do better than one would have predicted on the basis of a class (and/or racism) analysis. On the other hand, US sociological studies which deploy the concept of social capital in combination with ethnicity to explain the trajectories of ‘second generation’ migrants seem promising. This conclusion is offered on the basis of a brief literature review and a suggestion that the ‘motor’ of the British South Asian and Chinese overcoming of disadvantage lies in migrant parents getting their children to internalize high educational ambitions and to enforce appropriate behaviour.
This chapter addresses in four national contexts—Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands—how formally stratified school systems affect the educational outcomes of second-generation Turks. A comparison of only educational outcomes seems in one way to favor France and the Netherlands, where the second generation goes further in school, an advantage that seems attributable to differences associated with formal stratification. However, early departure from school is also higher in France and the Netherlands, and the risk of unemployment for dropouts is very high; in Austria and Germany, by contrast, the apprenticeship system provides a stronger link to the labor market for those with limited educations, and this has favored the emergence of a large skilled blue-collar stratum in the second generation. In the end, which type of system will foster more successful integration in the long run remains unclear.
This chapter shows how members of the second generation may suffer discrimination. It examines the ethnic penalties and difficulties encountered by the second generation in the French labor market. For this study, the chapter uses an alternative mode of comparison, in which a theoretical model developed in one context (segmented assimilation) can be compared in detail to the processes and their outcomes that are observed in another context. This model can illuminate otherwise puzzling divergences between Maghrebins and other second-generation populations in France. Some of the pessimistic predictions of the segmented-assimilation model have applied to some groups in France, where a pattern of durable inferiorization characterizes young people and produces the conditions that ignited the 2005 riots across the country.
This chapter investigates educational enrollment at the preschool level for three-, four-, and five-year-olds in the United States, in order to explore racial, ethnic, and nativity differences in these beneficial programs. Despite the fact that preschool programs could be especially valuable for children from immigrant homes, these children are less likely to be enrolled than native-born children. The chapter analyzes the factors associated with enrollment in order to explain the immigrant-origin disadvantage, concluding that socioeconomic differences matter more than culture and immigrant status do in explaining low prekindergarten enrollment. Especially relevant are the elevated poverty rates among many immigrant groups and the high cost of nursery school and preschool, which is not uniformly provided free of charge by the state.
